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British Journal of Management, Vol. 8, 99–106 (1997)

Management Research and

Literary Criticism
Geoff Easton and Luis Araujo
Department of Marketing, The Management School, University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YX, UK

This paper is concerned with analysing the role of rhetoric and literary criticism in
research and scholarship. It is argued that critical debate and dialogue are the hub of
the process of research and scholarship and that social science and literature have more
in common than is normally recognized. Most of these debates are carried out in
writing and involve elaborate writing and reading of texts – or literature as we prefer
to call it. We argue the case that management researchers may have something to learn
from literary criticism. A model of literary criticism comprising four different modes of
criticism – mimetic, expressive, pragmatic and objective – is described and the implica-
tions for management research are suggested. The paper concludes with a number of
reflections on what can be gained from this type of analysis and on the role of reflexivity
in the research process.

Introduction proponents of the debate in marketing, Hunt

There has been a great deal of largely sterile
debate around the issue of whether the field of
management studies and its marketing sub-
discipline are sciences. In this paper we propose
to explore the somewhat radical alternative that,
put crudely, the field of management studies may
be regarded as an artistic enterprise. By this we
do not mean to become embroiled in the equally
fatuous argument about whether the practice of
management is an art, black or otherwise. Rather
we wish to treat written reflections on the pro-
cesses of management, what we are normally
pleased to call theory, as literature.
There were two related sources of inspiration
for this departure; the first was an interest in the
role of metaphor in the development of theory
(Easton and Araujo, 1993). The second source of
inspiration comes from the epistemological battle
that has been fought out in the pages of leading
management journals over the last few years (see
e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Knights, 1992;
Brownlie et al., 1994). One area upon which there
appears to be increasing convergence of views
is criticality. For example two of the principal
(1990) and Anderson (1988), claim to occupy very
different positions. However, both appear to wish
to replace, albeit reluctantly, the notion from the
physical sciences of a critical experiment that dis-
tinguishes between alternative explanations, with
a process of critical debate from which explana-
tion emerges as the most convincing alternative
to the community of scholars concerned.
Debates of the kind advocated above are
largely conducted in writing. They comprise text
or, as we would prefer to argue in this paper,
literature. Traditional literature has a long history
of critical analysis. Indeed it is evident that much
of literary criticism has had the same sort of
objectives as appear to be central to the ‘critical’
movements in social science; to debate which
views are more profound, truer or offer the best
explanations of the world. However, there are
at least two major differences. In literary criti-
cism there is a greater acceptance of the non-
incremental nature of such conclusions. What
Greek authors wrote thousands of years ago has
equal standing with contemporary works. In addi-
tion there is more equanimity about the coex-
istence of multiple ‘explanations’.

© 1997 British Academy of Management

100
We have thus been led to argue that theoretical
writing can be treated as literature in the sense
that it can be fruitfully subjected to literary
criticism. This approach has a long tradition in
sociology (see e.g. Brown, 1977, 1987, 1989) and
has also been used in some management sub-
disciplines which have used critical, Foucauldian
approaches to their subject matter (see e.g. Miller
and O’Leary, 1987). If a critical approach is
required to examine a body of theory, if its quality
is to be evaluated, if it is to be judged, then it
seems sensible to borrow some of the ideas that
already exist to help the process along. We pre-
sent first a simple four-element categorization of
critical theory and for each category we discuss
the relevance of critical theory to the written out-
put of managerial researchers and theoreticians.
We conclude by suggesting ways in which this
particular epistemological approach can fruitfully
be developed.
Theories of literary criticism
Descriptions of management research theory and
works of literary fiction might seem, at first blush,
to have little beyond the medium of expression in
common. However we can bring them into closer
juxtaposition by more careful definition. By
literature we mean a written work of art which is
intended not only to divert and entertain but to
provide greater understanding of the world. The
relationship between entertainment and enlighten-
ment is a particularly difficult one to disentangle
and since philosophers have been attempting to
do so for millennia it would be presumptuous of
us to offer more than one or two comments here.
It is, for example, tempting to separate art from
entertainment precisely on the grounds of the
insights and understanding it provides. Art en-
lightens; entertainment diverts. However, different
art forms appear to incorporate different blends
of the two elements. Poetry, it could be argued, is
written to offer more palpable insights into the
human condition than music. However, few
would assert that, as a result, music is ‘merely’
entertaining. It evokes many kinds of emotion
and intellectual pleasure. Whether these should
be regarded as insightful and in what sense is a
moot point. It is tempting to conclude that trying
to separate out the elements is a not particularly
worthwhile endeavour.
G. Easton and L. Araujo
In a similar way management research or
theory can be regarded as both intentionally
fictional and entertaining; always the former,
rather rarely the latter. Even the most radical
positivist accepts that theory is an abstraction or
simplification of the ‘real world’; in other words a
fiction. For a conventionalist or constructionist
the difference between truth and fiction is, in any
case, immaterial. Truth in their terms is deter-
mined by convention or by social construction.
Since truth cannot be independently verified
it cannot be distinguished from fiction. Astley
(1985), for example, argues that knowledge is
generated as a result of careful scrutiny and
examination of ideas in public communication, by
advocates of diverse theoretical positions before
they are accepted as truth statements. New defini-
tions of truth are regarded as emerging products
of negotiated consensus amongst truth-makers.
This view of knowledge as the product of social
negotiation within a scientific community, accord-
ing to Astley (1985, p. 499), highlights the import-
ance of theoretical language as the medium
through which the community’s negotiations are
effected. Scientific fields are thus regarded as
‘word systems’ created and maintained through
a process of negotiation between adherents to
different theoretical languages.
Further, Davis (1971, 1986) suggests that in
the social sciences a new theory succeeds to the
extent that it undermines the validity of assump-
tions that have been routinely taken for granted
by the discipline. Formulating interesting theories
that attract the attention of an audience, reacting
against a baseline of what that audience pre-
sumed to be true, is, according to Davis (1971,
1986), fundamental to the success of a theorist.
Cognitive and aesthetic factors rather than the
simple ability to explain empirical reality is what
makes a theory interesting and successful.
There are of course differences between art and
the social sciences and we can learn from these
differences. The key notion which may be trans-
ferable to management researchers is the distinc-
tion made between the writer and the critic. The
relationship may not always be an easy one but
it is symbiotic. Critics cannot exist without works
to criticize; writers cannot write without being
influenced, however subliminally, by the critical
theories of the day. The interplay between the two
surely cannot but help to enrich our understand-
ing. We will later suggest that the writer/critic
Management Research and Literary Criticism
Universe
Work
Audience Artist
Figure 1
partition provides a useful model for manage-
ment researchers. We already have the writers.
Perhaps it is now time to engage some critics.
But what do literary critics do that their counter-
parts in management research do not? Literary
criticism, because of its antiquity and ubiquity,
has developed techniques, modus operandi, theo-
retical underpinnings. Critics must have a basis
upon which they can judge what is good liter-
ature, what is ‘valid’. It would be helpful to novice
critics such as ourselves if we had some sort of
taxonomy of critical theories. A number exist, for
example; object, literature, audience and author
(Bazerman, 1988); and legislative, theoretical and
descriptive (Watson, 1973). However the schema
developed by Abrams (1981) serves our purpose
best since it is well articulated and allows us to
place within it the forms of criticism we had
already identified a priori. It employs four rather
general categories within each of which a number
of critical theories can be placed. The categories,
and their relationships, are identified in the above
diagram (Figure 1).
The authors make no claims that this taxonomy
is either universal or particularly subtle. Perhaps
its most obvious defect is that it does not overtly
take into account all the possible relationships
between the variables. Nevertheless it provides
structure for what follows and a point of departure.
1. Mimetic
Critical theories that are concerned with the uni-
verse are termed mimetic. Art imitates life. Greek
philosophy was very concerned with this notion.
For example Socrates distinguished between the
idea, the fundamental nature of a thing, the thing
itself and the imitation of that thing. The imitation
is thus at third hand from the essence and the arts
are therefore no more profound or to be valued
101
than crafts, the law or moralists. This view pre-
vailed, more or less until the Renaissance, though
its impact upon artistic output does not seem
to have been profound. Later writers made the
distinction between iconic and conventional
imitation; the former occurs when there is clear
conformance between the object and the ‘imita-
tion’, the latter where the resemblance is defined
by convention. However, the most important
development in critical theory of this kind is a
rejection of the purely imitative nature of art.
That is to say, art can reach beyond its purely
or apparently imitative form to the essence of
the universe. Art has the capacity to reveal as
well as record. What is less clear is how the
process of revelation works or how we are to
judge its worth.
The traditional epistemologies of management
research would have few quibbles with the funda-
mental assumptions underlying mimetic theories
of criticism. A world exists out there and is more
or less knowable. One can gather data about it
and use those data to construct artefacts which
describe the underlying nature, the essence of the
world. Only in the criteria of judgement of worth
do traditional social scientists and artists begin to
differ. The former are concerned with the close-
ness of fit; the degree of imitation. The latter
know this to be a wild goose chase and opt for
more value-based and social benchmarks.
How then does a literary critic judge literature
in the mimetic mode? Let us nominalize a con-
tinuum and argue that there are two possible
levels of analysis, the superficial or iconic and the
profound or conventional. At the most superficial
level the critic can point out the correspondence
between the text and apparent reality. But where
do the data come from? The critic could collect
such data first, second or third hand: first hand
through a crucial experiment or test, second hand
through the data of others and third hand through
an interpretation of what others perceive gener-
ally to be the case.
What we are describing here is precisely the
sort of analysis management researchers have
traditionally undertaken. They seek to understand
what has been written, separate what is defini-
tional and conceptualize from what is proposed
or hypothesized and judge whether there is an
a priori match to existing data and experience,
usually from their own personal perspective. A
literary critic might spend longer on the process
102
and ask more pointed questions but would not
change the procedure profoundly.
However, if we analyse texts at a more pro-
found level we might ask different questions. In
particular we would wish to judge whether this is
a good (the best?) way to represent the pheno-
mena and to categorize previous efforts to
address the same topic. In other words is this a
better convention? One crucial way of measuring
this is to ask whether the text offers new insights.
Does it organize our perceptions of the world
differently so that, for example, we see new con-
nections? New does not necessarily mean good
but they are commensurate notions in the eval-
uation of theory. It is still possible to use com-
parison with data as a criterion for judgement but
the data in this case are not ‘real world obser-
vations’ but previous theories and models. What
the critic is concerned to point out is how this
theory compares with others, for example what
new concepts it employs, how it relates concepts
to each other, what is the scope and level of
analysis, etc.
Since mimetic criticism is closest to the current
ways of judging theoretical writing it was always
likely that fewer new insights would arise from its
use in this analysis. However, we were rather
surprised how many new avenues of thought were
generated. In particular we highlight the import-
ance of separating definition from proposition in
iconic analysis and the comparison with altern-
ative models (which for greater rigour should be
identified) in the conventional analysis.
2. Expressive
In the expressive theories of literary criticism the
artist is central. For example Wordsworth wrote:
‘Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings’ (Wordsworth, 1800). In order to under-
stand what the words mean one should attempt to
understand not only what the writer felt and their
state of mind but the temporal, social and cultural
context in which the words were written. For
example in ‘Blessing the Torrent: On Words-
worth’s Later Style’, Hartman (1964) interprets
one of Wordsworth’s later sonnets in the light
of, among other things, his knowledge of the
circumstances in which it was written. We know
that Wordsworth wrote the poem on a significant
nostalgic trip to Wales late in life and that it was
one of several such poems that attempted to
G. Easton and L. Araujo
‘domesticate the sublime’ through the medium of
poetry. The task of the critic in this situation is to
interpret the meaning of the text in the light of
the context. Consistency is clearly an important
criterion in these circumstances. Do the context-
ual parameters provide a plausible reading of the
text? While replicating the intended meaning may
be important in some works in others it may be
less so. At the heart of the expressive school is
the assumption that what is expressed is worth
expressing, which may not always be true. Not
every author is a Marx or Durkheim, a Derrida or
Simon. It can also be argued that many works of
art are timeless and need no context for them to
work. Could the same not be true of theories in
management? Will Marx and Durkheim always
have something to say to every generation of
social scientists or will they be treated as ancestral
and marginalized?
The equivalent of the expressive school in the
social sciences is the sub-discipline of the socio-
logy of knowledge. Its concern is to describe and
explain the behaviour of the producers of know-
ledge, most particularly scientists and social sci-
entists. A sociology of knowledge approach to
analysis of publications would offer a more sys-
tematic way to attempting to explain and under-
stand the meaning of the texts that contain the
knowledge we seek to interpret (Latour and
Bastide, 1986; Law, 1986).
Expressive criticism argues that an under-
standing of the authors of theories and the
context in which they write, is required before a
full understanding of their text is possible. As a
discipline it requires that we be more flexible
about the processes which lead to the research we
carry out. Formal reflexivity in the form of studies
of the sociology of management knowledge is
required. But we also need informal reflexivity
as individual researchers ask questions such as
‘why is the author saying that now?’ and ‘how
did this come to be published?’ as well as con-
fronting our own motives by asking ‘why am I
really doing this piece of research/writing?’ and
being prepared to accept the answer or do some-
thing else more worthwhile.
3. Pragmatic
Pragmatic criticism centres on the audience.
Literary critics of this school analyse texts in
order to discover how they achieve particular
Management Research and Literary Criticism
audience effects. The most obvious objective is
likely to be persuasion. Where this is the case the
pragmatic school becomes involved with the
theory of rhetoric. Put simply, ‘rhetorical’ theory
seeks to answer the question; what rhetorical
devices are used to persuade the readers of the
value of a text?
But what persuasion is involved in theory
exposition? Surely writing of this kind merely
seeks to present the material in as transparent a
way as possible. Certainly early Greek philo-
sophers such as Aristotle were concerned to
distinguish between rhetoric as practised by the
Sophists and philosophy whose purpose was to
understand the world without the overlay of
persuasive techniques. Later Cicero persuaded
centuries of scholars that the two could not be
separated. However, with the advent of science,
rhetoric was once again marginalized. It became
a normative subject useful for certain types of
occupation (lawyers, politicians, salespeople),
none of them particularly well regarded in
society!
However, in the twentieth century a number of
philosophers from very different schools, Nietz-
sche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein for example,
began to question the ability of man to separate
what was said from the way it was said; to dis-
tinguish between subject and object. The current
day postmodernists carry on the same theme.
Once again it became important to understand
rhetoric as an indispensable element of scientific
theory. However it is at the empirical level that
the most interesting work is being done. From the
1950s the ‘discipline’ of the rhetoric of inquiry has
been developing.
The basic assumptions/findings of this new and
burgeoning field of study are, as yet, few but power-
ful. First of all it is argued that no researchers
write transparently, communicating without the
need or desire to persuade: ‘In matters from
mathematical proofs to literary criticism, scholars
write rhetorically’ (Nelson et al., 1987).
Acceptance of one’s theoretical views is
fundamental to the progression of knowledge in
the direction that one desires. It leads to honours
which may be a goal in their own right. But it also
leads to more resources and greater power which
in turn gives the theory more impetus. It is tempt-
ing to conclude that the shape of knowledge in
the field will be profoundly shaped by the relative
rhetorical skills of the researchers.
103
A second concern of the rhetoric of enquiry is
the nature of argumentation and the belief that:
‘Every scientist or scholar, regardless of field,
relies on common devices of rhetoric: on meta-
phors, invocations of authority, and appeals to
audiences – themselves creatures of rhetoric.’
(Nelson et al., 1987)
However, it also appears to be the case that
each field or discipline has its own rhetoric. Why
should this be the case and what might be the
relationship between the nature of the field and
the rhetoric it employs? Studies in the sociology
of knowledge strongly suggests that different
paradigms or schools, defined as social groups
rather than as areas of knowledge, are to a greater
or lesser extent homogeneous in terms of their
beliefs and perceptions. Work progresses in a field
because those involved agree, among other things,
about what research activities are important, how
they should be carried out and how they should
be judged. Implicit in this view is that values are
also shared. Bazerman (1988, p. 47) stresses the
socially constructed nature of textual and literary
conventions within a particular discipline:
‘The words are shaped by the discipline – in its
communally developed linguistic resources and
expectations; in its stylised identification and
structuring of realities to be discussed; in its liter-
ature; in its active procedures of reading, evaluat-
ing, and using texts; in its structured interactions
between writer and reader. The words arise out of
the activity, procedures and relationships within
the community.’
Thus in the texts which are used to communi-
cate to other members of the paradigm, com-
petent writers will know how to couch their
message so that it is not only believed but valued.
They will know what authorities to quote, what
sequence of argument to use and whether under-
statement or lyricism works best. Examples of
rhetorical analysis of particular disciplines include
McCloskey (1985, 1994), McCloskey and Klamer
(1995), Klamer (1987), Klamer et al. (1988)
for economics, Rosaldo (1987) for anthropology,
Atkinson (1990) for ethnography, Throgmorton
(1991) for policy analysis and Stern (1990, 1994a,
1994b) for marketing theory and advertising.
Czarniawska-Joerges (1993) presents an interest-
ing argument for the redemption of narrative
knowledge in the social sciences and the breakdown
104
of artificial distinctions between scientific and
narrative knowledge.
In criticizing the hegemonic tendencies of mod-
ernist epistemologies in economics, McCloskey
(1985) analyses economics thought in terms of a
literary criticism orientation. In his view, to state
that the rhetorics of economics can be analysed
from a literary criticism perspective does not
invalidate its claim to scientific status. Econom-
ists, like any other scientists, do not speak into the
void; the rhetorical character of science makes it
social and the language of economics is constitutive
of that social practice.
‘A literary man with advanced training in math-
ematics and statistics stumbling into Economet-
rica would be astonished at the metaphors
surrounding him, in a sea of allegory.’ (McCloskey,
1985, p. 78)
The task of an economics criticism would be to
probe and dissect samples of economic argument
to detect, in the manner of a literary or philo-
sophical exegesis, the ways in which the authors
attempt to persuade their audience (McCloskey
1985, p. 69). The purpose of such scrutiny is not to
establish definitive interpretations, criticise liter-
ary form or ridicule the authors. It is rather, to look
beyond the received view on content, by exam-
ining the literary form and style of argumentation
chosen by the author. It is to understand better
what the author has written. We could apply the
same argument to management research.
4. Objective
The focus of the objective form of criticism is the
work itself with no outside reference. In Abrams’s
(1981, p. 26) words, objective criticism analyses
the text as a self-sufficient entity constituted by
its parts and their internal relations and judges
the text by criteria intrinsic to its own mode of
being. Of course, this mode of criticism is actually
impossible; one cannot separate the process of
analysing the text as an arrangement of signs and
codes from its reception and interpretation.
Nevertheless the intention is to isolate and focus
on the text, regarded as an artefact of convention
and contrivance as any other cultural product
(Atkinson, 1990). Two forms of analysis seem to be
possible here; the textual and deconstructionist.
In the process of textual analysis one can set up
criteria for the judgement of the work per se
G. Easton and L. Araujo
which can be both external and internal to the
text. One may simply expose the literary con-
ventions underlying the production of the text
and ask whether it conforms to any specific
literary genre. Similarly, the analysis of master
tropes and styles of representation involved in the
text may point to hidden relationships both
within and outside the text and generally help the
process of interpretation by locating its content in
the appropriate context. But the text may also
generate within itself criteria to facilitate its own
judgement through the way it positions itself in
relation to other texts, as well as redefining the
criteria according to which other texts will be
judged – e.g. by invoking new methodological,
epistemological or aesthetic criteria to evaluate
its own claims. Further, it is the critic or reviewer’s
job to suggest a set of criteria to evaluate a text
and to employ them in order to help others decide
what they think and believe.
By contrast to simple textual analysis, post-
structuralism and its more general counter-
part postmodernism seek to examine texts
from a totally different viewpoint. In the post-
structuralist universe, determining a meaning
from a text is problematical. Language is not
regarded as a transparent medium or a ‘conduit’,
a carrier of ideas and thoughts (Reddy, 1979). On
the contrary, language is regarded as opaque and
dense, framing and representing, often in subtle
and surreptitious ways, our understanding of the
external world.
In the structuralist perspective, language is seen
as a system of differences in which each term or
sign is defined not by itself but by the presence of
other terms from which it is seen to differ. Lan-
guage as a system of differences reveals a structure
characterized by the impossibility of locating mean-
ing in a sign, a system with neither beginning nor
end, in which a term can only be defined by its
negative, by what it is not. In post-structuralist,
deconstructionist views on language and writing
(see e.g. Cooper, 1989; Chia, 1994; Noordehaven,
1995), texts and discourse are seen as pervaded
by ambivalence, self-contradictions and double-
binds. The main purpose of deconstruction is to
overturn what is regarded as the logocentric tend-
encies inherent in a text – logocentrism being de-
fined as the intellectual tendency to structure
the text around central and foundational notions
that ensure stability and certitude of meaning. In
order to overcome this tendency and to reveal the
Management Research and Literary Criticism
metaphysical foundations to which a text is an-
chored, deconstruction offers a double movement
of overturning and, what Cooper (1989) calls,
metaphorization.
The movement of overturning recognizes that
the two terms do not simply coexist at the same
level but that one of them has always got the
upper hand. Merely overturning one term and
replacing it with the other only re-establishes the
previous hierarchical structure of dual opposition.
In order to combat the tendency of process to
degrade into structure, deconstruction employs a
second movement of ‘metaphorisation’ (Cooper,
1989, p. 483). Derrida uses this second movement
to emphasize that two binary opposites not only
oppose each other – as in the structuralist per-
spective – but are actually found to inhabit and
mutually define each other. Thus two individual
terms interpenetrate and merge in a continuous
and undecidable exchange of attributes.
The main conclusion of reading a text in an
objective literary criticism mode is that meaning
is not something that resides in the text but has
instead to be imposed on the text. In order to un-
derstand and make sense of text the reader must
draw on stocks of experience and knowledge,
cultural and literary conventions in order to
construct and infer meaning. More profoundly,
ambiguity and undecidability is not regarded as a
nefarious effect that can be eliminated or mini-
mized. On the contrary, it is an inevitable feature
of human discourse and can be used to develop
insights through questioning and probing and
shifting boundaries of meaning through further
and deeper analysis of the text.
Conclusions
One might have thought that literary criticism
would have offered management researchers
little more than advice as to how to write more
literate and readable papers. In practice, we hope
that we have convinced you that our foray into
the world of literary criticism has raised profound
issues about the whole process of doing and re-
porting research, both at the paradigm and
individual level. The mimetic school of criticism
reminds us that there are profoundly different
schools of epistemological thought and that we
105
cannot ascribe meaning to what we read until we
know to which school, consciously or unconsciously
chosen, the author belongs. But it would privilege
profound as well as iconic views and accept
multiple interpretations of the same phenomena.
The expressive school provides arguments for the
importance of not only understanding the text but
also the social processes which gave rise to it.
Should not every discipline have its own sociology
of knowledge? The pragmatic school returns us
once again to the text and the use of rhetoric in its
many forms to persuade us to accept what has
been written. Such knowledge is valuable not
simply so that we can become immune to siren
calls but also so that we can understand the
nature of the paradigm whose output we are read-
ing. Finally, the objective school, on the one hand,
in terms of textual analysis, provides us with ways
of judging text qua text. On the other hand, the
deconstructionists argue that such a task is im-
possible and point out to us the ambiguity and un-
certainty inherent in the interpretation of any
text.
It is tempting to offer recommendations along
the lines of ‘Therefore the discipline of manage-
ment [sic] should decide . . .’ However, paradigm
shifts based on the reading of a single paper are
rather rare in the social sciences so we will confine
ourselves to suggesting what we believe we should
try to do ourselves as a result of what we have
learned in our foray into literary criticism. We
should clarify our own epistemological assump-
tions before, during and after carrying out a piece
of research and keep abreast of the epistemo-
logical debates. We should spend more time talk-
ing to other writers instead of just reading what
they write and read more sociology of knowledge.
We should ‘carefully read’ a smaller number of
texts instead of skim-reading a greater number.
We should discuss and dissect, with colleagues,
more papers, our own as well as others, more
often. We should be explicit about the criteria
we are using to judge what we read and eschew
simplistic ‘a bunch of garbage’ evaluations. We
should constantly question our assumptions that
we have understood what we have written as well
as what others have written. Finally we should be
more reflexive about all our research and writing
and try to persuade others that they should be
too. This paper represents a small contribution to
the latter process.
106
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