What is CMS?
CMS is a largely left-wing and theoretically informed approach in the management and organization studies that aims to produce knowledge that would challenge the prevailing conventional understanding of management, managers, businesses and organizations. Hence, it is intended to provide a platform for debating radical alternatives whilst interrogating the established relations of power, control, domination and ideology in the organizations as well as the relations among businesses, society and people. Drawn together with critical accounts of social sciences and philosophy, CMS as a title is associated with the edited book of Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott published in 1992 called “Critical Management Studies”.
As an umbrella research orientation CMS embraces various theoretical traditions including Critical Theory, Marxism, post-Marxism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis and ecology representing a pluralistic, multidisciplinary movement. Although there are differences among these traditions, CMS have distinguishing characteristics such as denaturalization, non-performativity and reflexivity in the organization studies (Fournier & Grey, 2000). Though, these characteristics are also under continuously re-construction due to the developing structure of the CMS* . For instance, there have been suggestions to make CMS critically performative (see Spicer et al., 2009)
Having originated initially from the business schools in the United Kingdom, CMS as a platform has audiences and attraction from all over the world including Europe, Australasia, Latin America, Canada and the United States. Whilst there is an interest group in the Academy of Management (http://group.aomonline.org/cms/Index.htm), there are bi-annual CMS conferences organized since 1999. In addition to critical streams in European Group of Organization Studies Colloquium, Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism is another platform for sharing ideas and studies.
The list of the CMS conferences is as follows,
1st CMS Conference, 1999 – University of Manchester, Manchester Business School
2nd CMS Conference, 2001 – University of Manchester, Manchester Business School
3rd CMS Conference, 2003 – Lancaster University, Management School
4th CMS Conference, 2005 – University of Cambridge, Judge Business School
5th CMS Conference, 2007 – University of Manchester, Manchester Business School
6th CMS Conference, 2009 – University of Warwick, Warwick Business School
7th CMS Conference, 2011 - University of Naples Federico II, Faculty of Economics
Why a portal for CMS?
The aim of the portal is to gather information about CMS in one place as well as develop its own content (e.g. overviews on philosophers and CMS, overviews of themes researched within CMS, commentated bibliography etc) through collaboration of the CMS community. The website works as a wikipedia-type of website, so everyone can contribute to its content.
CMS portal is for everyone who wants to find out about/keep updated with CMS, both academic and non-academic, working in CMS and other academic areas.
The portal also provides an interactive space where students, academics, practitioners, policy makers, activists and others can debate and discuss issues relevant to the CMS. Through this, we hope to bring the spheres of management education, practice and transformation closer together.
* For a detailed discussion regarding the definition and aim of CMS please have a look at;
Adler, P. S., Forbes, L. C. & Willmott, H. (2008) Critical management studies, The Academy of Management Annals, 1 (1), 119-179.
Alvesson, M. (2008) The future of critical management studies in D. Barry & H. Hansen (eds.) The Sage Handbook of New Approaches in Management and Organization (pp. 13-26). London: Sage.
Alvesson, M., Bridgman, T. & Willmott (2009) Introduction in M. Alvesson, T. Bridgman & H. Willmott (eds.) The Oxford Hand book of Critical Management Studies (pp. 1-26). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
