Critical Management Studies: what they are and how they are applied to psychology.

A set of lines of research applied to the field of organizations.

Critical management studies are a set of works that draw on critical theory to formulate different ways of understanding the underpinnings and day-to-day functioning of organizations.

In this article we will take a closer look at what critical management studies are, where they come from and what some of them are.where they come from and what are some of their main proposals.

What are Critical Management Studies?

Critical Management Studies are a set of works that apply critical theory to the analysis and functioning of organizations.

In other words, it is a series of studies on management, organizations and work that, from a critical perspective, address social issues of relevance to these fields, such as gender, power, identity, etc. (Baleriola, 2017).such as gender, power, identity, etc. (Baleriola, 2017). Some of its main objectives are, broadly speaking, the following:

• To offer an alternative vision to the traditional approach in management studies.
• To use methodologies other than quantitative and experimental analysis.
• To study power relations and ideology within organizations. within organizations.
• To study aspects of communication between the people who make up an organization, as well as implicit values.

We will see below where critical management studies come from and what are some of their contributions to the management of organizations.

Critical theory applied to management

Critical theory is a current of philosophy and social sciences that was born in the middle of the 20th century. It establishes a rupture with traditional theoryIt establishes a break with traditional theory, based on a project of scientificist objectivity and typical of the natural sciences, since, beyond generating explanations or descriptions of the phenomena it studies, critical theory intends to evaluate them under a political component omitted in traditional theory.

This theory considers that every object of research, and every researcher, has been socially constructed, have been socially constructedthat is, they are situated in a particular vision of the world that corresponds to a specific historical and cultural context. Consequently, people and social sciences have a transformative potential that critical theory addresses in terms of power and domination especially.

This opened up crises, debates, objects and methodologies of research both in the social sciences and in other fields, such as the world of work and organizations. Specifically, it provided the opportunity to problematize some of the fundamentals of traditional business management, as well as its consequences in the daily activities of those who make up organizations.

Three fundamental elements

Baleriola (2017) tells us that the contributions of critical theory to business managementand the proposals that derive from this, can be summarized in the following points:

1. Criticism of technicist and self-limiting positions 2.

They question the scientistic foundations and methodologies that had been transferred to the activity and management of organizations, since they ended up reducing explanations of their functioning to variables or categories related to each other by means of numbers. These were far removed from what really happens within organizations, i.e., they did not consider the existence of more variables, or the ability of people to interpret what others say and do, etc.The existence of more variables, or the ability of people to interpret what others say and do, etc., was not considered.

From this point on, new methodologies new methodologies for the analysis of organizations are proposed..

2. Criticism of the power and ideology of traditional theory

Related to the above, critical management studies analyze the impact of language, implicit values and actions on interpersonal relationships, organizational culture, goals and objectives, etc.organizational culture, goals and objectives, and so on. This was either omitted by traditional theory or considered as a secondary element.

3. The pursuit of ideals

It is a matter of thinking and constructing other ways of acting, that is to say, to rethink what is taken for granted, rethinking what is taken for granted or has been naturalized within organizations.. From there, we seek alternatives, in this case critical and ethical approaches.

Methodology and ethical practice

Critical management studies aim to carry out in-depth analyses of the phenomena they study. For this reason, they are based on a primarily qualitative methodology, which supports the possibility of critical choice. In other words, critical management studies make an explicitly political use of the study and analysis of the phenomena occurring in organizations (Baleriola, 2017).

Some of the techniques and methodological foundations used by critical management studies are ethnography and discourse analysis, as well as the possibility of transformation at the very moment of investigating the phenomenon.

In this regard, the researcher is positioned as a tool for empowerment.Finally, they analyze ethical commitment in organizational activity, which implies understanding the tensions between the demands of the organization itself and its members.

In the same vein, critical management studies criticize the traditional postulates of corporate social responsibility, which generally insist on individual responsibility, and are particularly concerned with the image they project in their immediate context.

They also problematize reductionist biases about ethical practice, for example, the idea that ethical responsibility is an exercise that only applies to the highest levels of the organization (Tirado and Gálvez, 2017). They seek, on the contrary to make visible that individuals actively and daily constitute themselves as moral subjectsThis implies analyzing ethics not as a universal reality, but in the concrete context in which it occurs.