Critical Management Studies conference – WBS faculty introduce democratisation

The 6th annual Critical Management Studies (CMS) conference was hosted by WBS on the Warwick campus this year. A large gathering of 405 delegates from 34 countries came together to study and discuss 365 papers, 25 streams and 5 workshops.

Keynote speakers included Professor Simon Critchley, an English philosopher who teaches at the New School for Social Research at New York, and holds a part-time post as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tilburg.

Marta Calás, Professor of Organization Studies and International Management and Linda Smircich, Professor of Organization Studies, both at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, addressed the second plenary together.

At the third plenary WBS faculty Alessia Contu and André Spicer presented to the assembly a plan to democratise CMS, including the creation of the CMS board which was favourably received by the participants. They also introduced Dr Gianluigi Mangia who will be responsible for organising the next CMS conference in Naples, Italy, at the Federico II University, together with the doctoral consortium which will be held on the island of Capri.

Alessia Contu, Associate Professor of Organisation Studies at WBS, sums up this year's conference, "Discussions ranged from critical accounting to corporate social responsibility, organisational violence, and the political dimension of academic work of critical scholars and their engagement with the concrete, reflecting the importance of this sort of critically reflective work in today's crisis climate."