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British Journal of Management, Vol. , (2014) DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12053

The Regime of Excellence and the Erosion of Ethos in Critical Management Studies
Nick Butler and Sverre Spoelstra
Department of Business Administration, Lund University, PO Box 7080, SE-220 07, Lund, Sweden Corresponding author email: nick.butler@fek.lu.se
The regime of excellence manifested in journal rankings and research assessments is coming to increasing prominence in the contemporary university. Critical scholars have responded to the encroaching ideology of excellence in various ways: while some seek to defend such measures of academic performance on the grounds that they provide accountability and transparency in place of elitism and privilege, others have criticized their impact on scholarship. The present paper contributes to the debate by exploring the relationship between the regime of excellence and critical management studies (CMS). Drawing on extensive interviews with CMS professors, we show how the regime of excellence is eroding the ethos of critical scholars. As a result, decisions about what to research and where to publish are increasingly being made according to the diktats of research assessments, journal rankings and managing editors of premier outlets. This suggests that CMS researchers may nd themselves inadvertently aiding and abetting the rise of managerialism in the university sector, which raises troubling questions about the future of critical scholarship in the business school.

Introduction
The idea of excellence is increasingly coming to serve as the organizing principle of the contemporary university (Readings, 1996; Rolfe, 2013). Deriving from the private sector in the 1980s (Peters and Waterman, 1982) and closely linked to the development of New Public Management (Deem, Hillyard and Reed 2007), excellence involves imposing structures of corporate administration on institutions of higher education in the name of efciency and competition, replacing more collegial forms of university governance (Lucas, 2006; McNay, 1995). Part of this shift involves measuring and assessing academic research according to external indicators such as journal rankings and citation indices. Here, the content and quality of a piece of work is less important for the purposes of evaluation than its performance according to purely quantitative criteria, such as the rating of the publication outlet in

which it appears or the number and frequency of citations it attracts. Such metrics provide university administrators with the means to regulate and control academic labour, especially in relation to national research audits such as the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the UK (Hussain, 2011). While journal rankings are not formally tied to such audits, they are often used by deans and heads of school as a proxy for quality (zbilgin, 2009). Academic staff may therefore nd that the work they publish in lower tier outlets (e.g. 1- and 2-star journals) will not be submitted by their department to the research assessment panel because it is assumed to fall automatically outside the remit of excellence (e.g. 3- and 4-star journals), irrespective of its intrinsic merit. Taken together, such trends indicate that the regime of excellence understood as the conuence of national and institutional forces that determine the rules of play for individual

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2 researchers to advance within academia is coming to exert considerable inuence over the conditions of knowledge production in the contemporary university, both in the UK and elsewhere (Larner and Le Heron, 2005; Nkomo, 2009; Northcott and Linacre, 2010). Critical scholars in organization studies have responded to this regime of excellence in various ways. Some commentators notably those who are involved in editing the widely used Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Quality Guide, or the ABS list (Harvey et al., 2010) seek to defend the system of journal rankings on the grounds that it provides accountability and transparency in place of elitism and restricted access to privileged knowledge (Morris, Harvey and Kelly, 2010; Rowlinson et al., 2011). Others, however, note that journal rankings and research audits have become more than simply the means to evaluate scholarship ex post facto; they are now the very targets to aim for (Mingers and Willmott, 2013; Tourish, 2011). The regime of excellence thus encourages work that is homogeneous and middleof-the-road and disincentivizes more innovative or unconventional research (Willmott, 2011; see also Grey, 2010). This has led some commentators to suggest that performance indicators such as journal rankings and research assessments serve to undermine the very essence of good scholarship because they promote instrumental and opportunistic behaviour rather than genuine academic inquiry (Adler and Harzing, 2009, p. 84). Similar arguments have also been made against citation indices and impact factors notably the data that are collected by the Institute for Scientic Information which are said to result in forms of gamesmanship by authors, editors, publishers and universities at the expense of meaningful intellectual engagement (Macdonald and Kam, 2007, 2010, 2011; see also Fleck, 2013). Such forms of academic benchmarking have come under sustained critique in recent years, although the relationship between the regime of excellence and critical management studies (CMS) has received less attention. This is surprising given the fact that CMS rose to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s at a time when quantitative metrics were becoming widespread as measures of academic performance. As the deleterious effects of managerialism are among the core concerns of CMS (Adler, Forbes and Willmott, 2007; Alvesson, Bridgman and Willmott, 2009), one

N. Butler and S. Spoelstra might expect critical scholars to interrogate the impact of excellence on the development of the eld. While some scholars have attempted to account for the rise of critters within the business school by examining the links between wider political change and transformations in higher education (Fournier and Grey, 2000; Grey and Willmott, 2002; Rowlinson and Hassard, 2011), such explanations tend to ignore the way in which CMS has been shaped in important ways by the demand for excellence within the university itself, manifested most obviously in journal rankings and research assessments. This is a crucial point to address because it suggests that CMS may be implicated in the same type of managerialism that it seeks to criticize, which raises troubling questions about the future of critical scholarship in the business school. Drawing on interviews with professors in the eld of CMS, we argue that the ethos of critical scholars is being eroded by the regime of excellence. This means that decisions about what to research and where to publish are increasingly being made according to the diktats of research assessments, journal rankings and managing editors of premier outlets. In particular, we will show how some of the most basic tenets of CMS namely, non-performativity, denaturalization and reexivity (Fournier and Grey, 2000) are being undermined by the demand for excellence in the business school. In an earlier paper on this topic we examined the secrets of excellence among critical scholars, which provided insight into the way that the publication game tends to master its players rather than the other way around (Butler and Spoelstra, 2012). In the present paper, we broaden our scope by focusing less on individuallevel effects of excellence (i.e. the suspension of subjectivity among academics) and more on eldlevel effects of excellence (i.e. the reshaping of epistemic virtues within CMS). The paper is structured as follows. We begin by contextualizing the institutional rise of CMS and outlining the set of values that are said to guide scholarship in the eld. We then go on to describe our methodological approach before examining how excellence impacts on the research practices of critical scholars. Finally, we conclude by highlighting some of the ways in which critically inclined scholars might begin to counteract the pervasive logic of excellence in the business school.
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Excellence and the Erosion of Ethos in CMS

3 critical scholars do not aim to improve the effectiveness of managerial practice or increase the efciency of organizational processes, but instead explore issues around power, control and inequality at work. Unlike non-critical management research, therefore, CMS research steadfastly avoids inscribing knowledge within a means ends calculation (2000, p. 17). CMS is also characterized by an ethos of denaturalization: critical scholars do not accept management knowledge at face value but actively seek to expose and challenge its ideological underpinnings. This in turn may result in the excavation of alternatives that have been suppressed by extant forms of organization. Finally, CMS is characterized by an ethos of reexivity: critical scholars tend to reect on their epistemological, ontological and methodological assumptions far more explicitly than their non-critical (especially positivist) counterparts who may practise an ethos of scientic disinterestedness. This suggests that CMS researchers are aware of the socially constructed and politically interested nature of knowledge not least their own (Ford, Harding and Learmonth, 2010). While Fournier and Grey draw them in necessarily broad brushstrokes, such epistemic virtues usefully serve to distinguish CMS from non-critical management studies at a basic level. While many critical scholars would likely agree with Fournier and Greys depiction of such an ethos, commentators have pointed out that CMS seldom lives up to its higher aims. While some take the eld to task for not engaging with activists and other stakeholders outside the academy (Parker, 2002), others point out that research produced under the auspices of CMS often lacks wider social and political relevance (Thompson, 2004). At best, there is said to be a certain lack of consistency between word and deed among critical scholars (Antonacopoulou, 2010; Fournier and Smith, 2012). At worst, CMS is accused of being blind to the hierarchies and exclusions that operate within its own constituency (Tatli, 2012). Such views tell us that there is a growing dissatisfaction with aspects of CMS from within the critical community itself. In response, some scholars have attempted to rethink the ethos of CMS. For example, Spicer, Alvesson and Krreman (2009, p. 538) reject the idea that CMS is best characterized as non- or anti-performative and instead hope to move towards what they call critical performativity, which involves intervening in

Epistemic virtues in critical management studies

The institutionalization of CMS over the last 20 years is linked to wider political change and transformations in higher education. In particular, the advent of Thatcherism and the New Right in the UK was instrumental in the growth of the business school during the 1980s and the concurrent decline of sociology departments, which led ironically to MBA programmes being run by exiled social scientists (Fournier and Grey, 2000; Grey and Willmott, 2002). In addition, CMS has risen to prominence at a time when university research audits often associated with the rationality of neoliberalism (Shore and Wright, 1999) are coming to play an increasingly important role in the regulation of academic performance. Some commentators have noted that critically oriented business schools in the UK are amongst the most adept players in the game in terms of fullling RAE and REF criteria (Rowlinson and Hassard, 2011, p. 677). This alerts us to the fact that the growth of CMS should not only be understood in terms of the radical intentions of its exponents but must also be viewed as a response by a particular group of researchers to their specic circumstances (Rowlinson and Hassard, 2011, p. 674). Current conditions within higher education have therefore provided a fertile ground for left-wing intellectuals to gain status and inuence in the business school, both in the UK and elsewhere. Following the publication of Alvesson and Willmotts edited collection Critical Management Studies (1992), scholars have sought to formulate a shared ethos for CMS. This comprises a set of epistemic virtues (Daston and Galison, 2007) that shape the customs for scholarly engagement in the eld and delineate the appropriate mode of conduct for critical researchers. Some have framed this ethos in terms of Foucaults notion of the critical attitude and fearless speech (Barratt, 2003; Jack, 2004) while others draw on Derridas understanding of responsibility and undecidability (Rhodes, 2009; Rhodes and Brown, 2005). But arguably the most inuential attempt to outline the epistemic virtues of CMS is Fournier and Greys (2000) analysis of the conditions and prospects for critical scholarship in the business school. For Fournier and Grey, CMS is characterized by an ethos of non-performativity. This means that
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4 management discourses and practices with an afrmative intent rather than seeking to criticize from a distance. Although Spicer, Alvesson and Krremans notion of performativity differs from Fournier and Greys in important ways, there is an assumption here that critical scholars should be pragmatic in their engagement with management, asking questions about what works, what is feasible, and what those we address perceive as relevant (Spicer, Alvesson and Krreman, 2009, p. 545). Others go even further by suggesting that CMS researchers should be both critical and for management (Clegg et al., 2006). Needless to say, such notions are anathema to earlier articulations of CMS. We agree that there is often a disparity between word and deed among critical scholars. However, we do not see this issue arising from the ethos of CMS. Indeed, we feel that it is important for CMS researchers to critique the central tenets of managerialism without feeling under any obligation to be constructive. We see the problem, rather, lying with the encroaching inuence of excellence on academic research practices. As we will show, the process of knowledge production in the business school is becoming increasingly subservient to the strictures of journal rankings, research assessments and managing editors of premier outlets. In the remainder of the paper we will analyse the way in which the ethos of CMS being eroded by the regime of excellence before discussing the consequences for the future of critical management scholarship.

N. Butler and S. Spoelstra plishment at the same time as they actively contribute to non-mainstream and anti-positivist forms of research in academia. Indeed, while our respondents adopt a critical perspective in their work, they have all published extensively in highly rated journals according to the ABS list. Approximately half of them belong to the elite club of 4-by-4s i.e. four publications in 4-star journals over the last 6 years which is used as a common benchmark for research assessment in the UK and, increasingly, as an informal indicator of academic success elsewhere in Europe. Moreover, the professors we spoke to serve on at least one editorial board for a 3- or 4-star journal, which tells us that they not only produce excellent research but also set the standards for knowledge production in the eld and act as gatekeepers to the discipline. Our respondents are ideally placed, therefore, to provide insights into the conditions of work within the university-based business school in terms of their experiences of excellence from a CMS perspective. Overall, we conducted 31 interviews with professors in CMS. We began by conducting ve short exploratory interviews (each one lasting approximately 20 minutes) with key informants during the biannual Critical Management Studies conference in summer 2011 to get a sense of the issues that senior academics face in relation to the regime of excellence. Following on from these pilot interviews, we conducted a further 26 in-depth semi-structured interviews between autumn 2011 and summer 2013. The longest interview was 1 hour 50 minutes and the shortest was 30 minutes, with an average of 1 hour. All interviews were digitally recorded and fully transcribed. Wherever possible, these interviews took place face-to-face but in ve cases they were conducted over Skype or the telephone. At the time of our interviews, 20 of our respondents were based in the UK, ve elsewhere in Europe, three in Australia and two in the USA. 25 of our respondents were male and six were female, which is on a par with the percentage of female professors currently working in the UK (19.8%) (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2010). Taking our cue from interpretivist and reexive research (Alvesson and Skldberg, 2009; Prasad, 2005), we analysed our data set in so far as it displayed symptoms of a wider set of discourses and practices. For example, just as the search for identity is a symptom of individualism in
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Method
Our study is driven by a concern for the way in which the regime of excellence impacts on the working lives of critical scholars within the business school. Towards this end, we interviewed senior academics in the eld of CMS to nd out how they became so excellent. While this question is partly tongue-in-cheek, it touches on some fundamental issues in the business school namely, how critical scholars seek to negotiate the demand for excellence at the same time as maintaining a critical ethos in relation to their work. All our interviewees are business school professors who are broadly afliated with the critical management community. This means that they have achieved a high level of professional accom-

Excellence and the Erosion of Ethos in CMS contemporary society (Ybema et al., 2009, p. 299), so the pursuit of excellence is a symptom of wider changes in the university sector such as an increasing emphasis on research audits and journal rankings in terms of individual career progression (Frey, 2003). Such symptoms can be studied by paying close attention to the use of language in participants narratives of their lived experiences (Skld, 2010). To this extent, we focused on the interviews in so far as our respondents reected on their experiences of excellence in their conversations with us. We then manually coded the transcripts according to emergent themes such as academic values and virtues, pressures and tensions in academic work, experiences of research assessments, publication strategies, game-playing and costs of excellence. This approach allowed us to examine the links between individual accounts of research practices, institutional contexts and broader societal trends in relation to conditions of knowledge production within the business school. Like other researchers who have studied the working lives of academic staff, we have been able to use the obvious advantage of opportunistic sampling because of insider contacts and knowledge (Clarke, Knights and Jarvis, 2012, p. 7). As such, many of our respondents are known to the authors on a professional and sometimes personal level. One of the main advantages of this approach is that it allows for a much richer, subtler and embodied understanding of the research subjects accounts than interviews with members of other occupational groups. But the danger is that, like participative research, one might become too close to the research object to be able to reect critically on the respondents accounts of their own experiences (Alvesson, 2003). One must therefore be aware of the risks of over-familiarity and take every effort to avoid staying native (2003, p. 187). We therefore conducted our interviews with a full awareness that we partly shared the social and professional context in which our respondents were situated and made every attempt to avoid relying on preexisting personal narratives or cultural scripts. With this in mind, our interview schedule was designed to be provocative and norm-breaking, and we took every opportunity to move beyond common-sense meanings and assumptions in both our interviews and our subsequent analysis. Moreover, the process of conducting this research
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5 has sensitized us to the ways in which we too have been shaped by excellence. As a result, we are more determined to counteract some of its most detrimental effects on our own academic work a theme we shall return to in the conclusion of the paper.

The impact of excellence on CMS researchers

In this section, we explore how the regime of excellence has impacted on the working lives of CMS researchers. We begin by looking at the way in which the regime of excellence is perceived to have opened up opportunities for critical scholarship in the business school. We then go on to show how excellence shapes the research practices of critical scholars, focusing on the choice of publication outlet and the contents of research. We bring the section to a close by reecting on the some of the consequences of playing the game of excellence in CMS. Excellence in CMS While many of our respondents were critical of the explicit managerialism associated with the regime of excellence, they also acknowledged that journal rankings and research assessments had led to some positive outcomes in CMS. Foremost amongst these was a perceived shift in the business school from a system of patronage that relied on personal bias and favouritism to a more meritocratic approach that is based on journal publications (respondent 21). Indeed, the rise of excellence is said to have had the unintended consequence of democratizing the eld to some extent (respondent 14) because it allows critical scholars to develop their careers in ways that were previously unavailable to them:
There is one good thing about the RAE: it doesnt matter what the fuck you publish, only where you publish it. So if you look at CMS people who are in senior positions . . . 15 years ago, would those people have got those positions? Would their work have been judged on an ideological level and, because it wasnt ideologically connected with various institutional requirements, would they have not been promoted to senior levels as opposed to an RAE/REF situation? (Respondent 14)

6 While the ABS list is not formally tied to national research audits in the UK, university administrators (and indeed scholars themselves) often use journal rankings as a proxy for quality in terms of decisions around submitting publications to external assessment panels. As such, deans and heads of school are less concerned with the politics of a particular piece of research than they are with the rating of the outlet in which it appears when it comes to hiring and promoting academic staff. This has the effect of enabling radical left-wing intellectuals to gain a foothold within typically conservative institutions such as business schools. As one respondent put it: If you can just publish sufciently, no matter what your point of view, then academic employers tend to leave you alone . . . Ive got friends who are fairly straight down the line Marxists and they dont get leaned on (respondent 2). Research auditing mechanisms may therefore allow critical scholars to gain legitimacy for research that deviates from the functionalist orthodoxy provided, of course, that they are willing to play according to the rules of the game. To this extent, the regime of excellence and CMS appear to be entwined in a very close relationship:
The banalities of the RAE and the REF are well documented, the rather pernicious managerial aspects are there for all to see. But the counterfactual of it is, what if the RAE [or] REF didnt exist, what would the business school look like now? I can tell you one thing: critical management studies would not exist . . . We have to recognize that this journal game provides autonomy for us, it provides legitimacy, and it also allows us as sociologists, as critical thinkers, to stand and look economists, look positivists in American journals in the eye and say, were your equals. (Respondent 17)

N. Butler and S. Spoelstra Excellence and publication outlet The regime of excellence has come to exert considerable inuence over the working lives of critical scholars in recent years; it is something that just bears down on you all the time (respondent 18) and almost becomes a part of you (respondent 11). One professor we spoke to gave us an account of being slowly shaped by the demand for excellence:
Im not exactly sure when [journal rankings] started to inuence me consciously in terms of my submission decisions . . . A lot of it is emergent. Its not like one sits down one day and makes a plan. It comes about through gradual realizations, conversations. Once a certain realization is made, one will then perhaps gradually re-adjust. (Respondent 21)

It is this process of re-adjustment that concerns us here. To be sure, many of our respondents noted that at the beginning of their careers there were no clear rules of the game with clear standards of measurement (respondent 6). Now, with the rise of journal rankings, a quantitative measure of excellence standing in as a surrogate for quality can be attached to published articles for the purpose of research assessment and individual career progression. This inevitably changes the way scholars think about their work and approach the task of research:
I know, for example, for the next REF I have two 4s and two 3s and it would be much better to have two more 4s, and it would kind of make my life, my professional life it would have very material effects on it . . . It probably means that Im more likely to send stuff to these higher ranked journals rst, where before I might have sent it to the journal that I thought it was best suited to as a piece. (Respondent 14)

The regime of excellence therefore provides numerous opportunities for CMS researchers to advance their careers in academia, both in the UK and elsewhere. But our data suggest that there is a heavy price to be paid for pursuing excellence. As we shall see, the regime of excellence opens up spaces of freedom (respondent 21) within the business school at the same time as it tends to erode the ethos of critical scholars, especially in terms of what they choose to research and where they decide to publish.

It is telling that the respondent here speaks about academic research grounded in complex theories and rich empirical data in purely quantitative terms, i.e. in the language of excellence (i.e. 4s and 3s). What is more, he admits that he may have previously considered submitting his work to lower ranked outlets that are more appropriate for his work, but the tangible rewards for publishing in highly rated journals are today too great for him to ignore. This suggests that critical scholars are coming to nd that their professional judgement is being modied, or even overruled, by the
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Excellence and the Erosion of Ethos in CMS logic of excellence. A similar, though somewhat more conicted, view was expressed by another respondent:
Ive actually started to do it, fairly recently admittedly, but started to think about where am I going to get the most bang for my buck? And I hate thinking like that, I dont want to think like that, I want to publish where my work belongs. But I know . . . that whatever the REF panel says, my work will have more bang if I try and get it in Organization Studies [an ABS four-rated journal] than it will if I publish it in ephemera [an ABS one-rated journal]. (Respondent 15)

7 writing on a topic that ts in with debates in highly ranked journals but does not particularly re him up with passion: If it wasnt for the excellence pressure, I may have dropped it perhaps (respondent 11). Far from neutrally reecting the quality of published work, our data suggest that the regime of excellence plays an active role in shaping the research agenda of critical scholars. Of course, some critical scholars submit their work to top-ranked journals with the explicit intention of changing the system from within (respondent 19). This involves attempting to introduce radical ideas into the orthodoxy of academic discourse. For some, this has no doubt been possible to a greater or lesser extent, even if one will always have to make a series of accommodations and compromises when publishing in such outlets (respondent 30). Others, however, have felt the need to make more fundamental changes to their work. One respondent told us that a paper he published in a 4-star journal was originally written as a radical critique but, through a lengthy review process in which he was instructed by the editor to tone his argument down, became increasingly liberal and insipid (respondent 4). He reected on this experience:
It gave me my four-by-four in the last RAE. From an instrumental position, it gave me my professorship. But as a scholarship piece, its disgusting. Yeah, it was really, really awful. And it was one that I hoped would sink without trace, and it did luckily. (Respondent 4)

What is interesting here is the way that this respondent displays strong antipathy towards the regime of excellence, yet feels compelled to adopt its criteria in relation to her own research. This again serves to replace personal academic discretion (I want to publish where my work belongs) with a crude economic formula of input and output (where am I going to get the most bang for my buck?). Another respondent, reecting on his own research practices over the last decade or so, expressed this sentiment even more explicitly and with a hint of regret: I was . . . chasing the next publication because I needed it for promotion, and I needed it because the REF was coming (respondent 22). Whether or not research assessment panels take into account the rating of the journal in which academic work appears is not at issue here; what matters, rather, is the way that academic conduct is shaped by the (real or perceived) demand for excellence within the contemporary university. To a large extent, this pressure is exerted by deans and heads of school in the run up to research audits. But we must also acknowledge that critical scholars, despite their evident hostility towards the logic of excellence, may also nd themselves willingly complying with external benchmarks and performance indicators. Excellence and research content The regime of excellence not only impacts on where critical scholars choose to publish, namely highly ranked journals; it also inuences what they publish. For example, one respondent who works outside the UK told us: I have killed projects because I didnt see them ending up in [toptier] journals (respondent 13). By the same token, a UK-based professor noted that he is currently
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It is remarkable that a piece of work that is so highly rated according to an institutional measure of excellence is held in such low esteem by its author. Yet such a view is not uncommon among CMS scholars. Another professor told us: Even if the critical people are getting published [in topranked journals], I would argue probably an awful lot of it is not worth reading my own stuff included (respondent 22). According to some of our respondents, the reason for this has not so much to do with the quality of CMS research per se but the fact that editors are serving to defang the critical bite of such scholarship as a necessary condition for publication in top-tier outlets (respondent 4). For example, one respondent told us that he was explicitly requested by the editor of a 4-star journal to dumb down his argument: They actually used the expression dumb down, they did not use simplify. . . I never thought

8 you would actually get that, I thought it was just teased out in the review process (respondent 25). This clearly presents a risk for critical scholars who target top-ranked journals in order to secure legitimacy for heterodox research, since they may nd their work becomes watered down (respondent 3) or completely screwed (respondent 30) by heavy-handed editorial intervention. As one respondent insightfully put it: Its extremely tough to get stuff published in those journals that doesnt just end up looking like standard stuff that gets published in those journals (respondent 30). In such a context, the chances of being able to change the system from within seem rather slim indeed. Playing the game of excellence While lower rated journals may provide the opportunity to stretch and think and write without constraints (respondent 12), critical scholars are actively disincentivized from publishing in such outlets by institutional pressures such as research audits and promotion committees. As one professor sardonically noted, you might as well now write for your local gazette rather than publish in 1- and 2-star journals for all the benets it will bring; at most, perhaps, you may be able to buy yourself a good conscience (respondent 11). By contrast, critical scholars will be able to secure signicant professional advantages for themselves by publishing in top-tier journals, even though they may have to fundamentally compromise the substance of their arguments or neuter their work in advance in order to get through the review process. Indeed, it is a fact of contemporary academic life that you do have to dance to tunes namely, editorial expectations if you wish to publish in 3- and particularly 4-star journals (respondent 19). As decisions about what to research and where to publish are increasingly being made according to the diktats of research assessments, journals rankings and managing editors of premier outlets, the ethos of critical scholars is being eroded slowly but surely by the impact of excellence in their research practices. In the face of this, one might legitimately expect CMS scholars to lead the charge against this reconguration of research around managerial prerogatives. However, our interviews suggest that critical scholars tend to be more acquiescent

N. Butler and S. Spoelstra about the regime of excellence than we might imagine or indeed hope. While many of our respondents were highly sceptical of the kind of research that is published in top-ranked journals, rarely did they express any intention to withdraw their support for such outlets. For example, one respondent said that although top-ranked journals tend to publish papers that make you want to curl up and die, she continues to send her work to them because she recognizes that its a careerist game (respondent 15). This suggests that while CMS researchers are well aware of the negative impact of excellence on critical scholarship, they may nonetheless be inclined to play according to the rules of the game (rather than putting the game itself into question):
On the one hand I play the game, as other people do. But on the other hand, it doesnt mean that I actually think the game is the right one . . . The REF is the part that I dont like, but its an unavoidable part of where we are now. (Respondent 19)

While this respondent does not believe in the game, this may ultimately be of little signicance; what matters most is that he plays the game to the fullest of his abilities. Most critical scholars of course recognize that excellence is based on socially constructed criteria, which means they could be revisited, they are potentially eeting, they could be changed, but this does not mean they actively seek to call them into question; on the contrary, they may nd themselves accepting the facticity of the target, treating it as xed and objective (respondent 21). This serves to ensure the smooth functioning of excellence despite the evident misgivings of critical scholars. The obvious question to ask is whether playing the game of excellence is really unavoidable. Such reluctance among our respondents to entertain this possibility tells us just how far the regime of excellence has come in exerting a powerful sway over critical scholars in the business school.

Discussion
The previous section showed that the regime of excellence increasingly impacts on decisions made by critical scholars about what to research and where to publish. This section will examine the ways in which this erodes the research ethos of CMS.
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Excellence and the Erosion of Ethos in CMS First, the regime of excellence directly undermines the ethos of non-performativity by inviting critical scholars to become performative, i.e. gearing research around the principle of maximum output for minimum input (Fournier and Grey, 2000, p. 17). It is certainly true that much of the work published under the umbrella of CMS remains non-performative to the extent that it does not aim to improve the effectiveness of management or increase the efciency of organizations. However, once we start to look at the research practices of critical scholars particularly in terms of what they choose to research and where they decide to publish it becomes clear that the process of knowledge production in CMS is increasingly being shaped by an instrumental meansends calculation (Tourish, 2011). Since publications in top-rated outlets generate revenue for universities as a result of research assessment exercises, 3- and 4-star articles are coming to serve as bargaining chips for individual academics to seek promotion and negotiate higher salaries. This opens up an opportunity for critical scholars to mobilize scholarship in the service of career advancement. As demonstrated above, there is considerable institutional pressure on academics to publish their work in highly rated journals, which at times comes to override their professional judgement about the kind of research they should be pursuing or the type of outlet they would like to publish in. This inevitably involves both a stick and a carrot: while the punishment for failing to hit the required journals may result in an increasing administrative workload, demotion to a teaching position or even unemployment, the material and professional rewards for publishing in premier outlets are clear to anyone who has witnessed the frenetic and often lucrative football-style transfer market in academic labour immediately prior to any large-scale research assessment in the university sector (Lucas, 2006). When academics can gain a professorial chair solely on the basis of four 4-star articles, it is little wonder that many critical scholars nd themselves making shrewd costbenet analyses in relation to their research projects in terms of the optimal use of their time and energy for maximum return on investment (Alvesson, 2013). As soon as such utilitarian logic begins to dominate the production of knowledge in CMS, any questions about the quality of ideas are secondary to the mere fact of publication in a top-ranked journal.
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9 As the process of knowledge production in CMS is becoming increasingly performative, the content of knowledge in CMS is becoming less and less denaturalizing, which points to a further erosion of ethos. For Fournier and Grey (2000, p. 18), critical scholars share an ethos of denaturalization to the extent that they seek to deconstruct the reality of organizational life or truthfulness of organizational knowledge. On this view, CMS scholarship attempts to expose and challenge the ideological underpinnings of management knowledge and practice. However, a number of our respondents noted that the work that is published in premier outlets (their own included) does not always live up to such lofty ambitions; indeed, it is often described as boring, disgusting and ultimately not worth reading. This is partly due to protracted review processes, often lasting several years, which wear down the resilience of critical scholars to resist making unnecessary changes to their work on the say-so of managing editors. But it also has to do with the way that critical scholars attempt to second-guess what highly rated outlets will approve for publication even before they submit their work for consideration, thus emasculating their research in advance. Either way, the consequence is the same: the regime of excellence encourages the production of knowledge that is in line with a set of predetermined expectations, reinforced by the efforts of managing editors to increase the impact factor of their journal, that is very far from the critical objectives of denaturalization and all the poorer for it (see Alvesson and Sandberg, 2013). This is not to say that papers that are published in highly rated outlets are entirely without merit. Indeed, we can think of examples of interesting, important and remarkable scholarship that have appeared in premier outlets over the years. Nevertheless, it is notable that many of our respondents felt that their best piece of work was not a widely cited paper that had been published in a top-ranked journal but a little known paper in a lowly rated journal. Such claims may be an attempt by critical scholars to position themselves as perennial outsiders or victims of the system. Even so, there is little doubt that critical scholars are seriously concerned about the general lack of quality papers in elite journals. This brings us, nally, to the question of reexivity. On one level, critical scholars seem to be all too aware of their entanglement with the regime

10 of excellence. Certainly, many are able to speak cogently about the way they have engaged with the rise of journal rankings and research assessments and how this in turn has shaped their publication strategies over the years. For some, this is tinged with sadness; others, meanwhile, have few regrets. On another level, however, we may wonder whether critical scholars are always willing to reect on possible alternatives to academic game-playing. Indeed, while there is much talk about the pernicious managerial aspects of journal rankings and research assessments among our respondents, we found little evidence of outright deance to the regime of excellence. As we have seen, few critical scholars actually think the game is the right one, yet many resign themselves to playing according to the rules (often very unhappily). Some may see this as a form of cynical ideology: I dont really believe in the publishing system, but I act as if I do. Others may view it as mere hypocrisy and bad faith. In any case, it is worth noting how easy it becomes to delegate ones professional judgement to an external quantitative measure of quality once one has accepted the facticity of the target of journal rankings and research assessments, even to the extent of speaking in the language of excellence (e.g. 1-star, 2-star, 3-star, 4-star) to describe ones own work and that of others. Needless to say, this serves to reproduce the logic of excellence rather than reveal its socially constructed and politically interested nature. On this basis, we might plausibly claim that the ethos of reexivity is also being eroded by hegemony of journal rankings, research assessments and premier outlets in the business school. Taken together, the erosion of ethos along the lines of non-performativity, denaturalization and reexivity leaves CMS in a double bind. On the one hand, the academic prominence of CMS may not have been possible to the same extent in the absence of excellence. After all, the kind of formal measures of academic performance associated with journal rankings and research assessments have enabled critical scholars to thrive in an otherwise conservative institutional environment. On the other hand, the regime of excellence is coming to undermine the core epistemic virtues of CMS, at least in terms of the research practices of critical scholars. As a result, CMS researchers may nd themselves inadvertently aiding and abetting the rise of managerialism in the university sector. One

N. Butler and S. Spoelstra might argue that this trade-off is necessary and worthwhile in order to gain legitimacy for heterodox research in the business school. But the danger is that the process of knowledge production becomes entirely subservient to the strictures of journal rankings, research assessments and managing editors of top-ranked journals with potentially destructive consequences for the quality of research published under the aegis of CMS. We are not suggesting, of course, that there was ever a time when the epistemic virtues of CMS were fully realized in the business school. There has never been a golden age in which critical scholars were able to research whatever they want and publish wherever they please, and as a result produced consistently rst-rate scholarship. What we are saying, however, is that in recent years the epistemic virtues of CMS appear to have taken a backseat to the pursuit of excellence. Today, the task for critical scholars many of whom are full of good intentions becomes one of tting ones ethos around the demand for excellence, rather than struggling to maintain ones ethos in the face of excellence. We can return at this point to the question of the nature and purpose of research in CMS. On the basis of our data, there is evidence to suggest that critical scholars are beginning to view academic freedom not as a necessary condition for scholarship but as a reward for publishing sufciently in certain outlets. Indeed, our interviews are replete with talk of buying freedom, i.e. publishing in highly rated journals in order to gain the autonomy to pursue more imaginative or innovative research that falls outside the remit of excellence (Butler and Spoelstra, 2012). While this may sound like a pragmatic approach given the present conditions in academia, it serves to radically recongure what it means to be a scholar in the university-based business school: research is now viewed as a currency that can be exchanged for an equivalent, rather than as a piece of scholarship that possesses its own unique and incommensurable use-value (e.g. to create new concepts, to stimulate thought, to incite political action etc.). Treating research as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, inevitably serves to degrade scholarship in the name of excellence. At worst, critical scholars may nd that they buy themselves freedom to pursue nothing other than excellence itself, which serves to threaten the very viability of
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Excellence and the Erosion of Ethos in CMS CMS as a project that seeks to unmask the power relations around which social and organizational life are woven (Fournier and Grey, 2000, p. 19).

11 may be more complex than this (all too reasonable) narrative seems to suggest. We are of course well aware that publishing in a highly ranked outlet will serve to advance our careers and enhance our professional reputations. Can we honestly say that this played no part in our choice to submit the paper to BJM? Perhaps, but perhaps not. We also would like to believe that we have presented our ideas here without making a series of compromises and accommodations in line with editorial expectations. But is it any coincidence that our manuscript already resembled other papers in BJM prior to its submission? There is a real possibility that we have incorporated the imperatives of excellence within our work almost without realizing it, learned as if by osmosis from our academic environment. This may be true. But our aim here is not to indulge in excessive hand-wringing. Rather, we would like to suggest that asking such questions which may require an uncomfortable honesty towards oneself as an academic researcher is perhaps the rst step towards reclaiming some of the ground lost in recent years to external measures of quality and developing an ethos of research that is not in thrall to the regime of excellence. The rules of the game may well change, at least in the context of the UK, when the results of the REF are announced in 2014. Critical scholars may feel compelled to adapt their research practices once again in order to satisfy the set of institutional demands that will be brought to bear on their working lives and career prospects within the business school. For example, the ABS list (soon to rebranded as the International Guide to Academic Journal Quality) will no doubt modify its metrics and shift its rankings in light of the REF, and the Higher Education Funding Council of England may well place emphasis on funding bids and research grants over and above journal publications as a measure of excellence in future research assessments. We feel that the vicissitudes of excellence present an ideal opportunity to take stock of and recongure ones priorities in relation to research, as some outside the business school have indeed started to do (Rolfe, 2013). For if objective measures of quality fail to live up to more subjective assessments of quality, as our data have shown, then perhaps we should cease to think in terms of good journals altogether especially since some of the most highly ranked outlets are among the most poorly regarded by critical scholars and instead begin to think again

Conclusion
The regime of excellence involves a set of mechanisms on both a national and institutional level that are used to make managerial decisions about how funding and resources are distributed within the contemporary university. By establishing the rules of play for academic researchers, it has a signicant impact on the process of knowledge production within the business school, especially in terms of choices about where to publish and what to research. As we have seen, critical scholars are by no means immune to the logic of excellence; indeed, there is evidence to suggest that they are among the most skilled and able players of the game. This tells us that critical scholars may nd themselves complying with (rather than seeking to challenge) managerial prerogatives in higher education, not least in terms of their research practices. Such an erosion of ethos has serious implications for the future of critical scholarship in the business school since it reorients the production of academic knowledge around the imperatives of journal rankings, research assessments and premier outlets, thereby outsourcing the evaluation of research to external measures of quality. It will not have escaped attention that the authors have chosen to publish this paper in a highly ranked journal (currently four-rated according to the ABS list). An explanation for this choice which seems perfectly in line with the logic of excellence is therefore required, especially if we wish to avoid appearing as cynical double-dealers (we hope we are not). On the one hand, we nd it relatively easy to legitimize our decision to submit our work to the British Journal of Management (BJM). First, we have read with interest recent contributions to the debate on the future of CMS within the pages of this journal (e.g. Antonacopoulou, 2010; Ford, Harding and Learmonth, 2010; Tatli, 2012) and wish to add our own voice to this important issue. Also, since our empirical material deals mainly with experiences of critical scholars in the UK, particularly in relation to the RAE/REF and the ABS list, BJM struck us as an obvious choice of outlet. However, matters
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12 about what good scholarship might look like within the eld of CMS and beyond.

N. Butler and S. Spoelstra

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Nick Butler is a postdoctoral researcher at Lund University, Sweden. His research interests include the politics of excellence and relevance in the business school, the working lives of stand-up comedians and the philosophy of humour. He is a member of the editorial collective of ephemera. Sverre Spoelstra is Associate Professor at the Department of Business Administration, Lund University, Sweden. His current research interests include excellence and relevance in management research, leadership studies, theological motives in management knowledge and organizational philosophy.

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