How critique reinforces neoliberalism: Justification work in Yunus’s social business discourse

Management research increasingly focuses on how organisations address grand challenges such as poverty or climate change. While such challenges are complex, many management approaches reduce them to market-based solutions. This article explores the discursive dynamics behind this neoliberalisation of grand challenges, specifically examining how neoliberal discourse responds to criticism. Drawing on Boltanski’s recent work in pragmatic sociology, we use the concepts of critique, test and justification work to analyse Muhammad Yunus’s books on “social business”—a specific business model designed to address grand challenges through business ventures. We uncover how the author engages in a co-optation process that expresses critical claims while repurposing them within the neoliberal themes of compliance with market forces, the pursuit of sustainable growth and entrepreneurship of the self. Our analysis offers three contributions. First, we reveal the ontological plasticity of neoliberal discourse, which views the market not as a monolithic concept but from multiple perspectives—as natural forces, a human construct or a site for self-realisation. Second, we uncover how these perspectives fuel justification mechanisms, which disarm critique to reinforce neoliberalism. Third, we demonstrate how these justification mechanisms extend, align and revitalise the neoliberal approach to grand challenges while excluding alternatives. Ultimately, our article highlights why critique has such limited effects on the neoliberalisation of grand challenges and paves the way for radical engagement with the unsustainability of neoliberal capitalism.