From anti-managerialism to over-managerialism: How critical management studies in Israel were exiled from local business schools and emerged elsewhere

This chapter invokes the anthropological notion of galumphing as a mechanism for assessing the distinctly different patterns of research, writing and publishing within the Critical Management Studies (CMS) domain characterizing the two scholarly communities. CMS is seen as a form of analysis that “questions the authority and relevance of mainstream thinking and practice”. One of the roles of CMS is to foster social change and emancipation. CMS as an academic domain is not as developed in the US as internationally, particularly in the UK. While the US and UK shared some important socio-political features growing out of the 1990‘s embrace of neo-liberalism, CMS advanced faster within the UK. In order to render a picture of critical work in the US since 1992, the chapter adapts a research categorization schema from Alvesson and Deetz, which aids in making sense of US critical theorist’s contributions. Paradoxical thinking is a constructive tool in both analyzing and addressing the progression of Critical Management Studies.