Reflections on how art can put critical performativity to work in Management Education and connections with the "performativity dilemma"

We advance a “double performativity” is expected from Management Education. Building on the foundations of performativity, we argue this institution’s performativity can only occur through its agents – who we qualify as per-formateurs – using successful performatives. From there, we explain how management educators are faced with a “performativity dilemma”, i.e. the extent to which management educators want to, and are legitimate to, shape management students through management theories and discourses; we in particular focus on management educators who are interested in Critical Management Education (CME). Through a critical and French sociology framework, we question whether, as many critical management educators believe, critical ideas can be shared through “critical performativity”. In this empirical qualitative paper based on an artistic experiment, we determine whether or not art can help put critical performativity to work in the Management Education context. We use an ethnographic posture both in the academic world and during the workshop, combined with interviews. We show how not respecting conditions of successful (critical) performatives – that is a) wanting to be (critically) performative, b) using a transparent (critical) performative process and c) using codes and social references easy to understand for all –, complemented with us not being critical in critical terms when animating the sessions – for instance using a) “critical taylorism” and b) hoping for an “insidious (critical) performativity” – led to critical performativity at best not fully occurring, largely because we did not take an open and transparent critical stance towards the performativity dilemma