Muhammad Ifan Fadillah, Edi Suryadi, Gunawan
Critical Management Studies (CMS) has become stagnant due to its strong dependence on post-structuralist discourse analysis. This paper aims to revitalize CMS by integrating Critical Realism (CR) as an ontological and epistemological foundation in order to restore its emancipatory mission and enhance its relevance in addressing contemporary organizational and social challenges. This study adopts a qualitative meta-theoretical approach based on an extensive literature review, theoretical comparison, and critical discourse analysis. Using retroduction, it connects surface-level organizational phenomena to deeper structural mechanisms, and develops the CMS–CR Transformational Framework consisting of structural diagnosis, ontological intervention, and transformative praxis. The review shows that CR improves CMS’s ability to uncover structural mechanisms of capitalism, including labor precarity, financialization, and digital platform exploitation. The proposed framework enables both stronger theoretical explanations and practical strategies, ranging from wage justice and participatory governance to transnational regulatory reforms, thereby reestablishing CMS as a socially transformative approach. This study contributes by moving beyond both post-structuralist CMS and first-generation CMS–CR to propose a praxis-oriented framework. Unlike earlier works that remained primarily diagnostic, it operationalizes CR into a coherent model for structural intervention, making CMS more politically engaged, justice-oriented, and globally applicable. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.
Faculty of Economics and Business Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, No. 229 Dr. Setiabudhi Street, Bandung, Indonesia
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