The Critical Business School and the University: A Case Study of Resistance and Co-optation

Can a school of ‘critical management studies’ survive in the context of a marketising university which relies heavily on business education for its income? This paper explores the case of a UK management school which attempted to do that and survived for 13 years with a clearly ‘critical’ project. As someone who worked in the school, but left some time ago, I evaluate its successes and failures, concluding that the radicalism of its research and publication strategy was not paralleled by an understanding of the politics of the institution and its environment. This led to a posture of ‘defensive isolation’ which ultimately made the school vulnerable to changes in the strategies of senior university management.