https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508417740589 Organization 1–12 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1350508417740589 journals.sagepub.com/home/org ‘… The point is to change it’ – Yes, but in what direction and how? Intellectual activism as a way of ‘walking the talk’ of critical work in business schools Alessia Contu University of Massachusetts Boston, USA Abstract This article is a call to embrace and work towards a specific form of intellectual activism in business schools. Based on the inspiring work of Professor Patricia Hill Collins and other Black feminist and post-colonial scholars, intellectual activism is here defined as ‘the myriad ways in which people place the power of their ideas in service to social justice’. This article calls for and delineates a positive response to the current crisis by identifying key features and areas of work that scholars can engage with in ‘walking the talk’ of critical work in business schools. Keywords Performativity, Critique, Critical Management Studies, critical theory, diffraction, intersectionality, praxis, practice-based work, crisis, alternatives, alternative organizing In 2016, I was invited to give one of the keynotes at the Latin American and European Organization Studies (LAEMOS) conference and then to the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) sub-plenary five. Both were an honour and an opportunity. What you are reading is a short version of those talks. 1 My interventions focused on the concerns I (arguably with many in our field) had been chewing over for a while about critique and our role and position as management educators and business school academics in doing more than just offering sophisticated interpretations based on various forms of critical theories, something that I have been doing for about 20 years. These interpretations, while important, often do little more than build our professional identities and Corresponding author: Alessia Contu, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125-3300, USA. Email: Alessia.Contu@umb.edu Acting Up 740589ORG 0 0 10.1177/1350508417740589OrganizationContu research-article 2017