Between Sociology and the Business School: Critical Studies of Work, Employment and Organization in the UK

Martin Parker

doi:10.1111/1467-954x.12166

Abstract

This is a paper about what happens when a form of knowledge moves to another part of the university. The author, identifying himself as an ‘ex-sociologist’, investigates the relationship between the sociology of work, employment and organization and various ‘critical’ traditions within the business school. I argue that the contemporary divide between sociologies of work and employment, and Critical Management Studies (CMS) within the business school rests in part on developments in UK sociology in the 1960s and 70s. This means that divergent understandings of the role of sociology and its relevant theoretical resources provided the deep structure for the current tension between CMS on the one hand and research on work and employment on the other. The movement of sociologists and industrial relations academics to the business school provided the preconditions for two very different critical traditions. The paper concludes with thoughts on what it means to be an outsider inside an institution, and on the future prospects for Burawoy's ‘critical’ or ‘public’ sociologies in UK business schools.

Highlights

It seems evident that the prospects for Burawoy’s ‘critical’ and ‘public’ sociologies (2005a) are in part determined by the institutional location of sociologists themselves
As things travel, so do they change, because that which arrived in the business school was not the same as that which left sociology
One caution is necessary before I begin, in that I want to emphasise that this paper is about the British experience and is written by an author who identifies as an ex-sociologist who works in a business school

Summary

Introduction

It seems evident that the prospects for Burawoy’s ‘critical’ and ‘public’ sociologies (2005a) are in part determined by the institutional location of sociologists themselves. In this paper I will consider how, in the last forty years or so, the sociology of work, employment and organizations has moved from being perhaps an unfashionable area of sociology to providing some of the impetus for a huge critical research project within the business school.

Results

Conclusion