Abstract:

In their 2025 review article, Spicer and Alvesson engage in a scathing critique of CMS as stale, in decline, formulaic, predictable, focused on the usual suspects and relying on one-dimensional critique. In this paper, we argue that as review articles do more than merely summarise the field but also perform important field governance and boundary-making work, they have the capacity to inflict damage and violence and therefore necessitate moral responsibility and a reflexive ethics of critique. Drawing on dialectical and care-ethical sensibilities, we offer a critique of Spicer and Alvesson’s critique, showing how it narrows the space it claims to expand. To structure our critique and response, we draw inspiration from the children’s book series ‘That’s not my…’ as a dialectical device, arguing that the vision conjured in Spicer and Alvesson’s review is not our CMS, because it’s too self-authorising, too linear, too careless, too brutal, too exclusionary, and too hopeless. More broadly, we explore how review articles can construct centres and margins and reproduce divisions, and how friendly fire can undermine pluralist critical scholarship. We offer an alternative mapping of CMS as vibrant, contradictory, rhizomatic, caring, inclusive, hopeful and exciting. That’s our CMS.

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Critical Management Studies

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Dr. Olivier Ratle