OMT
CMS
SIM
Emamdeen Fohim
U. of Bern, Switzerland
Chintan Kella
Department of Organisation and Personnel Management, Rotterdam School of Managem, Netherlands
Medina Williams
Purdue U., West Lafayette, United States
Shaista Khilji
George Washington U., United States
Leanne Hedberg
MacEwan U., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jean-Pierre Imbrogiano
U. of Helsinki, Finland
Michael Lounsbury
U. of Alberta, Canada
Charlene Zietsma
U. of Michigan, United States
Samer Abdelnour
U. of Edinburgh business school, United Kingdom
Tapiwa Winston Seremani
IESEG School of Management, France, France
Sandiso Bazana
Grenoble Ecole de Management, France
Chahrazad Abdallah
U. du Québec à Montréal, Canada
Snehanjali Chrispal
-, Australia
Ella Henry
Auckland U. of Technology, New Zealand
Literature on decolonizing management and organization (MOS) studies has become a hot topic in our discipline (i.e., Allen & Girei, 2023; Pal et al., 2022; Yousfi, 2021). As scholars have recognized a Western-centric bias, fostering one-sided knowledge outputs incommensurate with other cultural contexts (Banerjee, 2021; Filatotchev et al., 2021), there has been an increased call to enhance indigenous theorizing (Bothello et al., 2019; Bruton et al., 2021; Salmon et al., 2023). However, decolonizing our discipline is more than overcoming a so-called WEIRD bias – the narrow research focus on and with actors from countries with a Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic background (Henrich et al., 2010). Instead, decolonizing MOS requires serious “emancipatory” steps to overcome institutional hurdles that hamper the heterogenization of knowledge creation (Banerjee, 2021). Further reflections and new solutions on the setup of journals (Barros & Alcadipani, 2022; Zoogah et al., forthcoming), international conferences (Kondayya et al., forthcoming), or business schools (Woods et al., 2022) are needed to include previously unheard voices in the mainstream literature. What decolonizing means in academia and what it is not is thus a topic that concerns all management scholars (Abdelnour, 2022). Particularly if we take our call seriously to create knowledge for addressing current and future grand challenges (George et al., 2016; Kunisch et al., 2023). Spaces for voices and theories on sustainable solutions beyond Western Enlightenment ideals are thus needed (Banerjee & Arjaliès, 2021). Hence, decolonizing MOS requires profound and deepened reflections from different viewpoints: i) taking stock of existing literature on the topic to identify unaddressed gaps, ii) establishing a common understanding of why to decolonize our discipline, iii) creating ideas of how to do this as an individual scholar in the broader system of knowledge creation, iv) reflect on what institutions in which areas of academia need to be reimagined, v) and finally launch initiatives and start actions (beyond writing about the topic) that can seriously impact and change our academic world. The presenter symposium wants to shed light on these issues through the presentation and subsequent discussion of five articles.
Author: Emamdeen Fohim – U. of Bern
Author: Michael Lounsbury – U. of Alberta
Author: Tapiwa Winston Seremani – IESEG School of Management, France
Author: Sandiso Bazana – Grenoble Ecole de Management
Author: Chahrazad Abdallah – U. du Québec à Montréal
Author: Snehanjali Chrispal – -
Author: Ella Henry – Auckland U. of Technology
Author: Chintan Kella – Department of Organisation and Personnel Management, Rotterdam School of Managem
Author: Medina Williams – Purdue U., West Lafayette
Author: Shaista Ehsan Khilji – George Washington U.
Author: Leanne Mara Hedberg – MacEwan U., Edmonton, Alberta
Author: Jean-Pierre Imbrogiano – U. of Helsinki