Really useful knowledge? Critical Management Education in the UK and the US

Abstract

This article reviews the Critical Management Education (CME) literature produced since 1995 and compares its development in the United Kingdom with that of the United States. It explores the relationship between CME, as an academic field, and that of Critical Management Studies (CMS), the wider movement that deploys critiques drawn from sociology and political science perspectives. In the UK, the origins of CME are in established debates about utilitarian versus liberal education and in radical adult education theory—quite separate from the CMS movement. In the US however, the article argues that business schools and the academy are sites that the CMS is attempting to colonise and CME cannot, in that context, be separated from the CMS project.