What to stop doing in order to get things done? A critical engagement with the discourse of critical management studies

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter engages with the performativity discourse in CMS that seeks to impact practice for social transformation. It seeks to draw attention to the implicit assumption of ‘scale’ as a causal mechanism in social transformation. Approach – This essay is primarily conceptual and theoretical. However it uses two real life social organizations from India as an illustration for the basic assumptions and the argument. It draws upon institutional theory and William Wimsatt’s work on ontology of complex systems, causation and robustness to make its arguments. Findings – The essay argues that large size and scale does not necessarily mean greater social transformation for the good. Drawing upon Wimsatt’s work, it argues that system level causal mechanisms are not necessarily limited to aggregative, additive effects the way a scale-based argument would have us believe. In fact such systemic interactions would be unpredictable. Therefore when CMS as a community of scholars looks at difficulty in scaling up of successful endeavours as a weakness it might hamper egalitarian social transformation in more ways than one. It delays and/or closes opportunities for new ways, risks reproducing ills of existing large scale systems and creating oppressive universals. It suggests that for a pluriversal world a more phenomenological understanding of local transformative efforts is needed for the CMS community. Value – This chapter provides a novel and sound theoretical basis for eschewing size and scale as indispensible for fostering social transformation. © 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.