Postcritical Management Studies: Philosophical Investigations

This book is the first of its kind to offer a new definition of contemporary management. It uses Michel Henry’s philosophy and takes the real, sensitive and pathetic subjectivity of individuals as the starting point of the analysis as opposed to the usual large categories of representations; resources; images; and discourses. This book thus proposes to rethink management by insisting on the dialectic of strength and vulnerability; its power of constraint, imitation and imagination; and finally its framework of action situated in a fourfold concern for the self, for people, for institutions and for the environment. These different notions are useful in order to experience a deeper understanding of management that is free from the obsolescence of the distant recommendations of ancient protomanagement and the outdated and dubious prescriptions of the so-called ＂scientific management＂.

Ghislain Deslandes is a Full Professor at ESCP Business School (Paris Campus) where he teaches Philosophy, Management and Communication. His research has been published in journals like European Management Journal, European Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Leadership, Organization or Organization Studies. His books include Le management éthique (Dunod, 2012), Essai sur les données philosophiques du management (PUF, 2013)/ Best essay EFMD-FNEGE in 2015, Critique de la condition managériale (PUF, 2016), Antiphilosophie du christianisme (Ovadia)/ translated in english in 2020 (Springer), A propos du management et d’un problème plus général (PUF, 2020) and Court traité sur la recherche d’une première vérité (Ovadia, 2020). Ghislain Deslandes was also an elected Program Director at the Collège International de Philosophie (CIPh) from 2013 to 2019.