Management Education in Chile : From Politics of Pragmatism to (Im)Possibilities of Resistance.

Cotroneo, Marcela Mandiola (2010) Management Education in Chile : From Politics of Pragmatism to (Im)Possibilities of Resistance. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This thesis explores several concerns and their relation to theoretical debates built around Critical Management Studies, Critical Management Education, Latin American Critical Thinking and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's Political Theory. By reflecting upon the practice of Management Education in Chile as a case study, this research tries to make sense of the propositions developed by CMS and CME as self-declared alternative projects to create new approaches to the aforementioned practices. My work seeks to address the perceived pitfalls of CMS and CME as radical projects, carrying out an exploration into their political failures and seeking to re-articulate the mentioned propositions using the political works of Laclau and Mouffe and possible insights from Latin American Critical tradition with the purpose of suggesting new radical standpoints. The specific focus of this project is the identification of prevalent discourses among current management education in Chile and an exploration of the potential for a more critical agenda. My endeavour intends to challenge "traditional" and Anglo-Saxon constructions of critical perspectives within Management Studies with a view to developing a new interpretation of CMS and CME from a perspective which reflects the Chilean/Latin American social and political context. In this project, I set forth a position that addresses Latin America's liberation discourses as a normative standpoint that thus illuminates the incipient and untied resistance attempts that are loosely sustained by local management education's key actors. Those masked practices are showing the negativity and limit of mainstream management education practices, as well as the (im)possibilities for local criticalities that could challenge Eurocentric hegemonic attempts for resistance.