I am responding to the call of this special issue by sharing accounts of my queer activist Ph.D. experience in business schools. It is hoped that this will prompt queered scholarship and research and propose answers to the concerns raised about the discriminatory and rigid nature of the current dominant humanist approach in management organisational studies (MOS).
This paper illustrates possibilities that emerge from using a queer ethos, through examples from authors who explored queer theory in MOS before me, queer activists' knowledge and my own experience as a queer troublemaker Ph.D. student doing queered research. I also use metaphors from queer communities to inspire a new way of writing academic research.
I articulate two propositions to queer MOS research: (1) how a queer ethos, which is an attitude of openness, provocation and discomfort, can guide and renew research and daily practices in academia, (2) how a queer writing inspired by the queer concept of genderfluidity can help to rethink standards of academic knowledge.
This queer ethos might help researchers to position themselves between blurry uncertainty and radical closure to develop a much-needed relational, processual and critical way of doing research in MOS.
Queer alternatives remain in the shadows of MOS. Authors have mostly used the conceptual power of queer theory, but few have explored its empirical dimensions. Queer theory offers still underexplored avenues to destabilize and resignify our way of doing research in MOS by questioning binaries and processes that normalize. I develop this untapped disruptive potential in this paper.
