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2025 AOM Annual Meeting

CMS

DIG Highlight

25163: CMS Keynote: Back To Business! Or, Why I’m Trying To Reinvent Myself as an Organizational Ethnographer

Monday, July 28, 2025
17:30 - 19:00 CEST (GMT+2)
Location: Bella Center: Hall B- B3-m9
Session Type: Plenary Session
Highlight: DIG Highlight
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/MK9R94
Critique is the pride and glory of Critical Management Studies, but we seldom make much of a splash beyond the own tribe. In this talk I will discuss why critical management scholars may do well to spend more time inside the capitalist business organizations that so often are the targets of our critique. In my view, this is no less important at a moment in history when diversity initiatives, workers’ rights and human rights are under increasing attack.

Torkild Thanem is Professor of Management & Organization Studies at Stockholm Universityand part-time Professor of Work Life Research at the University of Agder. For more than 20 years, he has contributed to critical conversations on embodiment, ethics and leadership in organizational life. Since 2016, he has spent much of his time doing in-depth fieldwork in business companies in order to understand how managerial ideologies operate in action and at the level of individuals, groups and organizations. Torkild’s research has been published in a variety of outlets, including Business Ethics Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Organization Studies, and the International Journal of Management Reviews. His latest book is Embodied Research Methods (Sage, 2019, with David Knights). Email: tt@sbs.su.se.