This year’s CMS conference was defined more by the papers that were absent than those that were present.

This is not to say that there weren’t great papers, and consequently, very interesting and captivating discussion, particularly in the stream on Experimental Ethnography and the Future of Critique that I convened with my colleague, Oz Gore. It is also not to say that the conference was spoiled by the absence of figures like Martin Parker (notable because of his signature shirts), or of many of my Scandinavian colleagues who I assume are busy getting ready for EGOS in Copenhagen. Nor was it marred by the large number of missing presenters, though, more so than any conference that I have ever attended, it felt like every stream was short of a few presenters and had timetabling shifts to deal with those who were unaccounted for. It was not even the absence of discussion of what David Knights once called the “gladiatorial character of academic conferences” for there was no shortage of combative and aggressively competitive behaviour (both called out and left unobserved). Rather, it is to say that I was consistently surprised by the lack of an awareness of the core traditions of Critical Management Studies by the various presenters that I heard.

As one presenter delivered a paper on the quantitative metrics that were used to measure “employee engagement” without questioning the managerialist assumptions behind the concept, I wondered whether they had read the original edited volume on Critical Management Studies (or indeed any of the growing library of texts within the discipline). As I listened to an author speak avidly about the ways in which they had measured “toxic leadership” by survey I wondered whether they were familiar with Organization as a journal and the papers on Critical Leadership Studies published there. And as I sat through a discussion on what we could learn from Mary Parker Follett, I wondered how the author felt about the morally and ethically dubious nature of Follett’s tradition and whether or not this author knew of the emergence of CMS from Labour Process Theory and thus whether this author had an appreciation of how incongruous their work seemed with the spirit of CMS.

In asking myself these questions, I gained a new appreciation for disciplinarity.

As context, while doing my PhD I gave my supervisors a very hard time on issues around the question of disciplinarity; contending in various ways that the antiquated logic of discipline and the exclusionary disciplinary policing that they were involved in when they asked questions along the lines of “what does this contribute to organization studies?” or “In what ways does this work draw upon the extant traditions of Critical Management Studies?” had no place in the future of the academy. I saw discipline as a means for securing academic identity and reaffirming particular forms of subjectivity and thus, as an obstacle that needed to be undermined. As such, my entire thesis rails against the notion of discipline and proudly touts its post-disciplinary status.

How many crates should I then get to hold all of the hippos that appear as I listen to a presentation at a CMS conference and wonder what the “critical” aspects of their work are?

What saves me from hypocrisy, I think, is that while my work might deviate from the traditions of CMS, I can still claim awareness of what they are and engage with them in my pedagogic practice. This, however, is definitely something to reflect upon further.