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In an assessment of Lawson’s social ontological analysis of the modern corporation, we consider what is marginalized: the significance of the status and the effects of the separate legal entity (SLE). The SLE is conceived as a specific type of construct that is ascribed particular properties through its stabilization within and between different (legal and economic) discourses. By showing how the SLE, as a reified construct, is rendered meaningful, real and/or consequential, we illustrate how the ‘social ontology’ of the modern corporation is radically contingent and inescapably contested. Given that the social ontology of the corporation defies definitive specification, we regard the prospect of the completeness of its disclosure (e.g. by foregrounding a specific referent) as problematic. Indeed, any account of social ontology that foregrounds a specific referent is seen to obscure a political process in which the stabilization of the SLE rests on the contingent foregrounding of particular priorities. This leads us to reflect on the power-inflected social organization of knowledge generation. Key to the explication of social ontology, and with specific reference to the corporation, is not, as Lawson contends, the concept of ‘community’ but the inescapability of contestation within relations of power that translate ontological openness into specific but precarious forms of ontic closure.

Drawing upon a range of influential contemporary movements in the social sciences such as the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, this text provides a wide-ranging analysis of management and its various specialisms. The book offers critical understandings of key areas of management theory and practice such as: accounting; strategic management; marketing; business ethics; and environmental management. The leading international contributors also examine: - the relations between power and discursive practices in the modern corporation - the role of architecture as a repressive and emancipatory force in organizations - gender and organizations and critical methodology for organizational research. Key issues of power/knowledge relations across these areas are addressed and new agendas both for these fields and for management studies as a whole are introduced. Contributing authors include: Mats Alvesson, Gibson Burrell, David Cooper, Karen Dale, Stan Deetz, Linda Forbes, John Forester, John Jermier, David Levy, Joanne Martin, Glenn Morgan, Martin Parker, Mike Power, Richard Loughlin and Hugh Willmott.

Purpose – The paper aims to examine the involvement of global accountancy firms in devising and selling tax avoidance schemes euphemistically marketed as “tax planning”. Design/methodology/approach – The study draws upon a range of secondary sources, including legal cases and government reports, to demonstrate how “tax planning” involves “wilful blindness” to complicity in dubious and sometimes fraudulent activity. Findings – The study reveals in detail the construction and promotion of elaborate tax avoidance schemes by big accounting firms. It casts doubt upon the “business culture” that has become established in these firms. Research limitations/implications – The study relies upon secondary sources. Subject to gaining adequate access to the big accounting firms, research based upon close-up investigation of “tax planning” would further illuminate such practices. Practical implications – The study shows how normalised and institutionalised “tax planning” schemes have become in the big four accounting firms. It suggests that such schemes require closer scrutiny if payments of tax are to be made as intended, and thereby provide the revenues required to maintain public services such as education, health and pensions. Social implications – The study informs a debate about the payment of taxes and the role of big accounting firms in creating aggressive tax avoidance schemes. It questions the appropriateness and adequacy of private regulation of these firms and so contributes to a public debate on the tax contribution of comparatively powerful and privileged parties. Originality/value – The study “blows the whistle” on the role of big accounting firms in devising schemes that reduce the “tax take” on business and thereby reduces the revenues required to provide and maintain public services.

This paper critically addresses the coherence, reception, and dissemination of \"situated learning theory\" (Lave and Wenger 1991). Situated learning theory commends a conceptualization of the process of learning that, in offering an alternative to cognitive theories, departs radically from the received body of knowledge on learning in organizations. The paper shows how elements of situated learning theory have been selectively adopted to fertilize or extend the established terrain of organizational learning. In this process, we argue, Lave and Wenger's embryonic appreciation of power relations as media of learning is displaced by a managerial preoccupation with harnessing (reified) \"communities of practice\" to the fulfillment of (reified) corporate objectives. We illustrate our argument by reference to Orr's (1990, 1996) study of photocopier technicians, which is very widely cited as an example of the \"new,\" situated conceptualization of learning in communities of practice. We commend a revitalization of situated learning theory in which learning practices are understood to be enabled and constrained by their embeddedness in relations of power; and, more specifically, by the unstable institutionalization of power relations within capitalist work organizations.

The paper explores how control in organizations is analysed by counterposing a poststructuralist reading and critique against what is identified as a critical realist account of its nature and significance. Drawing primarily upon Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, it argues that critical realist analysis exemplifies a position in which science is privileged and dualism is defended, in contrast to Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory where dualism is refused and there is a stronger commitment to emancipation. These differences between these versions of critical analysis are related to the more familiar terrain of organizational analysis examined in Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis; and, more specifically, in their discussion of the challenge posed by ethnomethodology to more established, commonsensical forms of analysis. The problematizing of commonsense found in ethnomethodological studies, it is suggested, has affinities with the deconstructive impulse of Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory but, crucially, the former lacks the latter’s politicoemancipatory intent (see also Pollner, 1991). In Burrell and Morgan’s terms, Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory is more radical than radical humanism (e.g. Critical Theory) in rejecting the latter’s ontology as well as refusing the sociological regulationism attributed to interpretivist analysis. The paper closes with a series of reflections upon the relevance of discourse theory for theorizing contemporary control.

Knowledge as a valuable asset of organizations is increasingly incorporated into thinking about strategy. Studies of knowledge management (KM) suggest that executives engaged in decision making often have a slender understanding of the strategic significance of knowledge. When addressing the challenge of explicating and designing a knowledge strategy, logics of codification and personalization have been differentiated and commended. The paper draws upon evidence from four case studies to identify factors that shape the evolving contexts of knowledge strategies. It is in these contexts that the challenge of continuously reviewing and revising the mix of codifying and personalizing aspects of strategic KM is practically accomplished. The cases are analysed with reference to external competition, leadership, organizational politics, culture and technology as a basis for advancing a more dynamic framework for the analysis of knowledge strategies.

Labour process analysis (LPA) is a well-established approach to the sociological study of work which attends to the instabilities of capitalism and, more specifically, to the volatile and contested nature of social relations at work. However; an unreflexive 'neo-orthodoxy' has emerged in recent years that is constrained by a series of dualistic and (critical) realist assumptions which inhibit the development of this distinctive sociology of work. This article contends that the potential of LPA can best be fulfilled through a renewal of critical reflection upon the foundational assumptions of LPA that can open up an acknowledgement and appreciation of the embroilment of subjectivity in the reproduction and transformation of production relations. This development is consistent with the central analytical importance ascribed to the 'indeterminacy of labour in LPA but invites the adoption of a negative ontology in order to advance a less narrow conception of its meaning and significance. Studies of the new media and creative industries are engaged to indicate how a revitalized labour process analysis might embrace this ontology as a way of exploring and explaining the radical contingency of organization in contemporary social relations.

The discovery of mass burial sites is rare in Europe, particularly in rural areas. Recent excavations at Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire have revealed a previously unknown catastrophic mass grave containing the remains of at least 48 men, women and children, with radiocarbon dating placing the event in the fourteenth century AD. The positive identification of Yersinia pestis in sampled skeletal remains suggests that the burial population died from the Black Death. This site represents the first Black Death mass grave found in Britain in a non-urban context, and provides unique evidence for the devastating impact of this epidemic on a small rural community.

Critical Management Studies’ or ‘CMS’ has emerged over the last ten years as the term to describe a diverse group of work that has adopted a critical or questioning approach to the traditional concerns of management studies. In this time, CMS has come to exert an increasing influence in Management and Management Studies, and while it has prompted fierce debate about its validity and use, there is no doubt that the rapidly growing interest in CMS has produces a vibrant and exciting body of work. Chris Grey and Hugh Willmott, leading authorities in this area have collected together eighteen readings, which reflect these developments, and show why CMS has become an important field of research. The book is divided into four sections, ‘Anticipating CMS’, looking at some of the roots of CMS, ‘Studying Management Critically’, ‘Critical Studies of Management’, and ‘Assessing CMS”, examining some of the internal and external critical discussions of CMS. Each reading and its significance is introduced by the editors, and in their introduction to the reader, they reflect more broadly on the history of CMS. In particular, they consider its institutionalization, both in terms of its becoming an identifiable body of work or approach, and its institutional context within business schools and indeed what it means to produce a Reader of critical work. As an assessment of CMS, the Reader will be of interest to academics, researchers and students of Management Studies. As an introduction to CMS, the book will prove invaluable to students taking courses requiring familiarity with the CMS literature.

Drawing upon a range of influential contemporary movements in the social sciences such as the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, this text provides a wide-ranging analysis of management and its various specialisms. The book offers critical understandings of key areas of management theory and practice such as: accounting; strategic management; marketing; business ethics; and environmental management. The leading international contributors also examine: - the relations between power and discursive practices in the modern corporation - the role of architecture as a repressive an