I want to borrow a feminist, and a specifically
Australian feminist, metaphor to describe the
place where critical approaches to management
education in organizations find themselves. They
are out on the verandah. In Australia the verandah
is a space that represents many practical and
symbolic functions. It is a space that can be 'read'.
It provides relief from the heat of the kitchen, a
place at risk of exposure to the elements (Morgan
and McWilliam, 1995) and a place of temporary
exile (often shared with the disgraced family
dog). Morgan and McWilliam (1995) see feminist
theory as inhabiting such a metaphorical position,
connected with and yet separate from 'main-
stream' space. Similarly critical management
education in organizations is 'verandahed' on two
counts. The first is by way of their relatively
under-researched and under-theorized practice
(Boud and Walker, 1992) compared to manage-
ment education within universities. There are few
authors who study critical forms of organizational
management education - Caproni and Arias
this area focus on critical organizational studies
(see Sotorin and Tyrell, 1998, for an overview of
the literature).
The second marginalization results from the
judgement of 'criticality' in Critical Management
Studies being largely dependent on finding crit-
ical 'markers' (literature or authors cited) in text
(Fournier and Grey, 2000). Management edu-
cation in organizations produces relatively few
textual accounts or fragments of practice, hamper-
ing any attempts for its critical practitioners to be
accepted as such by gatekeeping academics in the
field.
My aim in ...