Abstract
It is well known that there is little interest in Nietzschean thought in the management sciences. This observation is supported by the low number of articles published in management science journals that use what could be called the Nietzschean conceptual framework or even part of it. This observation of a weak mobilization of the Nietzschean corpus can be explained, on the one hand, by the non-univocal character of the Nietzschean style and, on the other hand, by the critical radicality of Nietzschean thought. Given this situation, one might expect Critical Management Studies to make significant use of Nietzschean concepts, especially Nietzschean genealogy. But this is not the case. Nietzsche’s work is hardly used by Critical Management Studies (CMS). Yet CMS, because it seeks to question and challenge existing managerial practices by analysing the power dynamics, processes of domination and inequalities that are expressed in organisations, could benefit from the Nietzschean genealogy. Indeed, Nietzschean genealogy, which aims to shed light on the history and origins of values, can provide useful insights into the critical work carried out by CMS and broaden their scope of investigation. In this essay, I argue that CMS should incorporate Nietzschean genealogy into their research in order to strengthen the critical scope of their work when questioning the axiological foundations of managerial practices and exploring the power relations that run through organisations.
REVIEWING EDITOR:
Introduction: Nietzsche, a ‘neglected’ thinker by the management sciences
Nietzsche has always been for me a loyal companion (which he wished to be in the eyes of his readers) who has always played the role of a lookout when the weather turns sour and it is necessary to rely on landmarks to find firm ground. During my studies, I had the opportunity to follow the courses of some French Nietzschean exegetes, namely Professors Michel Haar, Eric Blondel, Patrick Wotling and Marc Crépon, not forgetting Christian Berner who introduced me to Nietzsche during Year 13. This very personal context explains why, with age, I developed an affinity with this thinker that has followed me since the beginning of my career as a teacher-researcher in management sciences.
These affinities with Nietzsche have naturally led me to frequently wonder about the lack of interest in Nietzschean thought in management sciences. This observation of a lack of interest is supported by the few articles published in management science journals that call upon what could be called the Nietzschean framework or even part of it (see and ). This is a strange observation when one considers that there is a way of philosophising before and after Nietzsche. Faced with the weak use of the Nietzschean corpus in our research, I have finally found only two reasons for such a situation. The first reason is the asystematic and non-univocal character of Nietzschean thought and style. Every reader of Nietzsche must have had the same experience as I did: Nietzschean writings talk to each other, one can even say that they constitute a polyphonic network of conceptual analyses that communicate with each other and where none of them can be understood as the deciding principle for the understanding of the others. In this reticular approach to conceptual analysis, which is supported by stylistic variety, the interpretation of the main Nietzschean ‘concepts’ is never closed, which means that the reader must always be on his guard, as Nietzsche constantly tries to lead him down false interpretative paths in order to mislead him, or even to confront him with his own contradictions. In reading Nietzsche, I discovered a thinker who was disconcerting because he was testing me with a precise aim: there is a stylistic work in him which aims to select his readers on their capacity to orient themselves in a thought where the principles which command understanding are organised according to a reticular approach which is both decentralised and distributed.
Table 1. Papers using only the Nietzschean conceptual framework - sources: EBSCOhost business source complete and Cairn.
Table 2. Papers not using exclusively the Nietzschean conceptual framework - sources: EBSCOhost business source complete and Cairn.
This decentralised and distributed character of Nietzschean thought offers the reader few stabilised conceptual reference points, at least at first glance. The second reason for this weak mobilisation of Nietzsche lies, in my opinion, in the critical radicality of Nietzschean thought, which is considered disconcerting. The critical radicality of a thought that leads many researchers in management sciences to approach Nietzsche only indirectly through his filiation with Deleuze, Derrida or Foucault, to name but a few. However, I am convinced that researchers in management science working on issues related to values or value judgements would have a definite interest in directly investing the corpus of a thinker whose philosophy has, by the very admission of Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault, considerably inspired their respective philosophies. Moreover, when I think about it, it seems to me rigorously impossible to understand Deleuze’s, Derrida’s and Foucault’s philosophies accurately and rigorously without ‘rubbing shoulders’ with Nietzschean texts in depth. The lack of investment in Nietzsche’s work by research in management sciences is all the more damaging in that the few references to Nietzsche in these same works sometimes lead to misunderstandings or inaccuracies. These misunderstandings and inaccuracies often result from an understanding of Nietzsche through the reading of another thinker - be it Heidegger, Deleuze or Foucault - or an academic exegete. In short, Nietzsche seems to me, wrongly, to be an unloved thinker of our beloved management sciences, or at least a thinker somewhat lost from view.
CMS reluctant to ‘Nietzscheanise’ themselves
Given this state of affairs of a marginalised Nietzsche, I nevertheless expected the Critical Management Studies stream (Alvesson & Willmott, Citation1992) to make more pronounced and significant use of Nietzschean texts (McElwee et al., Citation2012). Indeed, we know that the Critical Management Studies (CMS) have emerged over the last three decades as a field of management science that aims to identify and explore the power dynamics, inequalities and processes of domination that lie behind managerial discourses and practices. In this sense, CMS can be seen as a critical movement seeking to deconstruct dominant values in organisations and to promote a dialogue on possible alternatives. Such a project led me to enter the CMS movement with the spontaneous assumption that Nietzschean texts should have a prominent place. But this was not the case. The more I read, the more it became clear to me that Nietzsche’s work was still very little used in the CMS. This is evidenced by the few references to Nietzsche in the reference works in the field of CMS:
In Critical management studies: a Reader (Grey & Willmott, Citation2005), 1 reference to Nietzsche.
In The Oxford handbook of critical management studies (Alvesson et al., Citation2009), 4 references to Nietzsche;
In Critical Management Research: Reflections from the Field (Jeanes & Huzzard, Citation2014), 1 reference to Nietzsche;
In The Routledge Companion to Critical Management Studies (Prasad et al., Citation2015), 3 references to Nietzsche.
This is all the more surprising given that the Nietzschean corpus proposes, albeit in an unformalised and structured manner, an approach to investigating values and power relations that is known as Nietzschean genealogy (Jørgensen & Boje, Citation2009). The Nietzschean genealogy (Merrick, Citation2021), which is basically a critical analysis approach aiming essentially at deconstructing the dominant values and at highlighting the power relations underlying them (Rayman, Citation2022), seems to me to be mobilisable by the CMS as a critical evaluation approach of the values and ideologies promoted in the organisations and incorporated by the individuals. Based as much on Nietzschean texts as on their commentaries by Wotling (Citation2016) and Blondel (Citation2006) as well as on the Nietzsche Dictionary (Astor, Citation2017), the following , which synthesizes the principles and the main moments of the Nietzschean genealogical approach, then constitutes a methodological approach that can be applied to the studies of organizations:
Table 3. Background, principles and stages of the application of the Nietzschean genealogy. Sources: based on Blondel (Citation2006), Wotling (Citation2016) and Astor (Citation2017).
Finally, the question remained and continued to nag at me: what could account for this lack of interest in Nietzschean thought and, above all, in its genealogy in the CMS?
CMS are critical, but not radical enough from a Nietzschean point of view
How can this marginalisation of Nietzsche and his genealogy within the CMS be explained?
In the following lines, I will venture to propose some possible answers to this question. Once again, I will rely on the radicality of Nietzschean thought to try to explain the little mobilisation of Nietzschean texts in the work of the CMS. Indeed, in my opinion, the radicality of Nietzschean thought can be considered as an explanatory element of this non-mobilisation of the Nietzschean corpus. It should be remembered that what might be called the CMS project aims to propose, through a variety of studies, a critique of the values embodied by management within the approaches, methods, tools, practices and relationships to others that structure the everyday life of organisations. This critique is fundamentally aimed at exposing the tensions, contradictions and inequalities that the universalism of the values embodied by a globalised management is said to bear in the face of the plurality of our singular organisational realities. In so doing, the CMS movement participates in what is now called the critique of managerial ideology with a view to achieving real emancipation of individuals (Alvesson & Spicer, Citation2012) and overcoming inequalities within organisations. If this current has a raison d’être that can be judged noble and scientifically supported, it is possible, on reflection, to identify several reasons for the lack of mobilisation of the Nietzschean critical approach. To be clear, the point is not to say that the CMS are not critical, but to understand why they are not radically critical in the Nietzschean sense.
The first reason I identify is that most of the research work of this current focuses on a critique of managerial values, practices and devices within organisations, but does not proceed to a critical work in the Nietzschean sense on the meaning and the scope of values conveyed by these same managerial values, practices and devices. I would be tempted to say that the CMS stop short of a real Nietzschean genealogical investigation by not going beyond its first moment, which consists of identifying the origin of the sources that produce the dominant interpretations that have conceived and favoured such and such organisational phenomena and such and such managerial practices. In my opinion, they fail to carry out the second moment of any Nietzschean genealogical approach, which is to rigorously question the beneficial or harmful character for human life of the values embodied in the individual and organisational phenomena they criticise. I think that this is more deeply explained by the fact that CMS have from the outset a critical approach oriented by a system of values (emancipation of individuals, equality of individuals, valorisation of individual differences…) which functions as a set of axioms refusing any hierarchy and any logic of domination. Now, if there is one thing that reading Nietzsche’s work has taught me, it is that Nietzschean thought is deeply a thought of hierarchy and command. In other words, for Nietzsche, I think that CMS would be considered insufficiently critical for the simple reason that they do not examine, with all the intellectual probity required, the beneficial or harmful character to the development and intensification of human life in organisation of the values they promote. In other words, in Nietzschean regime, CMS do not examine their own axiological system while at the same time examining the values, practices and managerial arrangements of organisations. Of course, it is not a question of making a value judgement on these studies; it is simply a question of recognising, by putting ourselves ‘in Nietzsche’s shoes’, their lack of critical radicalism which explains their weak mobilisation of Nietzschean texts.
Beyond the fact that the CMS carry within themselves an axiological system that is not evaluated, not criticized, the second reason, in my opinion, explaining their weak mobilization of the Nietzschean corpus resides again in their lack of critical radicality, but this time towards the conceptual foundations of certain notions on which their analyses are based. I do not mean, of course, that they do not offer analyses that allow us to understand, for example, how relations of domination derived from social values are expressed in relations to others in organisations. But, for a reader who is a little familiar with Nietzschean texts, I am forced to note that they mobilise, without questioning or authentically interrogating the systems of interpretation that they incorporate, certain notions that Nietzsche precisely worked to ‘dynamite’ in order to bring to light their unfounded, subjective and falsifying character, namely the concepts of free will, of the identity of the individual and of language. Far be it from me to claim that there is no reflexive work on these concepts within this research, but this reflexive work is, from a Nietzschean perspective, immediately hindered and biased by the value system that orientates them despite themselves.
While I do not see the CMS as having a Nietzschean lineage for the reasons outlined above, how can they integrate the radicality of Nietzschean thought into their studies? I believe that by further integrating Nietzschean genealogy into their analyses, CMS researchers could strengthen the critical scope of their work and develop more radical and innovative perspectives for understanding and transforming the organisational values and practices they study. I strongly believe that CMS need the critical radicality of Nietzsche and his genealogy to inspect the organisational basements.
Why CMS need Nietzsche to explore organisational subsoils
Despite the shortcomings of the CMS that I have highlighted, it seems to me that they would benefit from using Nietzschean genealogy. Indeed, the latter can be used as an approach to deconstructing organisational and managerial values in order to uncover their origins and historical foundations. This approach offers the possibility to highlight the social construction processes and power dynamics that shape and justify these values. By mobilising genealogy, CMS researchers can reveal how organisational and managerial values are embedded in axiological systems expressed in specific social practices, and how these systems may evolve over time. This allows the pseudo-naturalisation and fictitious universality of these values to be delegitimised by identifying the processes and power relations that underpin them. It thus offers a well-founded critique of these values, opening up a space for critical debate that invites both a rethinking of the value systems that underpin managerial practices and the invention of more emancipatory and just forms of management. In this sense, proposes, for different fields of management, the objectives and expected contributions of studies that would mobilise the Nietzschean genealogy.
Table 4. Aims and expected contributions of using Nietzschean genealogy in various fields of management.
To illustrate in a concrete way how Nietzschean genealogy could be used methodologically to critique certain corporate policies or practices, we propose two cases illustrating how to proceed methodologically with Nietzschean genealogy. These two fictitious cases, which relate to real company policies, are presented in and and show the ways in which Nietzschean genealogy can be used. In this way, we can see how Nietzschean genealogy can provide a concrete framework for the critical analysis of certain corporate policies, going beyond mere denunciation to open up prospects for transformation. Each methodological case study - a company’s diversity and inclusion policy or a teleworking policy - aims to show how Nietzschean genealogy can be mobilised to examine and analyse the origins of the phenomena studied, the underlying values and the power dynamics at play in each case. These cases underline that the aim of Nietzsche’s project is not to criticise moral values for the sake of criticising them and undermining morality; his aim is to question them in order to find out whether they make it possible to intensify human life for the common good and, if not, to transform them in order to achieve this aim. Applied to business, Nietzsche’s position is to deconstruct certain values in order to reconstruct them in the service of the common good.
Table 5. Methodological approach for applying the Nietzschean genealogy to Innovatech’s diversity and inclusion policy.
Table 6. Methodological approach for applying the Nietzschean genealogy to the case of FLCorp’s teleworking policy.
That’s why I believe that genealogy can be mobilised by CMS because it allows the identification and analysis of power processes within organisations. By highlighting the power relations that underlie any value system and the managerial practices associated with it, genealogy can then ‘unmask’ and bring to light the mechanisms of domination, exploitation and resistance that structure all organisations. Complementary to other theoretical frameworks from organisational theory, this approach offers the possibility of revealing the power strategies deployed by individuals and groups of individuals to establish, impose or challenge certain values and organisational and managerial norms. In so doing, it lifts the veil on the political and ethical issues at stake in the power struggles expressed in the organisational phenomena of value establishment and contestation.
To conclude this short essay, I am convinced that the use of the Nietzschean genealogy should provide a pathway within CMS for the emergence of research that will assess whether the conditions for the flourishing and intensification of human life are present in the organisations studied. This will, I hope, lead CMS to raise their ‘level of play’ in terms of critical radicalism to approach the level of ‘basement thinkers’ as Nietzsche expresses it in the aphorism ‘Classification’ of The Dawn of Day:
There are firstly superficial thinkers, secondly deep thinkers - those who go down into the depths of things, - thirdly radical thinkers who go to the bottom of things, - which is much more valuable than only going down into their depths! - and finally thinkers who stick their heads in the mud: which should be a sign of neither depth nor radicalism! These are our dear “subsoil thinkers”. (Nietzsche Citation1989, The Dawn of Day, Fifth Book, §446)
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Norbert Lebrument
Norbert Lebrument is Associate Professor of Strategy and Organisation Theory at the Clermont Auvergne school of management, Clermont Auvergne University. He is also a permanent member of the Clermont Research Management (CleRMa), the joint management research centre of Clermont Auvergne University and ESC Clermont Group. His current research focuses on smart cities, social change and philosophical implications inherent in management studies.
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