Management Research and Literary Criticism
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.00043 |
| Author | Geoff Easton,Luis Araujo |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
Introduction
There has been a great deal of largely sterile
debate around the issue of whether the field of
management studies and its marketing sub-
discipline are sciences. In this paper we propose
to explore the somewhat radical alternative that,
put crudely, the field of management studies may
be regarded as an artistic enterprise. By this we
do not mean to become embroiled in the equally
fatuous argument about whether the practice of
management is an art, black or otherwise. Rather
we wish to treat written reflections on the pro-
cesses of management, what we are normally
pleased to call theory, as literature.
There were two related sources of inspiration
for this departure; the first was an interest in the
role of metaphor in the development of theory
(Easton and Araujo, 1993). The second source of
inspiration comes from the epistemological battle
that has been fought out in the pages of leading
management journals over the last few years (see
e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Knights, 1992;
Brownlie et al., 1994). One area upon which there
appears to be increasing convergence of views
is criticality. For example two of the principal
proponents of the debate in marketing, Hunt
(1990) and Anderson (1988), claim to occupy very
different positions. However, both appear to wish
to replace, albeit reluctantly, the notion from the
physical sciences of a critical experiment that dis-
tinguishes between alternative explanations, with
a process of critical debate from which explana-
tion emerges as the most convincing alternative
to the community of scholars concerned.
Debates of the kind advocated above are
largely conducted in writing. They comprise text
or, as we would prefer to argue in this paper,
literature. Traditional literature has a long history
of critical analysis. Indeed it is evident that much
of literary criticism has had the same sort of
objectives as appear to be central to the ‘critical’
movements in social science; to debate which
views are more profound, truer or offer the best
explanations of the world. However, there are
at least two major differences. In literary criti-
cism there is a greater acceptance of the non-
incremental nature of such conclusions. What
Greek authors wrote thousands of years ago has
equal standing with contemporary works. In addi-
tion there is more equanimity about the coex-
istence of multiple ‘explanations’.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 8, 99–106 (1997)
Management Research and
Literary Criticism
Geoff Easton and Luis Araujo
Department of Marketing, The Management School, University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YX, UK
This paper is concerned with analysing the role of rhetoric and literary criticism in
research and scholarship. It is argued that critical debate and dialogue are the hub of
the process of research and scholarship and that social science and literature have more
in common than is normally recognized. Most of these debates are carried out in
writing and involve elaborate writing and reading of texts – or literature as we prefer
to call it. We argue the case that management researchers may have something to learn
from literary criticism. A model of literary criticism comprising four different modes of
criticism – mimetic, expressive, pragmatic and objective – is described and the implica-
tions for management research are suggested. The paper concludes with a number of
reflections on what can be gained from this type of analysis and on the role of reflexivity
in the research process.
© 1997 British Academy of Management
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