Critical Inquiry

This chapter outlines key characteristics of critical perspectives on inquiry in organization and management practice: critical inquiry. It is argued that critical inquiry can be understood as commitments to an epistemology of denaturalization, a negative ontology, and reflexivity. The chapter highlights how power and the linguistic turn are mobilized over these commitments. It also discusses methods commonly used in critical inquiry. The chapter concludes by pointing to two possible avenues of future development: stronger engagement with fixed and naturalized realities, along the lines suggested by critical realism, and/or stronger engagement with occasioned and situated alternative realities, as suggested by proponents of critical performativity.