Please see our call for contributions for this stream at the ICMS Conference in Manchester on 18th-20th June 2025 below and here: Regenerate CMS through Genealogies of Power – https://slownetwork1.wordpress.com/rege ... -of-power/.
There are other streams of interest on the ICMS conference website here: https://slownetwork1.wordpress.com/.
Regenerate CMS through genealogies of power
Charles Barthold, Senior Lecturer, Department for People and Organisations, Open University, UK
Alix Blanchard, PhD candidate, La Rochelle University, France
Layla Branicki, Associate Professor, School of Management, University of Bath, UK
Guillaume Delalieux, Professor, La Rochelle University, France
Call for Papers
This stream explores genealogy as a methodological approach to critically analyse management and organisations in order to regenerate critical management studies (CMS) in a profoundly challenging context. Firstly, the broader context is characterised by deepening inequalities from social, economic, gender, racial and environmental perspectives. Secondly, the broader context is characterised by a dangerous movement towards authoritarian governance, where human rights are challenged by state and corporate actions, for example through generalised surveillance (Zuboff, 2019). Thirdly, the broader context is characterised by the Anthropocene, whereby a planetary environmental crisis is putting the Earth system at risk. As a result, genealogy is relevant in that it connects specific management and organisation phenomena and the broader context through a critical historicisation (Jørgensen, 2002).
Drawing on the work of Nietzsche (1994), philosopher Michel Foucault (1971, 1977) developed genealogy as a way to analyse the historical emergence of the Modern prison system, centred around disciplinary power and panopticism, in replacement of more violent ways of managing and repressing illegal practices. By contrast, with other types of historical approaches that aim to reproduce the past social systems and their contexts, genealogy is a ‘‘history of the present” whose objective is the “uncovering of hidden conflicts and contexts as a means of re-valuing the value of contemporary phenomena” (Garland, 2014: 365). Another important point that differentiates genealogy from traditional types of historical approaches emphasising linear causality is that genealogy foregrounds contingency in its historicisation of power relations (Rowlinson, 2004). Thus, genealogy enables to problematise contemporary phenomena by tracing their hidden history, especially “the production of specific discourses, subjects, and practices” (Barthold et al., 2024: 7).
The methodological approach of genealogy has been employed to study critically various topics relating to management and organisations. HRM has been argued to be a site of disciplinary power through a variety of techniques of power (Townley,1994; Barratt, 2003). A genealogical methodology has also been employed to problematise how business ethics discourses such as compassion can be used as a technique of disciplinary power in organisations (Simpson et al., 2014). Authors have deployed a genealogy of accounting (Hoskin and Macve, 1986; see also, McKinlay et al., 2010). Furthermore, a genealogical analysis has been deployed to uncover the colonial origins of specific forms of entrepreneurship discourses (Smith and Kaminishi, 2020). Finally, genealogy has been used to provide a critical account of CSR discourse, explaining how stakeholder dialogue is based on military strategies.
We argue that genealogy is a particularly fruitful approach to regenerate CMS. Firstly, it enables conducting in-depth and problematised analyses of management and organisation power relations. Secondly, it invites an interdisciplinary approach drawing on social sciences and humanities (e.g. history, philosophy, anthropology, politics, geography or literary criticism), linking specific organisational phenomena to different contexts. Thirdly, genealogy can help construct effective alternatives and resistance strategies to mainstream management and organisations. As a result, this stream seeks original, critical and interdisciplinary scholarship in relation to these three points.
Although this is not an exhaustive list, we propose the following research questions:
Regenerate CMS through a genealogical analysis of power
• How a genealogical analysis of power can be deepened in relation to management and organisational phenomena that have been already studied (e.g. HRM, accounting, entrepreneurship or CSR)?
• How a genealogical analysis of power could be applied to areas of management and organisation, where it has not been employed (e.g. platforms, diversity, digital work, teamwork…)?
• How a genealogical analysis of power could be combined with other approaches about power (e.g. hegemony, elites)?
Regenerate CMS through a genealogical interdisciplinarity
• How could a genealogical method be deployed, in combination with disciplines based in the social sciences?
• How could a genealogical method be deployed, in combination with disciplines based in the humanities?
• How could a genealogical method be deployed by combining various qualitative approaches (e.g. archives, documentary analysis, observation)?
Regenerate CMS through informing resistance with genealogies
• How can a genealogical method inform alternative organisations?
• How can a genealogical method inform social movement organisations resisting mainstream management and organisations?
• How can a genealogical method map resistance to management and organisation?
• How can a genealogical method develop an analysis of whistleblowing?
Submission
We encourage colleagues interested to submit a one-page abstract (500 words) emphasizing the type of contribution (qualitative, theoretical…), research question, problematics, and research contribution to the track. We are currently negotiating to organize a special issue in a management journal based on the work on this track.
Submissions should be sent no later than Thursday 30th of January to the organizing Team at the following emails:
charles.barthold@open.ac.uk
Guillaume.delalieux@univ-lr.fr
ljb217@bath.ac.uk
alix.blanchard@sciencespo-lille.eu
The decision of acceptance should be sent to participants in return no later than Friday 21st February 2025.
References:
Barthold, C., Branicki, L. and Delalieux, G. (2024). Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? How corporations maintain hegemony by using counterinsurgency tactics to undermine activism. Organization Studies, 01708406241261449.
Barratt, E. (2003). Foucault, HRM and the ethos of the critical management scholar. Journal of Management Studies, 40(5), 1069-1087.
Foucault, M. (1971). ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’. In Rabinow P. (Ed.) 1984. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon, 76–100.
Foucault M (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon.
Garland, D. (2014). What is “history of the present”? On Foucault’s genealogies and their critical preconditions. Punishment & Society, 16, 365–384.
Hoskin, K. and Macve, R. (1986). Accounting and the examination: A genealogy of disciplinary power.
Accounting, Organizations and Society, 11(2), 105–136.
Jørgensen, K. M. (2002). The meaning of local knowledges: Genealogy and organizational analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 18, 29–46.
McKinlay, A., Carter, C., Pezet, E. and Clegg, S. (2010). Using Foucault to make strategy. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 23(8), 1012-1031.
Nietzsche, F. (1994). On the Genealogy of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rowlinson, M. (2004). Historical perspectives in organization studies: Factual, narrative, and archaeo-genealogical. In Damian E. Hodgson and Chris Carter (Eds.), Management knowledge and the new employee (pp. 8–20). Burlington: Ashgate.
Simpson, A. V., Clegg, S. and Pitsis, T. (2014). “I used to care but things have changed”: A genealogy of compassion in organizational theory. Journal of Management Inquiry, 23, 347–359.
Smith, A. and Kaminishi, M. (2020). Confucian entrepreneurship: Towards a genealogy of a conceptual tool. Journal of Management Studies, 57, 25–56.
Townley, B. (1994). Reframing Human Resource Management. Power, Ethics and the Subject at Work. London: Sage.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. London: Profile Books.