The (re)negotiation of the critical warrant in critical management education: a research agenda

摘要

Since the introduction of tuition fees for undergraduate programmes in the UK universities, there has been a great deal of attention paid to the impact of the changes on higher education. But the lack of coverage given to the effects of the growing consumerist discourse that was influencing teaching methods and assessment approaches was puzzling [Naidoo, R., and I. Jamieson. 2005. "Empowering Participants or Corroding Learning? Towards a Research Agenda on the Impact of Student Consumerism in Higher Education." Journal of Education Policy 20 (3): 267-281]. There has been a similar silence within the critical management education (CME) literature despite the anecdotal accounts of the progressive erosion of the educational space for criticality. The changes to the educational environment present an opportunity to take stock of how critical approaches are able to respond - or if they are able to respond - to a more consumerist environment where different generational priorities and expectations of education are being expressed. This paper seeks to open up the debate and outline a research agenda to examine CME in the new higher education in the context of marketization, generational change and internationalization.