What do Business Schools Really Teach? The Role of Critical Management Studies in Business Education

The four articles in this section focus on “institutions” and their role in breaking the rules (or not, as the question mark suggests). This is a somewhat ironic focus for this collection of articles given the rule-like properties of institutions that are so often their defining feature. Conceptually these articles address ways in which different types organizations help or hinder the progress of critical management studies in terms of getting certain things done, and done in a certain way. My commentary is structured around the two types of institutions discussed in the four articles in this section on “Breaking the rules?” (i) critical management studies as an ideology which Martin Parker compares to a political party and Hugh Willmott to a social movement, and (ii) the business school as an obstacle to the diffusion of that ideology which Sarah Stookey shows in the context of American business school programs and Kimmo Alajoutsijärvi et al. explain as a function of the spread of academic capitalism.