Hard Lessons: (Critical) Management Studies and (Critical) Work and Organizational Psychology

This short paper explores what lessons Critical Work and Organizational Psychology (CWOP) might learn from the rise of Critical Management Studies (CMS) thirty years ago. I begin by exploring the conditions of possibility for CMS, before providing a history of how it grew and institutionalized. Despite its ‘success’, I describe how partial, parochial and positional it was, and open a gap between its achievements within some Business Schools and its relative invisibility outside them. I conclude with some challenges for CWOP, in the spirit of learning from CMS.