Abstract
In this chapter, we explore the intersection of media studies and management studies, working to develop an understanding of the importance of critical thinking in the traditions of both fields. The author examines critical management studies (CMS), an emerging field that engages critically engages with management science by interrogating underlying assumptions and implicit epistemological foundations. CMS shares a theoretical ancestry with media and communications studies. This contribution is important for two reasons. First, there is a need to clarify research directions that can enrich theory about media management, an obviously cross-disciplinary practice. Second, it is important to question assumptions about the divide between critical and administrative approaches in social science because that has great relevance in this field. Our examination considers a range of pertinent concepts, including instrumental rationality, performativity and managerialism, culminating in a proposed critical framework that should prove useful for future development in both scholarly work and practical application. Critique is also offered regarding the critical tradition in the context of media management scholarship.
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Notes
- 1.
Rupert Murdoch’s son, James, was, until the phone-hacking crisis, chairman of News Corp. Europe ad Asia, where he ran its newspaper operations and much of the company’s European TV assets.
- 2.
Not without considerable criticism from both within the organisation and opponents within both academic and policymaking circles.
- 3.
The Culture Industry first appears as a term in one of the chapters of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’.
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Brown, C. (2016). Media Management: A Critical Discipline?. In: Lowe, G., Brown, C. (eds) Managing Media Firms and Industries. Media Business and Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08515-9_5
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