Post-structuralism and critical management studies: the desire for emancipation and the constitution of the subject

Eloisio Moulin de Souza, Susane Petinelli Souza and Alfredo Rodrigues Leite da Silva

RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), 2013, vol. 17, issue 2, 198-217

Abstract: Critical Management Studies have distinct epistemological bases. However, is there something in common that could the study field status? Some authors suggest that the quest for emancipation is be a common feature in currents of thought that are part of the Critical Management Studies. Thus, this article questions whether emancipation is really a characteristic feature of the poststructuralist movement, focusing mainly on the possible differences between post-structuralism and Critical Theory as regards this topic, as well as analyzing possible distinctions between poststructuralist authors related to subjectivity and emancipation. Therefore, we performed a bibliographical research of studies that discuss the main characteristics of Critical Management Studies. Post-structuralism clearly attempts to break with the subject's agency vs. structure dichotomy; where a completely autonomous subject (individual subject) is at one pole, and another socially determined subject determined (collective subject) is at the other. Emancipation seems to be not merely a common feature in Critical Studies, but also a nodal point. In this sense, emancipations only exist in the plural, because there are conceptual differences between and within the approaches to Critical Management Studies which have direct implications on the concepts of universality, subjectivity and emancipation, as well as on their forms of political action.

Date: 2013
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