In my paper I consider the condition of modern management education using the perspective of “Critical Management Education” (CME). This kind of reflection is relevant, because management education as currently practiced in western Europe and USA is strongly based on positivistic paradigm which constitutes strong concern about economic efficiency without the concern about the human dignity or freedom in organizational reality.

The economic and technical perspective of human, management and world, deep-rooted in management learning is seen today as the “one best way” of thinking. As a result, there is still little humanities in curriculum of business schools and also in curriculum in university’s programs of management learning, so there is little chance to teach students (managers) how to think in the critical way. Thus, management education don’t equip students with an adequate management competences - critical thinking is one of the most important competency which can make possible to cope with the complex cultural and social problems associated with the modern organizational world.

I defend the thesis, that knowledge transferred through the process of modern management learning is parochial, pernicious, and danger for human - because of the positivistic and functional orientation of this knowledge. Behind the mask of science and naturalness, positivists subordinate knowledge of management and truth only to the production of efficiency without the concern about philosophical assumptions of knowledge and about important political and ethical aspects of organizational reality - for example relations of domination, oppression, power, instrumentality.

The economic approach in management learning is strongly linked with the fact, that management sciences in western Europe and USA are situated on the economic paradigm, and its main feature is the epistemological fundamentalism. The great amount of scholars engaged in management sciences claim that “there is no alternative” for management theory than approach based on positivistic view. One of the main problem here is associated with the existence of an “intellectual cartel”: researchers use to cite each other in their publications and they don’t make the dialog with knowledge which stands in contradiction with theirs point of view.

The main aim of my reflection is to denaturalize the economic and positivistic fundamentalism deep-rooted in management education and management sciences. I present and apply insights developed by critical theory (especially Habermas’s theory of cognitive interests) to offer a heuristic framework to criticise the positivist orientation in management sciences and management learning because of unreflexivity about philosophical assumptions  and insensibility of ethical and political dimensions of management. According to this I would like to show the falseness of positivist argument against critical point of view, that every science, knowledge and education is critical in nature.

I try to answer the following questions: why do the positivistic assumptions in management sciences and management education lead managers to non-critical way of being and are dangerous for people engaged in organizational reality? Is it possible to implement critical orientation in management sciences, education and practice without loosing an economic dimension?

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