Introduction from the Guest Editors

Introduction from the Guest Editors

Critical management studies in The Netherlands has been profoundly influenced by two factors:

1. 1.

   the lack of explicit management-labor conflict manifested in strikes, factory occupations, etc., whereby labor relations and labor process theory have never been pre-eminent; and

2. 2.

   the late and weak separation of management and organizational studies from economics, whereby attention to social theory and processes was (at least in the 1970s and 1980s) the key differentiator.

CMS in Holland has been more (neo-)humanist than (neo-)Marxist. Mainstream business school research, has increasingly been (re-)absorbed by (neo-)positivism. The managerialist agenda within the business schools, with business professors trying to tell managers how to run their organizations more profitably, has succeeded in many places. Such “objectified consulting” dominates at the MBA business schools, such as TIAS, RSM and Nijenrode. But, within the numerous specialist Master’s courses, organizing, social constructivism and ethical questioning have remained options.

This alternative collection of articles resulted from a cms.nl (national) workshop held at the UvH (Universiteit voor Humanistiek), which in effect is a faculty of applied philosophy with independent university status. This circumstantial link to (applied) philosophy, and distance from the business school world is indicative. In Holland (critical) organization studies has not broken away from philosophy and is not an independent social science. It is much less anti-practitioner or manager than its UK counterpart. After all, there is a strong philosophy and organization movement in Holland with numerous practitioner members. CMS’s discourse definitely is marginalized from the mass undergraduate polytechnic training factories, and it is under attack from no-nonsense anti-critical managerialists in academe. CMS’s insistence on political, epistemological and existential reflection obviously does not meet everyone’s needs or tastes. But CMS in Holland is neither an intellectualistic sociological ghetto, nor an inevitable point of passage. It may be marginalized and under (political) attack, but it has more of a self-identity now than ever before.

We hope you will enjoy sampling its wares.

About the Guest Editors

Hugo Letiche is Research Professor, Director of the Professional PhD (DBA) programme, and holds the Humanitas/ISCE endowed Chair of “Meaning in Organization” at the Universiteit voor Humanistiek, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Ruud Kaulingfreks is Lecturer in Organizational Theory at the Universiteit voor Humanistiek Utrecht, The Netherlands and external Professor at Leicester University, UK. Robert van Boeschoten is Lecturer in Media and Organization at the Universiteit voor Humanistiek, Utrecht, The Netherlands and at the Amsterdam Polytechnic.

Hugo Letiche, Ruud Kaulingfreks, Robert van Boeschoten