This article reviews the use of the later Foucault in organization and management studies. Offering an evaluation of readings of the later writing, we comment on arguments for re-focusing on genealogical criticism, for an alternative Foucauldian politics of the workplace and a form of practical criticism sometimes derived from the later writing.A key aim is to attempt to open up new directions for critical inquiry drawing on other ways of reading Foucault. If genealogy is to be installed as a vital resource for critique, there appears to be a need for renewal. On the question of political alternatives, we comment on the ambiguities and silences -especially the historical silencesof the later Foucault's interpreters. A style of practical criticism inferred from readings of the later writing should not, we suggest, be accepted without qualification.
K E Y WO R D Scritical management studies critique Foucault genealogy parrhesia
This discussion reviews begins with a review of the uses to which Foucault's thought has been put in the study of human resource management, going on to consider - and to reject - a number of major criticisms of Foucault and Foucauldian studies of human resource management. Yet there remains much in Foucault's project that we seem often to ignore. Accordingly, the discussion considers the question of the articulation between Foucault's intellectual work and the practical, political spheres. Foucault conceives his own critical intellectual practice as part of a way of life analogous to the classical conception of an ethos. Adopting a loose and critical relationship to Foucault, the argument of the paper is that Foucault's ethos demands further attention as the possibilities for more practical and engaged forms of critical intellectual work have begun to be debated in management studies. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.
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