Critical management studies in South Africa: Directions and contexts

Volume editor

Geoff A Goldman

Synopsis

This book shows how Critical Management Studies (CMS) scholarship is starting to develop a character of its own in South Africa. It attests to CMS slowly gaining momentum and acquiring an identity of its own amongst South African scholars. However, management studies in South Africa is dominated by capitalist ideology and positivist methodology. Although Interpretive scholarship has gained some momentum, it still falls within the parameters of ‘mainstream’ capitalist thinking. Scholarship outside the domain of capitalist thinking, such as critical scholarship, remains sorely underexplored. Being entrenched in the positivist tradition is arguably a major Achilles’ Heel for the progression of management as a field of inquiry.

Critical management studies presents a vehicle for alternative epistemologies to be heard in the management discourse. With its focus on power imbalances, struggles for emancipation from oppression, and distrust of capitalism, CMS provides the peripheral point of view with a voice. Critical management studies presents a space where scholars can engage with South African realities surrounding political, cultural, social, and historical contexts and issues in management.

This book is promoting CMS to the scholarly community to show that there are exciting possibilities being offered by a different approach to management scholarship. This book also forms part of a larger project of growing CMS in South Africa and is a collection of original works by academics actively working in CMS, following various methodological approaches which can be categorised into two broad methodological categories, namely, conceptual work and empirical work following an Interpretive approach.

Chapters

Chapter 1
Exploring ‘criticality’ in critical management studies in South Africa: What should we be critical of, why should we be critical of it and how critical should we be?

Geoff A Goldman
Chapter 2
What the world needs now: Global emancipatory critical management theory

Chris W Callaghan
Chapter 3
Critical management studies: Beginning or end?

Whitey van der Linde, Ruan Taljaard
Chapter 4
Western superiority complex/African inferiority complex as impediments to decolonising management education

Chimene Nukunah, Neil Eccles
Chapter 5
Management education: A barrier to critical management studies

Josephine Katumba, Phenyo Maboke, Daniella Teles, Whitey van der Linde
Chapter 6
Academic hubris in the scholarly entrepreneurship discourse

Maria M Smit, Marius Pretorius
Chapter 7
Artificial entrepreneurship and fallacy assumptions that inform enterprise development failure

Marius Pretorius, Ingrid le Roux, Wesley Rosslyn-Smith, Rebaona Lestholo
Chapter 8
Want to make money? Start a Church: Pastorpreneurs in action

Freddie Crous