Promising Futures:CMS, Post‐Disciplinarity, and the New Public Social Science

Abstract

AbstractThis paper considers the future prospects forCriticalManagementStudies and by extension management studies more generally. To explore these, two frameworks from the wider social sciences are deployed. The anchorpoint for the discussion isMichaelBurawoy's work distinguishing types of scholarship on the bases of (a) conceptions of knowledge produced by social scientists, and (b) different audiences for that knowledge.CriticalManagementStudies is founded on critique but its future will be determined by how it makes its way acrossBurawoy's other domains of professional, policy and public scholarship. To examine this,Idraw onJohnBrewer's recent articulation of the ‘new public social science’.Brewer's problem‐driven, post‐disciplinary approach conceives the public value of social science as its conservation of moral sentiments and sympathetic imagination towards each other as social beings, and its ethical concern about the humanitarian future of humankind. The new public social science is normative and partisan, transgressive, scientific, and impactful. I argue that this provides a potentially fruitful template to guide future management studies. This is a future in whichCriticalManagementStudies – as management studies' critical and emancipatory conscience – has a central role to play.