Cooking up Critical Research: Some Thoughts on Theory, Practice and Success Criteria Authors:

In this paper we use the example of Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners campaign to explore a number of issues of relevance to critical management studies and research namely; the potential and limitations of critical research (CR) (social change and emancipation); achieving the aims of CR (criticality and praxis); the power of the (celebrity) researcher as critical and change management. The main point of this paper is to develop a critique of the practical relevance of CMS. The paper uses Oliver's campaign as a comparative case study to illustrate weaknesses of current critical research. However, the point of this is not to provide "data" to "prove" or "demonstrate" anything. Rather, Oliver's campaign will provide the reader with a case analysis which should allow us to view some of the problems of CMS in a sharper light. Our main argument in this paper is that a central problem of critical research is that it does not live up to its own standards of criticality. We will use Jamie Oliver's campaign as an example of possible success in initiating and managing social change. Although the number of empirical critical management studies has begun to grow in recent years, there are relatively few for researchers to draw upon. There are certainly no CMS projects that have become as high profile as the campaign that will be considered here. Further, there are few projects that have led to a relevant change in public perception. We will argue that Oliver's campaign shows several crucial properties of critical research without being explicitly linked to critical theory. The unique contribution of this paper is that it allows a reconceptualisation of critical management from the point of view of popular culture. It thereby opens up new avenues for a critical appreciation of CMS, and aims to start a debate on how critical theory and critical practice can reconnect in a practically successful and theoretically stringent manner.