Doing Critical Management Research

Mats Alvesson holds a chair in the Business Administration department at Lund University in Sweden and is also part-time professor at University of Queensland Business School. He has done extensive research and published widely in the areas of qualitative and reflexive methodology, critical theory, organizational culture, knowledge work, identity in organizations, gender, organizational change, management consultancy etc. He has published 20 books with leading publishers and hundreds of articles, many of which are widely cited and used on higher levels in university education.

Stanley Deetz is Professor of Communication and a President's Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is Director of both the Center for the Study of Conflict, Collaboration and Creative Governance and the Peace and Conflict Studies Program. Prior to joining the CU faculty in 1997, he taught for several years at Rutgers University, chairing the department there during the 1980s.

Deetz specializes in the study of organizational communication from a critical/cultural/philosophic perspective. Organizations are considered to be complex contested sites where publics make critical economical, social and political decisions. His teaching, research, and applied activities consider both internal organizational practices and their consequences for society. His studies of commercial and community organizations have provided a theoretical understanding of organizational governance and decision making with the intent of promoting a more in-depth understanding of various organizational forms and encouraging the exploration of alternative more collaborative communication practices that allow greater democracy, higher quality decisions, and more productive cooperation among stakeholders. His current research primarily focuses on relations of power in work sites and the way these relations are produced and reproduced in everyday interaction. His work impacts on corporate social responsibility by exploring ways that values held by the larger society can be incorporated into everyday organizational decision making processes.

He is author of Leading Organizations through Transitions (Sage 2000), Doing Critical Management Research (Sage 2000), Transforming Communication, Transforming Business (Hampton, 1995) and Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life (SUNY, 1992), and editor or author of 8 other books. He has published over 100 essays in scholarly journals and books regarding stakeholder representation, decision-making, culture, and communication in corporate organizations and has lectured widely in the U.S. and Europe.

He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Göteborgs Universitet (Sweden, 1994), and has held visiting appointments at Arizona State University, the University of Texas, the University of Iowa, and the Copenhagen Business School. He is a Fellow of the International Communication Association serving as its President, 1996-97, and has held many other elected professional positions. In 2004 he received the National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar Award (a lifetime achievement award). He is also an active consultant and does training and development work for companies in the U.S. and Europe.

At CU he has served as a member of the Academic Vice Chancellor’s Advisory Committee, the Program Review and Personnel Committees for the Leeds School of Business, and the Dean’s Advisory Committee for the School or Journalism and Mass Communication. In the department he has served as Associate Chair for Graduate Studies and the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies. Additionally, he has provided programs for the Leadership Forum, Information Technology Systems, Student Affairs, Leadership Education Advancement Program and several other units on campus and in the community.