Making ‘Critical Performativity’ Concrete: Sumantra Ghoshal and Linkages between the Mainstream and the Critical

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12227
Published date01 October 2017
AuthorPaul K. Edwards
Date01 October 2017
British Journal of Management, Vol. 28, 731–741 (2017)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12227
Making ‘Critical Performativity’ Concrete:
Sumantra Ghoshal and Linkages between
the Mainstream and the Critical
Paul K. Edwards
Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Park Road, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
Email: P.K.Edwards@Bham.ac.uk
Critical performativity (CP) advocates direct engagement with managerial practice to
promote social change while being subversive of a focus on eciency. Its critique of ef-
ficiency needs to be reconsidered: there can be a common real interest in eciency, and
addressing eciency does not entail an uncritical acceptance of a managerial agenda.
Taking this step allows CP to engage with more conventional views. Two kinds of such
views can be distinguished, the unitarist, which stresses common interests,and the plural-
ist, which allows for diverging interests. The work of the mainstream scholar Sumantra
Ghoshal illustrates an eort to move beyondunitarism towards a more pluralist position.
He developed a ‘good theory of management’ that aimed to address eciency, but also
the quality of jobs. Appraisal of this theory from the perspective of real interests points
to limitations, but also ways in which it can be givena critical edge. The result is an anal-
ysis that advances that strand of CP that seeks to makespecific interventions in concrete
organizational practice.
Introduction
Critical performativity (CP) is an increasingly
debated theme in recent critical management
studies (CMS) scholarship, as signalled by a set of
five papers in Human Relations in February 2016,
which in turn refer to discussions going back to the
classic contribution by Fournier and Grey (2000).
These papers demonstrate that the application of
CP is heavily contested, but there is reasonable
agreement that it involves: direct and specific
engagement with managerial practice; a ‘subver-
sive’ view of engagement based on a normative
commitment to ‘create social change’ (Spicer,
I am very grateful to Julian Birkinshaw and Robin
Wensley foradvice at the start of this project. Comments
from seminar participants at Birmingham, Norwich and
Nottingham Trent business schools help to develop it.
Special thanks go to the reviewers, and one in particu-
lar, who oered critical, supportive and wise advice in
drawing out the contribution of the paper.
Alvesson and Karreman, 2009, p. 539, 2016) and
indeed emancipation; and a questioning of the
(non-critical) ‘alignment between knowledge,
truth and eciency’ (Fournier and Grey, 2000,
p. 17).
The present purpose is not to debate CP as a
whole. It is to suggest ways in which the criti-
cal and the ‘non-critical’ can speak more directly
to each other than has been the case to date. It
does this in two ways. First, it draws on industrial
relations scholarship, which identifies three posi-
tions and not two (Heery,2016). These are labelled
unitary (part of mainstream management studies),
radical (embracing CMS) and, between these two,
pluralist or neo-pluralist (Ackers, 2002). We can
grasp these three positions using the criteria that
Fournier and Grey (2000) set out to dierenti-
ate critical from non-critical management studies,
namely,the approach to performativity,denatural-
ization and reflexivity. Secondly, framing the issue
in this way permits understanding of the extent of
© 2017 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
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