Management Studies

Abstract

In traditions of Western thought, the idea of reason remains the core concept guiding formal and managerial logic, research, and teaching in management studies. Inside this, an antagonistic structure of reality and thought were to become reality if managerial ideology was not to eclipse the true state of affairs. The managerial world is a world of direct, immediate, and non-reflected experience in which managerial regimes, Managerialism, semi-academic and quasi-scholarly subjects such as management studies exist. According to the prevailing ideology of Managerialism, the reality of managerial regimes must never be fully comprehended, transformed, or even subverted. The managerial order is to remain the only reality there is. Hence, management studies’ guiding principle is the equation of

Reason = Truth = Reality.

It is value-neutral, objective, and avoids joining the subjective and objective worlds into one antagonistic unity. Managerial reasoning remains un-reflected reasoning deprived of all its original critical content as outlined in Kantian Enlightenment.⁵³⁶ Its emancipatory powers have deliberately been annihilated so that critical reason has no longer any transformative powers. The power of the negative no longer establishes theoretical, practical, and ethical reasoning.