ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I illustrate how organizational research inspired by critical theory enriches our understanding of organizational phenomena. I begin by describing the defining characteristics of the pursuit of emancipatory knowledge through critical inquiry. I then illustrate how critical inquiry is a crucial path towards complementing the primarily functionalist positivist scholarship in the different subfields of organization studies (including strategic management, entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, and international management) with alternative theoretical and empirical insights. To realize the potential of critical inquiry, organizational scholars may draw on a diverse range of established critical qualitative approaches. I introduce a selection of those approaches and refer to key literature for each approach to provide interested readers with entry points for further reading. I conclude by emphasizing that critical inquiry’s openly political and ideological agenda enables us to study not only how organizational realities are but also how they ideally should be as well as how they may be transformed towards these ideals.
