CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES
- Academic year
- 2025/2026 Syllabus of previous years
- Official course title
- CRITICAL MANAGEMENT STUDIES
- Course code
- EM1611 (AF:582027 AR:328274)
- Teaching language
- English
- Modality
- On campus classes
- ECTS credits
- 6
- Degree level
- Master's Degree Programme (DM270)
- Academic Discipline
- SECS-P/07
- Period
- 4th Term
- Course year
- 1
- Where
- VENEZIA
Contribution of the course to the overall degree programme goals
Expected learning outcomes
Understand the epistemological and moral foundations of Critical Management Studies.
Critically assess how calculative practices shape organisational and societal norms.
Examine the ethical and political consequences of accounting, auditing, and managerial ideologies.
Engage with philosophical perspectives on value, rationality, and responsibility in organisational life.
Analyse how discourses and professional norms influence institutional legitimacy and organisational conduct.
Reflect on their own position within systems of accountability and develop a language for moral critique.
Pre-requirements
Contents
Epistemology and Inquiry
Exploring the nature of knowledge and legitimacy in the production of accounting and management research.
The Taken for Granted
Revealing the hidden assumptions in accounting, audit, and managerial frameworks.
The Audience of Management Research
Who benefits from knowledge production? For whom do performance metrics and reports speak?
Modernity and Managerial Scientism
The moral rationality behind objectivity, standardisation, and performance measurement.
Postmodernism and Cultural Construction
Problematizing calculative practices as social and cultural artefacts that reinforce dominant ideologies.
Critical Theory and the Frankfurt School
Interrogating instrumental reason and its effects on autonomy, meaning, and human flourishing.
Ideology and Hegemony
Exploring how professional and organisational systems reproduce existing hierarchies and marginalise alternative ways of knowing.
Management as Discourse
Understanding how language and reporting produce "truths" and shape organisational behaviour.
Gender, Rationality and Identity
A feminist perspective on the moral limitations of calculative logics and the gendered assumptions in professionalism.
Governmentality and Control
How risk, compliance, and audit function as moral technologies of self-discipline and control.
Referral texts
Supplementary readings will be provided via Moodle. These will include journal articles, chapters, and reflective essays offering critical and ethical insights into accounting, control, and institutional practices.
Assessment methods
Students who obtain a grade of 27 or below will have their grade automatically registered. Students scoring above 27 may opt for an oral examination to elaborate or refine their answers.
Please note: the oral exam may confirm or reduce the grade, depending on the performance.
Type of exam
Grading scale
(18–21): Minimal understanding of critical and ethical concepts; limited ability to apply them
(22–25): Reasonable grasp of theory; some analytical capacity and awareness of normative issues
(26–28): Solid critical engagement and coherent argumentation; visible ethical reflection
(29–30): Sophisticated analysis with strong conceptual insight and sensitivity to ethical complexity
(30 cum laude): Exceptional originality, intellectual clarity, and moral-philosophical depth
Teaching methods
Guided discussions and collective close reading
Group debates and peer feedback
Mini-presentations drawing on personal, professional, or empirical cases
Writing workshops and interpretive tasks
Participation is central to the learning process and is considered a form of ethical engagement in its own right.
Further information
Course Platform: Moodle
Office Hours: Weekly, for reading support and consultation (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ricevimento-office-hours-prof-fabrizio-panozzo-tickets-55149274966?aff=oddtdtcreator )
Cross-application: Students are encouraged to bring ethical issues, dilemmas, or discourses from their own professional and disciplinary experience for shared analysis
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals
This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development