Neutrality as complicity in our “critical” journals: A reflection on management and business publishing through the lens of selective silence on the genocide in Palestine

The essay reflects on management/business scholarship’s failure to acknowledge their complicity in, and to engage with major ethical crises of our time. We build on our attempt as critical accounting academics to garner action against the genocide in Palestine by four leading critical/interdisciplinary accounting journals. Accounting is deeply entangled in the political and economic organisation of occupation, and violence perpetrated by the state of Israel against Palestinians. Unlike Marketing Theory and Organization , who adopted stances against genocide, including boycotting Israeli academic institutions, most management and critical/interdisciplinary accounting journals remained silent, contradicting their long-standing claims to critical and theoretical positions against oppression. In response to our community mobilisation, the four journals desisted from taking meaningful actions, using their publisher’s ‘neutrality requirements’ and/or DEI as justifications for their (in)action. This reflective piece details our efforts, the journal’s responses, and our rebuttals to their inaction. We further reflect on the implication of corporate takeover of academic journals and marketisation of universities, and their (in)-capacity to engage with major ethical crises of our times.