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While critical approaches have enriched research in proximate fields, their impact has been less marked in studies of healthcare management. In response, the 2016 Organizational Behaviour in Health Care Conference hosted its first-ever session dedicated to the emergent field of critical healthcare management studies (CHMSs). The purpose of this paper is to present five papers selected from that conference.

In this introductory paper, the authors frame the contributions as “green shoots” in a field of CHMS which contains four main furrows of activity: questioning the taken-for-granted; moving beyond instrumentalism; reflexivity and meanings in research; and challenging structures of domination (Kitchener and Thomas, 2016). The authors conclude by presenting an agenda for further cultivating the field of CHMS.

The papers evidence the value of CHMS, and provide insight into the benefits of broadening theoretical and methodological approaches in pursuit of critical insights.

CHMS works to explicate the multiple and competing ideologies and interests inherent in healthcare. As pragmatic imperatives push the provision of health and social care out of the organisational contexts and into private space, there is a particular need to simultaneously understand, and critically interrogate, the implications of new, as well as existing, forms of care.

This paper reviews, frames and details practical next steps in developing CHMS. These include: enhanced engagement with a wider range of actors than is currently the norm in mainstream healthcare management research; a broadening of theoretical and methodological lenses; support for critical approaches among editors and reviewers; and enhanced communication of critical research via its incorporation into education and training programmes.

The paper contributes to an emerging stream of CHMS research, and works to consolidate next steps for the field.

Ethnography has emerged as a potentially valuable empirical means of understanding how and why accounting operates within organisations. However, its use in the accounting literature has not been without controversy. This paper addresses one of the key issues of dispute: the role of critical foundational theories in ethnographic accounting research. First, the paper draws from competing proposals for ethnography in the accounting literature in an attempt to shed further light on the use of critical theory within an ethnographic field study. It is argued that critical theory can be a valuable tool in developing further insights from ethnographic study, but that its timing within the stages of the empirical work is crucial to achieve a balance between understanding and explanation. Second, in highlighting the lessons learnt from the author’s own ethnographic research, the paper discusses the (as yet untapped) potential for critical ethnography to inform directly the design and development of new accounting systems. It is proposed that using ethnography “actively” in this way could provide the methodological basis for the development of new forms of accounting, such as social accounting.

To explore how Critical Management Studies can be used to frame a strategy to effect change and promote diversity and inclusion in organizations.

Drawing on the experience gained from a large multi-sector action research project aimed at promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in organizations, this chapter proposes a multilayer [Critical] Ecological Model.

While early critical theorists were committed to effecting change, the rise of post-modern critical theory eroded the ground on which to stand, widening the gap between theory and practice. Secondly, the chapter asserts the importance of linking empirical research and critical theory in order to advance equality seeking projects. Thirdly, the chapter provides a [Critical] Ecological model that bridges theory and action in Critical Management Studies, based partly on experience from a large community-based research project. The need for a multifaceted approach to advance equality and inclusion emerged as a way to bridge ideological differences among actors and academics committed to effecting social change.

By addressing directly the challenges of theoretical rifts as well as differences in research focused on micro, meso and macro levels, the chapter builds a framework to allow different stakeholders – scholars, practitioners, activists and change agents across sectors – to take action in advancing inclusion and equality as well as an understanding of interactions between levels.

While sharing similar goals, many approaches to change are fragmented on the level of analysis and by underlying paradigms. This chapter is unique in its focus on ways to bridge theory and practice and to develop a framework for action that accommodates equality seeking theorists and activists working on several levels.

This chapter addresses current trends regarding how the meta-theory of critical realism (CR) frames comparative and international education research and practice. It introduces the key tenets of CR and explores how these ideas have been and can be applied in educational research. It demonstrates how CR provides a valuable alternative to the positivist, interpretivist and constructivist paradigms, and leverages elements of all three to provide new approaches to develop knowledge that is free from the dualisms embedded in their ontological assumptions. I argue that by offering a dialectical understanding of structure and agency, as well as the material and ideational dimension of social reality, CR provides an ontological framework that does not do conceptual violence to the reality we seek to research. This ontological basis is particularly valuable to the social justice agenda of educational research in general because it allows researchers to work beneath the surface of empirical research to disclose the field of possibilities for social action.

No scholar or researcher is able to provide robust evidence that counters the scant reflection on metatheory – mostly ontology and epistemology – underlying management studies in general, and industrial marketing and purchasing research in particular. This paper is a contribution to the indispensable discussion of metatheoretical alternatives in research, and most importantly, the strengths and shortcomings thereof, and respective implications on research questions, objectives, and findings.

This chapter will focus on the use of reflective dialogues (RDs) to explore pedagogical practice in higher education. RDs allow researchers and participants to reflect on observed phenomena together, engaging in collaborative reflection that may allow both the researcher and the researched to gain from the interaction, throwing into focus different aspects of practice and a different perspective on the situation, and blurring the boundaries of research and researched into a more reciprocal relationship. Drawing on research which investigated the relationship between critical pedagogical theory and practice with 10 self-identifying critical pedagogues across eight English universities, I will explore the benefits and tensions of using a reflective dialogue approach, and the impact this methodology can have on researchers and participants. This chapter will make a case for RDs as both a practice for educators and as a methodology and explore how to do it, supported by relevant methodological literature, as well as the benefits and challenges of using RDs in social research, concluding with a discussion on how RDs might be used in other contexts to aid professional learning and reflection.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how three core elements of critical management studies (CMSs), “de-naturalisation”, “reflexivity” and “(non)-performative intent”, can help expand the current debate in the supply chain management (SCM) field.

The authors used a systematic literature review to select 103 articles published in 12 high-ranking journals in the SCM field based on the Academic Journal Guide of the Chartered Association of Business Schools.

The findings of this study suggest that SCM studies can be narrowed down into four major CMSs themes: “power”, “ethics and environmental issues”, “diversity” and “working conditions”, but even these themes are still under-discussed and undertheorized in SCM. The literature the authors reviewed is more concerned with explaining these phenomena than questioning them and proposing new agendas. This paper, therefore, will discuss how these three core elements of CMS can help transform the “hidden” issues of SCM, which it will do by illustrating it in the context of buyer–supplier relationships and lean manufacturing.

This research will encourage SCM scholars who are interested in conducting more critical studies and teaching the harmful effects of global supply chains.

This paper highlights that a combination of SCM and CMS approaches is important when we decide to adopt a more critical “constructive” view of supply chain challenges and engage practical and critical views, respectively, to generate knowledge that not only increases (corporate) performance but also highlights social needs and values.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to Modell’s arguments regarding the relative usefulness of critical realist philosophy in relation to actor-network theory.

The authors outline the challenges in applying critical realism to critical accounting. The authors then consider Modell’s criticisms of actor-network theory, providing a counterargument highlighting the methodological choices distinguishing actor-network theory from critical realism.

The authors argue that critical realism, whilst providing an interesting addition to the critical accounting research project, confronts challenges disentangling intransitive and transitive forms of knowledge. Actor-network theory is presented as a way of examining accounting practices as local associations, providing practical opportunities to study (the assembly of) “the social”.

Methodological diversity is to be explored, acknowledging the ontological politics of our choices.

This paper is an original commentary contributing to critical accounting research.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how critical realism can be mobilised as a meta-theory, or philosophical under-labourer, for research on space accounting and how this may further inquiries into the known as well as the unknown implications of space exploration and commercialisation.

This is a conceptual paper that applies critical realism to the field of space accounting using cost management in space contracts as an illustrative example.

Adopting a naturalised version of critical realism that recognises the complex interplay between natural and social realities, the author nuances the distinction between intransitive and transitive objects of knowledge and advances a framework that may be used as a starting point for a transfactual mode of reasoning. The author then applies this mode of reasoning to the topic of cost management in the space sector and illustrates how it may enhance our insights into what causes cost overruns in space contracts.

By adopting a naturalised version of critical realism, the author establishes a philosophical framework that can support the broadly based, inter-disciplinary research agenda that has been envisaged for research on space accounting and possibly inform policy development.

This paper is the first to apply a critical realist perspective to space accounting and lays a philosophical foundation for future research on the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to debate intersectionality as a key methodological aspect for critical research. While intersectionality is a consensus for critical studies, it is important to highlight the challenges that a perspective that consider power relations across social categories put forward. For this, I examine how these relations are seen in research, and highlight the risks of hierarchical views on social categories, or the invisibilization of those same categories.

These reflections will be primarily based on previous research on immigration in São Paulo and on older transsexual women in Brazil, studies that required a multi-faceted analysis. The studies were based on critical feminist, post-colonial studies and psychoanalysis to examine discourses and to unravel the social imaginaries on the immigrant and on transsexual women in Brazil. For this, I bring forth the notion of the other as a discursive space often placed on these groups, and how the discursive position also reflect views on gender, race, sexuality and class as structural discursive boundaries in Brazil.

Taking the border as a metaphor to read everyday encounters, the body becomes a mark of difference, where subjects are placed at specific discursive (and also geographical) positions – at the center or at the margins. Taking this into account, the paper highlights two main aspects: first, a debate on the importance of intersectionality for critical methodological frameworks, and second, how critical discourse analysis allow us to defy the taken-for-granted binary constructions of other-us, that are continuously re-evoked and reified in discourse.

This debate is important as there are innumerous ways of approaching intersectionality, hence a critical analysis into current debates and methodological standpoints become central.