Working with Critical Documentary Film

In the past decade, critical documentary film has become increasingly important as a means of exposing oppressive and exploitative organizational practices and highlighting social justice issues. Films such as The Corporation (2003), Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Fired! (2007), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Black Gold (2006), Ghosts (2006), McLibel (2005), Mondovino (2004), No Logo (2003), Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004), Sicko (2007), Super Size Me (2004), Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005), The Take (2004) have dealt with a wide range of issues including human trafficking, sweatshop working conditions, non-unionized labour practices, the insecurities of white-collar work, climate change, environmental pollution and ecological exploitation, corporate control of the press, stealth marketing to children, monopoly practices and the impact of global branding, human health and commercial food production. Many of these films focus on some of the largest and most powerful global corporations on the planet.  Some, such as Supersize Me (2004), have led directly to changes in corporate practice. Others, like The Corporation (2003), have had indirect yet significant effects on public perceptions of the responsibilities of business. In addition, there are a growing number of proxy documentaries (Hassard and Buchanan, 2009), a hybrid genre that combines documentary and drama, such as Fast Food Nation (2006), The Age of Stupid (2009), The Constant Gardener (2005) and It’s a Free World (2007).

These films provide new ways of understanding work organizations as the dominant institutions in contemporary society (Rhodes and Westwood, 2008) and offer significant ethnographic and historical insight into the lived experience of organization (Hassard, 2009). They thus constitute a source of rich analytical material for management researchers and educators (Billsberry, Charlesworth and Leonard, forthcoming 2011). Consequently, they have found their way into the management classroom, as a way of educating managers about issues such as business ethics and corporate social responsibility and have resulted in numerous books, articles, case studies and websites that support the use of film in management education.

However, it is important to remember that these representations do not provide a window on the truth but rather a means of advancing certain ideological positions (Hassard and Holliday, 1998; Bell, 2008). The purpose of the workshop was to reflect on how critical documentary films are used by management educators and students and to explore the impact that these films have on audiences. It also provided an opportunity to explore whether as management scholars we are sufficiently active in seeking to understand the work of filmmakers. 

The growth in critical documentary feature film can partly be explained by the rise in accessible technologies like viral videos and digital recording, which have expanded opportunities for film production, coupled with the development of innovative distribution methods as a way of reaching non-traditional audiences. This was achieved through the involvement of an invited guest speaker, Eric Smith a partner from Free Range Studios, a graphic and creative design organization that has produced some of the most successful viral videos for non-profits, political campaigns and socially responsible businesses, such as The Meatrix. The workshop also explored how corporations have in turn become more skilful in counteracting the negative effects of critical documentary, through using documentary film to seek to portray their business activities favourably. By bringing together filmmakers and management researchers and educators, the workshop assessed the current and future impact of critical documentary films on management education and organizational practice and explored ways of making the relationship between them more mutually beneficial and potentially more productive.

The objectives of the workshop were to:

• Understand how critical documentary films are used by management educators, in different educational, national and cultural contexts.
• Reflect on the impact of critical documentary films on management education. Are they primarily a way of maintaining students’ interest in the classroom and keeping them entertained, or do they enable uncaring organizational practices to be resisted?
• Consider activist documentary filmmakers as organizational analysts and change agents and think about ways in which management educators can engage with them more effectively in order to raise awareness of social justice and environmental issues and to give voice to those who are marginalised and oppressed by organizational practices.
• Discuss the kind of knowledge that documentary films generate, including how they generate authenticity, present ideological arguments and advance truth claims.

References

Billsberry, J., Charlesworth, J. and Leonard, P. (forthcoming 2011) (eds.) Moving Images: Effective Teaching with Film and Television in Management. Information Age Publishing.

Bell, E. (2008) Reading Management and Organization in Film Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hassard, J. and Holliday, R. (1998) Organization Representation: Work and Organization in Popular Culture. London: Sage.

Hassard, J. and Buchanan, D.A. (2009) ‘From Modern Times to Syriana: Feature Films as Research Data’, in Buchanan, D.A. and Bryman, A. (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Organizational Research Methods. London: Sage.

Hassard, J. (2009) ‘Researching Work and Institutions through Ethnographic Documentaries’, in Buchanan, D.A. and Bryman, A. (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Organizational Research Methods. London: Sage.

Rhodes, C. and Westwood, R. (2008) Critical Representations of Work and Organization in Popular Culture London: Routledge.

Workshop Powerpoint Slides

Pauline Leonard, University of Southamption, UK

Using Feature Films in Management Education

Abstracts of Speakers’ Talks

PDW Abstracts

YouTube Film Clips Shown in the Workshop

Bonecrusher (2009)

The Corporation (2003)

The Meatrix (2006)

The Age of Stupid (2009)

Supersize Me (2004)

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

The Story of Stuff (2007)

Wall Street (1987)

Syriana (2005)

Factotum (2006)

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