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Critical performativity has become a promising notion for critical scholars who want to have concrete impact on society. Although the number of studies contributing to this literature has significantly increased in recent years, most of them are still restricted to theoretical debates. Rarely are those who have analyzed empirical cases and explored the institutional context that strengthen or limit the chances of critical projects to be successfully performed in practice. In this article we draw on the case of Popular Cooperative Incubators in Brazil to address this blind spot in current literature on critical performativity. We particularly focus on the institutional context for critical projects to be performative and on how actors shape the institutional context. We develop the notion of "critical performative work" to better show how the combination of institutional theory and critical management studies can help advance critical performativity. We offer both new theoretical contributions and practical suggestions for critical theory to have a larger impact in practice.

Although worker cooperatives offer an organizational model that critical management scholars could adopt to demonstrate the utility of their normative ideals, little is known about how academia can contribute to the creation of worker cooperatives. Building on the concept of performativity and the case of the Technological Incubators for Popular Cooperatives in Brazil, we provide an account of constructing incubators for worker cooperatives across multiple universities. Our study uncovers the challenges that scholars face in performing the model of worker cooperatives by cognitively embedding actors within both economic and cooperative principles through teaching. Our results clarify the role of feedback loops, knowledge circulation, and the building of 'chains of translation' in the concrete manufacturing of worker cooperatives, and we show how universities can help develop a multilevel, flexible, and complex support network that enhances the performativity of the worker cooperative model. We advance the concept of a 'critical performativity engine' to describe the process whereby the first method for incubating cooperatives was developed and then translated across settings.

The lack of transparency in African microfinance institutions (MFIs) is believed to delay the dissemination of microfinance in the continent. In this study, we focus on the question of how organizational characteristics and governmental corruption influence the transparency of African MFIs. Our results show that MFIs' maturity and larger size improve transparency in African MFIs, while a nonprofit status or a focus on small businesses do not lead to the same improvement. Regulation, in turn, makes African MFIs less transparent. Our findings also reveal the impact of governmental corruption on the relationship between organizational characteristics and MFIs' transparency in Africa: less corruption enhances the transparency of all MFIs, excepting for the regulated ones. Finally, we show that in countries with high levels of corruption, the MFIs that should be supported in becoming more transparent are the nonprofits, those dedicated to small businesses, and the regulated MFIs. ; A falta de transparência nas instituições de microfinança (IMFs) africanas pode dificultar a difusão da microfinança no continente. Nós analisamos a influência das características organizacionais e da corrupção governamental sobre a transparência daquelas IMFs. Nossos resultados mostram que a maior maturidade e tamanho das IMFs aumentam a sua transparência, enquanto a ausência de fins lucrativos e o foco nos pequenos negócios não geram o mesmo resultado. A regulação legal, por sua vez, diminui a transparência das IMFs africanas. Nossos resultados também revelam o impacto da corrupção governamental sobre a relação estabelecida entre as características organizacionais e a transparência das IMFs na África: menos corrupção aumenta a transparência de todas as IMFs, exceto daquelas reguladas. Finalmente, nós mostramos que em países com altos níveis de corrupção, as IMFs sem fins lucrativos, as dedicadas aos pequenos negócios e as reguladas são as que devem ser mais apoiadas para aumentar a sua transparência.

This article analyses the role of academics in the production and maintenance of alternative organizations within the capitalist system. Empirically, we focus on academics from the University of Buenos Aires who, through the extension programme Facultad Abierta, have supported worker-recuperated enterprises since their emergence in Argentina in the early 2000s. Conceptually, we build on prior studies on worker-recuperated enterprises as well as the 'critical performativity' concept that we define as scholars' subversive interventions that can involve the production of new subjectivities, the constitution of new organizational models and/or the bridging of these models to current social movements. Our results uncover the multiple roles of academics in relation to these three facets and highlight the key interactions of these roles. In so doing, our analysis advances prior studies of worker-recuperated enterprises by clarifying how academics can support alternative organizations while offering a renewed conceptualization of critical performativity as a multifaceted process through which academics and workers interact.