Feeling Criticized

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant: he could drink you under the table

“Critical” This and “Critical” That: My esteemed blogging colleagues at Organizations & Markets have a burr under their saddle:

At the ongoing Academy of Management Meetings there are a number of sessions with titles such as “Critical Perspectives on Power in Organizations.” Of course, we all know that “critical” is a code-word for left-leaning (often extremely so) work on the issues with which social science deals, in the traditions of mainly European lefty and muzzy sociologists and philosophers, such as Foucault, Habermas, etc.

Oh, please, guys.

First of all, lumping Foucault and Habermas together in the circle of hell reserved for the muzzy left is like lumping the Black Panthers and the NAACP together under the rubric of “black radicals.”

It’s like lumping together Glasgow’s Celtic and Rangers under the general rubric of “British soccer teams.”

Lean to the left, lean to the right, Foulcaldians, Habermasians, fight, fight, fight.

Habermas, in fact, has spent his career trying to reconcile the European tradition with the Anglo-American, building on the insights of good old American Pragmatism — which of course, only non-Americans even read and discuss anymore.

Witness, for example, his long-time collaboration with Prof. John Searle.

Foucault? Unrecalcitrant in his deliberate refusal to write in plain English, that I will grant you, cheerfuly.

I’ve read tons of Foucault, and learned things from the guy, but it’s true: there’s absolutely no point trying to extract sound bites for my PowerPoint from the guy or trying to build an inclusive, interdisciplinary conversation around him.

More generally, though, there’s a technical meaning of the term “critical” that is pretty well accepted and approved for use in the social sciences.

As James Faulconer of BYU writes in a glossary for one of his courses that has become a source for Google’s “define:” query:

As used in Kant’s philosophy, this adjective refers to the philosophical/rational ability to delimit reason. Kant’s first major work, The Critique of Pure Reason set out to show the limits of reason so as to open up the possibility of talking meaningfully about morality and religion, matters that do not fall exclusively within the compass of reason. For example, Kant argued that, though reason enables us to think about causation, it does not allow us to think about the cause of causation. Reason will come to contradictory but equally plausible conclusions (”antinomies”) if it tries to think about things beyond its limits, such as the cause of causation.

Do we no longer read Kant in this country as a basis for our conversations on methodology for the human and natural sciences?

I mean, come on: Commies hate Kantianism!

I, mean, I do realize that there’s a movement afoot to overthrow the tyranny of Englightment “ideology” over the minds of our American youth, but come on, you can’t really be serious about this:

Still, I am somewhat disturbed that a scholarly organization, such as the AoM, can accept session titles of these kind. The clear implication of these kind of titles is that the rest of us, who may also be interested in, say, “power in organizations,” are not really critical — which to me means that we are not serious scholars. That implication is evidently preposterous, particularly given the low level of scholarship that often characterizes so-called “critical studies,” including those in management.

Think of the distinction between the “non-critical” and the “critical” as something like the distinction between the folks who make the money and those who audit the books.

Most of the energy in any field of study goes toward applying established methods of study to questions that still need answering or settling. And quite rightly so. That’s where the real work gets done.

So let’s use the term “applied” to describe that kind of work: practicioners as opposed to theorists.

That sounds a little better, doesn’t it? While the theory boys and girls cavil, the majority of researchers are applying themselves, diligently, to finding new applications for emerging knowledge in their field.

So, fine: blessed be the experimenters. It’s the spadework without which neither theoretical nor practical knowledge could ever hope to advance.

The critical faction, on the other hand, is the audit department. They’re like internal affairs: everyone despises them as hidebound, nitpicking and parasitical, and their failure to keep us honest is only felt when they fail at it.

Think Arthur Andersen, may he rest in peace.

They’re the folks who sift through the results of vast amounts of applied research and try to use it to refine the methods that we use so we can produce better results, and understand them better.

They slap us on the wrist when they think we are making claims for the practical implications of our empirical findings that may not be supported by the data, or by the limitations inherent in the epistemological condition of the human bean-counter.

Think of them as the border patrol.

So I have to say I really, really dislike the talking point my friends are passing along here, and especially the effort to identify different phases of the research process with the ideological polarities of contemporary political “debate.”

That way lies faith-based science and research.

And faith-based corporate managers are like faith-based aeronautical engineers: Keeping them around can be detrimental to your bottom line. And it can cause your EKG to flatline.

The same goes for my friends at O&M: Painting with such a broad brush, they’re making themselves look a little stoopid. And I hate to see such bright folks hiding their light under a bushel that way!

On the other hand, if you want to argue that some academic fields have gotten to be all criticism and no basic research, you’ll get a sympathetic hearing here.

I’m with Claude Levi-Strauss, who wrote late in his career that you really have no business turning to criticism until you’ve paid your dues in the field with a bucket and a toothbrush.

There is an unfortunate tendency these days, especially in academia, to coddle young brains by letting ‘em beg off the spadework and go directly to armchair pontification.

And there’s no better recipe for disaster than putting an armchair pontificator in charge of a real-life project.

Think of lieutenants fresh out of West Point during the Vietnam conflict: They had the lowest life expectancy of anyone on the battlefield. If the Cong didn’t get them, fragging did. The ones that survived were the ones that listened to their sergeants, the one with the experience and the intuitive know-how.

That’s the funny thing about life experience: You can’t always explain, at a formal, theoretical level, why what you know won’t work won’t work.

But you do know, the same way that some Chinese medicines turn out to work, even if the explanation why — chakras and so on — has no rational basis.

Willow tea works for headache because it contains salicyclic acid: the basic ingredient of aspirin. But tiger penis doesn’t give you a permanent boner, except maybe via the placedo effect.

I guess that’s why I hate so much to see this kind of schism between the theoreticians and the practicioners.

So please, guys, don’t try to shut up the Foulcaldians and negative dialectians.

Here’s a hint: Arm yourself with a fat binder of business cases, attend those critical theory seminars, and pepper the pointy-headed crowd with relevant counterexamples. What about this? What about that? What about the Cisco Academy in Africa?

I mean, I hate hasty generalizations based on airy-fairy speculation just as much as you do. Seriously.

This tactic might well help to steer the debate back toward the planet Earth, which I submit would be more useful for everyone involved.