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EXTENDED ABSTRACT

Purpose: A basic assumption in the social sciences, especially in the fields of business and management, is that scientific knowledge advances cumulatively by building on earlier theoretical and empirical findings. Yet, current management literature has been moving further and further away from this pattern, becoming an echo chamber in which Western-oriented “management fashions” are continuously reproduced. Using Abrahamson’s theory of management fashions and Alvesson’s idea of “empty signifiers”, this study claims that commonly used terms such as efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, and cost optimization have lost their analytical power. Instead, they have come to be used as ready-made models that are applied in a wide variety of research situations. This process of conceptual commodification is closely linked to global power relations in that knowledge is mainly produced in the institutional “Center” and then passively absorbed by the “Periphery”. By means of the concepts of academic dependency and epistemic colonialism, the article seeks to deconstruct this major crisis by looking at its manifestations at a more immediate level. To achieve this, it draws on my own professional experiences and the sense of alienation I have felt as an academic working within a peripheral higher education system, particularly when teaching courses in healthcare management and dealing with the “publish or perish” demands of the academic promotion system.

Method: To capture the internalized institutional pressures and the subjective experience of academic alienation—phenomena that positivist quantitative instruments often fail to measure—this study adopts critical autoethnography as its central methodology. Breaking with the objectivist traditions of mainstream management research, autoethnography serves here to connect personal experience with wider cultural, organizational, and political structures. The empirical material is drawn from my experiences as a Lecturer (Ph.D.) within the Turkish higher education system. The data consist of my past academic portfolios, course syllabi, lecture notes, retrospective reflexive notes on classroom dialogues, and personal observations regarding editorial and promotion jury expectations. The material reflects my teaching experience since 2011, with a particular focus on healthcare management courses. The data were examined through a Critical Management Studies (CMS) perspective, utilizing reflexive thematic analysis to explore the intersections between personal pedagogical and academic experiences and broader structural conditions.

Findings: The analysis reveals two distinct yet interconnected dimensions of alienation, conceptualized as “The Illusion at the Lectern” and “The Pressure at the Desk.” The first dimension exposes the pedagogical dissonance experienced while teaching imported managerial concepts. In healthcare management—a field intrinsically bound to human vulnerability, ethics, and care—the imposition of a strict managerialist vocabulary (e.g., framing hospitals as mechanical factories to be optimized and patients as outputs) creates a profound ontological clash. The classroom experience frequently demonstrates the limitations of imported, sterile concepts in addressing the practical realities brought into the lecture hall by students working in the field. In this process, the academic is often reduced to a “transmitter” of Western-centric templates.

The situation then relates to academic output. Both the promotion system and high-impact journals place an unspoken requirement on “conceptual recycling”. In order to obtain publications and advance my career, I am frequently forced into the position of linking my research to the most recent management trends determined by the Center. As a result, the peripheral academic ends up acting as an “academic subcontractor”, gathering only local empirical data to confirm imported Western theories and thus continues the cycle of academic dependence.

Conclusion: From the perspective of this autoethnography, the apparent stagnation in management science is less the result of a lack of research and more due to the continuous, cyclical adoption of commodified management fashions which support the ideological supremacy of managerialism. In order to break this cycle, the study calls for “epistemic disobedience” in three areas. Firstly, the curricula should be freed from the influence of managerialism so that disciplines like healthcare management can recover their human-oriented ontology and regard experiences obtained in local settings as valid sources of knowledge. Secondly, researchers should resist the temptation of fashionable “empty signifiers” and instead generate genuine knowledge that deals with real local issues. Thirdly, independent and merit-based local academic publishing systems should be established; as long as the Center holds onto the mechanisms for evaluating knowledge, academia on the periphery will have difficulty in producing truly original and autonomous scientific thought. Finally, the discipline has to get rid of its fashionable but empty theoretical attire in order to face up to the raw, complex realities of organizational life.