Open AccessAgainst management: Auto-critique
Author(s) -
Martin Parker
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
organization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.908
H-Index - 99
eISSN - 1461-7323
pISSN - 1350-5084
DOI - 10.1177/13505084211020922
Subject(s) - manifesto , context (archaeology) , democracy , task (project management) , sociology , point (geometry) , inequality , political science , management , economics , history , politics , law , mathematical analysis , geometry , mathematics , archaeology
In this review I consider the 20 years that have passed since the publication of my book Against Management. I begin by locating it in the context of the expanding business schools of the UK in the 1990s, and the growth of CMS in north western Europe. After positioning the book within its time, and noting that the book is now simultaneously highly cited and irrelevant, I then explore the arguments I made in the final chapter. If the book is of interest for the next two decades, it because it gestures towards the importance of alternative forms of organization, which I continue to maintain are not reducible to ‘management’. Given the intensifying crises of climate, ecology, inequality and democracy, developing alternatives must be understood as the historical task of CMS within the business school and I propose a ten-point manifesto in support of that commitment.