Beyond the Confines: Management, Colonization and the Everyday

Abstract

Drawing on critical social theory, this article argues that critical management studies (CMS) should extend its analytical gaze beyond the work organization and consider the ways in which management increasingly appears to colonize the subjectivity-constituting experiences and practices of everyday life. This argument is developed with reference to a discussion of various illustrations of the cultural ubiquity of management. The article concludes by reaffirming the need to develop a critical study of management as a social phenomenon, one that broadens the focus of CMS beyond the confines of the business school and its concern with organizational management in order to develop a sustained critique of this managerial colonization of the lifeworld.