Contested rationalities, contested organizations: Feminist and postmodernist visions

Postmodernist contestations of modernist economic and organizational rationalities have made immense contributions to organizational analysis. A current direction in critical theory now, working through the postmodernist critique, seeks new conceptions of organizations and sources for the revitalization of organizational life. In particular, feminist criticism drawing on, and contributing to, postmodern forms of inquiry and interpretation, offers new visions of critical organizational analysis. This article addresses feminist postmodern critiques, and particularly discusses two feminist contributions developed out of serious critical engagement with postmodernist thought: eco‐feminism and conceptions of “relational autonomy”, of agentic, social subjectivity.