Critical management studiesand mainstream” organization.docx

Critical management studies
and “mainstream” organization

science
A proposal for a rapprochement

Max Visser
Nijmegen School of Management, Institute of Management
Research,

Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a
rapprochement between the field of critical
management studies (CMS) and what is constructed here as the
“mainstream” of organization theory
and research.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper contains a
comparative analysis of relevant literature
from the fields of organization theory, political science and
political psychology.

Findings – It is found, first, that at least four instances of
“mainstream” theory and research more or
less share CMS assumptions; second, that CMS and
“mainstream” may benefit from mutual contact
(using the example of the “power elite” discussion in the 1950s
and 1960s); third, that CMS and
“mainstream” may benefit from “mainstream” operationalization

of CMS-concepts (using the example
of the development of the F-scale in the 1930s and 1940s).

Originality/value – The paper ranks among the first to search
for convergences between two fields
that seem firmly divided in both theoretical and institutional
terms.

Keywords Critical management, Organizational theory,
Management power

Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction
Since the 1970s a field of organization studies has emerged that
explicitly takes a
critical stance towards modern practices of management and
organization and to
(what is constructed in this paper as) the “mainstream”[1] of
scientific theory and
research on these practices (Grey and Willmott, 2005a). Given
this dual purpose of
critiquing management and the studies thereof, this field has
appropriately labeled
itself as critical management studies (CMS).

Although the field of CMS is not easily defined and demarcated,
some common lines
of thought can be discerned. Put briefly, CMS scholars argue
for a critical conception of
management “in which research is self-consciously motivated
by an effort to discredit,
and ideally eliminate, forms of management and organization
that have institutionalized
the opposition between the purposefulness of individuals and
the seeming givenness

and narrow instrumentality of work-process relationships”
(Alvesson and Willmott,
1992, p. 4). This givenness (or naturalness) of relationships
needs to be critically
examined (or de-naturalized), because what is treated as natural
or given often masks

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1934-8835.htm

The author thanks Jos Benders, Yvonne Benschop, Rene ten
Bos, Hans Doorewaard,
Erik Poutsma, and the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for
their critical (both with and
without capital C) and stimulating comments on earlier drafts of
this paper.

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International Journal of
Organizational Analysis
Vol. 18 No. 4, 2010
pp. 466-478
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1934-8835
DOI 10.1108/19348831011081912

underlying structural power and ideological differences (e.g.
between managers and

employees, capital and labor, men and women). Further, narrow
instrumentality,
according to which knowledge and truth are only valued in
relation to effective and
efficient managerial performance, is countered by an anti-
performative stance, in which
broader concerns (like just working relationships, human
development and ecological
effects) are brought into the discussion (Alvesson and Willmott,
1992; CMS Manifesto;
Fournier and Grey, 2000; Grey and Willmott, 2005a).

Ultimately, the ideals of CMS are human emancipation and
enlightenment, based
on the:

[. . .] assumption of the possibilities of a more autonomous
individual, who, in the tradition of
Enlightenment, in principle can master his or her own destiny in
joint operation with peers
(Alvesson and Willmott, 1992, p. 9; Nord and Jermier, 1992).

Although sharing a critical conception, CMS scholars differ in
their stance towards the
objects of their critiques. Regarding management, some scholars
want to engage with
practice, using critique pragmatically to effect desired changes
in organizations, while
others want to disengage with practice, fearing a colonization of
CMS terms and ideas
by practitioners (Fournier and Grey, 2000; Huff and Huff, 2002;
Nord and Jermier,
1992). However, some consensus seems to emerge among CMS
scholars that
engagement with practice is desirable when it creates
“thoughtful practitioners capable

of engaging these issues both inside the corporation as
managers and outside it as
citizens” (CMS Manifesto, p. 2). Such engagement could take
the form of teaching
prospective managers in business and professional schools and
of organizational
consulting (Grey and Willmott, 2005a; see also the discussion
among Clegg et al., 2006;
Phillips, 2006; Willmott, 2006).

Although CMS scholars thus appear to have found ways to
meaningfully engage
with management, their engagement with studies, i.e.
“mainstream” theory and
research on management and organization, seems less clear cut.
Although there exists
a fair amount of empirical research in the CMS field, its theory,
methods and results
tend to be rather narrowly confined to that field. Apart from
critiquing, CMS scholars
in general do not engage with “mainstream” organization
scientists in discussing
theory or comparing empirical findings.

This divide between CMS and “mainstream” organization
science seems
unfortunate for both sides. The ideals and critiques of CMS
have direct relevance
for management and organization studies, but they tend to
remain relatively isolated
and remote from the bulk of these studies. Although many of the
concerns CMS
scholars raise often have been noted and supported by
“mainstream” scientists, these
concerns tend to remain abstract and devoid of a firm empirical
base (Walsh and

Weber, 2002). Proper “mainstream” understanding is often not
encouraged by the
complex language CMS scholars sometimes resort to (Huff and
Huff, 2002; Phillips,
2006), or by the fact that research in the CMS field sometimes
appears to be less critical
of its own assumptions (like managerial domination, structural
inequality, etc.) than of
those of “mainstream” organization science (Clegg et al., 2006;
Wray-Bliss, 2003).

In this paper, I propose a rapprochement between CMS and
“mainstream”
organization science from a “mainstream” perspective. Claims
by CMS scholars may
gain strength and recognition when they can be connected to
similar claims within
the “mainstream,” and when they can be backed up by
“mainstream” methods

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of empirical research. In doing so, I will primarily inquire into
mechanisms of theoretical
and conceptual fit and comparison, and less into inter- and
intragroup processes that
also may determine rapprochement in a more social sense. The
theoretical and empirical
possibilities of rapprochement are the prime focus of inquiry in

this paper.

In the remainder of this paper, I will attempt to connect CMS
and “mainstream” in
three ways. In the first section, I will point out and briefly
discuss “mainstream”
organizational theory and research that to some degree appears
to share
CMS-assumptions. In the second section, I will show how CMS
and “mainstream” may
benefit from mutual contact through the example of the power
elite debate in the 1950s
and 1960s. In the third section, I will show how CMS and
“mainstream” may benefit from
“mainstream” operationalization of CMS-concepts through the
example of the
development of the F-scale in the 1930s and 1940s. Finally,
some conclusions are drawn.

Connecting CMS and “mainstream” theory and research
Several instances of “mainstream” organizational theory and
research to some degree
appear to share CMS assumptions. First, the work of Chris
Argyris seems pertinent
here. From his first (Argyris, 1957) to his last book (Argyris,
2004), Argyris has posited
a fundamental discrepancy between basic human needs for self-
actualization and
development and common organizational practices. While
employees want to develop
and actualize themselves and to increase their competence and
autonomy, they are
thwarted in these wants and needs by the formal structure,
culture and management
style of most organizations. This discrepancy causes apathy,
alienation and a

materialistic orientation among employees, leading to
dysfunctional behavior within
organizations. In his later work with Donald Schön, Argyris has
elaborated this
discrepancy in terms of defensive routines, Model I norms and
behavior, and limited
learning systems. To remedy this discrepancy, Argyris and
Schön advocate a Model II
learning culture and double loop learning, embracing the norms
of valid information,
free and informed choice, and internal commitment to choices
thus made. Managers
and employees should put up their own assumptions and values
for discussion and
testing and display maximal openness and minimal
defensiveness in their
communication (Argyris and Schön, 1974, 1978, 1996).

Argyris’ general position and the concepts of Models I and II
may be of interest to
CMS scholars, because they seem to resonate well with the
concerns of many CMS
scholars with just working relationships and human
emancipation, a fact already
acknowledged by some CMS scholars (Nord and Jermier, 1992).
Furthermore, Model II
bears considerable resemblance to Habermas’ idea of
“Herrschaftsfreie Diskussion”
that informs many CMS ideals (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992).

A second instance of “mainstream” organizational theory and
research that to some
degree appears to share CMS assumptions ironically comes from
a “mainstream”
critique on the overall desirability of double loop learning and
other higher levels of

organizational learning. Various authors have pointed at the
dangers of implicit
ideological control, dominance and exploitation inherent in
these levels of learning
(Driver, 2002; Salaman, 2001; Snell and Chak, 1998). Others, in
particular Edgar Schein,
have compared these forms of learning to coercive persuasion,
practiced in Korean and
Chinese prisoner camps in the 1950s. They have argued that
learning organizations,
through various “golden chains,” subtly coerce their employees
into a process of openly
discussing their norms and values (Coutu, 2002; Schein, 1999).
Such a process may

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represent a psychologically painful forced choice situation,
because employees
ultimately may be forced to choose between changing their own
deepest values and
endangering working relations with their colleagues, or even
losing their jobs.
The pathological effects of such forced choice situations have
been firmly established
in the experiments on obedience to authority (Milgram, 1974)
and line judgments
(Asch, 1952; 1955).

The concepts of coercive persuasion and forced choice situation
may be of interest

to CMS scholars, because they signify the behavioral micro-
dynamics of control,
dominance and power and the pathological effects thereof. CMS
scholars may use these
results to refine their analyses of structural power and
ideological differences within
organizations and devise new ways to research these
differences.

A third instance of “mainstream” organizational theory and
research that to some
degree appears to share CMS assumptions is concerned with the
role of emotions.
Emotions still appear to be a difficult issue in organizations,
stemming from a basic
incompatibility between the elusive nature of emotions and
principles of modern
management. Modern management usually aims at the reduction
of unforeseeable
events, focusing on the control of input, throughput and output
of all organizational
processes. Since emotions usually evade any form of such
control, there is no proper
place for them in modern organizations (Albrow, 1992;
Fineman, 1996). When the role of
emotions is acknowledged, many management practices are
primarily directed at
controlling emotion. Such management of emotion focuses on
effortful coping with one’s
own emotions and the emotions of others and on the elimination
of ineffective thoughts
and feelings. It aims at the obliteration of unmanageable aspects
of emotion by
neutralizing, buffering, prescribing and normalizing emotions,
for example in the form of
feeling rules at work and emotional labor (Ashforth and

Humphrey, 1995; Doorewaard
and Benschop, 2003; Hochschild, 1983).

The concepts of emotional control and emotional labor may be
of interest to CMS
scholars, because they are indicative of the subtle ways in
which narrow instrumentality
and managerial domination may endanger human development,
identity and
authenticity. More than the “mainstream,” CMS may be in a
theoretical position to
critically analyze the interplay of emotions, rationality and
power in work situations and
to provide input for further research on these issues.

A fourth instance of “mainstream” organizational theory and
research that to some
degree appears to share CMS assumptions is concerned with the
role of paradox and
double binds in organizations. Paradox in social interactions
occurs when messages
are incongruent at the verbal and non-verbal levels in such a
way that they lead to
confusion and uncertainty in the person receiving these
messages. Paradoxical
communication becomes part of a double bind situation under
four conditions:

(1) two or more persons are involved in an intense relationship
with a high
(physical or psychological) survival value for at least one of
them;

(2) in this relationship messages are regularly given that at the
verbal level of
communication assert something, at the non-verbal level negate

or conflict with
this assertion, and at both levels are enforced by punishments or
signals that
threaten survival;

(3) in this relationship the receiver of the incongruent messages
is prevented from
withdrawing from the situation or commenting on it; and

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(4) double binding in this sense is a long lasting characteristic
of the situation,
which, once established, tends towards self-perpetuation. A fair
amount of
organizational research evidence suggests that a prolonged
exposure to double
binding communication patterns may lead to a variety of
psychopathological
symptoms, including stress, anxiety and behavioral disturbances
(Dopson and
Neumann, 1998; Tracy, 2004; Visser, 2003a, b, 2007a, b).

The concepts of paradox and double bind may be of interest to
CMS scholars, because
they signify the interactional and communicational patterns that
accompany
managerial domination and manipulation and specify the
detrimental effects thereof

on employees’ psychological well-being.

Connecting CMS and “mainstream” through research: the power
elite
debate, 1953-1963
CMS and “mainstream” organizational science may benefit from
mutual contact on the
basis of empirical research. Several theoretical claims that
appear to divide CMS and
“mainstream” may be modified and enriched by critically
comparing results of
empirical research from both sides. I offer the power elite
debate between 1953 and
1963 as an example.

Mills’ (1956) The Power Elite is generally regarded as an
important precursor of
CMS (Fournier and Grey, 2000; Grey and Willmott, 2005b). In
this paper, Mills
analyzed the power structure of US society at the national level.
For him those people
have power, who are able to realize their will, even against the
will of others; the
ultimate kind of power is violence. Power is first and foremost
institutional, based on
the access to the command of major institutions. Institutional
power is shared by only a
small cohesive group of people, called the power elite:

[. . .] those political, economic and military circles which as an
intricate set of overlapping
cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In
so far as national events are
decided, the power elite are those who decide them” (Mills,
1956, p. 18).

However, the power elite do not rule alone. Below the elite are
the middle levels of
power, which comprise Congress, pressure groups and the new
and old upper classes
at the local and regional level. At the bottom of the pyramid
resides the great mass of
politically powerless citizens.

The sociologist Hunter (1953) applied a similar framework to
the power structure of
the metropolitan community of Regional City (Atlanta,
Georgia). Using a reputational
method, he identified a group of 40 people who are, reputedly,
dominating major
decision making in industry, banking and commerce. Below this
top group there
appears a larger group, the political understructure, consisting
of political parties,
trade unions and civic organizations. A still larger group, at the
bottom of the
pyramidal power structure, is the powerless majority of ordinary
people.

The elitists’ work ignited a lively debate in the political and
administrative sciences
on the conceptualization and localization of power.
“Mainstream” pluralist social
scientists raised several methodological and theoretical issues.
Methodologically,
Hunter’s use of a reputational method was criticized as a form
of circular reasoning: to
ask a panel to name the community’s top leaders is to
presuppose that such a group of
top leaders exists (Kaufman and Jones, 1954; Polsby, 1960,
1980). Theoretically, the
approach by Hunter and Mills was criticized for isolating the

decisions of the power

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elite from the systemic context of the interests those decisions
serve and for focusing
upon an abstract and a-historical image of bureaucratic
hierarchies, with command
posts at the top (Alford and Friedland, 1985). Instead, pluralist
social scientists argued,
theory and research should concentrate on concrete decisions on
important public
issues and on the question whether there is a cohesive elite that
dominates all major
issues (Bell, 1958; Dahl, 1957, 1958).

The prime empirical pluralist answer to the elitist model was
Dahl’s (1961) Who
Governs?. His book dealt with the principal question: “in a
political system where nearly
every adult may vote but where knowledge, wealth, social
position, access to officials,
and other resources are unequally distributed, who actually
governs?” (Dahl, 1961, p. 1).
Studying patterns of decision making in New Haven,
Connecticut, in the areas of
education, party nominations and urban renewal, Dahl found
that only a few people
make the actual decisions, of which the mayor and his aides are
the most dominant.
Their power is based on the support of the political stratum, a

small group of highly
politically involved individuals. This stratum is not a
homogeneous and closed class, but
a heterogeneous and open group easily accessible to people
from the apolitical stratum of
the community. Dahl also found that the elected officials are
more powerful than the
economic or social elite. New Haven constitutes a pluralist
democracy, in which a few
leaders make the important decisions, but under democratic
constraints.

Important objections to both the elitist and pluralist approaches
were raised by
Bachrach and Baratz (1962, 1963). They argued that the
pluralist model does not take
account of the fact that power may be, and often is, exercised
by confining the scope of
decision-making to relatively safe issues. This occurs when
power wielders attempt to
create or reinforce social and political values and institutional
practices that limit the
scope of public consideration to only those issues that are
comparatively innocuous to
them. Some issues are organized into politics while others are
organized out:
organization is the “mobilization of bias” (Bachrach and Baratz,
1962, p. 949).
Furthermore, pluralists tend to inquire into issues generally held
to be significant, thus
using the same reputational method they disapprove of in the
elitist approach.

Several reviewers of the power elite debate between elitists and
pluralists have
deplored the lack of scientific progress, theoretical dissension

and academic bickering on
the issues of community power and decision making (Polsby,
1980; Ricci, 1984). Yet they
seem to neglect the possibility to momentarily ignore
theoretical and methodological
differences and to concentrate on empirical findings instead. A
comparison of
Dahl’s New Haven and Hunter’s Atlanta studies will illuminate
this point.

In New Haven Dahl discovered by empirical means that only a
few people make the
actual decisions in the three policy areas he selected.
Nevertheless, this rule of the few
is called pluralist democracy, because of the democratic
constraints existing on that
rule. With regard to Hunter’s work, several reviewers (Kaufman
and Jones, 1954;
Polsby, 1980) have argued persuasively that the Atlanta power
elite face constraints as
well. For example, the leaders engage in bargaining with the
black community on the
subject of school facilities (Hunter, 1953, p. 222), in a time that
the South was still
segregated and the civil rights movement still nascent. Also it
was indicated that the
power leaders rarely innovate or execute policies, but instead
“have action initiated for
them (by the under-structure personnel) more often than they
initiate action” (Hunter,
1953, p. 226). The point is that, while Dahl and Hunter started
out with quite different

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theoretical approaches, their empirical findings were much
closer to one another: both
discover elites, who make decisions under certain kinds of
constraints.

The example of the power elite debate offers some clear
parallels to more recent
developments in CMS. Many CMS scholars posit the existence
of managerial
domination, structural inequality and manipulation in
organizations in identical ways
the older elitists posited the existence of an all powerful elite in
communities and
countries (Ailon, 2006). In some cases research methods in
CMS are open to identical
objections as the pluralists raised against the elitists (Clegg et
al., 2006; Wray-Bliss,
2003). At the same time, “mainstream” organizational scientists
have almost
universally recognized the role of power in and around
organizations (Mintzberg, 1983;
Morgan, 1997). Unwittingly they may have come to conclusions
that are supportive of
CMS conceptions in identical ways the pluralists came to
conclusions close to the elitist
position. Concentrating on empirical research and critically
comparing results from
both sides may provide support for CMS conceptions from
rather unexpected corners
of “mainstream” organization science. Fairly recently, in a

number of text books steps
appear to have been taken in this direction (Darwin et al., 2002;
Knights and Willmott,
2007; Palmer and Hardy, 2000).

Connecting CMS and “mainstream” through operationalization:
the
development of the F-scale, 1929-1950
Finally, CMS may benefit from operationalizing its key
concepts with “mainstream”
methodology to perform empirical research and develop a body
of knowledge that
cannot be discounted by “mainstream” scholars on
methodological grounds. I offer the
developmental history of the F-scale between 1929 and 1950 as
an example.

The work of the Frankfurt “Institut für Sozialforschung”
(hereafter IfS) is generally
regarded as an important precursor of CMS (Alvesson and
Willmott, 1992; Nord and
Jermier, 1992). In the 1930s, the IfS was mainly concerned with
the rise of fascism and
national-socialism in Europe ( Jay, 1973). One of its senior
members, the psychoanalyst
Erich Fromm, sought to find an explanation for this rise by
combining Freudian
psychoanalysis and Marxist social philosophy. From Freud he
borrowed the insight
that individuals are driven by drive-needs (such as sex, hunger,
thirst, fatigue, etc.).
These needs often press for instant and real gratification, the
absence of which causes
anxiety in the individual. From Marx he borrowed the insight
that gratification of
needs is dependent upon the socio-economic structures of

society, in particular the
modes of economic production and organization. Since society
is characterized by a
sharp economic inequality between the owners of production
means and the working
classes, it follows that the latter class has fewer opportunities
for drive need
satisfaction than the former. Consequently, the proletarians are
forced to suppress their
needs far more than the ruling class (Fromm, 1932).

As a next step, Fromm posed the question how working class
individuals deal with
these repressed needs and how the societal structure holds
together, in spite of the sharp
class dichotomy. Here he asserted that these individuals learn
from an early age on to
suppress their needs through an excessive dependence upon
authority, first that of their
parents and later that of society as a whole. In other words, they
develop an authoritarian
personality. Only a full identification with authorities liberates
the authoritarian
individual from the anxiety, caused by unfulfilled needs. At the
same time, however,
these authoritarians feel hostility towards the powerful
authority figures, but they

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suppress this hostility and displace it on less powerful persons

and groups, which they
come to hate and despise. If therefore society is structured in
such a way that the
authoritarians can submit to a strong authority and at the same
time unleash their
repressed hostility on designated out-groups and minorities, the
societal structure will
remain intact. The authoritarian personality is the
“psychological glue” that binds the
ruled masses to the ruling few and which maintains the unequal
socioeconomic structure
in society (Fromm, 1936, 1941).

While this explanation for the rise of fascism and national-
socialism was
theoretically well-developed, it lacked empirical
operationalization and corroboration.
An early attempt to obtain empirical evidence on the
psychological character of the
working class and its possible receptiveness to authoritarian
ideologies included a
large survey among German white and blue collar workers, held
in 1929 under
Fromm’s supervision. However, due to the forced emigration of
the IfS to the USA in
1933, during which half of the questionnaires were lost and
increasing discord between
Fromm and other leading IfS members, the results of the survey
were not published
until half a century later (Fromm, 1984; Jay, 1973).

A more comprehensive attempt to combine Freudian-Marxist
insights with modern
psychological measurement techniques was undertaken by a
joint research team of
European and US scholars during Second World War. In 1943,

the American
psychologists Nevitt Sanford and Daniel Levinson started a
study on anti-Semitism. The
study was refunded and extended to a broad assessment of the
relationship between
personality and prejudice, and the two researchers were joined
by psychologist
Else Frenkel-Brunswik, an émigré from Vienna. As the work
proceeded, additional
funds became available from the American Jewish Committee
through the intervention
of Max Horkheimer, the exiled director of the IfS. This made it
possible for one of the IfS’s
leading social philosophers, Theodor Adorno, to join the
research group. The search
continuously widened as more general aspects of anti-Semitism
and prejudice were
uncovered, finally leading to the conception and publication of
The Authoritarian
Personality (Adorno et al., 1950). The title indicates that the
final results had come close
to Fromm’s (and others’) earlier conceptions ( Jay, 1973;
Sanford, 1973; Smith, 1997).

One of the best-known instruments to come out of this huge
scientific endeavor was
the F-scale, a 38-item scale intended to measure potential
fascism in the individual.
Developed on the basis of clinical interviews, projective tests
and surveys among
selected samples, the scale purports to measure underlying
dimensions of personality
through projective items, which seemingly have nothing to do
with fascism. As such it
represented one of the first attempts “to make depth-
psychological processes amenable

to mass-statistical treatment” (Sanford, 1973, p. 152).

Initially, several follow-up studies criticized The Authoritarian
Personality on
methodological grounds. Yet as research proliferated, much of
this criticism quickly
became obsolete. The F-scale was applied to a large number of
subjects of different
national, ethnic, social and occupational backgrounds, and none
of these applications
came to results incompatible with those of the original research.
Often they found the
F-scale to be related to other attitude scales or overt behaviors
in ways consistent with
theoretical expectations in The Authoritarian Personality. The
validity of the F-scale
gradually became well-established, as over the years consistent
high scores were
ascertained among groups as British fascists, American
ultranationalists, former
German SS-members and white South African segregationist
students, where most

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other groups attained significantly lower scores. All in all, the
correlations and
expectations by Adorno et al. tended to be (re)confirmed,
“strengthening the argument

in favor of a central and relatively deep-seated personality
structure, which helps to
determine behavior in a wide variety of situations” (Sanford,
1973, p. 156; Meloen, 1997;
Roiser and Willig, 2002; Smith, 1997).

The example of the development of the F-scale seems to offer a
promising direction for
CMS scholars. Similar to Fromm and Adorno, they may attempt
to develop key concepts
like managerial domination, structural inequality and
manipulation, and to translate
them into appropriate instruments and designs for empirical
research. Such an approach
would permit a comparison and discussion of empirical results,
rather than a discussion
of theoretical differences, which in its turn could lead to the
joint development of a
shared body of knowledge between CMS and “mainstream”.
Further, such an approach
could force CMS concerns more to the center of discussion
within “mainstream”
organization science, and they also could become relevant for
practitioners.

Discussion and conclusions
In this paper, I have proposed a rapprochement between CMS
and “mainstream”
organization science in three ways. In the first section, I have
pointed out four instances
of “mainstream” theory and research that more or less share
CMS assumptions: the
work of Argyris (and Schön); the critique by Schein and others
on higher levels of
organizational learning; theory and research on emotions in
organizations; theory and

research on paradox and double binds in organizations. In the
second section, I have
shown how CMS and “mainstream” may benefit from mutual
contact through the example
of the “power elite” discussion in the 1950s and 1960s. In the
third section, I have shown
how CMS and “mainstream” may benefit from “mainstream”
operationalization of
CMS-concepts through the example of the development of the
F-scale in the 1930s and
1940s.

Several points of discussion may be raised here. As a first
point, this paper has
concentrated on the theoretical and empirical possibilities of
rapprochement, rather than
the social and institutional possibilities. Nevertheless,
intragroup processes within CMS
and “mainstream,” as well as intergroup processes between
CMS and “mainstream” will
play an important role in rapprochement. One can think of the
relative positions of CMS
and “mainstream” in the various national academies of
management, at universities,
business and professional schools, and in other institutions. The
ways in which these
positions will develop and leading scholars at both sides will
act towards one another
will be influential in determining actual rapprochement (Walsh
and Weber, 2002;
Zald, 2002).

As a second point, this paper has concentrated on the academic
world and its internal
discussions. Nevertheless, the points argued in this paper have
immediate relevance for

practicing managers and employees, in two ways. First,
questions of power differences,
inequality and just working relationships directly impact
organizational life and
performance. Second, it is increasingly realized in organizations
around the world that
corporate responsibility should encompass more than just
increasing profit and
performance, also including wider concerns of human growth
and sustainable ecological
and global development. A rapprochement between CMS and
“mainstream” may put an
end to insider academic bickering and mark the beginning of
becoming more relevant to
the world outside academia.

IJOA
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474

To conclude, although written from a “mainstream” perspective,
the proposal for
rapprochement in this paper is intended as a genuine invitation
for joint reflection and
dialogue between CMS and “mainstream” scholars. In many
ways the concerns raised
by CMS scholars are too important to be left to the field of
CMS, nor should the task of
being critical be exclusively delegated to that field. Critical
reflection should be a
natural task for all organization scientists. The sheer existence
of a separate field of
CMS indicates that this task has been neglected in the past

decades and needs to be
restored to its proper place in organization science.

Note

1. The dichotomization of the organizational scientific
community into CMS scholars and
“mainstream” scholars is admittedly a very crude representation
of reality, since it is very
well possible for organizational scholars to be critical in one
part of their work and
“mainstream” in another part. However, for the clarity of
presentation I propose to maintain
this division momentarily, in which the “mainstream” is defined
as all organizational theory
and research not explicitly positioning itself as CMS, as defined
in this paper.

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Further reading

CMS Manifesto (n.d.), available at:
http://group.aomonline.org/cms/About/Domain.htm (accessed
28 September 2010).

About the author
Max Visser is an Assistant Professor at Nijmegen School of
Management, Radboud University,
The Netherlands. He received his PhD from University of
Twente. His research interests include
consistency, learning and communication in organizations, on
which subjects he has published
in Academy of Management Review, System Dynamics Review,
Journal of the History of
the Behavioral Sciences and Political Psychology, among
others. Max Visser can be contacted at:
[email protected]
IJOA
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478

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CALIFORNIA MANAGEMENT REVIEW
Volume XXVIII, Number 2, Winter 1986
© 1986, The Regents of the University of California

The Study of Social Issues
in Management: A Critical
Appraisal
David Vogel

Competing Frameworks

The academic field of Social Issues in Management is now two
decades
old. Over this period, research in this area has primarily fallen
into one of
two broad categories: it has either been concerned with the
relationship
of business and society or with the interaction of business and
government.

The first research framework dates from the 1960s. It was
originally
associated with the concept of corporate social responsibility.
The premise
of this concept is that society's legitimate expectations of
business extended
beyond the making of profits. It held that in addition to their
economic
responsibility to stockholders, managers of the corporation also
had an
obligation to consider the impacts of their decisions on other
diverse con-
stituencies. Among the most important of these constituencies
was the
urban poor, whose exclusion from the mainstream of the
American econ-
omy represented the most pressing domestic policy issue of that
decade.
The unit of analysis of this research framework was the

corporation, which
was conceived of as a social as well as an economic institution.
Scholarly
writing sought both to describe and evaluate how managers
were adjusting
to the public's changed expectations of their role.

The business and society framework assumed that managers
enjoyed
substantial discretion in balancing the demands of "society"
with those of
their more traditional constituencies, i.e., stockholders,
suppliers, custom-
ers, and lenders. However, by the early 1970s, this assumption
had become
much less valid. The dramatic expansion in the scope of
government
regulation during the late 1960s and early 1970s drastically
narrowed the
boundaries of managerial discretion. By the mid-1970s, for a
corporation
to make its products safe, reduce its emissions, hire women and
minorities,
and design a safer workplace did not constitute evidence that
the managers
were behaving responsibly; it simply meant that they were
obeying the

142

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 143

law. In effect, many of the social demands previously made on
business

became politicized: corporate social policy was now being
formulated not
at board meetings, but at congressional committees, regulatory
agencies,
and judicial proceedings. "Society" had thus become collapsed
into "govem-
ment. " As a result, in many companies the management of
corporate social
policy became a component of corporate public affairs.

This shift in the political environment of the firm did not mean
that
scholars ceased to be interested in the relationship between
business and
society. The former supplemented the later, it did not supplant
it. The
continued salience of the business-society framework was
reflected in
studies of subjects such as the corporate social audit, corporate
codes of
conduct, shareholder activism, the relationship of corporate
social perform-
ance to corporate profitability, corporate govemance, and
business ideol-
ogy. In many respects, the recent revival of interest in business
ethics—
with its emphasis on the ethical responsibilities of managers—
demon-
strates the continued viability of this way of approaching the
study of the
corporation. (Significantly, the two most extensively studied
topics in busi-
ness ethics, namely corporate involvement in South Africa and
the market-
ing practices of the manufacturers of infant formulas overseas,
both repre-

sent areas in which corporate conduct is not constrained by
American law.)

However, research in the Social Issues in Management field has
become
increasingly dominated by studies of the relationship between
business
and govemment. The latter encompasses govemment
regulation—its for-
mulation and its implementation—as well as corporate political
strategies—
including campaign contributions, lobbying, coalition building,
grass-roots
organizing, and corporate public affairs and the role of public
interest and
other advocacy groups. In contrast to the study of business and
society,
which was primarily topic oriented, much of this research has a
strong
disciplinary orientation—primarily derived from political
science or eco-
nomics, or in the case of political economy, from both. Its
analytical focus is
not so much the corporation as the interaction of business and
govemment.

Notwithstanding the growing volume of research generated by
both
frameworks, the issues they address have diminished in
importance over
the last five years. Twenty years ago, one could argue
persuasively that
coming to grips with changing public expectations of corporate
social per-
formance was the most pressing challenge confronting American
manage-

ment. A decade ago, a similar assessment could be made of the
importance
of govemment regulation. Neither remains t m e . The issues
traditionally
addressed by those who study Social Issues in Management are
no longer
at the cutting edge of management practice. Both the political
and social
environments of business are now more stable, more predictable
and man-
ageable than at any time over the past two decades. Thanks in
part to
economic de-regulation and increased foreign competition, it is
now the
economic environment of business that constitutes the major
area of uncer-
tainty for the managers of most companies.

144 DAVID VOGEL

This is not to suggest that business no longer faces political or
social
challenges; it certainly does and will always do so. New
regulatory issues,
such as those involving the safety of chemical plants and the
most effective
way of cleaning-up toxic wastes, continue to emerge. Rather it
is to argue
that given the current political climate, these challenges are
much less
threatening to corporate profits and prerogatives than was the
case when
our field originally emerged. The major legislative,
administrative, and

judicial battles over the direction and scope of government
regulation are
over: the contemporary politics of regulation primarily focus on
implemen-
tation.

The most obvious index of this development is the recent
cutback in
corporate resources devoted to public affairs. A number of
corporations
have made major reductions in both the size of their Washington
offices
and in their headquarters staffs responsible for monitoring the
external
environment. Compared to the situation in the 1970s, relatively
few of
the new CEOs of the 1980s have been chosen because of their
skills at
external relations; rather, their background is more likely to be
a technical
or scientific one. Even more dramatic is the virtual atrophy of
the Business
Roundtable, the clearest symbol of the heightened politicization
of manage-
ment that occurred in the 1970s. The Roundtable still exists, but
its political
role is much less important than it was five years ago.

From another perspective, our field is the victim of its own
sucess. Is
there any competent manager of an American corporation who
still needs
to be persuaded that social and political forces can have as
much impact
on the bottom line as the decisions of his or her competitors?
While such

a perspective was novel 10-15 years ago, now it has become
part of the
conventional wisdom of the business community.

Significantly, while there have been a growing number of
indictments
of management education, it is noteworthy that no one claims
that business
schools are not adequately preparing future managers to cope
with the
external political environment. Rather, critics have focused on
the exces-
sive emphasis on quantitative skills and the lack of sufficient
coursework
in production management and international business. There is
no shortage
of explanations for the competitive failures of American
industry, but the
inadequacy of the political skills of America managers is
conspicuously not
among them. It is thus problematic whether business schools
will commit
additional resources to the business-govemment-society field.
They are
more likely to place increased emphasis on international
business, corporate
strategy, and production management.

New Directions

What then is the likely future of our field? In fact, the process
of building
from these two frameworks has already begun. As I survey our
field, it
appears to be moving in two somewhat different but equally
promising

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 145

directions. The first focuses on the study of intemational
business and
global competition and the second emphasizes corporate
strategy.

The growing importance of intemational competition to the
future of
American business scarcely requires elaboration. Imports and
exports as
a percentage of GNP doubled in the United States between 1970
and 1980;
70% of all domestic markets now face foreign competition.
Intemational
competition is to the 1980s what government regulation was to
the 1970s.
Japanese companies have replaced American regulatory
agencies as the
most important challenge to the future of the modem
corporation. The
most critical problem for GM is no longer whether it can
comply with
EPA; it is whether it will survive the competitive challenge
from Toyota.

Research in Social Issues in Management has always had an
intemational
dimension, but in the past this has largely focused on the social
and political
behavior of American multinationals overseas. However,
"intemational
business" no longer happens exclusively outside the United

States. On
the contrary, issues of intemational competition now dominate
the domestic
political agents; during the 1980s, the impact of public policy
on the inter-
national competitiveness of American industry emerged as the
central
issue of business-government relations in the United States. As
the issue
of plant closings illustrates, it has even spilled over into the
study of
business and society.

It is important that we significantly expand our research in the
intema-
tional area. We need to train, recmit, and develop intellectual
and institu-
tional ties with area specialists as well as with scholars in
intemational
management. In addition, we need studies that describe how
different
capitalist nations have addressed issues such as plants closings,
the regu-
lation of dangerous substances, corporate political power, the
rights of
whistle-blowers, and the assessment of technological risks.
These are
subjects which, for the most part, scholars in our field have
studied with
exclusive reference to the United States. By giving our analysis
of the
relationship among business, government, and society a
comparative di-
mension, we will not only enrich our knowledge of the global
environment
within which American industry must now operate, but also

sharpen our
understanding of our own political and social system.

The second promising direction in which our field has begun to
move
involves the integration of the management of the extemal
environment
with corporate strategy. The links between business policy and
Social
Issues in Management have always been strong. Indeed, in many
schools,
the latter is taught under the rubric of the former. Moreover,
many of
the recent texts in our field and much recent research on
corporate political
activity emphasizes the strategic dimension of corporate public
affairs.
Clearly, research into business-government relations is
becoming more
"managerially" oriented. We are slowly beginning to understand
that a
corporation's choice of political strategy is shaped by the same
kinds of
factors that govem its investment decisions.

146 DAVID VOGEL

But we need to move a step further. We need to study the
interrelation-
ship of a corporation's economic and political decisions, i.e.,
the way in
which a firm's investment decisions are shaped by its political
options and
the way in which a firm's political strategies are infiuenced by

its market
position. We need studies of corporate political activity that are
explicitly
informed by an understanding of how the firm tries to compete
in the
marketplace. Unlike the 1970s, when corporate public affairs
primarily
involved defending the firm from challenges from non-business
interest
groups, government relations has increasingly become a vehicle
by which
firms seek to enhance their firm's competitive position, both
domestically
and internationally. The recent demands of a number of
industries for trade
restrictions as well as the extensive intra-industry battles over
the pace
of economic deregulation illustrate this shift. Moreover, the
links between
corporate public affairs and corporate strategy are particularly
important
in the area of international business, where public policy plays
such a
critical role in the shaping of the competitive position of plants,
divisions,
firms, and industries.

In addition, there is a potential for increased intellectual
exchange be-
tween students of corporate strategy and business ethics. The
develop-
ment of business ethics over the last five years has been
disappointing, a
subject to which I will return in the next section of this article.
But in one
respect, it is extremely promising. Though their language may

differ, there
is a striking similarity between the descriptions of "well-
managed" firms
offered by students of management and that of "socially
responsible" cor-
porations offered by students of corporate social performance.
Peters and
Waterman's description of how a well-run corporation treats its
employees,
customers, and suppliers bears a remarkable resemblance to the
portraits
others have offered of socially responsible companies. A more
recent book
in this genre. Vanguard Management by James O'Toole, makes
this rela-
tionship explicit. Throughout his book, O'Toole argues that a
sense of
ethics is a critical component of a "Vanguard Management."
More gener-
ally, many of same structures and values that characterize a
well-run firm
also appear to characterize an ethically managed firm. At the
same time,
a firm's value system can be seen as an integral component of
its "corporate
culture."

By moving in one or both of the two directions outlined above,
our field
will both become more relevant to the practice of management
and reduce
its isolation from the other components of management
education. The
study of either area requires a better understanding of how a
corporation
performs its central mission, i.e., mobilizing capital and labor

to create
additional wealth. We have long argued that those who study
management
need to better appreciate the political and social dimensions of
business.
But the opposite is now true as well. Those who write about
business-
govemment-society relations urgently need to enrich their
understanding
of management.

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 147

The Politics of Teaching and Research

My second observation about the direction of research in SIM
concems
business ethics and social responsibility. I am concemed that we
have
inadvertently allowed our writing about these topics to become
politicized.
Too often the way we treat these subjects remains rooted in the
conven-
tional wisdom of 1970s liberalism. The problem is not that
members of
our field have allowed their research and teaching to be shaped
by their
political and social values. Such a perspective is both
unobjectionable and
unavoidable. It is rather that they have confused the realms of
ethical and
political discourse. Instead of justifying their political
preferences in their
own terms, they have tended to equate them with "corporate

responsibil-
ity." Let me provide a few examples.

Recently, a number of corporations have begun to provide
financial aid
to the rebel forces in Nicaragua. Given our conventional
definition of cor-
porate social responsibility, these contributions would appear to
provide
a perfect illustration of this phenomena. Not only are companies
attempting
to compensate for a reduction in govemment funding, but the
corporations
involved in this effort will only benefit indirectly from their
commitment.
Rather, their motivation is presumably similar to those
companies that
have ratified the Sullivan principles. In both cases, firms are
using their
economic resources to change the political system of another
country so
that it more closely reflects their vision of a decent and just
society. But
while scholars in our field have published numerous analyses of
the respon-
sibility of corporations to end racial injustice in South Africa,
not a word
has been written—or is ever likely to be written—on the
responsibility
of companies to stop the spread of forces hostile to private
property and
political pluralism in Latin America. Why not? What is the
difference? Is
a company only acting "responsibly" when it seeks political
outcomes that
fall on one side of the political spectrum?

More generally, there is a remarkable dearth of literature on the
ethical
and social implications of corporate investment and trade with
communist
countries. For example, in Africa, the Govemment of Angola is
engaged
in a civil war against pro-Westem forces that now control one-
third of the
countryside. The former's military expenses are largely financed
by reve-
nues generated by Chevron, and Cuban troops defend the region
in which
the company's refinery is located. When the Portugese ruled
Angola, there
was extensive discussion of Chevron's role in perpetuating
colonialism and
a number of articles examined its responsibilities to the people
of Angola.
The current govemment of Angola is at least as oppressive as
the Por-
tugese colonial administration. Yet the same scholars who now
write about
the responsibilities of American corporations in South Africa
are strangely
silent about the ethical responsibilities of Chevron to the people
of Angola.

To take another example, I have yet to read a single article or
case-study
analyzing the moral or social responsibility of corporations
seeking to in-

148 DAVID VOGEL

crease their sales to the Soviet Union by pressuring the
Department of
Commerce to relax its regulations governing the export of
advanced tech-
nology. Does not East-West trade also involve moral issues?
And why is
it that those who have written about the way Western firms
market infant
formulas in the third world have ignored the marketing practices
of state-run
firms in socialist countries?

One finds a similar political bias in the analysis of domestic
political and
social issues. For example, those who have written about the
social dimen-
sions of plant closings invariably equate keeping a plant open
with being
"responsible," and closing it with being "irresponsible." Yet one
could just
as persuasively argue that a company that keeps an unprofitable
plant open
is delaying the adjustment of the American economy to a
rapidly changing
and highly competitive international environment in order to
avoid public
criticism. Such a policy may be in the immediate interests of the
residents
of the community in which the plant operates. But in the long-
run its
decision may make all Americans somewhat poorer. Yet this
latter analysis
—which strikes me as no more nor less ethically informed than
the
former—has been remarkably absent from the literature on plant

closings.

Most of the cases on personal ethics used in business and
society courses
deal with a conflict in values between the corporation and those
who work
for it. Almost invariably, the subordinate's values are being
challenged by
his or her superior, who is generally assumed to be acting in the
interests
of the corporation and its stockholders. That such conflicts
occur with
considerable frequency cannot be doubted, and surely we have a
respon-
sibility to prepare our students for them. But there is another
kind of
ethical conflict which also occurs in the real world, namely the
tension
between a manager and a government official. The literature on
government
regulation is replete with examples of corporate executives
being pressured
by regulators to comply with rules and regulations that offend
their profes-
sional training and personal values. Yet, somehow, this
particular sort of
ethical dilemma is absent from the literature on business ethics.

Why is it that unethical behavior on the part of government
officials is
invariably defined as caving in to corporate political pressures,
and never
as their attempt to impose unreasonable demands on business?
We have
numerous descriptions of supervisors coercing engineers to cut
comers

on product or worker safety, but not one case detailing the
tribulation of
an environmental engineer under pressure from EPA to install a
scrubber
that he believes is unreliable and ineffective. We have many
cases describ-
ing company efforts to resist the efforts of regulatory officials
to remove
unsafe products, but not one chronicling the dilemma of a
corporate scientist
who sincerely believes that a particular product he or she has
designed
and tested is safe and effective according to his or her scientific
standards,
but is unable to secure permission to market it due to the
uninformed or
politically motivated opposition of a regulatory official.

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 149

If we can accept the fact that a corporation can act
irresponsibly, even
though its behavior is legal, is it also not conceivable that there
might be
occasions when a corporation could violate a particular
regulation, but still
be acting responsibly? More fundamentally, how should we
teach our
students to respond to unreasonable government demands? For
example,
do we wish to recognize the phenomenon of "corporate civil
disobedience"
—the intentional violation of a law by a company on the
grounds that it is

illegitimate? These are important issues, but those who write
our textbooks
on business ethics have ignored them.

Moreover, too much of current writing and teaching on business
ethics
tends to echo uncritically the conventional wisdom of the
media. How
many of those who teach about the irresponsibility of Hooker
Chemical
Company with respect to its toxic waste disposal practices in
Love Canal
are aware of a subsequent study that found that there was no
increase in
abnormalities among residents who lived near the former
Hooker Chemical
site and that therefore their physical relocation by EPA was
entirely unwar-
ranted—and therefore irresponsible. More recently, the Reagan
Adminis-
tration has been strongly criticized for its lack of commitment
to the
enforcement of health, safety, and amenity regulations. But how
many
scholars working in the business and society field have sought
to measure
the actual impact of the Administration's regulatory policies on
public health,
safety, and environmental quality in the United States?

My reading of the literature on business ethics and corporate
social
responsibility suggests that far too often these terms are used
simply as
expressions of the personal values of their writers. That this
process is

often unconscious does not make it any the less invidious. Too
many of
those who write in our field dress up their political preferences
in the
language of business ethics and assume a consensus on what
constitutes
"right" and "wrong," "responsible" and "irresponsible," when in
fact, there
is often none. It is far more likely to be the case that the same
decision
can fall into either category, depending on the assumptions of
the individual
scholar making the assessment.

There is a place for the analysis of business decisions and
dilemmas in
terms of the categories of ethical theory. But these categories
must be
employed with considerable care and discipline. In fact, the
standards of
ethical discourse are far more rigorous than those of political
discourse.
Ethical judgements cannot be made on an ad hoc basis. They
must be
rooted in a clearly specified set of principles and applied
consistently.

Consider the current controversy surrounding the role of
American
corporations in the Republic of South Africa. As a citizen, one
is entitled
to espouse whatever position on this issue one choses. But if
one wishes
to make an ethical argument as a scholar, one must both clearly
specify
the broader principles that underlie one judgment and be

prepared to apply
them on a universal basis. What, after all, makes investing in
South Africa

150 DAVID VOGEL

wrong? If it is because it is ruled by a repressive minority, then
one is
obligated to condemn corporate trade and investment in much of
the world,
including virtually all of the rest of Africa and East Europe.
Now South
Afinca is distinctive in that it is the only government in which
political
representation is based on race. But why is elite rule based on
race any
worse than oppression based on religion (as in much of the
Muslim world),
tribe (as in much of Africa), caste (as in India), or on
membership status
in the Communist Party?

My point is not to defend the Government of South Africa or
justify the
presence of American corporations there. It is rather to argue
that as
scholars, we cannot simply echo the chants of students for
disinvestment
and divestment outside our classrooms. If we are going to use
the language
of moral discourse, we must do so honestly and consistently,
however
much that serves to complicate the problems we address. Nor do
I mean

to suggest that the answers to the questions I raise are self-
evident. It
may well be the case that trading with the Soviet Union is
morally preferable
to investing in the Republic of South Africa or that aiding the
Contras is
an example of corporate irresponsibility. But those who wish to
make
these distinctions owe us an explanation as to how they reached
their
conclusions.

The political bias of much of the thinking about business and
society
among members of the SIM division is also apparent in the
treatment
accorded to recent conservative writers. Over the last five years,
the
most exciting and innovative writing on the central issues
surrounding the
study of business and society—questions such as the moral and
intellectual
status of capitalism, private property, and marketplace
exchange—have
come from the right. One may or may not find the arguments of
Wealth
and Poverty by George Gilder or The Spirit of Capitalism by
Michael
Novack persuasive, but the issues they address are surely
critical to any
contemporary discussion of the social and political role of the
corporation.
Yet I would venture to suggest that those teaching in our field
are far
more familiar with the work of someone like Charles
Lindbloom, whose

book. Politics and Markets, is highly critical of market-based
polities.
Whether or not they agree with Lindblooms' conclusion,
virtually everyone
in our field knows his argument and can critically evaluate it. I
doubt if
much the same could be said of the writings of people like
Gilder and
Novack. Ironically, our field, which has prided itself on being
the cutting
edge of the ever-changing social and political environment of
business, has
yet to take this conservative intellectual renaissance seriously.

I think that the politics of SIM are only in part due to the
personal
political views of the members of our division. They also refiect
the origin
of the field in the liberal social and political climate of the
1960s and 1970s.
The contemporary resurgence of interest in corporate
responsibility and
business ethics both emerged during a period when the
corporation found

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 151

itself under considerable pressure to re-assess its relationship to
the society
of which it was a part. The political and intellectual pendulum
has shifted
dramatically over the last five years. While I am not suggesting
that we
substitute a right of center orthodoxy for a left of center one,

our field
would benefit considerably if the views of those who
contributed to it
reflected a greater political diversity than they do at present.
Most impor-
tantly, as scholars, we have a social responsibility to be more
self-conscious
about the ideological assumptions that inform our research and
teaching.

Community Based Civic Leadership Programs: A
Descriptive Investigation

Tarek Azzam
Ronald E. Riggio

Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College

This paper focuses on the development and
operational practice of civic leadership
programs within the entire state of California.
The intention of this paper is to provide a
clearer understanding of how civic leadership
programs are shaped and structured. This paper
also offers a glimpse into the status of civic
leadership programs within California, and will
cover a variety of topics such as the types of
programs, curricular practices of programs,
major issues facing programs, occupational
make up of participants, and program funding.

Implications for future civic leadership
development are discussed.

Civic Leadership programs are formal
leadership development programs sponsored by
local community agencies with the aim of
training future and current leaders in the skills
necessary to serve their communities. These

programs attempt to foster an understanding of
the events, people, and organizational entities
that shape a community, while providing skills
and knowledge to be more effective leaders. An
important aim of these programs is to inspire
citizens to step forward and assume leadership
roles within the community. The concept of
civic leadership has been defined as:

The ’art and science’ of leading in the
public arena where one engages in the affairs of
society through public advocacy, debate,
education, and the fostering of dialogue and
group reflection. Civic leadership promotes
critical thinking in the public arena and an
examination of new alternatives and paradigms.
(Reed, 1996: 100).

The steady rise in the number of civic
leadership programs points to the perceived

importance of having increased numbers of
trained civic leaders within the community.
Some evidence indicates that communities with

strong civic engagement and strong local

leadership tend to have lower crime rates, better
schools, and more effective government
institutions (Putnam 1995; Rossing, 1998).
Typically, these cities have a strong sense of
community and personal ownership. Fostering
these feelings of civic respect and ownership has
been a challenge to many local cities and
governments, and the growth of civic leadership
programs may be one important step in
enhancing a sense of community.

Most civic leadership programs have had a
relatively recent emergence in the United States.
The earliest known program is Leadership Inc.
in Philadelphia that began in 1959 (Moore,
1988). Different sources give different reasons
and historical factors that contribute to the
creation of civic leadership programs. Many
stories attribute the formation of civic leadership
programs to the race riots that were ravaging the
country in the 1960’s (Community Leadership
Association, 2001). These programs started as a
way to bring the community together by trying
to create a mutual understanding of the issues
and problems facing the community.

Other stories attribute the formation of

leadership programs to a severe lack of leaders
within the community. A dramatic example of
such a case occurred with a tragic plane crash
that was carrying most of Atlanta’s young
leaders (Fredricks, 1998). This event created a
leadership vacuum within the community and
spurred members of the community to form
Leadership Atlanta to help fill vacant leadership

roles. Although this case is extremely rare,
many communities report that they are finding it

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56

harder to locate capable leaders to assume
responsibility and help guide the community,
and to replace retiring community leaders. R. D.
Putnam, (2000) has suggested that the reduction
of civic participation can be linked to increased
pressure on time and money. Putnam also

suggested that current technological trends (such
as computers and e-mails) have, in some ways,
reduced human and community interaction.

The value of civic leadership programs is
hard to gauge due to the unique nature of
individual programs. Each program contends
with different issues, different populations,
different budgets, different approaches to
training leaders, and many other significant
differences. Although the differences between
programs may be large, some preliminary
research on the effectiveness of civic leadership
programs found evidence of positive long-term
impact. Daugherty and Williams (1997)
conducted a longitudinal study of graduates of
civic leadership programs and observed that
alumni were still active in the community three

years after completing their program.
Interestingly, they also found that the impact of
these programs went beyond the graduates. For
example, non-graduates were found to use the
methodology and curriculum of graduates of the
leadership programs. There seemed to be a
transfer of knowledge from graduates to other
people when they interacted in the community.
This led to overall improvement in the execution
and formation of community projects.

Today, the number of community
leadership programs is on the rise. Currently
more than 700 community programs are
operating in nearly all regions of the United
States (Community Leadership Association
2001; Fredricks, 1998). Many of these programs
were formed in or were closely affiliated with
the local chambers of commerce. A substantial
number of these programs were started by
individuals who have either participated in other
civic leadership programs or who have had some
informal contact with other leadership programs.

There is a national organization for civic
leadership programs called the Community
Leadership Association (CLA). This
organization has over 400 members and holds an
annual conference for civic leadership program
directors, and other interested parties. CLA also
provides informational resources for emerging

and current programs by publishing a civic
leadership program guide for individuals or
programs that are interested in how to create,
operate, and maintain a civic . leadership

program. In California, the major association is
the California Association of Leadership
Programs (CALP). This association is well
known among most civic leadership programs
within California. These associations coupled
with contact between other leadership programs
in proximity yield a close-knitted network of
programs that try to share their efforts and

experiences.

Leadership Development in Civic
Leadership Programs

At their core, civic leadership programs
have much in common with other leadership
development programs. Over 85 percent of all
leadership training programs use formal
classroom instruction (Day, 2000). While many
civic leadership programs use classroom
instruction, most also offer direct involvement of
participants in the community, as well as
requiring participants to work on actual
community problems or issues. In this way civic
leadership programs have much in common with
&dquo;action learning&dquo; approach to leadership
development (Conger & Toegel, 2004; Dotlich
& Noel, 1998). In addition, these types of civic
leadership programs appear to see leadership as
a complex interaction between the leader, the
organization, and the larger social environment -
- the city community (Fiedler, 1996).

Leadership development could be seen as a
process that requires both social and contextual
interactions coupled with formal training (Day,

2000). The use of social systems coupled with
individual training can help to build
commitments and establish a relational network

among members of an organization or
community (Wenger 1998). Through this
process, individuals will have the opportunity to
learn through social interaction in relevant
contexts. They will learn from their work and
not be removed from their work to learn. This
can ultimately lead to better retention and
application of what is learned (Wilson, 1993;
Dotlich & Noel 1998).

Individuals should be encouraged to
understand and practice leadership development

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57

in their work. To achieve that an environment
needs to be created where individuals are able to

help and support each other, create social
networks, and work toward relevant objectives.
Each individual is considered a leader working
together in a social setting and building
relationships and commitments with other
members of the community (Day, 2000).

Almost all civic leadership programs

provide participants with the opportunity to
interact with the community with many also
including formal leadership training. This
difference from other leadership programs can
provide a distinct advantage for leadership
development. Many civic leadership programs
encourage participants to engage with the
community and use what they have learned to
work on or discuss solutions to problems facing
the community. This engagement process can
facilitate the learning process by providing a
relevant context, and can help establish social
networks between the participants and the
community.

Most civic leadership programs
(approximately 76 percent) tend to structure
their curricula using both formal classroom
training (Instructional Approach) and exposure
to community organizations, and prominent
community members (Orientation Approach) to
facilitate the learning process. An important
question is how effective each of these methods
are in fostering leaders, and how they work in
combination. A brief description of each
approach is provided.

The Instructional Approach is focused on
teaching participants leadership skills through
courses and structured lessons. This is quite
similar to typical managerial leadership
programs, or leadership training programs
conducted in organizations. Many of these
programs hire leadership consultants (they are
usually either academics or independent
consultants) to train and instruct community

participants in leadership skills. For example,
common topics covered would be leadership
styles, developing personal as well as team
communication skills, and effective leadership
strategies. Many of these programs include
team-building exercises such as weekend
retreats and the completion of a team building
&dquo;ropes course.&dquo; The philosophy of these
programs is that leadership is a skill that can be

learned in a controlled setting, and then be
applied to the actual civic community.

The Orientation Approach is focused on
orienting participants to the functions of the
community and introducing them to different
leaders within the community. The program
curriculum is normally divided into different
topics. These topics can cover areas in the
community such as history, culture, education,
law, government and economy. For example, on
&dquo;government day&dquo; participants could spend a
session meeting with the mayor, touring the
local city hall, and meeting with various
decision makers. For the &dquo;law&dquo; topic day,
participants may meet with the head of the
police, go on a police &dquo;ride along,&dquo; and visit the
local jails. For the &dquo;education&dquo; topic day they
may meet the superintendent of schools and visit
different schools. The philosophy of these
orientation programs is that interaction with

community leaders can implicitly teach
participants leadership skills and provide
participants with a better understanding of the
community.

This paper provides information regarding
the status of civic leadership programs with an
initial focus on programs within California. It

provides an understanding of resources available
to these programs (both human and financial),
challenges facing programs, and community
interest and participation in civic leadership
programs.

Methods

Participants
Seventy-two civic leadership program

directors/administrators were interviewed about
their particular programs. All participants were
located in California. Participants and programs
were identified using multiple search methods
such as internet web searches, phone directory
searches, and contact with the local chambers of
commerce. Augmenting the search were
programs that were identified using the
membership roster of the California Association
of Leadership Program (CALP) and the national
Community Leadership Association (CLA).
These sources provided further information
about the presence of many civic leadership
programs within California. Seventy-two (72) of
83 program administrators agreed to be surveyed

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58

for an 85 percent response rate. The survey was
administered using a semi-structured telephone
interview. Each interview lasted approximately
45 minutes. A few program administrators

responded to the questions through electronic
mail.

Procedures
The survey instrument was administered to

the leading administrators for each program
using semi-structured interviews. If the program
director was not available, other knowledgeable
sources from within the programs were
interviewed (such as program assistants,
advisory board members or events coordinators).
The interview questions addressed the following
topics:- year of establishment, tuition charged to
attend the program, the different funding
sources, number of students in current class,
occupational backgrounds of participants past
and present, curricular focus (Instructional vs.
Orientation), number of meetings per year, time
spent during each meeting, number of alumni,
type of alumni follow-up, number of full/part
time staff working for the program,
communication with other civic leadership
programs, and major issues and concerns facing
the program. Internet websites and brochures

produced by the programs were also used to

gather further information about each program.

Results

Interview data
Number of Years in Existence-

Many California civic leadership programs
are relatively new. The spread of civic
leadership programs in California started in
1980 with Leadership Stockton as the vanguard
program. Mean age of programs within
California is approximately 10.7 years
(SD=5.99). The oldest was Leadership Stockton
at 22 years and the most recent were programs
beginning in 2002, including Leadership
Connection (Apple Valley) and Carlsbad
Chamber University (Carlsbad).

Tuition & Funding Sources-
The most striking aspect of tuition was the

great amount of variance among programs
(M=$907, SD=$686). Some programs such as
the Santa Ana Leadership Initiative and
Leadership Coalinga offered their programs free
of charge. These programs depended heavily on
community sponsorships (e.g. Leadership
Coalinga is mostly funded by Fresno County
and local business), grants from local or national
foundations (e.g., Santa Ana Leadership
Initiative receives a grant from the Kellogg
foundation), fundraising events, and volunteer
services.

The most expensive programs had tuitions

ranging from $2,000-$4,500. Most of these
programs offered scholarships to help their
participants with tuition. These programs were
typically located in large metropolitan cities in
California. Due to their locations, these
programs had access to a relatively large
population base. They also depended on grants
and sponsorships (these include small business
and large corporate sponsorships) to provide
further funding.

As noted, civic leadership programs find
funding from a variety of sources. Presented are
the top six funding sources mentioned during the
interviews. Community sponsorship was the top
funding source for civic leadership programs
with 53 percent of the program administrators
interviewed saying that they receive in-kind
donations from local business, corporations, and
volunteer help from the community. Active
fundraising was also a major source of revenue
with 31 percent of programs engaging in events
such as dinner parties, auctions to raise money,
and various other fundraising events. Some
programs (16 percent) receive grants from
foundations such as the Kellogg and Harden
Foundations. The Chambers of Commerce are
also an important source of funding with 15
percent of programs receiving some monetary
compensation from their local chambers. Table 1
illustrates the distribution of sources of founding. I

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Table 1

Types and frequency of funding sources used by civic
leadership programs

Only 8 percent of civic leadership programs
receive some funding from their alumni dues, if
they happen to have an alumni association or
some organization or club to keep the alumni
involved. Some programs are able to cover all
of their funding needs from tuition alone.2

2

Many programs use multiple funding
sources, only 16 percent of programs rely solely
on tuition as their only funding source, while
approximately 55 percent of programs use one
additional funding source (besides tuition) to run
their programs, 23 percent use two additional

funding sources, 6 percent use three or more
additional funding sources. The level of funding
available is heavily dependent on the location of
programs. Programs such as Leadership
Sunnyvale have access to major corporations
such as Yahoo, Netscape, and AMD who have
provided financial support. Other programs may
not have the same corporate opportunities but
they tend to have high levels of community

commitment to supplement their needs. These

programs tend to utilize small local businesses
and fundraising events to help sustain the
ongoing program.

Class Size and Occupational Makeup of
Participants

The class size of civic leadership programs
can vary depending on the size and resources
available to the particular programs. The mean
for participants per class was 24 (SD=8.96).
This number varied from 9 participants to up to
54 participants per class. However, this number
fluctuated from year to year for most programs.
Many of the program directors said that
enrollment numbers are dependent on factors
such as advertising, community involvement,
and the economic condition of the area. Table 2

displays a frequency distribution of program
enrollment.

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Table 2

Frequency distribution of class size across civic leadership
programs

The survey also shed some light on the

occupational background of participants. We
were interested in finding out how involved
different occupational sectors were in
community leadership programs. Figure 1 is a
pie chart that illustrates the occupational
breakdown of civic leadership participants.
Programs reported that approximately 28 percent
of participants came from the govemment/public
sector. This category encompassed individuals
who work for or are affiliated with

government/public institutions such as public
schools, fire and police departments, city halls,

and public hospital officials. The private sector
accounted for 48 percent of participants,
consisting primarily of large and small business
owners and individuals coming from
corporations. Participants from the non-profit
sector accounted for 22 percent of enrollment,
including participants from organizations such
as the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and many
small local charity and service organizations.
The remaining 2 percent of participants came
from individuals who were either retired or local

community activists.

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Figure 1
Occupational background of civic leadership participants by
sector

The occupational background of
participants did vary somewhat from area to
area. This again was related to the local
demographics of the city or town. Many
program directors interviewed said that they try
to strike a balance during the application
process. They wish to attain an even mix of
backgrounds and experiences to increase the
chance of learning from each other’s knowledge.
Many program directors are faced with problems
of acquiring a sufficient applicant pool to create
this kind of balance. Overall, effort is made to
ensure some representation from as many areas
as possible.

Curricular Focus and Homework
One of the objectives of this paper was to

find out how civic leadership programs approach
leadership development and training. Directors
were presented with a brief description of the

instructional and the orientation approaches and
were asked if they had a combination of both
approaches or if they did one or the other
exclusively, or whether they had some other sort
of structure.

Figure 2 presents a pie chart that illustrates
the breakdown of the various approaches to
leadership development amongst surveyed
programs. As can be seen, the majority of

programs (three-fourths) offer a combination of
both orientation and instruction as part of their
curriculum. Each of these programs, however,
had a different degree of emphasis on each
approach. Some programs included an
instructional classroom session at the end of

every meeting. Others dedicated a full day to
instruction while leaving the remainder of the
meetings for orientation.

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Figure 2
Percentage of programs that follow the orientation approach,
instructional approach, or combine both

The degree or level of emphasis of each
approach in the combination programs varied
greatly. Directors were asked to estimate the
percentage of time dedicated to each approach.
Results indicated that the amount of time spent
on the instructional approach ranged from 10
percent to 50 percent. Overall, the orientation
approach was incorporated into almost all of the
civic leadership programs surveyed.

Only two programs were spending 100
percent of their time on the instructional
approach. These were two relatively new

programs Carlsbad Chamber University (just
completed its first year in 2002) and Leadership
Carpinteria (started in March 2002). These
programs offered classes in leadership related
topics to interested participants. Some topics
included in these programs are: leadership
styles, communication skills, and conflict
resolution. This is a relatively new trend within
California’s civic leadership programs and more
attention will given to this trend as it develops.

Number of Meetings
Civic leadership programs tended to run

from 9 to 12 months, typically meeting once a
month. The mean number of meetings per year
for each program was 10 (SD=2.9). Some
programs (approximately 12 percent) also
include a 2-day weekend retreat as part of their
offerings. Each meeting usually lasts about 7
hours. This number varied depending on the
topics covered and the resources available.
Many of the programs have topic days that focus
on specific areas of the community. Topics
covered can include: education, economy,
government, law, history and culture. Most
programs begin in the morning with an
introduction to the topic and the events of the
day. Typically, the mornings are spent touring
relevant locations and interacting with leading
members of the topic area (i.e. education,
police, and government). For example, during
Leadership Modesto’s health care day
participants would meet in the mornings with the
chief executive officer (CEO) from the
Memorial Hospital Association, learn the history

of health care, and discuss ethical issues in the
health care field.

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63

Depending on the program’s curricular
focus the remainder of the day may be spent on
orientation (continuing the tours and meetings
with topic leaders) or instruction (classroom
instruction regarding a leadership-related topic).
Other programs, such as Leadership Salinas,
offer their sessions during a 20-week period with
meetings held once a week. Some other
programs run as long as two years. For example,
Leadership Clovis offers a two-year program
where the first year is an introduction to the

community, offering various orientation
opportunities to participants. In the second year
participants choose a community issue or
problem, then plan, and implement a
community-focused project to attempt to
alleviate the problem.

Number of Alumni and Alumni Follow-up
The number of alumni for each program

was almost completely dependent on the number
of years since the establishment of the program.
The mean number of alumni was about 256

alumni. Typically, the programs with the largest
number of alumni also tended to be located in

large metropolitan cities. (Lead San Diego and
Leadership San Francisco have more then 800
graduates from their programs).

Regardless of the number of alumni, many
programs are faced with the challenge of
keeping their alumni connected and informed

about the events in the community. Almost 73
percent of civic leadership programs have some
form of alumni follow-up using different
methods. During the interviews we found that
28 percent of programs use monthly or quarterly
newsletters to keep alumni informed, 45 percent
of programs also use various social events such
as dinners or luncheons or even annual
Christmas parties to stay connected with their
alumni. Almost 38 percent of the programs
surveyed have an alumni association that has
monthly meetings, tries to work on long-term
community projects, helps raise money for the
leadership programs (through dues or
fundraising) and/or helps to decide on the events
and curriculum of future leadership classes.
Almost 6 percent of civic leadership programs
have a yearly class reunion. Seventeen percent
of programs also invite past alumni to join the
steering committee to direct the future course of
the leadership program. Eleven percent of
programs invite alumni to continue their

leadership learning by taking refresher courses
on leadership. Four percent of programs have an

annual alumni retreat, and 9 percent provide
volunteer opportunities through the leadership
program as a way to keep them involved in both
the community and the leadership program.3 3
Table 3 provides a breakdown of alumni follow-
up methods.

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64

Table 3

Types and frequency of approaches to alumni follow-up

The involvement level of alumni was a

major concern facing many leadership programs.
Many programs attempt to keep the alumni
involved by having them participate in future
and current classes and events either as
instructors or as consultants to the incoming
classes. In many programs, there was at least
one alumnus on the programs’ boards of
directors or advisory boards.

Staff and Networking
One of the major concerns for most

leadership programs is the shortage of paid staff
to help run and organize the program. The
typical number of either full time or part time

staff member is about one. Many programs rely
heavily on volunteers to aid with day-to-day
operations. Usually the only paid staff person is
either the director of the program, or if run from
the chamber of commerce, the person whose
main job description includes part time work on

the local leadership program. In many instances,
paid employees are faced with the task of
conducting the program with minimal
assistance. For example, in Leadership Santa
Barbara County, volunteers run the entire
operation with no paid staff. These programs
like many others rely on volunteers and in-kind
donations from the community.

As for contact with other leadership
programs, a majority of the programs (63
percent) indicated that they are or have been in
contact with other leadership programs and other
similar organizations. Many are in contact with
other nearby programs. There is also wide
recognition of the California Association of
Leadership Programs (CALP) and the
Community Leadership Association (CLA)
among the programs surveyed.

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65

Major Challenges Facing Civic

Leadership Programs

Several key issues tended to dominate the
list of challenges facing civic leadership
programs. Table 4 presents an illustration of the

types and frequency of the major issues
mentioned by civic leadership programs. The
most frequently mentioned challenge was
funding, with 43 percent reporting that they
were having problems finding enough funds to
operate their programs. Some programs were
having problems recruiting enough participants

due to small populations in their area or a lack of
awareness of and interest in civic leadership
programs. These programs typically had
problems with creating a diverse and balanced
class from the applicant pool. Many programs
wished to create more diversity in their selection
process but were hindered by the relatively small
applicant pool. Having enough resources
(including staff and time) to run the program
effectively was also a major issue mentioned by
a number of program directors.

Table 4

Types and Frequency of issues and challenges reported by civic
leadership programs

Other important issues that were raised by
program directors were the lack of alumni and

community involvement in the program. This
issue could be considered one of the most

challenging and crucial to any civic leadership
programs. The fact that these programs have
little community support can hinder the

development and experience of the participants.
Although this issue was mentioned explicitly by
only seven of the California programs, it is still
an important problem for civic leadership
programs in general. A related issue is the
difficulty in getting alumni to stay active in the
community and in the program. Most programs

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66

have tried to address the problem through a
series of different alumni follow up programs
that were discussed in an earlier section.

On the other end of the spectrum,
approximately 11 percent said that they had no
problems or issues. These programs were well
funded, had a good applicant pool to draw from,
and had a good deal of sustained interest from
the community and alumni.

Discussion

This paper focused on the type, number,
and status of civic leadership programs within

the state of California to determine the

pervasiveness of types of programs, and to
understand their various missions, structures,
and their impact on the surrounding
communities. While this paper provided some
basic information, more work needs to be done
to present a fuller picture of the effectiveness
and importance of these programs. Many
programs engage in a self-evaluation process.
This is usually done by surveying alumni and
current participants and by asking them to
highlight what was learned and provide
suggestions for improvement. Although this
method has yielded helpful feedback for
individual programs, no one has analyzed the
impact of civic leadership programs on a more
widespread basis using a standardized method,
such as a standard survey of the alumni and

participants, and comparing results across
programs. There are many difficulties in trying
to compare these programs. Each program is

unique in its operation, its curriculum, and its
population.

However, a standardized evaluation and
comparison of civic leadership programs will
yield many benefits. First, knowledge from such
a study could ultimately lead to the development
of best practices and best structures for civic
leadership programs. Such information could
prove extremely helpful in optimizing the
impact and effectiveness of these programs in
developing new leadership within the

community. The difficulty of finding such
information would lie in aggregating the various
differences between different programs to find
the best possible combination for all programs.
Each program operates in a unique environment
and has unique needs and resources, but the

benefits of having a general guiding principle of
operations can contribute to program success.

Second, a standardized study of civic
leadership programs could help identify the best
curricular approaches or combination of
approaches for training community leaders.
Looking at what elements work best from both
the instructional and orientation approaches
would provide relevant information about
leadership development and the best sort of
curriculum.

Third, an evaluation of alumni across
various leadership programs may also provide
valuable insight into how leadership programs
affect alumni and what are the best ways to keep
alumni connected. This information would prove
valuable in determining the impact of civic
leadership development, and in determining the
sustainability and evolution of civic leadership
programs in their respective communities.

Summary

The relatively recent growth and seeming
explosion of civic leadership programs in many
communities has sparked an interest in these
programs and the way they approach leadership

development .

4
Due to the community

involvement and focus, these programs possess
certain advantages over other leadership
development programs. For example, many of
these programs provide the opportunity to
network with other members of the community
and with current community leaders. This
provides an important stepping-stone for
incoming leaders. The networking opportunities
may provide participants with the connections
and information needed to get things
accomplished. Moreover, unlike many executive
leadership training programs, which are focused
primarily on individual development, the focus
of civic leadership is on the community and
solving its existing problems. This can serve as a
source of motivation and inspiration for students
in civic leadership programs.

Looking at civic leadership programs
within California, we know that they are
relatively new and are operating with limited
resources. Many approach civic leadership
development by combining knowledge learned
from the classroom with knowledge gained from
interacting with the community. These programs

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67

attempt to attract a wide range of participants
from different backgrounds and experiences.
They also have a growing number of alumni,
with some alumni helping start civic leadership
programs when they move to new communities.
Most programs utilize different methods to tap
into their alumni and use them as a potential
resource. All programs attempt to act as
instruments of positive change within their
respective communities.

The impact of civic leadership programs
will likely be greater as the demand for local
leadership increases. The potential for these
programs to be instruments of change and
improvement within the community is high.
Based on recent trends, civic leadership
programs will likely continue to grow in many
communities. As they grow, many of these
programs will need to find sources of support
and information in order to develop a program
that is effective in developing leadership
capacity in their communities. More attention
will have to be given to this area of study in
order to better understand and help in the
development of these new and old ventures into
community leadership.

References

Community Leadership Association (2001). Program
Development Guide. Indianapolis: Community
Leadership Association.

Conger, J.A., & Toegel, G. (2004). Action learning
and multi-rater feedback: Pathways to
leadership development? In S.E. Murphy &
R.E. Riggio (Eds.), The Future of Leadership
Development. (pp. ) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 107-128.

Daugherty, R. & Williams, S. (1997). The long-term
impacts of leadership development: an
assessment of a state wide program. The
Journal of Leadership Studies, 4 (2), 101-114.

Day, D.V. (2000). Leadership development: A
review in context. Leadership Quarterly, 11 (4),
581-613.

Dotlich, D.L. & Noel, J.L. (1998). Action learning:
How the world’s top companies are recreating
their leaders and themselves. San Francisco:

Jossey-Bass.
Fiedler, F.E. (1996). Research on leadership selection

and training: One view of the future.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 241-250.

Fredricks, S. (1998). Exposing and exploring
statewide community leadership training
programs. The Journal of Leadership Studies, 5
(2), 129-142.

Moore, C.M. (1998). A colorful quilt: The community
leadership story. Indianapolis: Community
Leadership Association.

Putnam, R.D. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s
declining social capital. Journal of Democracy,
6 (1), 65-78.

Putnam, R.D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse
and revival of American community. New
York: Touchstone.

Reed, T. (1996). A new understanding of "followers"
as leaders: emerging theory of civic leadership.
The Journal of Leadership Studies, 3 (1), 95-
104.

Rossing, B. (1998). Learning laboratories for
renewed community leadership: Rational,
programs, and challenges. The Journal of
Leadership Studies, 5 (4), 68-81.

Wilson, A. (1993). The promise of situated cognition.
New Directions for Adults and Continuing
Education, 57, 71-79.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: the
organizational frontier. Harvard Business
Review, (January-February), 139-145.

Reference Notes

’Note: Many of the chambers do not offer money, but
other valuable services such as workspace,
staffing, and access to equipment such as
computers, phones, and internet access to many
of the leadership programs.

2These percentages do not add up to 100 because
many programs use multiple methods to find

funding.

3Many of the programs use different combinations of
the different types of alumni follow-ups.

4
Future planned research will expand the focus to

examine civic leadership programs nationally.

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Capital & Class
2015, Vol. 39(2) 197 –220

© The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:

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DOI: 10.1177/0309816815581773

c&c.sagepub.com

Critical management
studies and critical
theory: A review

Thomas Klikauer
University of Western Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Critical management studies (CMS) has pervaded the field of
management
studies, claiming to be based on the Frankfurt School of critical
theory. This
paper examines that claim. It starts with a brief outline of
management studies vs.
CMS, and of some of CMS’s goals: micro-emancipation, the
production of better
managers, good management, and fairer organisations. The aim
is to provide an
overview of current literature, to outline critical theory’s
epistemological theory,
and to deliver an assessment of CMS in the light of that.

Keywords
Critical management studies, critical theory, domination,
emancipation,
management studies

A historical introduction to management,
management studies, and critical management
studies
Advocates of management studies claim that management dates
back to the pyramids,
since such a large project would have demanded managerial
skills for its accomplishment
(Kreitner 2009: 33; Scott 2013: 9f.; Griffin 2013: 33). This is
pure ideology. Management
is a 20th-century phenomenon intimately linked to managing
for-profit companies, or
what Jessop (2013) calls ‘accumulation regimes’. Without profit
there is no management.
Perhaps the pyramids demanded organisational skill but there
were no shareholders, and
no scientific management existed 2,500 years ago. Perhaps more
than Fayol’s (1916) man-

agement principles (e.g. managerial authority paired with
workers’ discipline, a

Corresponding author:
Thomas Klikauer, University of Western Sydney, Australia.
Email: [email protected]
581773CNC0010.1177/0309816815581773Capital &
ClassKlikauer
research-article2015

Article

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198 Capital & Class 39(2)

managerial unit of command, subordination, order, and esprit de
corps), it was Taylor’s
quasi-scientific management (1911) that marked the transition
from simple overseeing of
a factory to modern management (Marglin 1974; Lipietz 2013).
Taylorism remains a
crypto-scientific enterprise: in his 1911 work Scientific
Management, Taylor stated, ‘he
[the worker] shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more
nearly resembles in his
mental make-up the ox than any other type’ that a worker
should be trained like an intel-
ligent gorilla, and be ‘so stupid that the word “percentage” has
no meaning to him’ (Taylor
1911: 59). Taylor’s writings led to a more structured approach
to the exploitation of work-

ers. While still based on an 18th- and 19th-century ‘Satanic
Mills’ model of factory admin-
istration that will be familiar to readers of Charles Dickens’s
Bleak House (1853), with
brutal and sadistic overseers armed with whips and sticks
(Engels 1892), the management
of people only moved from punishment regimes to rewarding
regimes (Klikauer 2012)
when theory X (punishment, stick) was superseded by theory Y
(reward, carrot) as
McGregor (1960, 2006) had outlined in the mid-1960s.

But a more structured way of extracting surplus also meant that
managers had to be
trained in specialised facilities (Locke & Spender 2011). This
allowed rising manage-
ment schools to teach a newly invented field of management
‘studies’ that remained – at
least in philosophical-theoretical terms – well below classical ‘-
ologies’ like psychology,
sociology, biology and the like. In order to gain crypto-
scientific recognition, manage-
ment studies staunchly followed the positivistic track by
transferring methods of natural
science into the world of management studies (Horkheimer
1937; Habermas 1976a;
Klikauer 2007). By the late 1980s, management studies was an
established field. Around
that time, a new field – critical management studies – began to
emerge as a hermeneutic
critique of traditional management studies. It borrowed ideas
from ‘critical theory’ to
frame itself as a ‘critical’ discipline. CMS’s founding edition
Critical Management Studies
(Alvesson & Willmott 1992b) introduces CMS with the
statement, ‘critical theory pro-

vides the primary inspiration for this volume’ of CMS
(Alvesson & Willmott 1992b: 1).
More recently, this point was re-emphasised in ‘Critical Theory’
(2011: 93), by CMS
theorist Robert Cluley, who states, ‘critical theory, in the
context of CMS, is most closely
associated with the work of a particular group of German
scholars belonging to the
Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt’ (e.g.
Butler & Spoelstra 2014:
543; Jeanes & Huzzard 2014: 5, 13, 20, 29, 74, 79, 85, 99, 110,
115, 236, 242; Wickert
& Schaefer 2015: 110).

Over the years, CMS has distinguished itself from traditional
management studies by
rehearsing its numerous and continuously outlined links to
critical theory (Tables 1 and
2, below). With that, CMS introduced a new theme into an
overwhelmingly non-critical
and perhaps even anti-critical but largely functional and
positivist field. It introduced
critique as a creative way of thinking that helps managers to
iron out system deficiencies
in order to perfect the managerial apparatus (Klikauer 2013).
While critical theory’s
project is overtly dedicated to ending domination as a pathway
to emancipation, CMS
appears to remain part of management studies, calling its
project ‘micro-emancipation’
(Alvesson et al. 2009: 446ff.; Huzzard & Johansson 2014: 97;
Wickert & Schaefer 2015:
115). It attempts to use carry-overs from critical theory,
adjusted to management studies’
prime ideology of managerialism (Butler & Spoelstra 2014:
539). Incidentally, manage-

rialism has never been discussed in any substantial way by CMS
(Klikauer 2013). Instead,

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Klikauer 199

CMS wants ‘the production of better managers’ (Alvesson et al.
2009: 446ff.), with next
to no interest in Kinna’s (2014: 611) exhortation that it should
‘expose, subvert and
undermine dominant assumptions about the social order’.
Perhaps CMS is more in line
in its historical origins with Fayol’s ‘managerial authority
paired with workers’ discipline,
command and control, and subordination’. Hence, CMS seeks
improvements on author-
ity, discipline, command, control, and the subordination of
workers. It seeks a genuine
‘betterment’ of domination. Meanwhile, critical theory’s
emancipatory project is directed
against domination (Farrands & Worth 2005). These seemingly
divergent sets of ideas
are examined below, beginning with a brief overview of CMS’s
argument that it is based
on critical theory, before moving on to detail the Frankfurt
School’s critical theory.

Critical management studies and the Frankfurt
School of critical theory
Ever since its invention in the late 1990s, CMS has claimed to
work in the tradition of

the Frankfurt School’s critical theory, with the most recent
example being found in Hartz
et al.’s (2013) CMS Conference announcement about ‘dealing
with contemporary criti-
cal theorists’ and critical theory ‘classics as mere footnotes of
CMS’. CMS links to critical
theory have become so numerous that only a selection can be
listed here. While the
incomplete list below does not claim to represent the full range
of CMS literature on
critical theory, it nevertheless shows the abundant, established
and enduring ways in
which CMS has linked itself to critical theory. This has been
rehearsed over and over
again. The examples shown in Table 1 show 26 occasions on
which CMS has claimed to
be based on critical theory.

While these references depict more than twenty years (1992 to
2013) of intensive and
prolonged CMS-critical theory linkage, three of them are
examined here in greater detail
in Table 2 to exemplify the longstanding CMS programme of
connecting itself to critical
theory, which can be observed at the ‘Critical management
studies’ Wikipedia page, and

Table 1. Links between critical management studies and critical
theory.

1. Alvesson & Willmott (1992a, b) 14. Waring (2009: 41)
2. Alvesson & Willmott (1996) 15. Safranski (2010: 19)
3. Alvesson (1994) 16. Armstrong (2010: 1)
4. Hassard et al. (2001: 340) 17. Cluley (2011: 92ff.)
5. Zald (2002: 367) 18. Alvesson (2011)
6. Ackroyd (2004: 166) 19. Clegg (2011)

7. Adler et al. (2007: 125, 138) 20. Tatli (2012)
8. Armstrong & Lilley (2008: 354)
9. Butler (2008: 9)

21. Alvesson & Spicer (2012: 376)
22. www.criticalmanagement.org

10. Hancock (2008: 10) 23. Wikipedia page: ‘Critical
management studies’

11. Smith (2008: 18) 24. group.aomonline.org/cms/
12. Rowlingson (2008: 206) 25. Jeanes & Huzzard (2014: 25)
13. Spicer et al. (2009: 545) 26. Butler & Spoelstra (2014: 543)

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200 Capital & Class 39(2)

in more formal, chronological terms in works stretching from
CMS’s founding docu-
ment (Alvesson & Willmott 1992b) to the current Oxford
Handbook of Critical
Management Studies (Alvesson, Bridgman & Willmott 2009):

Table 2 depicts a multitude of links in which CMS demonstrates
its links to critical
theory. In their (2009: 361) elaboration of CMS’s ‘long-
standing and highly influential
link to critical theory’, Duberley and Johnson pose the question,
Is CMS reflective of
critical theory, or does it follow the paradigm of traditional
management studies? They

approach the answer to this question using a somewhat Hegelian
three-step approach: a)
critical theory (thesis); b) CMS (anti-thesis); and c) their
relationship to one another
(synthesis). In other words, the question is not whether critical
theory is CMS’s ‘only’
theoretical background – it isn’t. CMS has incorporated other
theoretical fields (post-
modernism, labour process theory, critical realism, etc.),
perhaps to broaden its appeal.
Nonetheless, the key question of this review remains whether
CMS (Tables 1 and 2)
carries critical theory’s emancipatory project, or whether it is
simply a ‘critical’ version of
management studies. In order to answer this, the article will
briefly introduce the philo-
sophical-theoretical origins of the Frankfurt School at the
Institute for Social Research.
When the Nazis occupied the institute in 1933, its members
escaped to New York, where
they became known as Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (Jay
1974; Rasmussen &
Swindal 2004; Tarr 2011; Masquelier 2012; Berry 2012; Nickel
2012; Outhwaite 2012;
Forst 2013).

Table 2. Examples in which CMS connects itself to critical
theory (1992-2009).

• ‘critical management studies (CMS) is a loose
but extensive grouping of …
theoretically informed critiques of management …
grounded originally in a critical
theory perspective’ (wikipedia.org).

• In what might be called CMS’s founding

document (Alvesson & Willmott’s Critical
Management Studies, 1992b: 1), the authors note, ‘the
standpoint of critical theory
… provides the primary inspiration for this volume’
(1992b: 4).

• ‘contributors to this collection have been
attracted by the capacity of critical theory’
(1992b: 4).

• ‘critical theory as a counterpoint to mainstream
management studies’ (1992b: 8).
• ‘critical theory gives a new way of
understanding’ (1992b: 16).
• A chapter referencing key works on critical
theory (1992b: 20ff.).
• In the Oxford Handbook of Critical Management
Studies (2009) the CMS–critical

theory link is presented as follows: ‘critical theory’s wide
compass continues to offer a
valuable resource’ (2009: 6).

• ‘critical theory has perhaps had even more
influence on the development of CMS
than other theoretical foundations’ (2009: 29).

• ‘the critical theory tradition became relevant’
(2009: 37).
• ‘critical theory provides a potentially valuable
contribution to CMS’ (2009: 46).
• ‘following Alvesson and Deetz (1996, 2000), we
use the term “critical theory”’

(2009: 346).
• ‘we started this chapter by outlining some of

the underpinning assumptions of CMS

and the impact of these upon the methods employed. Initially
we explored the
methodology of a long-standing and highly influential
perspective closely associated
with CMS: critical theory’ (2009: 361).

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Klikauer 201

Historically, critical theory’s epistemological origins are found
in the Enlightenment
philosophy of Kant’s (1724-1804) ‘Trilogy of Critiques’ (1781,
1788, 1790), and subse-
quently in Hegel (1770-1831), Marx (1818-1883), Engels (1820-
1895) and Lukács
(1885-1971). Kant and Hegel (1807) acknowledged the
existence of the human ‘subject’
by positioning it in relation to the objective world, and
elementary to their work have
been ‘critical consciousness’, morality, Sittlichkeit, self-
determination, freedom, self-actu-
alisation, alienation, and Hegel’s master-servant dialectics
(Kojève 1947).

Critical theory, creating knowledge and critical
management studies
In a seminal founding essay, ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’
(1937), the philosopher-
sociologist Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) constructed critical

theory’s basic epistemologi-
cal parameters, coining the term ‘critical theory’. For critical
theory, theory is more than a
disconnected research method: it has social, material, ethical,
historical, philosophical and
political significance. Historically, traditional theory assumed
its role as a critique on reli-
gion challenging the hegemony of feudalist regimes. Most
importantly, traditional theory
resulted in the positivist idea of a seamless transfer of methods
developed in natural science
to social science. It operates as an enclosed system (e.g. system
theory) of propositions in an
attempt to discover never-ending law-like foundations of
society that are neutral to histori-
cal developments (Habermas 1976a: 142; Adorno 1993;
Bernstein 2001).

It is a conceptual ordering of invented facts, which lacks an
examination of the social
reality of the factors that created the so-called facts. Law-like
hypotheses are developed
in anticipation of legal policy regulators, without there being
any democratic justifica-
tion for them. This disregards the existence of contradictions as
if these had no influence
on the observable phenomenon. Traditional theory has a
tendency towards logical and
purely mathematical correlations. These models have been more
influential to manage-
ment studies than to CMS, even though CMS has never been
immune to approaches
generated by traditional theories. Rejecting traditional theory,
Horkheimer’s initial
approach to theory was elaborated in Habermas’s Knowledge
and Human Interests (1987),

constructing normative foundations for three knowledge-guiding
interests, as seen below
in Table 3.

Table 3 shows the three knowledge-creating interests to which
science in general,
social science, management studies and critical management
studies adhere. In general,
management studies adopts an uncritical-positivist
understanding of management, sup-
porting prevailing paradigms while enhancing domination
(Grandy & Gibbon 2009).

Table 3. Critical theory’s three knowledge-creating interests.

• an empirical-analytical interest in organisational
control over production, time,
workers, output, etc.)

• a hermeneutic-historical interest in understanding
meaning in its historical
continuations

• a critical-emancipatory interest in freedom and
autonomy, assisting those pressed
into production processes and domination to free themselves.

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202 Capital & Class 39(2)

Most empirical-analytical research is guided by a Comte-

Weber-Popper illusion of ‘pure
scientific values’. It is formulated as a ‘standpoint-
unboundedness’ linked to the illusion
of a partition between researcher and social reality, with the
idea that research is totally
separated from the sphere of real life rendering objectivity a
key ideology. This is carried
out by people whom Bartiz (1960) has called ‘servants of
power’.

Since Kant’s post-feudalist 19th-century philosophy, however,
this is no more than a
dangerous delusion or a deliberate attempt to mystify research,
concealing the key inter-
est of empiricism – managerial domination – behind the veil of
scientific objectivity.
Ever since Kant, people have been aware that our objective-
subjective world is insepara-
ble. In sharp contrast to positivism’s pretence that Kant’s
epistemological philosophy
never existed, critical theory argues that all knowledge has a
‘perspective’ and flows from
certain epistemological, social, ethical, and political
commitments, because truth cannot
exist independent from the subject. Therefore, no researcher can
be over and above social
totality, because society and research are a single unit from
which life cannot be detached.
Hence, researchers in all fields must reflect upon themselves
from within this context
(Habermas 1976a: 131).

A key attempt to somehow remain disconnected from society in
empirical-analytical
research is found in establishing hypothetical-deductive, non-
historical, and law-like

classifications with empirical content, using controlled
observations, experiments, tests,
and models. This is a version of knowledge that attempts to
create and justify exact
knowledge. Its validity is achieved through recourse to the
source of knowledge. It is a
kind of circular self-validation that is grounded in the
objectivist illusion that observa-
tions can be expressed in basic statements by relating facts in a
descriptive fashion, seek-
ing to eclipse prescriptive intentions. In the end, the acceptance
or rejection of such
statements is made in accordance with law-like rules
disconnected from society and
researcher (Habermas 1976b: 204). The research occurs in a
self-invented vacuum inside
which no life exists.

This version of knowledge is linked to a ‘cognitive interest in
technical control over
objectified processes’ (Habermas 1968: 290) – managerial
knowledge used to set labour
power in motion while dominating it (Fromm 1980; Bonß 1984;
Smith 2010).
Knowledge is used to establish and expand the power of direct,
technical, bureaucratic,
coercive, cultural, neo-normative, and internalised control
(Sturdy et al. 2009; Fleming
et al. 2010). As a consequence, a substantial number of
publications on research into
for-profit organisations can be called ‘auxiliary science’,
supporting and stabilising domi-
nation (Anderson 2009).

Since the Enlightenment, it has been proven over and over again
that natural science,

technology, technical knowledge, and instrumental rationality
have never been able to
guarantee material and social emancipation (Marcuse 1968b).
Often, such research has
been a support function for purely technical policy
recommendations supportive of man-
agerial domination. Any managerial research restricted to
empirical-analytical knowledge-
creation is limited to a position of ‘examining the self-
preservation … of social systems in
the sphere of pragmatically successful adjustment processes’
(Habermas 1976b: 222).
Apart from empirical-analytical knowledge which analyses
management solely from
‘within’ a self-invented technical rationality constructed as
problem-solving, Habermas’s
second knowledge-creating interest is geared towards meaning
and understanding.

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Klikauer 203

Historical-hermeneutical research is the science of
interpretation. It originated in lit-
erary theory and began with the Greek god Hermes. It does not
seek to access facts by
observation, but through interpretation (Gadamer 1974;
Klikauer 2007: 82ff.; Letiche
2006: 170). Inside CMS, for example, hermeneutics interprets
texts such as contracts,
agreements, mission statements, rules, directives, arrangements

on organisational issues,
committee minutes, policies, company documents, etc.
(Alvesson & Sköldberg 2009;
Alvesson 2010). Knowledge is mediated through language and
linguistic pre-under-
standing (syntax and semantics) that derives from the
researcher’s initial situation.
Generally, all representations are social actions occurring inside
a context that is part of
a social-historical continuation (Hegel 1807, 1821; Adorno
1993; Habermas 2000).
Consequently, all knowledge is formed inside a living societal
context that is part of a
socially constructed framework.

Hermeneutics is not satisfied with the production of facts, but
focuses on understand-
ing the factors behind the facts. It replaces hypothetical-
deductive empiricism with a
hermeneutic quest for meaning and sense-making. Habermas
(1976b: 222) calls this
science ‘adjustment processes’, while CMS calls it ‘working
affirmatively with managerial
discourses’ (Spicer et al. 2009: 546). CMS does this through a
set of (prefixed ‘critical’)
interpretations of a given reality, such as management, while
remaining strictly within
managerial parameters (Fournier & Grey 2000: 27; Hancock &
Tyler 2008: 32).

By contrast, the third knowledge interest of critical-
emancipatory empiricism goes
beyond both through its critique of the ideological content of
research. It rejects the idea
that methodology is merely an application of mechanical,
observational, and statistical

techniques, and a purely technical device (Marcuse 1964, 1966;
Adorno 1976; Morrow
& Brown 1994). Critical-emancipatory science criticises such
techniques as ritualistic in
order to legitimise a certain form of knowledge. Critical-
emancipatory research uses
non-empirical methods such as the research-society interface
with the method of self-
reflection being determined by an emancipatory interest
directed towards autonomy,
human freedom, self-determination (Kant), ethical life and self-
actualisation (Hegel),
non-alienation (Marx), liberation (Marcuse), ideal speech
(Habermas), mutual and equal
recognition (Hegel & Honneth), and Mündigkeit (Horkheimer &
Adorno). Critical
theory’s term ‘emancipation’ encompasses these philosophies
while adding its own speci-
fications (Adorno 1969, 1973; Klikauer 2007: 85).

Management, managerial capitalism and managerialism – issues
on which CMS is
strangely quiet (Locke & Spender 2011; Klikauer 2013) – work
in the opposite direc-
tion, with pathological consequences (Bakan 2004; Samuel
2010). As Habermas (1967:
222, cf. Marcuse 1972: 98) emphasised:

under the conditions of reproduction of an industrial society,
individuals who only possessed
technically utilisable knowledge, and who were no longer in a
position to expect a rational
enlightenment of themselves nor of the aims behind their action
would lose their identity.

Critical theory works to overcome pathologies created by

management. The interest
of critical-emancipation is directed towards any analysis that
frees consciousness from
the domineering dependence on hypostatised powers,
empiricism, positivistic approaches,
and from its neutral-scientific associations (Adorno 1976: 113).
The undeniable link

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204 Capital & Class 39(2)

between knowledge and interest challenges empirical-analytical
and historical-herme-
neutic science because both seek to establish the fantasy of
objectivism and ‘the illusion
of pure theory’ (Habermas 1976a: 155, Klikauer 2008: 173).
Instead, critical theory
exposes ‘pure-facts-and-value-neutrality’ ideologies as a mirage
that can be evaluated
through critical reflections on knowledge and interest.
Emancipatory criticism focuses
on the dialectics between knowledge and interest, while being a
reflective method of
research and theory (Adorno 1976: 111).

In broad terms, critical theory is directed towards self-reflection
and emancipation,
preserving the emancipatory element in Kant, Hegel, Marx,
Marcuse, Adorno,
Horkheimer, Habermas and Honneth. It is a radical re-
constitutive project of a transfor-

mation directed towards universal human emancipation. This is
quite different from
CMS. While CMS includes some elements of critique, critical
theory is designed to work
towards emancipation (cf. Tarr 2011: 33, 179; Adler 2002: 388).
This can be shown in
a simple sociological three-by-three matrix indicating each
field’s main knowledge inter-
ests in black, and minor interests in grey:

Figure 1 shows the three relevant fields of inquiry (traditional
management studies,
CMS, and critical theory) on the horizontal axis, and Habermas’
three knowledge-creat-
ing interests on the vertical. It shows three black areas of
inquiry, with their prime knowl-
edge-creating interest. For traditional management studies,
empirical analysis produces
knowledge that assists management. CMS’s hermeneutical
interest is reflected in inter-
preting and understanding management, designed to show
management’s shortcomings
and formulated as system-confirming critiques; and for critical
theory, it is a critical-
emancipatory interest in creating knowledge that ends
domination and is directed
towards emancipation.

Figure 1 also shows four grey areas that have secondary
relevance to the main knowledge
interest of each field. Management studies have a limited
interest in understanding mean-
ing, with the prime interest remaining inside the production of
empirical-analytical knowl-
edge. This situation is reversed in CMS, with a prime interest in
meaning and understanding,

while empirical-analytical research takes a secondary position.
CMS’s main interest is a
critical evaluation or re-interpretation of empirical-analytical
findings. Things are very dif-
ferent for critical theory. Its major interest is in critical-
emancipatory knowledge while
using empirical-analytical and hermeneutical research to
support its quest for emancipa-
tion, not control (management studies) and not re-interpretation
(CMS).

Field:�

Knowledge interests �

Traditional
management

studies

Critical
management

studies

Critical
theory

1 Empirical-
analytical

2 Hermeneutical

3 Critical-
emancipatory

Figure 1. The knowledge interest matrix of MS, CMS & CT.

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Klikauer 205

The only three forms of knowledge that are relevant to all three
fields of inquiry are
found at the historically basic level of post-Enlightenment’s
empirical-analytical knowl-
edge. But this has three different meanings depending on each
field of inquiry. For tra-
ditional management studies, it is the production of empirical
knowledge within the
framework of instrumental rationality (Schecter 2010) that is
analysed and presented to
management (e.g. the Academy of Management Journal,
Harvard Business Review, etc.),
while its secondary knowledge – hermeneutics – is a fringe
issue (e.g. the Academy of
Management Review, cf. Eden 2003; Thompson 2004; Clarke
2009). For CMS, the role
of empirical-analytical knowledge rests in its critical analysis
and re-examination of
empirical knowledge, designed to ‘search for loopholes in
managerial and organisational
control’ (Alvesson & Willmott 1992a: 446). For critical theory,
the production of empir-
ical-analytical knowledge is of use when it advances human
freedom and emancipation.
In sum, the knowledge-interest of management studies is
primarily the support of man-

agement; CMS’s central interest is a critique of management
and management studies;
and emancipation and human freedom are the focus of critical
theory. Consequently,
critical theory is significantly different from traditional
management studies and CMS.

The review: Key themes of the Critical
Management Studies Handbook
How an academic field sees and presents itself and which are its
key themes is often
explained via a major publication such as, for example, a
‘handbook’. The Oxford
Handbook of Critical Management Studies provides a
comprehensive insight into CMS
(Alvesson et al. 2009; cf. Parker 2010: 297, 300; Hodson 2012).
In line with previous
CMS research, the handbook seeks to combine critical theory
with management stud-
ies. It represents a kind of linear thinking, along the lines of
‘critique + management
studies = CMS’.

In an attempt to merge two ‘strange bedfellows’ (Sotirin &
Tyrell 1998: 305), CMS
reduces 90-plus years of critical theory’s philosophy, theory
development and research to
a ‘study’ in an endeavour to equalise CMS’s non-philosophical
and non-theoretical exist-
ence with critical theory’s philosophy and history. CMS views
itself merely as a ‘study’,
not as an academic, theoretical and, above all, philosophical
discipline. Critical theory’s
strong philosophical origins (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Adorno,
Habermas, Honneth) are sac-
rificed on the altar of managerial ‘studies’. Having rejected the

true notion of science and
philosophy as a subject that exists only ‘for itself ’ (Hegel
1807, 1821; Adorno 1993),
CMS remains a ‘study’ inside managerial infrastructures,
frameworks, paradigms, and
ideologies. Critical theory is the exact opposite. It only exists
for itself, serving nobody
– with the exception of those oppressed (Marcuse 1966) – but
least of all management
and managerialism. Some of the key differences between CMS
and critical theory are
tabled below:

Table 4 provides a short overview of core differences between
critical theory and
CMS, starting with the philosophical history of critical theory
and CMS’s manage-
ment history. Both are products of different epochs and
different experiences with
critical theory’s strong critique of capitalism, fascism, and
Stalinism, and CMS’s cri-
tique on management. The German sociologist Max Weber
appears to remain the

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206 Capital & Class 39(2)

Table 4. Key differences: Critical theory vs. CMS.

Key issues Critical theory CMS

Early:
CT=philosophers

Immanuel Kant, G. F. W.
Hegel,

Taylor, Fayol, Henry Ford

CMS=writers Karl Marx, George Lukacs McGregor, Drucker
Mintzberg, Chandler
History 1920s 1990s
Country of origin Germany (20s-30s) → USA

(30s-50s)
Europe: Sweden & UK

Three historical
themes

Fascism, capitalism, Soviet
state-socialism (Outhwaite
2012)

Managerial control & domination,
management culture (Alvesson
2002)

Three key sociologists Max Horkheimer, Theodor
W. Adorno, Herbert
Marcuse, etc.

Max Weber (dominant),
Durkheim, & Marx (partially)

Key theories Critical theory Critical theory but also critical
realism, postmodernism, feminism,

labour process theory (lpt),
pragmatism, symbolic interaction-
theory, environmentalism

Contemporary
research areas

Society, capitalism,
consumerism, mass-media
& communication

Management, managerial ‘for-
profit’ organisations

Five key texts Traditional and Critical
Theory (1937

CMS (1992)

Minima Moralia (1944) Emancipation in Management &
Org. Studies (1992)

One-Dimensional Society
(1966)

Making Sense of Management
(1996)

Struggle for Recognition
(1995)

Oxford Handbook of CMS (2009)

Communicative Action
(1997)

Conditions & Prospects for CMS
(2000)

Epistemology Horkheimer (1937)
Habermas (1985)
Institutions Institute of Social Research None

New School of Social
Research (NY)

None

Key authors Adorno, Horkheimer,
Fromm, Marcuse, Habermas,
Kellner, Honneth, etc.

Alvesson, Willmott, Knights, etc.

Telos Universal emancipation Micro-emancipation (Alvesson)
Mündigkeit (Adorno) Producing ‘better’ managers

(Reedy 2008:58&62)

(Continued)

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Klikauer 207

predominant source of CMS, whereas critical theory’s key
writers originate from phi-
losophy, economics, sociology, psychology, and from within

critical theory. Both also
differ strongly in their respective research areas, with critical
theory’s wider societal
focus and CMS’s narrow managerial-organisational focus. Most
decisively, critical
theory has a well-developed, comprehensive, and concise body
of theories that are
philosophically grounded, while CMS has exposed itself to a
claim of being a ‘bit of
everything’ (cf. Adler et al. 2007). While critical theory is
narrow in its theoretical
background, it is wider in its research interest. CMS represents
the opposite: examin-
ing a specific issue (management) from a wide – sometimes
somewhat contradictory
– array of theories, ideas, models, and concepts, e.g. labour
process theory versus post-
modernism (Johnson & Duberley 2000: 11; Alvesson & Deetz
2005; Hassard &
Rowlinson 2011; Mills & Mills 2013).

Examining key texts in critical theory and CMS, one quickly
recognises that there is
no overlap. With the exception of Marcuse’s One-Dimensional
Man (1966) and a few
others, most critical theory texts do not deal specifically with
management. Perhaps this
is because of management’s non-philosophical, non-theoretical,
un-cultured, and non-
intellectual existence of a particularity expressed such as the
narrow subject of factory
administration. In CMS, it is the exact reverse: management and
organisations are the
be-all-and-end-all of its existence. They define and shape
CMS’s mediocre, confined,
and simple universe. Practically no text within the CMS

portfolio provides a substantive
critique of ethics, history, philosophy, society, culture,
consumerism, managerialism or
capitalism in general; but all its texts have management as their
subject. Perhaps critical
theory’s research interest is best reflected through Bauhaus-
architect Walter Gropius’s
‘the human mind is like an umbrella – it functions best when
open’. CMS focuses on
management while avoiding any distraction through linking
management to capitalist
pathologies, managerialism, and consumerism. While critical
theory’s telos is universal
emancipation, for CMS it is ‘micro-emancipation, the
production of better managers,
good management, shap[ing] organisations to become fairer,
and the idea that manage-
ment’s social engineering can be balanced’ (Alvesson et al.
2009: 446ff.; cf. Akella 2008;
Smith 2008: 18, 19; Rowlinson 2008: 208; Barros 2010: 168,
181; Johnson 2009:
271ff.; Tatli 2012).

Key issues Critical theory CMS

Self-determination &
actualisation

Social engineering balanced with
a better world (Spicer)

Key journals Philosophy and Social
Criticism, Telos,

Organization, Critical
Perspectives on Accounting,

Critical Perspectives on
International Business
e-journals: Ephemera, [email protected]@
gement, Tamara

Thesis Eleven,
Constellations, Critical
Inquiry, Theory and Society,
Law and Criticism

Table 4. (Continued)

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208 Capital & Class 39(2)

Each also has its own respective journals. CMS scholars do not
publish in critical
theory journals, and there is no cross-referencing between
critical theory and CMS.
They are neatly separated and so are their views on
management. CMS seeks to reform
management and also, albeit marginally, management’s
denigration of labour to human
resources, while critical theory views human beings as self-
reflective agencies with
emancipatory potentials. CMS criticises the managerial (mis-
)use of people inside
organisations, but stays clear of labour’s overall role in the
capitalist profit system
(Marcuse 1966; Postone 1993; Long & Lee 2001; Payne &
Barbera 2010).

CMS’s history began with Alvesson and Willmott’s ‘On the idea
of emancipation in
management and organisational studies’ (1992a), published in
one of management’s
major journals, the Academy of Management Review (AMR),
published by the American
Academy of Management. The AMR represents the extreme
opposite of critical theory,
while Alvesson and Willmott’s article is not reflective of
critical theory’s core philosophies
(Butler & Spoelstra 2014: 539). At first glance, the title appears
to contain a tautology:
‘emancipation in management’; but Alvesson and Willmott
strenuously seek to combine
what essentially cannot be combined by artificially dividing
critical theory into a ‘pro-
gressive’ and an ‘accommodating’ stream.

In CMS’s camera obscura version of reality, critical theory’s
progressive approach to
emancipation is then labelled ‘orthodox’ and dismissed as
‘grandiose’, while the CMS
invention of organisational ‘micro-emancipation’ is deemed
acceptable. This represents a
reductionism rejected by critical theory (Klikauer 2011; cf.
Marcuse 1966, 1968a,
1968b, 1969). For critical theory, emancipation remains a
Kantian categorical impera-
tive (a universal ‘must’), not a hypothetical one (Kleingeld
2012; Klikauer 2010: 68-76,
2012: 173ff.). There can never be ‘if-then’ conditions (e.g.
micro, organisational, etc.)
attached to emancipation, such as ‘if management was nice then
emancipation would
follow’ (Klikauer 2012: 168ff.). Instead, emancipation as a

universal duty – not micro-
emancipation – finishes the ‘Unfinished project of modernity’
(Habermas 1985). Already
critical theory’s Kantian-Hegelian origins make it impossible to
accept anything but uni-
versal and unconditional emancipation and freedom.
Armstrong’s (2010: 2) critique on
CMS, for example, highlights CMS’s use of ‘emancipation’:

in this manner the nonsensically truncated sentence ‘I
emancipate’ becomes ‘emancipation’ or
‘emancipatory’, thereby conveying a vague sense of doing good
whilst the grammar covertly
strips away the inconvenient questions of whose emancipation
might be at issue and from what
oppression.

In other words, CMS does not appear to ‘give voice to the
voiceless’ (Parker 2010:
299). It cannot place the ‘to be’ emancipated subjects – workers
– at the centre, because
CMS’s centre is occupied with for-profit organisations and
management. Therefore,
CMS creates a ‘vague sense of doing good’ while circumventing
emancipation in the
absence of a subject that is forced into managerial-oppressive
regimes. Through the skil-
ful Houdini-like vanishing act of a subject’s emancipation, CMS
has no emancipated
individuals left to construct a sittliche-rational society (Hegel).
Marcuse (1941: 185)
made the very opposite of CMS very clear: society is to be
constructed by the critical
reason of the emancipated individual. Moreover, critical
theory’s ‘emancipatory

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Klikauer 209

idea’ – just an idea! – is not ‘a group of projects, each limited
in terms of space, time, and
success’, as claimed by CMS. And critical theory can never be
reduced to a ‘search for
loopholes in managerial and organisational control’ (Alvesson
& Willmott 1992a: 446).
Critical theory’s emancipatory project can never be reduced to
‘loophole-searching’
implicitly affirming managerial control and domination.

Finally, for CMS, ‘the costs of emancipation must be
acknowledged’ (Alvesson &
Willmott 1992a: 447). For critical theory, managerial costs are
irrelevant to universal
human emancipation. Human emancipation and freedom are not
questions of manage-
rial costs. Instead of counting the cost of emancipation to
management, critical theory
counts the human cost of unfreedom under managerial regimes.
If critical theory would
accept the dependency of freedom and emancipation on
managerial costs, it would deny
its philosophical origins and annihilate itself. CMS is firmly
aligned to managerial cost-
cutting strategies rather than to critical theory’s emancipation.
For CMS’s crypto-criti-
cism, the theory and philosophy of critical theory is simply
orthodoxy. How much CMS

is part of the managerial paradigm can be exemplified by a key
statement in CMS’s origi-
nal key article (Alvesson & Willmott 1992a: 457): ‘users of
orthodox critical theory are
inclined to be dismissive of ideas that are intended to enhance
the capacity of managers
to raise the productivity of labour’. Set against that, CT argues
that its philosophy is not
just ‘orthodox’. It does not simply have ‘inclinations’, but a
well-developed theoretical
and philosophical body, and is not simply dismissive of
management (Marcuse 1966;
Marcuse 1968a; Postone 1993; Adorno 1993; Ellem 2008; Berry
2012). CT does not
accept an ‘increase in labour productivity’ as natural, neutral,
and for all to accept. This
is pure ideology (Klikauer 2008; cf. Wood & Kelly 1978: 19).
The issue is CMS’s ‘pro-
ductivity of labour’ vs. critical theory’s ‘liberation of labour’
(Calas & Smircich 2002;
Bridgman & Stephens 2008; Cunliffe 2008; Roan et al. 2009:
17ff.).

CMS’s claim that ‘CMS has emerged as a movement that
questions the authority and
relevance of mainstream thinking and practice’ in management
(Alvesson et al. 2009: 1;
cf. Walsh & Weber 2002: 402), invites three problems: firstly,
CMS admits that it
emerged as a restrictive critique of management studies;
secondly, if CMS were part of
critical theory it would reflect on critical theory’s philosophical
origins and critical theo-
ry’s body of theories; and finally, if CMS were aligned to
critical theory, domination and
emancipation would be its core instead of ‘questions of

authority and relevance’ (Klikauer
2007: 76-96).

Clearly, CMS’s own introduction already indicates significant
differences between
CMS and critical theory. CMS emphasises that being critical
towards management is
nothing new, while mentioning Weber, Durkheim, and Marx.
First, Weber and
Durkheim are not in the tradition of critical theory (cf. Simich
& Tilman 1980). Marx’s
strong emphasis on political economy is continued in critical
theory, while remaining
critical of reducing the human condition to issues of political
economy. Second, as ‘the’
theoretician of the Wilhelminian Empire, one of Weber’s
favourite terms – Herrschaft/
domination (cf. Marcuse 1968a; cf. 1972) – remains
conspicuously absent from CMS
(Alvesson et al. 2009). Finally, Weber, Durkhei, and CMS may
‘question authority and
relevance’, but do not include emancipation from domination
and oppression (Jeannot
1994, 2010).

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210 Capital & Class 39(2)

The Handbook’s ‘Recalling the bigger picture’ has four
concerns: critical questioning,
negations and deconstruction, social reform and emancipation,

and the legitimate pur-
pose of organisations. A critique in the tradition of critical
theory goes beyond a simple
‘critical questioning’. Instead of de-construction, critical theory
would radically re-con-
struct management so that it no longer reflects what it currently
is. One of the clearest
dividing lines between CMS’s post-modernist ‘de’-construction
and critical theory’s ‘re’-
construction is based on destruction under postmodernism and
an emancipatory re-
construction of society towards ending domination under
critical theory. Suddenly,
‘emancipation’ appears in CMS’s handbook, but not as a fully
developed concept, as in
critical theory. For CMS, emancipation appears to be non-
essential (Hegel). For critical
theory it builds the key of everything critical theory has ever
produced.

Meanwhile, the CMS focus on the ‘legitimate purpose of
organisations’ indicates that
CMS accepts for-profit organisations as ‘a given’, marking a
‘TINA’ (there is no alterna-
tive) critique from ‘within’ the managerial paradigm, not
‘about’ management (Grey &
Willmott 2002; King 2008). For critical theory, current business
organisations have no
legitimacy, even discounting management’s anti-democratic
stance and managerialism’s
fight against democracy. For critical theory, the democratic
formation of Rousseau’s
volonté générale, (e.g. Habermas’ communicative action)
remains highly relevant to
industrial organisations. CMS fails comprehensively to expose
management’s lack of

democracy. Equally, issues such as the ‘pathology of commerce’
(Bakan 2004; Beder
2002), organisational pathologies, white-collar crime and
environmental destruction,
etc. are all absent from the CMS handbook’s key chapter, which
sets out the theoretical
framework for CMS (cf. Alvesson 2011).

CMS’s ‘Critical theory and its contribution to CMS’ is, of
course, of key interest to
critical theory. In a writing style akin to story-telling rather
than critical, philosophical
and emancipatory reflections, selective sections of the Frankfurt
School’s history are
retold. While outlining some of critical theory’s key points from
‘critique of the dialectics
of environment, the one-dimensional society, a critique on
technology, to an emphasis
on communicative action’, it manages to entirely miss the
theory of almost every one of
them. One of critical theory’s key concepts is communicative
action (Habermas 1997).
This can serve as an example delivering valuable insights into
CMS’s treatment of a core
critical theory element. It is imperative to note that
communicative action does not
imply that an ‘idea becomes central as a point of reference for
the creation of a free and
just society where no social groups become marginalised and all
interests are heard, as
well as for the methodical orientation of social research’
(Alvesson et al. 2009: 36).
Communicative action is not about ‘marginalised groups’ and
getting ‘heard’, as CMS
claims. It is about a domination-free dialogue enshrined in ideal
speech that would ren-

der management impossible (Johnson & Duberley 2000: 122).

Communicative action sets categorical imperatives under which
one either commu-
nicates free of domination, or does not (Klikauer 2008: 149ff.).
There is no middle-
ground: no ‘a-bit-of-both’; no conditioning, as Habermas makes
abundantly clear
(Klikauer 2008: 160ff.). A dialogue is either free of domination
(Klikauer 2007) or it
represents communicative distortions (Klikauer 2008).
Unfortunately, CMS is not rep-
resentative of Habermas’s key demands. Instead, it
accommodates management. CMS
also relates itself to critical realism and to ‘Perspectives on
labour process theory’,

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Klikauer 211

emphasising that CMS needs to develop a ‘credible account of
the relationships between
capitalist political economy, work systems and strategy and
practice of actors in employ-
ment relations’ (Alvesson et al. 2009: 108). CMS cannot take on
critical theory’s ‘life-
world’, since it is locked into the managerial paradigm depicted
in its lack of consideration
of management studies’ forgotten actors: namely, workers.

In short, CMS cannot move beyond its current organisational

confinements. CMS’s
‘Organisations and the environment’ mentions some of the main
representatives of
social ecology; but neither ‘social ecology’ nor ‘deep ecology’
are conceptualised, even
though both are reflective of critical theory. In Arne Dekke Eide
Næss’s conception of
‘shallow’ versus ‘deep’ ecology, the former is concerned with a
fight against pollution
and resource depletion, and has the health and affluence of
people in developed coun-
tries as a key focus. Deep ecology, on the other hand, focuses
on biospheric egalitarian-
ism, departing from the moral standpoint ‘all living things are
alike’, with an inherent
value in their own right. This is so, independently of their
usefulness to others. For a
critical theory approach to management, these criticisms are
impossible to neglect when
discussing environmentalism.

CMS’s concept of culture highlights ‘shared values’ (Alvesson
et al. 2009: 233). Being
an institutional setup for the creation of profit-maximisation
under asymmetrical power
relations, corporations do not create shared values, because
those who are supposed to
share managerial values – workers – are excluded from the
process of creating those so-
called shared values. As long as management excludes workers,
shared values can never
eventuate. CMS fails to take account of this. The exclusion of
workers and self-actualisa-
tion (Hegel) prevails in CMS’s view on ‘organisational
changes’. In sum, organisational
culture and change are reflective of Lockwood’s ‘system’, not

‘social’ integration (1964
Habermas; 1997 Klikauer 2012: 144).

System integration is highly problematic for ethics, a term
related to moral philoso-
phy. Whether critical or not, almost all key philosophers who
contributed to moral phi-
losophy are absent from CMS’s main discussion on moral
philosophy. A discussion on
moral philosophy in the tradition of critical theory would
include, at least, its own intel-
lectual predecessors: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Lukács, Adorno,
Horkheimer, Marcuse; and
contemporary exponents such as Habermas and Honneth. All
have written on moral
philosophy – but none are of concern to CMS.

An unexpected highlight is Fleming and Mandarini’s ‘Towards a
workers’ society?
New perspectives on work and emancipation’. However, even
CMS’s analysis of ‘workers
society’ largely fails to highlight the ‘class inequalities’
prevalent in society and manage-
rial regimes. There is ‘silence on the question of class [which]
has been the norm within
CMS’ (Armstrong 2010: 3-4; cf. Hassard & Rowlinson 2011:
225ff ). But the inclusion
of a chapter on workers’ emancipation at least covers CMS from
the claim to have
neglected both. However, critical theory’s ‘ideal of the
autonomous subject’ (Barros
2010: 168), for example, is nowhere to be seen. The following
statement is almost self-
evident for CMS’s approach to workers and emancipation: ‘we
return to the question of
emancipation’. If one needs to ‘return’ to emancipation, it

certainly has never been a key
part of CMS. In line with that, CMS’s ‘Critical management and
methodology’ is not
reflective of critical theory, because critical theory’s key
methodological text remains
absent; that is, Critical Theory and Methodology (Morrow &
Brown 1994; Johnson &

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212 Capital & Class 39(2)

Duberley 2000: 121; cf. Alvesson & Sköldberg 2009; Brooke
2009; Alvesson &
Kärremann 2010). In sum, rather than engaging with critical
theory or being reflective
of critical theory’s philosophies, theories, and methodological
developments, CMS lacks
all the key texts ever produced by critical theory on these
subjects (Letiche 2006: 17;
Forslund & Bay 2009).

Conclusion: Some inconsistencies between CMS
and CT’s emancipatory project
The trouble lies with CMS itself. If one positions CMS as a
continuum between critical
theory and the management-accommodating forces of those who
Baritz calls ‘servants of
power’, then CMS should be located close to critical theory
(critical-emancipatory). But
this points to inconsistencies between CMS and CT’s
emancipatory project. In ontologi-

cal terms, CT’s emancipatory project is directed to the
emancipation of the human indi-
vidual while CMS’ ontology is the individual within capitalism.
CMS’s ontology suggests
a ‘problem-solving’ approach to this. It appears that CMS is
aligned with managerial
capitalism’s triage of management, management studies, and
managerialism. It never
fundamentally questions this paradigm. CMS’s inconsistency
with critical theory, paral-
leled by its closeness to management studies, becomes evident
when one considers CMS’s
lack of critical theory comprehension: an absence of critical
theory’s founding philoso-
phers Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Lukács; and a lack of 20th
century critical theory writings:
Horkheimer’s seminal critique on traditional theory; Adorno’s
sharp critiques on 20th
century mass-consumer society; Marcuse’s devastating critique
of consumer society and
managerial regimes; Habermas’s domination-ending philosophy
of communicative eth-
ics; and Honneth’s demand for equal and mutual recognition.

It remains striking that, in the twenty years since CMS’s
invention (Alvesson &
Willmott 1992a, 1992b), there should exist a plethora of
articles, books, editions, collec-
tions, handbooks, four-set-volumes, classical readings, and
several CMS conferences,
with hundreds of papers, etc. – and yet that there is not one
single substantial, theoreti-
cal, and critical publication inside CMS dealing with critical
theory. CMS articles are
exclusively published in managerial/organisational journals.
The absence of critical the-

ory is reflected in CMS’s triviality of fault-finding. Overall,
CMS remains firmly locked
inside the hermeneutical interest of understating meaning,
creating system-conforming
alternatives to standard management studies without providing a
serious challenge to the
managerial paradigm (e.g. Alvesson & Willmott’s ‘making
sense’ [1996]; Alvesson’s
‘understanding’ [2002]; Alvesson’s interpretation [2010]; Butler
& Spoelstra’s [2014:
548] ‘critical scholars may find themselves complying with
[rather than seeking to chal-
lenge] managerial prerogatives’). CMS appropriates selective
themes of critical theory for
its mild critique from within, rather than its being about or
against management. CMS
remains paradigm-conforming, rather than challenging, failing
to highlight the inherent
contradictions between human existence and management.
Therefore, it can never
develop a framework for emancipation.

CMS can never see itself understood in terms of one of critical
theory’s earliest prede-
cessors – Kant – because in order to do so, it would have to
adhere to three categorical

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Klikauer 213

imperatives: universalism, ethics, and means-ends – all of

which are too problematic for
CMS. Instead, it advocates ‘micro-emancipation’ – not
universal emancipation. CMS
can never be in line with an imperative that demands to treat
human beings as an ‘end
in-themselves’, rather than as a managerial ‘means’. CMS is
more in line with the
‘Kingdom of Means’ than with the ‘Kingdom of Ends’.

Finally, CMS can never be representative of critical theory’s
human emancipation of
the Enlightenment, including power and reason attained in
communicative action,
because any adherence to Habermas’s project of communicative
action would annihilate
management. Instead of domination, critical theory’s
communicative action would
establish emancipation, ending all the hierarchies, pathologies,
asymmetrical power-
relationships, and dominations prevalent in management. This is
a form of communica-
tion and emancipation that CMS can never tolerate, but which
critical theory advocates.
CMS’s micro-emancipation neglects critical theory’s key
philosophy of a management–
society/capitalism interface. Understood as a mild critique from
within, CMS represents
an exquisite collection of system-stabilising themes, with no
threat to the ideological
dominance and hegemony of the management paradigm because
it is system-maintain-
ing, rather than system-challenging. CMS provides an important
system-improving cor-
rective to that. Inside the managerial paradigm, CMS is
respectable, while critical theory
is the very opposite.

CMS does not end Theodor W. Adorno’s 1944 assertion, ‘there
is no right life in the
wrong one’ (cited in Brink 2010). Management is a ‘wrong way
of living’ because it is
inherently anti-democratic, hierarchy-creating and sustaining,
and based on power,
domination, and anti-emancipation. CMS’s acceptance of the
managerial paradigm is
linked to its pretence that there can be a ‘correct life’ inside
management, while simulta-
neously cutting off the management-society-capitalism link. As
Horkheimer would say,
‘those who don’t want to talk about capitalism should keep
silent on management’.

Finally, it is wrong for CMS to claim that ‘the intent of critical
theory is not to
indulge in the utopian project of eliminating hierarchy’
(Alvesson and Willmott 1996:
18). Already Kant highlighted the inextricable link between
‘what is’ and an always uto-
pian ‘what ought to be’, while Hegel established that one cannot
exist without the other
(Hegel 1807; Benhabib 1986). Kant’s entire philosophy is
inherently utopian, directed
towards ‘The Kingdom of Ends’ (Korsgaard 1996). Hegel
continued the utopian project
with the philosophy of human freedom. Like critical theory,
they saw Enlightenment as
a still ‘unfulfilled’ project (Habermas 1985), with the
Kantian/Hegelian and critical
theory project of human emancipation still outstanding.
Horkheimer (1947) outlined
this when writing ‘the mythical scientific respect of people for
the given reality, which

they themselves constantly create, finally becomes itself a
positive fact, a fortress’. CMS
displays this ‘mythical respect for the given’ when annihilating
critical theory’s utopian
project of emancipation and Kant’s ‘what ought to be’, while
simultaneously asphyxiat-
ing itself inside the ‘fortress’ (Horkheimer) of the managerial
paradigm.

Critical theory’s utopian project seeks to end domination and
hierarchies, even in
management. CMS meets Adorno’s (1944) warning: ‘since the
banishment of utopia and
the unity of praxis and theory was made compulsory, one has
become all too practical’.
CMS has banished utopia so that it can provide practical
adjustments – labelled ‘cri-
tiques’ – ‘for’ management. CMS is neither ‘in-itself ’ (Kant)
nor ‘for-itself ’ (Hegel), but

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214 Capital & Class 39(2)

for management, seeking to create ‘better management’. In his
masterpiece, The One-
Dimensional Man (1966), Marcuse noted that ideas like CMS
are ‘developed within the
historical continuum of domination to which they pay tribute.
And this continuum
bestows upon the modes of positive thinking their conformist
and ideological character;

upon those of negative thinking their speculative and utopian
character’.

CMS, which developed as an inconsequential sideshow to
management studies
(Voronov 2008: 940), fulfils this to perfection: it ‘bestows upon
the modes of positive
thinking their conformist and ideological character’. Those who
think critically are dis-
missed as ‘speculative and utopian’, accused of ‘indulging in
utopian projects’. Not only
because of its 500-year-long history (More 1516), critical
theory does exactly that,
because it is based on emancipation that strongly negates ‘the
given’. For critical theory,
the end of authoritarian and undemocratic management,
domination and hierarchies,
and the quest for human freedom and emancipation, remain
utopian projects. In its
finality, CMS offers nothing of the intellectual brilliance and
philosophical strength of
critical theory’s radical-utopian project as outlined by Adorno
and Horkheimer; none of
the emancipatory vibrancy of Marcuse, the thoughtfulness of
Fromm and Benjamin, or
the farsighted critical-analytical skills of Reich, Kirchheimer
and Neumann; and none of
the theoretical and philosophical thoroughness of Habermas, or
the illuminating-critical
insights of Honneth. CMS is not in line with critical theory’s
project of emancipation
and human freedom.

Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2011
EGOS Colloquium in Gothenburg. I

am particularly grateful for Peter Armstrong’s exquisite critique
and presentation of the paper, and
to the participants of Stream 51: Marxist Studies of
Organization – The Challenges of Design. I
am also grateful to the referee’s comments, which have been
extremely helpful.

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Author biography
Thomas Klikauer is the author of Managerialism (Palgrave
2013). His great-grandfather was a
member of the Revolutionary Workers Council of 1918/19.
Thomas entered the factory gates at
the age of 15 organising a small strike and getting involved in
the 1984 35-Hour Strike of the
German metalworkers’ union. He has a Ph.D. from Warwick,
and currently lives in Sydney,
Australia, where he is working on his next book, Hegel’s Moral
Corporation.

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Training a New
Generation of Leaders

Reed L. Welch
Texas A&M University

Executive Summary
This article highlights the Eisenhower Leadership Development
Program, an
undergraduate course with a two-fold purpose: (1) to develop
students’ leadership
skills and abilities, and (2) to foster in students a desire to use
their leadership
abilities to address the different problems that communities and
society face. To
accomplish this the course uses traditional classroom
instruction, guest speakers,
leadership games and activities, and, most notably, semester-
long group projects.
Through the group projects students apply the leadership skills
they have learned in
class to real world situations and become more conscious of the
positive
contributions they can make as leaders in their communities.

About the Author: Reed L. Welch received his Ph.D. in political
science and is currently at Texas
A&M University with the Center for Public Leadership Studies
in the George Bush School of
Government and Public Service where he works with the
Eisenhower Leadership Development
Program. He also teaches in the Department of Political Science

and the International Center at the
George Bush Presidential Library Complex.

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71

Training a New Generation of Leaders’

Most would agree that one of the purposes of higher education
is to help develop an
informed and responsible citizenry that is knowledgeable and
understand the
democratic system. As part of this education, however, not
often enough do we
stress the need for active participation in the system, the
process of participating,
and the leadership role and impact citizens can have. Indeed,
people frequently
identify societal problems and look to elected and appointed
public officials for
leadership in finding solutions. Yet leadership and the ability to
address societal
problems takes place at all levels by people &dquo;who are
actively engaged in making a
positive difference in society. A leader, in other words, is
anyone - regardless of
formal position - who serves as an effective social change
agent, so in this sense
every student...is a potential leader&dquo; (Astin, 1997, p. 9).

Because every student &dquo;is a potential leader&dquo; who

can work to create positive change
in society, it is not enough to confine education to helping
students become more
knowledgeable about current issues or about how government
works. Education
should also encourage the development of skills and attitudes
that will result in
students becoming effective leaders in addressing societal and
community problems.
Indeed, Astin argues that the &dquo;’leadership development’
challenge for higher
education is to empower students, to help them develop those
special talents and
attitudes that will enable them to become effective social
change agents&dquo; (Astin,
1997, p. 9).

What leadership education should include may vary depending
on a person’s
concept of leadership and the purpose of the training. However,
at the heart of
leadership education, most would include the need to train
students to grasp the
problems and issues facing society, to develop analytical and
problem-solving skills,
to learn to communicate and work effectively as members of a
team, to have
experience working in groups, to learn to work with people of
diverse backgrounds,
cultures, and academic disciplines, to learn to establish goals
and motivate others to
achieve those goals, and to know how to speak and write
effectively (e.g.; Hersh,
1998; Hopkins and Hopkins, 1998; Brungardt, Gould, Moore,
and Potts, 1997;
Hashem, 1997; Reed, 1996; Conger 1992; Dertouzos, Lester,

and Solow, 1989).

Most often leadership education takes place under the guise of
training students to
be productive workers and leaders in the workforce. Although
preparing students
for civic leadership may pose as being very different from
training students for
careers, the two are not as different as we sometimes think.
Many of the
characteristics that businesses and potential employers desire in
their employees are
the components that make up an effective leader in the
community. Just as
developing problem-solving and analytical skills, learning to
work and communicate
in groups of diverse backgrounds, cultures, and training, and
knowing how to
effectively write and speak are essential for students to succeed
in their careers,
these skills and experiences are also important in making
students &dquo;effective social
change agent~s~.&dquo; What is needed, however, is for these
skills and concepts to be
taught in the context of being used to improve the community
and society rather
than as a means of obtaining a higher-paying job.

1 The author would like to thank Dr. Letitia Alston, Dr. Richard
Cummins, Dr. Arnold Vedlitz, and
an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on the paper.
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72

The purpose of this article is to highlight a program that is
designed to develop
students’ leadership skills and abilities and foster in students an
appreciation of the
different problems that society faces and the potential
contributions they can make
in assuming leadership roles in addressing these problems. The
Eisenhower
Leadership Development Program at Texas A&M University is
an interdisciplinary,
one-semester course for undergraduates. It features classroom
instruction, various
classroom exercises and activities, and semester-long group
projects. For the
projects, the groups, typically consisting of seven students,
conduct original
research and develop recommendations to real problems
submitted to them by real
clients. The group projects are time-consuming and
intellectually demanding and
provide the students the opportunity to apply the leadership
skills and concepts they
have learned in class to a real world situation.

Background and Development of the Eisenhower Leadership
Development
Program

The Eisenhower Leadership Development Program at Texas
A&M University
began in the spring of 1994 after Dr. Arnold Vedlitz, professor
of political science
and director of the Center for Public Leadership Studies in the

George Bush School
of Government and Public Service, and Dr. Lyle Schoenfeldt
from the Department
of Management, were awarded an Eisenhower Leadership
Development grant from
the U.S. Department of Education.2 The first Eisenhower class
consisted of 50
selected students from the College of Liberal Arts and the
College of Business
Administration. In following semesters the College of
Agriculture and Life Sciences
and the College of Engineering were added and the class size
was capped at its
current enrollment of 80, with 20 students coming from each
college. When the
federal funding ended for the Eisenhower Program, the George
Bush School of
Government and Public Service, the Center for Public
Leadership Studies, and each
of the four colleges participating in the program assumed the
financial support of the
program.

Because four different colleges participate in the program, each
college designates at
least one faculty member from the college to serve as a co-
director of the program.
The directors decide the course content, the speakers, the
activities, and the projects
that students will work on, and serve as mentors to the groups.
There is also a staff
who implements the directors’ decisions and carry on the day-
to-day functions of the
program.

Although the active involvement of directors from four different

colleges at times
complicates the running of the program, the interdisciplinary
approach of the
program and the diversity in the students’ majors and career
paths greatly enhances
the overall learning experience and outweighs any difficulties in
coordinating the
program through four different colleges. Having multiple
disciplines in the
program exposes students to different perspectives and forces
them to work with
those who have been trained differently and have a different
outlook on how things
should be done. As will be discussed in more detail later, this is
particularly the case
with the semester-long group projects in which each group has
at least one member
from each of the four colleges. Thus engineering students,
liberal arts students,
agricultural students, and business students must learn to work
together in a group.

2 No grants of this kind are currently available from the
Department of Education. at WALDEN UNIVERSITY on
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73

Classroom Instruction and Activities

Although the semester-long group projects consume the
students’ time and
differentiates the program from a typical leadership class, class

time remains an
essential component to the Eisenhower Program. It is used to
expose students to
leaders and engage in activities that help them better understand
leadership, develop
their own leadership abilities, and become more aware of how
leadership can make a
difference in addressing the problems society faces. To do this
the class addresses
many different topics and instruction takes place in a variety of
modes, including
guest speakers and discussions, games and activities, and
student presentations.

Speakers

There are two kinds of speakers in the Eisenhower Program.
The first kind consists
of leaders and experts in their fields who have done something
to distinguish
themselves as leaders. These speakers talk about local, national,
and global issues
and share their perspectives and experiences in providing
leadership. These
different leaders and experts help students broaden their
horizons and become more
conscious of the complex issues and problems that leaders and
society face.

The speakers that have spoken to the class in recent semesters
include President
Bush who talked to the class about public service and the
United States role in the
world; the president of the American Medical Association
discussed some of the
country’s healthcare challenges; a Nobel Peace Prize winner

talked about the role of
food production and the environment in international politics; a
Texas state senator
and the state land commissioner talked about various issues
concerning the state; a
former chairman of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating
Board talked about
issues facing higher education; a Foreign Service officer and
United States
ambassador discussed current foreign policy issues; another
speaker discussed
cultural issues and differences between the United States and
other countries; and
business leaders have talked about gender, race, culture, and
other issues in the
workplace. Regardless of who they are we have found that noted
leaders are very
willing and often even excited to speak to the class.

The second kind of speaker addresses specific leadership skills
that students need to
develop: how to work with others, how to work in a group, how
to resolve conflict,
how to manage one’s time, how to communicate with people in
writing, and how to
make a presentation to a group. Thus speakers discuss group
communication, team
work, and intergroup conflict, and students gain an
understanding of their own
conflict resolution styles and how best to resolve conflict. A
presentation is given
about time management, planning, and prioritizing, and the
importance of having a
vision and long-term aspirations. One class is dedicated to
specific ways that the
students can more effectively present their research and

recommendations in
writing, and another class session demonstrates to students how
to make
presentations to a group.

Regardless of whether the speakers talk about contemporary
issues and their
concepts of leadership or discuss the skills students need to
acquire to become
leaders, students enjoy the speakers’ insights and interaction
with them and believe
that the speakers contribute to their understanding of leadership
and what they need
to do to become effective leaders.

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74

Readings

We are currently using two books for the class. One is
Leadership: Theory and
Practice, by Peter G. Northouse (1997). The other one is
Discovering the Leader
Within: Running Small Groups .Successfully, by Randy Fujishin
( 1997). These books
cover a variety of different leadership topics, ranging from an
overview of different
approaches and theories of leadership to emphasizing the skills
leaders need to have.
Speakers are chosen to elucidate some of these different topics

and readings. For
example, on the same day that a speaker addresses conflict
resolution, a reading
assignment is given over a chapter entitled &dquo;Managing
Conflict&dquo; in Discovering the
Leader Within. At other times, the speakers may not directly
address the readings.
In such instances the directors lead a discussion in class or in
smaller groups, in
which they tie together what the speakers have said with the
readings. At various
times during the semester students are given a quiz in which
they are required to
write a short essay that incorporates the material they have read
with what has been
discussed in class. The bulk of the readings and quizzes are
concentrated in the first
half of the semester before the group projects begin to occupy
more of the students’
time.

Games and Activities

In addition to having guest speakers talk about the problems
that leaders face or the
skills that students need to develop to become effective leaders,
some classes are
devoted to teaching the same principles with activities, games,
or computer
simulations. The activities usually focus on building trust,
cooperation,
communication, listening skills, teamwork, problem solving,
creativity, advanced
planning, and an understanding of the decision making process.

To do this we have used various games and activities: lineup,

stepping stones,
building towers with Legos or Tinker Toys, ball toss, turning
over a new leaf, shoe
factory, among others. These games and activities come under
different names and
have many variations. Although space does not allow for an
explanation of how to
carry out these activities and games, I have included a list of
sources that contain

good information for how to conduct these and many other
exercises (Bishop, 1997;
Honey, 1997; Bendaly, 1996; Eggleton and Rice, 1996;
Williamson, 1996; Rohnke
and Butler, 1995).

We have found that these activities are not only beneficial to
use in class but also
during a retreat we hold on the first Saturday of the semester.
(Also at the retreat,
as will be discussed later, students find out about the different
projects they can
work on during the semester.) Different activities and exercises
serve as good ice
breakers in helping students get to know one another, get
involved in the class, and
get students started on thinking about and understanding
different aspects of
leadership.

Students Presentations

Another important use of classroom time is for group
presentations. These
presentations provide students the opportunity to develop their
abilities to give a

presentation in front of a group and be critiqued in how they
perform. The first
opportunity takes place a month into the semester when groups
present their project

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75

outlines to the class. In the outline presentations each group
explains the purpose of
its project, the core questions the group will need to answer to
accomplish the goals
of the project, what methods will be used to answer these
questions, the progress on
the literature review, and what the group members have learned
about the topic.
The entire class is expected to participate in a thoughtful,
helpful critique of each
project. This not only gives students the opportunity to give a
presentation in front
of a group and to answer questions but the feedback they
receive is expected to
benefit the projects as well.

At the end of the semester the groups give final presentations on
the projects they
have worked on during the semester. The students are carefully
scrutinized by the
Eisenhower directors and staff for how they explain the
problems they looked into,
how they explained the methods they used to answer the

research questions, the
organization of their presentation, how they present themselves,
how they report
their findings, whether they can support with their research the
recommendations
they make to the client, and their ability to answer questions.
The presentations
have proved very useful to the groups. It is another opportunity
to make a
presentation in front of a group and the critiques and feedback
they receive results
in very polished and improved presentations when they are
given later to the clients.

Group Project

In many ways the heart and soul of the Eisenhower Program is
the semester-long
projects that students conduct as members of a group. It is the
most demanding
part of the course. The groups are expected to produce a
professional report that
addresses a problem given to them by real clients. The groups
are charged with
looking into the problem, conducting research, considering
alternatives, and
proposing recommendations that are supported by their research
and evaluation.
Because of these group projects students are able to apply what
they have learned in
class and gain practical experience in such things as working as
a team, resolving
conflicts, working for a client, meeting deadlines, conducting
research, and
presenting written and oral reports.

On the first Saturday of the semester a retreat for students and
prospective clients is
used to present to the class the problems the clients want a
group of Eisenhower
students to address. The clients represent a variety of different
organizations and
agencies, such as school districts, cities, county governments,
state agencies, the
university, and a number of high profile non-profit
organizations. After listening to
the various clients’ presentations, the students rank the projects
that they are most
interested in working on. We then use the students’ preferences
to help us place the
students into different groups. Typically there are about seven
students in each
group. We mix and match the students in the groups according
to their majors,
interests, past experiences, and career goals and ensure that
each group has a
diverse membership. We do not want, for example, a group
consisting solely of
engineering or business majors. One of the benefits of having an
equal number of
students from four different colleges is that we can place at
least one person from
each of the four colleges in every group. Even though we
purposely arrange the
groups the way we want them, as it works out, students almost
always work on
their first, second, or third project choice.

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76

These projects are difficult and time consuming but provide
students a number of
invaluable experiences and are well worth the effort. For
undergraduates this is
likely to be the most extensive paper they will do in college,
and for most is the first
time they have conducted original research. The group project
requires that
students do extensive reading to develop an expertise in the
specific issue they are
addressing. They must analyze and weigh alternatives, decide
on the best
alternatives, and come up with recommendations that are not
only supported by
their research but are also economically and politically feasible,
or, in other words,
useful to the client. They present their research and
recommendations to their
clients in a written report and also in an oral presentation.

If developing research and analytical skills and honing their
writing and
presentation skills were the only benefits that students got out
of the Eisenhower
project, it would be worthwhile. But there are additional
benefits from doing the
group projects. One of the specific benefits that these projects
provide is the
opportunity for students to function in a group. In their groups
students learn
about working as a team, resolving conflict, developing a
division of labor, and

improving their communication ability. At a time when an
increasing number of
jobs require people to work in groups, most of what is done by
college students is
done individually. Because we arrange students in groups to
ensure a mixture of
students with different backgrounds, majors, and career goals,
students experience a
different dimension of group dynamics and see how different
people and different
majors approach the same problems in different ways. This
often leads to
frustration and conflict and provides an opportunity for students
to implement in a
&dquo;real&dquo; group what they are learning in class about
teamwork and conflict resolution.
It also provides students the opportunity to see how different
perspectives and
approaches can contribute to making the whole better. These
projects could
perhaps be done on an individual basis, although on a much
smaller level, but
students would be robbed of the valuable experience of working
in a group.
Regardless of whether preparing for one’s profession or
participating in community
affairs, students need to learn to work effectively as members of
a group.

Another benefit of doing these projects is that students enjoy
working on something
meaningful. Many students have said they were pleased that
their research and
recommendations were not just read by a professor, given a
grade, and thrown away
or stored in a filing cabinet for a few years. Instead, their

reports are read carefully
and taken seriously by the people and agencies that have a
problem and are looking
for solutions. Certainly one of the rewarding features of doing
the projects for the
students is the sense of accomplishment they feel for the
contributions they made for
their clients (i.e., school districts, cities, counties, and other
non-profit agencies and
organizations). Indeed, the final report and presentation that
students produce are
much better because the students know it is important and is
being done for an
outside client.

Invariably, first time clients are surprised at the quality of the
reports and the
professionalism of the students. This does not happen by
accident. Each group’s
progress and work is carefully monitored and scrutinized by the
directors and staff
There are fixed deadlines for outlines, first drafts, and final
versions of the papers to
ensure the projects are on track and will be finished on time.
The directors and staff
play a critical role in helping the groups focus their research,
find resources,
consider alternatives, and present their studies in written reports
and group
presentations. Even though the class has 80 students, students
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77

attention. With the number of directors and staff involved with
the Eisenhower

Program the student to teacher ratio is 10:1, and the groups
receive more
supervision than they do in most classes. Despite the aid
students receive from the
directors and staff, the report is the students’ work and they are
responsible for its
success. They are the ones who do the research, develop the
recommendations and
conclusions, write the report, and present their findings and
recommendations to the
client.

From the beginning of the program in the spring of 199~
through the fall of 1999,
Eisenhower students have completed 105 projects for local and
state non-profit
agencies and organizations. The various projects are diverse and
appeal to the
different interests of students. In recent semesters, for example,
a study considered
the feasibility of a one-stop health facility for the indigent in
Bryan and College
Station, the College Station Independent School District
requested a plan for
integrating computers into the classroom, Texas A&M
University asked for a study
of its energy consumption and plans for implementing an energy
conservation
program on campus, a representative of the 4-H program asked
a group to examine
the possibility of beginning a 4-H program on the internet, a

local, non-profit
theater wanted to know the best way to gain financial and
community support, some
state and county judges asked an Eisenhower group to evaluate
the effectiveness of a
program designed to help the children of divorcing parents, and
work was done for
the Governor’s Science and Technology Council in examining
the high-tech
workforce needs in Texas and what Texas can do to meet those
needs.

Getting these kinds of projects lined up each semester requires
work and planning.
There are a number of different ways that we get the requisite
number of projects
each semester. The program directors ask representatives in
organizations they
work with or are familiar with if they are interested in being
clients and have
problems Eisenhower can work on. To get other projects the
directors may not be
familiar with the people in an organization but identify an
organization that
Eisenhower would like to work with. It is frequently the case
now that potential
clients call the Eisenhower Program wondering if a project can
be done for them.
These clients usually have either had a project done for them in
a previous semester
or heard about the program from a former client. At other times
potential clients
have attended a meeting (such as a city council meeting) where
a group has given its
final presentation to its client and have been impressed by what
they have seen and

wanted a project done for them.

The criteria for the projects is that they be done for nonprofit
organizations that not
only want help but have projects that can be clearly defined and
carried out in one
semester. Usually nonprofit organizations have problems or
issues they are dealing
with but do not have the time or ability to carry out the studies
on their own. They
are usually very receptive and even excited about the possibility
of having an outside
group research a problem they are dealing with free of charge.

The Selection of Students

Because of the program’s rigor and the high demand to get into
the Eisenhower
Program, students are admitted into the program through an
application process.
To be considered for the Eisenhower Program a student must
have at least a 3.0
grade point average and be a junior in one of the four colleges
sponsoring the
program. The junior status and GPA requirements help ensure
that the students
who are admitted into the program have already acquired many
of the skills that
will enable them to carry out a project and be able to take full
advantage of the

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78 ’

opportunities that the program offers. The kinds of research
projects that groups
carry out demand a tremendous amount of effort and
commitment and require that
students be intellectually prepared. Certainly one of the reasons
that the
Eisenhower Program works as well as it does is because of the
quality of the
students. At the same time, however, even though a student’s
GPA is important and
there is a minimum GPA requirement, a student’s GPA is only
one facet that is
considered in the application process. Students fill out a
questionnaire detailing
their leadership experience, their career goals, and why they are
interested in the
Eisenhower Program. Applicants who express an interest in
public service and
community affairs receive special consideration.

To ensure a wide range of applicants, we actively solicit
applications by conducting
a mass mailing to all eligible students (approximately ~,000
each semester), and as a
result we receive many times the number of applicants as the
students we can admit
into the program. The deep application pool allows us to select
students who have
distinguished themselves in the classroom and in other activities
and ones we feel
would most benefit from participating in the Eisenhower
Program.

Grading

The grade that a person earns in Eisenhower depends on both
the individual’s work
and the work of the person’s group. The student’s attendance
and participation in
class make up 15 percent of a student’s grade and another 10
percent is derived from
the quizzes held at the end of some of the classes. The
remaining 75 percent is
determined by the group’s work on the project, which combines
the grades on the
outline, first draft of the paper, the final report, and the oral
presentations to us and
to the client, and then weighted by the individual’s contribution
to the group and
the project.

One of the concerns of having so much of an individual’s grade
based on the group’s
performance is the free-rider problem, whereby students who do
not put much effort
into the group or its project receive the same grade as the
people in the group who
do the work. The free-rider problem is usually not much of a
problem in the
Eisenhower class, however, because of the quality of students in
the Eisenhower
Program and the grading system takes into account the free-
rider problem.

Unlike most classes, students apply to get into the program and
most who apply are
not accepted. The students who do get into the program are all
good students and
usually prove to be highly motivated individuals who want to

make the most of the
opportunity. The application process and the minimum grade
point average
requirement weed out the kinds of students who are usually
culpable of being free
riders in a group project.

However, even good students sometimes have work, other
classes, a social life, or
other factors that interfere with their contributions to a group.
Thus the grading is
structured so that not everyone in a group necessarily receives
the same grade on
the group project. Rather, the grade that individuals receive for
the project depends
on how group members anonymously evaluate one another’s
contributions to the
group and the project. The questions by which group members
evaluate each other
range from the quantity and quality of each group member’s
work to his or her
contribution to the group’s morale and concern about the
feelings of other group
members.

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79

The group evaluation form is based upon a 110-point scale. The
highest and lowest
scores that an individual receives from the group members are

dropped and the
remaining scores are averaged. The overall group average is
also calculated and
used to normalize an individual’s score (student score/overall
average group score).
The project score is then weighted for each individual by the
normalized group
evaluation score. For example, if a group earns a total of 70 out
of 75 points for a
project grade, the average group score is a 100 (out of 110), and
the student receives
95, then the student’s normalized group score is .95 and the
student would get a
66.5 out-of 75 for the project grade (i.e. 70 x .95). On the other
hand, if another
group member received a normalized group score of 105 he
would get a 73.5 for a
project grade (i.e. 70 x 1.05) rather than a 66.5 like his fellow
group member who
had a score of 95. Using this method of grading not only
protects against the free-
rider problem but rewards students who distinguish themselves
in a group with
higher scores (i.e., better grades) than the group as a whole
receive. In other words,
one student may receive a ’C’ for a project and another student
receive an ’A’ even
though they are in the same group and did the same project.

Because the group’s evaluation of an individual’s contributions
is critical in
determining a student’s final grade, we do not wait until the end
of the semester to
find out that a group is not happy with an individual’s
performance. Instead, in the
middle of the semester group members anonymously evaluate

each other and turn
those evaluations in to the staff The midterm evaluations are not
a part of the

grade but are a means for program mentors to alert students who
received subpar
ratings that they need to make some changes before the
evaluations do affect their
grades and it is too late to change. The poor midterm
evaluations usually serve as a
wakeup call. Most students make the necessary changes and end
up receiving
positive evaluations from their group.

Program Evaluation

The Eisenhower Program has conscientiously attempted to
improve the program
each semester, and the program portrayed in this paper is the
beneficiary of years of
experience and evaluation from students and Eisenhower
directors and staff alike.
In their evaluations at the end of each semester students are
asked specific questions
about each speaker, the activities, and the projects and make
suggestions of ways
that Eisenhower could be improved. With the student
evaluations in mind, the
directors and staff critically analyze and evaluate the different
components of the
program. The number of directors and staff members involved
in the program as
well as the natural turnover in personnel has infused the
program with new ideas
and insights that have been subsequently introduced into the
program. Although

the goals of the program have not changed, with the experience
we have garnered
over the years, through the input of students, and the thorough
self-examinations at
the end of each semester, different elements have been modified
in an effort to

improve the program and better achieve its goals.

The efforts of the Eisenhower Program have been evaluated by
the four colleges
participating in the program, the university, and those outside
the university, who
have recognized it for developing leadership skills among
students and for being a
community outreach program for the university. The colleges in
the Eisenho,;er
Program are proud of their associations with and contributions
to the program.
Some of them, and even the university, have highlighted the
Eisenhower Program in
their promotionals. The colleges participating in the program
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80

students, and other colleges in the university want to be
included in the program.
The Eisenhower Program has also been recognized from outside
the university.
Clients who have had projects done for them by Eisenhower
students have written

letters of commendation and thanks and have often solicited the
Eisenhower

Program to do other projects for them. In addition, the local
television news and
several newspapers throughout the state have covered different
projects and
disseminated the conclusions and recommendations that the
groups have reached on

important policy issues affecting different communities and the
state. The
effectiveness and success of the Eisenhower Program in
teaching leadership was
recognized in 1997 when the National Association of
Leadership Educators awarded
the Eisenhower Program the &dquo;Outstanding Leadership
Program Award.&dquo;

Although the Eisenhower Program has received numerous
accolades and has
actively sought to improve itself from semester to semester,
there are some facets of
the program that we would like to do better. The shortcomings
in many ways can
be attributed to the one-semester time frame with which
Eisenhower operates.
There simply is not enough time to cover everything that would
be appropriate and
useful for a leadership class. Thus, like other college courses,
choices have to be
made in what should be included and emphasized. The
Eisenhower Program has
elected to emphasize the group projects, giving students the
opportunity to
experience and even experiment in a &dquo;real&dquo; world

setting the principles and skills
they learn in the classroom. One of the drawbacks of this
approach is that students
do not receive as much theoretical grounding in leadership as a
typical leadership
course might include. Yet, we feel the practical application of
leadership skills and
principles gained through work on the projects outweigh the
benefits of spending
more time on classroom exercises and readings.

Although the choice has been made on what we are going to
emphasize in the
program, it does concern us that by requiring and expecting so
much work from the
students, we may at times short-circuit the potential gains in
learning and personal
growth. The group projects consume such a tremendous amount
of time and energy
that students tend to keep their noses to the grindstone in
finishing their projects,
and do not take the time to evaluate themselves and reflect on
what they are
learning and experiencing. Yet, to maximize the learning
opportunities that
Eisenhower offers, such reflection needs to occur.
Unfortunately the directors and
staff too often fall into the same trap as the students. We
concentrate our attention
on the immediate work of helping students produce a high
quality report for a client
rather than helping them process and ponder on what they are
learning and doing.
We at times need to do a better job of focusing our attention on
the individual
students in helping them identify their strengths and

weaknesses, think about what
they are learning and experiencing, determine what their goals
are, and realize what
they need to do to achieve those goals.

Conclusion

In recent years universities have responded to the call to train
students to be better
leaders by offering numerous and varied leadership courses and
programs. Some of
these leadership courses and programs are for undergraduate
students and others
are geared for graduate students. Some are interdisciplinary
while some are for
particular majors or are taught by one of the traditional
disciplines such as political
science. Many use traditional classroom methods of teaching
leadership while
others offer a more experiential approach (Freeman and King,
1992, 7-147). In this
article I outlined what the Eisenhower Leadership Development
Program does to
teach undergraduate students leadership concepts and skills. I
think there are many

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81

things that are done in the Eisenhower Program that can be
adapted and applied to

other courses and situations.

Class sessions are used to help students better understand
leadership and develop
the skills and abilities that they need to become successful
leaders. Activities as well
as more traditional instruction methods are used to help students
gain a better
understanding of, among other things, their leadership styles,
their strengths and
weaknesses, teamwork, group dynamics, resolving conflicts,
setting goals, planning,
and prioritizing. In other class sessions students are exposed to
distinguished
leaders who talk to the students about their perspectives on
leadership, what they
think makes a leader, how they became leaders, and some of the
problems and issues
they face as leaders. Students enjoy rubbing shoulders with
leaders and benefit from
seeing how these leaders speak and conduct themselves.

What is done in the classroom would not be complete without
the group projects. It
is in the groups that students practice the skills and concepts
they learn in class,
such as working in a team and resolving conflicts. The project
makes it so that
working as part of a group is not just an academic exercise.
Instead the groups are
working on real problems, for real clients, needing real
solutions. In the process of
working on these problems, students develop their leadership
skills and abilities and
become more conscious of community and societal problems
and some of the

problems and limitations that leaders and decision makers face.
It is through these
hands-on experiences, coupled with classroom learning, that
Eisenhower prepares
students to become the next generation of leaders.

References

Astin, A. W. (1997). Liberal education and
democracy: The case for pragmatism. Liberal
Education, 83, 4-15.

Bendaly, L. (1996). Games teams play - Dynamic
activities for tapping work team potential. New
York: McGraw-Hill.

Bishop, S. (1997). Training games for assertiveness
and conflict resolution. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Brungardt, C. L., Gould, L. V., Moore, R., & Potts,
J. (1997). The emergence of leadership studies:
Linking the traditional outcomes of liberal
education with leadership development. The
Journal of Leadership Studies, 4, 53-67.

Conger, J. A. (1992). Learning to lead: The art of
transforming managers into leaders. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.

Dertouzos, M. L., Lester, R. K., & Solow, R. M.
(1989). Made in America: Regaining the productive
edge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Eggleton, C. H., & Rice, J. C. (1996). The fieldbook
of team interventions - Step-by-step guide to high
performance teams. Amherst, MS: HRD Press.

Freeman, F. H., & King, S. N. (Eds.). (1992).
Leadership education 1992-1993: A source book.
Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

Fujishin, R. (1997). Discovering the leader within:
Running small groups successfully. San Francisco:
Acada Books.
Hashem, M. (1997). The role of faculty in teaching
leadership studies. The Journal of Leadership
Studies, 4, 89-100.

Hersh, R. H. (1997). The liberal arts college: The
most practical and professional education for the
twenty-first century. Liberal Arts, 83, 26-33.

Honey, P. (1997). The trainer’s questionnaire kit -
21 simple feedback questionnaires to inspire
learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Hopkins, W. E., & Hopkins, S. A. (1998). Diversity
leadership: A mandate for the 21st century
workforce. The Journal of Leadership Studies, 5,
129-40.

Northouse, P. G. (1997). Leadership: Theory and
practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Reed, T. K. (1996). A new understanding of
"followers" as leaders: Emerging theory of
civic leadership. The Journal of Leadership Studies.
3, 95-104.

Rohnke, K., & Butler, S. (1995). Quicksilver -
Adventure games, initiative problems, trust
activities and a guide to effective leadership.

Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing.

Williamson, B. H. (1996). Supervision:. The ASTD
trainer’s sourcebook. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Assignment Requirement – Analysis and Synthesis of Prior
Research

At professional conferences, blocks of time may be set aside for
what are termed "poster sessions." A hotel ballroom or large
open area will be ringed with individuals who use displays such
as posters or electronic presentations displayed via projectors.
These sessions provide an opportunity to share one's research in
an intimate setting, with a small group gathered around who
share a similar interest. The seminar format of this course is
very similar to this academic exchange. During one set of paired
weeks, you will be appointed as a Group Leader. If you are one
of the Group Leaders for this week, you are to prepare an
academic presentation, much like a poster session.

Your presentation should present an analysis and synthesis of
prior research and will begin the interaction with your
colleagues. You will prepare an academic paper of 7 pages in
APA format on the material in this week’s readings. This
analysis will be an open-ended introduction to explaining how
unconventional leadership can be modeled and implemented in
occupational settings. Your goal, as the presenter, should be to
persuade your discussants that the approach(es) you have
analyzed and synthesized are a sound means for challenging
conventional leadership methods. You should acknowledge that
there are other models, or means to study leaders and their use

of unconventional leadership methods, but you should strive to
be as persuasive as possible that the specific concepts and
operationalizations you have reviewed are exciting research
avenues and that they are potentially breakthrough areas in the
understanding of how unconventional leadership contributes to
organizational effectiveness.

Your paper should contain the following elements:

· An incorporation and analysis of at least five of the required
resources from this pair of weeks – see attached annotated
Bibliography
· The incorporation and analysis of five additional resources
from the Walden Library – Articles attached here
· An identification of principal schools of thought, tendencies in
the academic literature, or commonalities that define the
academic scholarship regarding your topic – Understanding the
Critical Perspective of Civic Leadership Theory (CLT)
· An evaluation of the main concepts with a focus on their
application to management practice and their impact on positive
social change
· Direct evidence of addressing the learning outcomes from this
pair of weeks.
In addition to the above elements, the Group Leader(s) for this
week will focus thematically on:

· Synthesizing the main points of critical management studies
(CMS) and evaluating the theory in terms of its impact on
leadership function in large organizations.
· Summarizing the major aspects of stakeholder theory,
considering how stakeholder theory contributes to
organizational reform in a way that might accommodate CMS.
· Considering whether CMS and stakeholder theory provide
approaches that will improve management practice and the
impact that organizations have on society.

· Selecting an aspect of CMS and identifying, discussing, and
evaluating the implications for practicing managers.
· Providing examples of how Fortune or Bloomberg Business
Week 1000 top global organizations are, or are not, utilizing
stakeholder theory.
The 7-page paper will be aligned in the following sub headings:
1. Introduction
2. Civic Leadership Theory (CLT)
3. Civic Leadership Programmes
4. Effects of CMS and CLT approaches that will improve
management practice
5. The New generation of leaders
6. Conclusion
7. References (10 references minimum)

Running head: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

9
Annotated Bibliography
Name:

Institution Affiliation:

Date:

Adler, P. S., Forbes, L. C., & Willmott, H. (2007). Critical
management studies. The Academy of Management Annals, 1,
119–179
Adler, Forbes, and Willmott evaluate the themes of Critical
Management Studies (CMS) and the shortcoming of the
application of methodology together with other mainstream

management theory in leadership. The focus is on the use of
teamwork as one of the themes and a theoretical concept in
many organizations. The researchers steer a study in which
theoretical model of CMS strategies are deployed in universities
and business institution to validate hypothesis on the
insignificance of the prioritization of critical issues. Using a
qualitative approach, the researcher compares the outcome of
the common themes in the United Kingdom with the situation in
the United States. The findings highlight the commonality in the
adaptation of theme considered critical in leadership such as
teamwork. However, the scholars consider the methodology
redundant in the actualization of business goals.

The objective of the study was highlighting the shortcoming of
prioritizing factors (CMS) that leaders describe as essential in
their strategies to leadership. The paper identified teamwork as
the exaggerated critical component dominating themes of many
contemporary organizations. The underlying concept in the
epistemic study is that the deployment of the strategies leads to
complacency and theoretical administration. The findings affirm
that reliance on mainstream theories in the advancement of
leadership is risky halts progress in organizations. The
philosophical concept in the article is that no single approach
fits all situations.

The underlying idea of the study is that the proposed framework
for use in many organizations such as the advancement of
teamwork is insignificant in solving society’s problems.
Instead, leaders ought to deploy a combination of theoretical
frameworks in dealing with problems that hinder success in
operations. After a qualitative assessment of numerous studies,
the authors validate the basis for adaptation of CMS but oppose
it by suggesting alternative strategies. The strength of the
suggestion is that it encourages the adoption of a holistic
approach to management in which a leader acknowledges the
implication of overlooking any aspect of administration. The

undoing of the approach is that it can create confusion in
decision-making since a leader might not prioritize issues for
redress.

In future, scholars can use the same concept in evaluating
significance on numerous leadership theories incorporating
CMS concepts. In the study, the description relates to the course
concept that reiterates the need to address hygiene factors such
as the attitude of an employee in trying to maximize the
utilization of a given strategy in leadership. Additionally, it
encourages collective decision making for the benefit of all.
The limitation is that the study highlights on leadership as an
administrative duties yet leadership are manifest even when
steering informal obligations.
Baker, D. P., Thorne, S., Gamson, D., & Blair, C. (2006, August
11).Cognition, culture, and institutions: Affinities within the
social construction of reality. Paper presented at the American
Sociological Association Annual Conference in Montreal,
Canada.
The article exploits the real situation in a work setting while
assessing the implications that variables such as cognition and
culture pose on the outcome of leadership strategy in an
organization. The scholars’ focuses on the role of cognition,
culture, and institution in the development of a social construct
in a given setting. The methodology employed hypothesizes that
social constructs aspect such as openness in communication
shape the outcome of coordination. As per the findings of the
relationship using samples from various organizations, the
author concludes that a combination of factors affects the nature
of the relationship between a leader and the subjects.

While qualifying cognition as instrumental in success, the
article highlight that leadership is a complex concept due to the
rise in globalization. Unlike before, practice requires the
deployment of a holistic approach in decision-making. The
researchers also examine the components of leadership that

necessitate special attention when dealing with employees
demands. The objective in the exploration of the subject is
enlightening readers about the challenges of leadership and the
need to approach the task as an evolving concept. Reading the
article create the impression that the philosophy behind the
presumption is that no single strategy fits all situations, but
communication is integral.
The authors adopt a flexible approach in the exploitation of the
concept of leadership since they do not equate particular action
to a specific decision. The underlying assumption is that the
social construct influences outcome of leadership actions. As
concluded in the study, the researchers identify behavioral
change as some of the variables that contribute to the paradigm
in leadership. The article’s proposition relates to the concept of
leadership as explored in the class materials. In concluding that
leadership is flexible and requires consistent implementation of
the contingent decision, the authors affirm the assertions of the
class materials.

The outstanding thing in the article is that it elucidates the
shortcoming of the deployments of a theoretical framework in a
leadership setting. Its weakness is that it encourages simulation
of cognitive responses in predicting human responses to
situations in a global context. The limitation is that the concepts
suggested obsolete since the article point out change as
inevitable. Therefore, the findings of the research also qualify
as redundant if the assertion holds. In the future, the claim of
the scholars can change leading to further exploration of the
concepts that shape social construct due to alteration in societal
dynamics.
Harvey, M., & Buckley, M. R. (2002). Assessing the
“conventional wisdoms" of management for the 21st century
organization. Organizational Dynamics, 30(4), 368-378
The article explores the urge to integrate a combination of
strategies in management in the contemporary times. The focus
is on the outcome of utilization of conventional methodologies

in leadership. The objective is to highlight the significance of
the incorporation of conventional methods in contemporary
leadership. The researchers explore the elements that contribute
to change in leadership approach, which influences charisma
and creativity. Among them is time, technology and
globalization will are critical to future leadership. As per the
findings, the exploitation of the conventional methodologies
together with new strategies is recommendable since leadership
is not static.

The underlying concept in the exploration of the variable is that
changes in the external environment drastically affect the
outcome of leadership in an organization. The study infers to
historical data evaluating the significance of traditional
methodologies in leadership, and as such, it is a critical source
for understanding dynamics of changes in leadership strategies.
It reaches a conclusion that hypothesizes that decision-making
determines the outcome of leadership.

The strength of the reading is that it acknowledges change as
something that is inevitable. It recognizes charisma as critical
to leadership. The reading is a good source reference when
formulating organization vision since the authors cite
globalization and technological advances as some of the
components altering leadership in the contemporary times. The
shortcoming of the writing is that it delves into the impact of
external factors making it appear as subjective. Therefore, this
is because internal factors contribute immensely to the outcome
of leadership in organizations.

The limitation of using the study is that it validates
conventional methodologies without presenting tangible proof
for the decision. Focus on globalization as a critical factor in
shaping the outcome of leadership can mislead management in a
homogenous setting. In future, it is recommendable that the
authors corroborate the elements that contributed to success in

the past with the aspects of progression in the contemporary
times.
Parmar, B. L., Freeman, R. E, Harrison, J. S., Wicks, A. C., de
Colle, S., & Purnell, L. (2010). Stakeholder theory: The state of
the art. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press
The study exploits a collection of empirical data in quantifying
the role of stakeholders in businesses decisions. Parmar,
Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, de Colle, & Purnell (2010), focuses
on stakeholder’s theory as an integral concept in the
conceptualization of the managerial activity. The study uses the
idea to examine the interconnected nature of business activities,
with much focus on the value creation aspect. After which, the
researcher assert that understanding management requires an
evaluation of the roles of parties interested in business
activities. The 30-year data obtained through a qualitative
process aid in the exploration of the genealogy of the concept
leading to the conclusion that a relationship exists amid
decision of the organization and the issues prioritized by the
interested parties.

The study quantifies the role of primary stakeholders as
instrumental in influencing a managerial decision. The
researchers exploit CSR initiatives as some of the indicators of
organizations’ desire to acknowledge the influence of
stakeholders. The underlying concept is that the parties
concerned influence leadership’s actions and as such, the idea
can help in examining the consequences of the decision by
leaders. The study validates the significance of utilization of
stakeholder theory in decision-making in modern context. As a
result, the concepts come out as essential in making decisions
since they reiterate the need to consult stakeholders before
decision-making. The methodology of comparing actual data
with theoretical assumption makes the reading credible.

The strength of the research is the fact that it identifies the role
of parties that influence decision-making in a managerial

context. The scholars also reiterate the need to justify assertion
before upholding a theory as significant. In the case of the
study, the researchers test the validity of stakeholder theory in
business decision using historical data. The shortcoming in
exploiting the methodology is that it can jeopardize the process
of accomplishments of the goals of the organization through
leadership. In future, a similar study can guide in the
exploration of relationship amid various parties interested in a
commercial undertaking.

Weeks Course Reading: Assessing the Critical
PerspectiveIntroduction
You begin your first 2 weeks of this seminar by closely
examining both critical management theory and stakeholder
theory in order to understand the challenges to the conventional
wisdom of management and organizations. As you prepare to
begin, consider this quote:

The common core [of critical management studies or CMS] is
deep skepticism regarding the moral defensibility and the social
and ecological sustainability of prevailing conceptions and
forms of management and organization. CMS's motivating
concern is neither the personal failures of individual managers
nor the poor management of specific firms, but the social
injustice and environmental destructiveness of the broader
social and economic systems that these managers and firms
serve and reproduce. (Adler, Forbes, & Willmott, 2007, p. 119).

Harvey and Buckley (2002) introduce the need for challenging
the conventional wisdom of management. To them, it is a matter
of adjusting managerial practice to changing realities:
globalization, the new virtual, or Internet-based, work world,
information overload, asynchronous working conditions and a
general speedup of time requiring faster response to various
demands. The authors, however, see the conventional system

remaining substantially the same, but with some modifications.
Consider whether or not their recommendations go far enough
and what else might be required to lead to positive social
change and increased competitiveness. Harvey and Buckley
present a strong case for rethinking the status quo while
representing the mildest perspective on the need to change.

Parmar et al. (2010) examine theory that explicitly changes the
way managers think about business. Primarily, the authors
present the concept that business organizations serve other
purposes than stockholder profits–an idea that challenges a
fundamental assumption of neoliberal economics. Once this is
acknowledged, the definition of the manager's role dramatically
shifts away from the values espoused and toward the substance
of relationships. This new role includes the individual's practice
of ethical behavior, the consideration of the public's interest,
and the implicit implications of economic systems on
individuals' ways of life.

Finally, critical management studies (Adler, et al., 2007)
provide a deeper analysis of the system and challenge leaders to
question the impact of virtually all major components of the
neoliberal economic model.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this week, you will be able to:
· Describe the domain of critical management studies
· Summarize the major aspects of stakeholder theory
· Describe the relationship between the principles of neoliberal
economics and organizational/leadership behavior
· Describe new leadership behaviors required to accommodate
critical management studies and stakeholder theory

CALIFORNIA MANAGEMENT REVIEW
Volume XXVIII, Number 2, Winter 1986
© 1986, The Regents of the University of California

The Study of Social Issues
in Management: A Critical
Appraisal
David Vogel

Competing Frameworks

The academic field of Social Issues in Management is now two
decades
old. Over this period, research in this area has primarily fallen
into one of
two broad categories: it has either been concerned with the
relationship
of business and society or with the interaction of business and
government.

The first research framework dates from the 1960s. It was
originally
associated with the concept of corporate social responsibility.
The premise
of this concept is that society's legitimate expectations of
business extended
beyond the making of profits. It held that in addition to their
economic
responsibility to stockholders, managers of the corporation also
had an
obligation to consider the impacts of their decisions on other
diverse con-
stituencies. Among the most important of these constituencies
was the
urban poor, whose exclusion from the mainstream of the

American econ-
omy represented the most pressing domestic policy issue of that
decade.
The unit of analysis of this research framework was the
corporation, which
was conceived of as a social as well as an economic institution.
Scholarly
writing sought both to describe and evaluate how managers
were adjusting
to the public's changed expectations of their role.

The business and society framework assumed that managers
enjoyed
substantial discretion in balancing the demands of "society"
with those of
their more traditional constituencies, i.e., stockholders,
suppliers, custom-
ers, and lenders. However, by the early 1970s, this assumption
had become
much less valid. The dramatic expansion in the scope of
government
regulation during the late 1960s and early 1970s drastically
narrowed the
boundaries of managerial discretion. By the mid-1970s, for a
corporation
to make its products safe, reduce its emissions, hire women and
minorities,
and design a safer workplace did not constitute evidence that
the managers
were behaving responsibly; it simply meant that they were
obeying the

142

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 143

law. In effect, many of the social demands previously made on
business
became politicized: corporate social policy was now being
formulated not
at board meetings, but at congressional committees, regulatory
agencies,
and judicial proceedings. "Society" had thus become collapsed
into "govem-
ment. " As a result, in many companies the management of
corporate social
policy became a component of corporate public affairs.

This shift in the political environment of the firm did not mean
that
scholars ceased to be interested in the relationship between
business and
society. The former supplemented the later, it did not supplant
it. The
continued salience of the business-society framework was
reflected in
studies of subjects such as the corporate social audit, corporate
codes of
conduct, shareholder activism, the relationship of corporate
social perform-
ance to corporate profitability, corporate govemance, and
business ideol-
ogy. In many respects, the recent revival of interest in business
ethics—
with its emphasis on the ethical responsibilities of managers—
demon-
strates the continued viability of this way of approaching the
study of the
corporation. (Significantly, the two most extensively studied
topics in busi-

ness ethics, namely corporate involvement in South Africa and
the market-
ing practices of the manufacturers of infant formulas overseas,
both repre-
sent areas in which corporate conduct is not constrained by
American law.)

However, research in the Social Issues in Management field has
become
increasingly dominated by studies of the relationship between
business
and govemment. The latter encompasses govemment
regulation—its for-
mulation and its implementation—as well as corporate political
strategies—
including campaign contributions, lobbying, coalition building,
grass-roots
organizing, and corporate public affairs and the role of public
interest and
other advocacy groups. In contrast to the study of business and
society,
which was primarily topic oriented, much of this research has a
strong
disciplinary orientation—primarily derived from political
science or eco-
nomics, or in the case of political economy, from both. Its
analytical focus is
not so much the corporation as the interaction of business and
govemment.

Notwithstanding the growing volume of research generated by
both
frameworks, the issues they address have diminished in
importance over
the last five years. Twenty years ago, one could argue
persuasively that

coming to grips with changing public expectations of corporate
social per-
formance was the most pressing challenge confronting American
manage-
ment. A decade ago, a similar assessment could be made of the
importance
of govemment regulation. Neither remains t m e . The issues
traditionally
addressed by those who study Social Issues in Management are
no longer
at the cutting edge of management practice. Both the political
and social
environments of business are now more stable, more predictable
and man-
ageable than at any time over the past two decades. Thanks in
part to
economic de-regulation and increased foreign competition, it is
now the
economic environment of business that constitutes the major
area of uncer-
tainty for the managers of most companies.

144 DAVID VOGEL

This is not to suggest that business no longer faces political or
social
challenges; it certainly does and will always do so. New
regulatory issues,
such as those involving the safety of chemical plants and the
most effective
way of cleaning-up toxic wastes, continue to emerge. Rather it
is to argue
that given the current political climate, these challenges are
much less

threatening to corporate profits and prerogatives than was the
case when
our field originally emerged. The major legislative,
administrative, and
judicial battles over the direction and scope of government
regulation are
over: the contemporary politics of regulation primarily focus on
implemen-
tation.

The most obvious index of this development is the recent
cutback in
corporate resources devoted to public affairs. A number of
corporations
have made major reductions in both the size of their Washington
offices
and in their headquarters staffs responsible for monitoring the
external
environment. Compared to the situation in the 1970s, relatively
few of
the new CEOs of the 1980s have been chosen because of their
skills at
external relations; rather, their background is more likely to be
a technical
or scientific one. Even more dramatic is the virtual atrophy of
the Business
Roundtable, the clearest symbol of the heightened politicization
of manage-
ment that occurred in the 1970s. The Roundtable still exists, but
its political
role is much less important than it was five years ago.

From another perspective, our field is the victim of its own
sucess. Is
there any competent manager of an American corporation who
still needs

to be persuaded that social and political forces can have as
much impact
on the bottom line as the decisions of his or her competitors?
While such
a perspective was novel 10-15 years ago, now it has become
part of the
conventional wisdom of the business community.

Significantly, while there have been a growing number of
indictments
of management education, it is noteworthy that no one claims
that business
schools are not adequately preparing future managers to cope
with the
external political environment. Rather, critics have focused on
the exces-
sive emphasis on quantitative skills and the lack of sufficient
coursework
in production management and international business. There is
no shortage
of explanations for the competitive failures of American
industry, but the
inadequacy of the political skills of America managers is
conspicuously not
among them. It is thus problematic whether business schools
will commit
additional resources to the business-govemment-society field.
They are
more likely to place increased emphasis on international
business, corporate
strategy, and production management.

New Directions

What then is the likely future of our field? In fact, the process
of building

from these two frameworks has already begun. As I survey our
field, it
appears to be moving in two somewhat different but equally
promising

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 145

directions. The first focuses on the study of intemational
business and
global competition and the second emphasizes corporate
strategy.

The growing importance of intemational competition to the
future of
American business scarcely requires elaboration. Imports and
exports as
a percentage of GNP doubled in the United States between 1970
and 1980;
70% of all domestic markets now face foreign competition.
Intemational
competition is to the 1980s what government regulation was to
the 1970s.
Japanese companies have replaced American regulatory
agencies as the
most important challenge to the future of the modem
corporation. The
most critical problem for GM is no longer whether it can
comply with
EPA; it is whether it will survive the competitive challenge
from Toyota.

Research in Social Issues in Management has always had an
intemational
dimension, but in the past this has largely focused on the social

and political
behavior of American multinationals overseas. However,
"intemational
business" no longer happens exclusively outside the United
States. On
the contrary, issues of intemational competition now dominate
the domestic
political agents; during the 1980s, the impact of public policy
on the inter-
national competitiveness of American industry emerged as the
central
issue of business-government relations in the United States. As
the issue
of plant closings illustrates, it has even spilled over into the
study of
business and society.

It is important that we significantly expand our research in the
intema-
tional area. We need to train, recmit, and develop intellectual
and institu-
tional ties with area specialists as well as with scholars in
intemational
management. In addition, we need studies that describe how
different
capitalist nations have addressed issues such as plants closings,
the regu-
lation of dangerous substances, corporate political power, the
rights of
whistle-blowers, and the assessment of technological risks.
These are
subjects which, for the most part, scholars in our field have
studied with
exclusive reference to the United States. By giving our analysis
of the
relationship among business, government, and society a

comparative di-
mension, we will not only enrich our knowledge of the global
environment
within which American industry must now operate, but also
sharpen our
understanding of our own political and social system.

The second promising direction in which our field has begun to
move
involves the integration of the management of the extemal
environment
with corporate strategy. The links between business policy and
Social
Issues in Management have always been strong. Indeed, in many
schools,
the latter is taught under the rubric of the former. Moreover,
many of
the recent texts in our field and much recent research on
corporate political
activity emphasizes the strategic dimension of corporate public
affairs.
Clearly, research into business-government relations is
becoming more
"managerially" oriented. We are slowly beginning to understand
that a
corporation's choice of political strategy is shaped by the same
kinds of
factors that govem its investment decisions.

146 DAVID VOGEL

But we need to move a step further. We need to study the
interrelation-
ship of a corporation's economic and political decisions, i.e.,

the way in
which a firm's investment decisions are shaped by its political
options and
the way in which a firm's political strategies are infiuenced by
its market
position. We need studies of corporate political activity that are
explicitly
informed by an understanding of how the firm tries to compete
in the
marketplace. Unlike the 1970s, when corporate public affairs
primarily
involved defending the firm from challenges from non-business
interest
groups, government relations has increasingly become a vehicle
by which
firms seek to enhance their firm's competitive position, both
domestically
and internationally. The recent demands of a number of
industries for trade
restrictions as well as the extensive intra-industry battles over
the pace
of economic deregulation illustrate this shift. Moreover, the
links between
corporate public affairs and corporate strategy are particularly
important
in the area of international business, where public policy plays
such a
critical role in the shaping of the competitive position of plants,
divisions,
firms, and industries.

In addition, there is a potential for increased intellectual
exchange be-
tween students of corporate strategy and business ethics. The
develop-
ment of business ethics over the last five years has been

disappointing, a
subject to which I will return in the next section of this article.
But in one
respect, it is extremely promising. Though their language may
differ, there
is a striking similarity between the descriptions of "well-
managed" firms
offered by students of management and that of "socially
responsible" cor-
porations offered by students of corporate social performance.
Peters and
Waterman's description of how a well-run corporation treats its
employees,
customers, and suppliers bears a remarkable resemblance to the
portraits
others have offered of socially responsible companies. A more
recent book
in this genre. Vanguard Management by James O'Toole, makes
this rela-
tionship explicit. Throughout his book, O'Toole argues that a
sense of
ethics is a critical component of a "Vanguard Management."
More gener-
ally, many of same structures and values that characterize a
well-run firm
also appear to characterize an ethically managed firm. At the
same time,
a firm's value system can be seen as an integral component of
its "corporate
culture."

By moving in one or both of the two directions outlined above,
our field
will both become more relevant to the practice of management
and reduce
its isolation from the other components of management

education. The
study of either area requires a better understanding of how a
corporation
performs its central mission, i.e., mobilizing capital and labor
to create
additional wealth. We have long argued that those who study
management
need to better appreciate the political and social dimensions of
business.
But the opposite is now true as well. Those who write about
business-
govemment-society relations urgently need to enrich their
understanding
of management.

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 147

The Politics of Teaching and Research

My second observation about the direction of research in SIM
concems
business ethics and social responsibility. I am concemed that we
have
inadvertently allowed our writing about these topics to become
politicized.
Too often the way we treat these subjects remains rooted in the
conven-
tional wisdom of 1970s liberalism. The problem is not that
members of
our field have allowed their research and teaching to be shaped
by their
political and social values. Such a perspective is both
unobjectionable and
unavoidable. It is rather that they have confused the realms of

ethical and
political discourse. Instead of justifying their political
preferences in their
own terms, they have tended to equate them with "corporate
responsibil-
ity." Let me provide a few examples.

Recently, a number of corporations have begun to provide
financial aid
to the rebel forces in Nicaragua. Given our conventional
definition of cor-
porate social responsibility, these contributions would appear to
provide
a perfect illustration of this phenomena. Not only are companies
attempting
to compensate for a reduction in govemment funding, but the
corporations
involved in this effort will only benefit indirectly from their
commitment.
Rather, their motivation is presumably similar to those
companies that
have ratified the Sullivan principles. In both cases, firms are
using their
economic resources to change the political system of another
country so
that it more closely reflects their vision of a decent and just
society. But
while scholars in our field have published numerous analyses of
the respon-
sibility of corporations to end racial injustice in South Africa,
not a word
has been written—or is ever likely to be written—on the
responsibility
of companies to stop the spread of forces hostile to private
property and
political pluralism in Latin America. Why not? What is the

difference? Is
a company only acting "responsibly" when it seeks political
outcomes that
fall on one side of the political spectrum?

More generally, there is a remarkable dearth of literature on the
ethical
and social implications of corporate investment and trade with
communist
countries. For example, in Africa, the Govemment of Angola is
engaged
in a civil war against pro-Westem forces that now control one-
third of the
countryside. The former's military expenses are largely financed
by reve-
nues generated by Chevron, and Cuban troops defend the region
in which
the company's refinery is located. When the Portugese ruled
Angola, there
was extensive discussion of Chevron's role in perpetuating
colonialism and
a number of articles examined its responsibilities to the people
of Angola.
The current govemment of Angola is at least as oppressive as
the Por-
tugese colonial administration. Yet the same scholars who now
write about
the responsibilities of American corporations in South Africa
are strangely
silent about the ethical responsibilities of Chevron to the people
of Angola.

To take another example, I have yet to read a single article or
case-study
analyzing the moral or social responsibility of corporations
seeking to in-

148 DAVID VOGEL

crease their sales to the Soviet Union by pressuring the
Department of
Commerce to relax its regulations governing the export of
advanced tech-
nology. Does not East-West trade also involve moral issues?
And why is
it that those who have written about the way Western firms
market infant
formulas in the third world have ignored the marketing practices
of state-run
firms in socialist countries?

One finds a similar political bias in the analysis of domestic
political and
social issues. For example, those who have written about the
social dimen-
sions of plant closings invariably equate keeping a plant open
with being
"responsible," and closing it with being "irresponsible." Yet one
could just
as persuasively argue that a company that keeps an unprofitable
plant open
is delaying the adjustment of the American economy to a
rapidly changing
and highly competitive international environment in order to
avoid public
criticism. Such a policy may be in the immediate interests of the
residents
of the community in which the plant operates. But in the long-
run its
decision may make all Americans somewhat poorer. Yet this

latter analysis
—which strikes me as no more nor less ethically informed than
the
former—has been remarkably absent from the literature on plant
closings.

Most of the cases on personal ethics used in business and
society courses
deal with a conflict in values between the corporation and those
who work
for it. Almost invariably, the subordinate's values are being
challenged by
his or her superior, who is generally assumed to be acting in the
interests
of the corporation and its stockholders. That such conflicts
occur with
considerable frequency cannot be doubted, and surely we have a
respon-
sibility to prepare our students for them. But there is another
kind of
ethical conflict which also occurs in the real world, namely the
tension
between a manager and a government official. The literature on
government
regulation is replete with examples of corporate executives
being pressured
by regulators to comply with rules and regulations that offend
their profes-
sional training and personal values. Yet, somehow, this
particular sort of
ethical dilemma is absent from the literature on business ethics.

Why is it that unethical behavior on the part of government
officials is
invariably defined as caving in to corporate political pressures,
and never

as their attempt to impose unreasonable demands on business?
We have
numerous descriptions of supervisors coercing engineers to cut
comers
on product or worker safety, but not one case detailing the
tribulation of
an environmental engineer under pressure from EPA to install a
scrubber
that he believes is unreliable and ineffective. We have many
cases describ-
ing company efforts to resist the efforts of regulatory officials
to remove
unsafe products, but not one chronicling the dilemma of a
corporate scientist
who sincerely believes that a particular product he or she has
designed
and tested is safe and effective according to his or her scientific
standards,
but is unable to secure permission to market it due to the
uninformed or
politically motivated opposition of a regulatory official.

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 149

If we can accept the fact that a corporation can act
irresponsibly, even
though its behavior is legal, is it also not conceivable that there
might be
occasions when a corporation could violate a particular
regulation, but still
be acting responsibly? More fundamentally, how should we
teach our
students to respond to unreasonable government demands? For
example,

do we wish to recognize the phenomenon of "corporate civil
disobedience"
—the intentional violation of a law by a company on the
grounds that it is
illegitimate? These are important issues, but those who write
our textbooks
on business ethics have ignored them.

Moreover, too much of current writing and teaching on business
ethics
tends to echo uncritically the conventional wisdom of the
media. How
many of those who teach about the irresponsibility of Hooker
Chemical
Company with respect to its toxic waste disposal practices in
Love Canal
are aware of a subsequent study that found that there was no
increase in
abnormalities among residents who lived near the former
Hooker Chemical
site and that therefore their physical relocation by EPA was
entirely unwar-
ranted—and therefore irresponsible. More recently, the Reagan
Adminis-
tration has been strongly criticized for its lack of commitment
to the
enforcement of health, safety, and amenity regulations. But how
many
scholars working in the business and society field have sought
to measure
the actual impact of the Administration's regulatory policies on
public health,
safety, and environmental quality in the United States?

My reading of the literature on business ethics and corporate
social

responsibility suggests that far too often these terms are used
simply as
expressions of the personal values of their writers. That this
process is
often unconscious does not make it any the less invidious. Too
many of
those who write in our field dress up their political preferences
in the
language of business ethics and assume a consensus on what
constitutes
"right" and "wrong," "responsible" and "irresponsible," when in
fact, there
is often none. It is far more likely to be the case that the same
decision
can fall into either category, depending on the assumptions of
the individual
scholar making the assessment.

There is a place for the analysis of business decisions and
dilemmas in
terms of the categories of ethical theory. But these categories
must be
employed with considerable care and discipline. In fact, the
standards of
ethical discourse are far more rigorous than those of political
discourse.
Ethical judgements cannot be made on an ad hoc basis. They
must be
rooted in a clearly specified set of principles and applied
consistently.

Consider the current controversy surrounding the role of
American
corporations in the Republic of South Africa. As a citizen, one
is entitled
to espouse whatever position on this issue one choses. But if

one wishes
to make an ethical argument as a scholar, one must both clearly
specify
the broader principles that underlie one judgment and be
prepared to apply
them on a universal basis. What, after all, makes investing in
South Africa

150 DAVID VOGEL

wrong? If it is because it is ruled by a repressive minority, then
one is
obligated to condemn corporate trade and investment in much of
the world,
including virtually all of the rest of Africa and East Europe.
Now South
Afinca is distinctive in that it is the only government in which
political
representation is based on race. But why is elite rule based on
race any
worse than oppression based on religion (as in much of the
Muslim world),
tribe (as in much of Africa), caste (as in India), or on
membership status
in the Communist Party?

My point is not to defend the Government of South Africa or
justify the
presence of American corporations there. It is rather to argue
that as
scholars, we cannot simply echo the chants of students for
disinvestment
and divestment outside our classrooms. If we are going to use
the language

of moral discourse, we must do so honestly and consistently,
however
much that serves to complicate the problems we address. Nor do
I mean
to suggest that the answers to the questions I raise are self-
evident. It
may well be the case that trading with the Soviet Union is
morally preferable
to investing in the Republic of South Africa or that aiding the
Contras is
an example of corporate irresponsibility. But those who wish to
make
these distinctions owe us an explanation as to how they reached
their
conclusions.

The political bias of much of the thinking about business and
society
among members of the SIM division is also apparent in the
treatment
accorded to recent conservative writers. Over the last five years,
the
most exciting and innovative writing on the central issues
surrounding the
study of business and society—questions such as the moral and
intellectual
status of capitalism, private property, and marketplace
exchange—have
come from the right. One may or may not find the arguments of
Wealth
and Poverty by George Gilder or The Spirit of Capitalism by
Michael
Novack persuasive, but the issues they address are surely
critical to any
contemporary discussion of the social and political role of the
corporation.

Yet I would venture to suggest that those teaching in our field
are far
more familiar with the work of someone like Charles
Lindbloom, whose
book. Politics and Markets, is highly critical of market-based
polities.
Whether or not they agree with Lindblooms' conclusion,
virtually everyone
in our field knows his argument and can critically evaluate it. I
doubt if
much the same could be said of the writings of people like
Gilder and
Novack. Ironically, our field, which has prided itself on being
the cutting
edge of the ever-changing social and political environment of
business, has
yet to take this conservative intellectual renaissance seriously.

I think that the politics of SIM are only in part due to the
personal
political views of the members of our division. They also refiect
the origin
of the field in the liberal social and political climate of the
1960s and 1970s.
The contemporary resurgence of interest in corporate
responsibility and
business ethics both emerged during a period when the
corporation found

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN MANAGEMENT 151

itself under considerable pressure to re-assess its relationship to
the society
of which it was a part. The political and intellectual pendulum

has shifted
dramatically over the last five years. While I am not suggesting
that we
substitute a right of center orthodoxy for a left of center one,
our field
would benefit considerably if the views of those who
contributed to it
reflected a greater political diversity than they do at present.
Most impor-
tantly, as scholars, we have a social responsibility to be more
self-conscious
about the ideological assumptions that inform our research and
teaching.

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