Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Core Periphery Relations and Organisation Studies
Core Periphery Relations and Organisation Studies
Robert Westwood
Newcastle Business School, Australia
Gavin Jack
La Trobe University, Australia
and
Michal Frenkel
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Selection and editorial content © Robert Westwood, Gavin Jack, Farzad Rafi Khan
and Michal Frenkel 2014
Individual chapters © Contributors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-30904-4
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries
ISBN 978-1-349-45626-0 ISBN 978-1-137-30905-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137309051
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Index 249
List of Illustrations
Figures
Tables
vii
Acknowledgements
viii
Notes on Contributors
Sammy K. Bonsu is fortunate to have been born in Ghana where his inter-
ests in markets, culture and socio-economic development were nurtured.
He has parlayed this interest into something of a career supported by
the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada and
the Social Science & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada.
Currently on location at Ghana Institute of Management & Public
Administration (GIMPA), Sammy maintains research interests in Africa
and Diasporan experiences that inform theoretical developments.
Michal Frenkel is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Anthropology and
Organisation Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research
focuses on the transformation of local and transnational (ethnic, racial,
class and gendered) social orders in the context of the ‘globalisation’ of
management practices. She has published widely in journals such as the
Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies, Organization Science,
Organization and Gender, Work and Organization as well as in leading Israeli
journals. Her empirical and theoretical articles have looked at the role of
geopolitical and centre-periphery power relations in the cross-national
transfer and translation of management practices within multinational
corporations, and across national boundaries. In other publications she
looked at the role of national and political ideologies as well as polit-
ical institutions in the importation and translation of classic models of
management.
Manuka Henare is currently Associate Dean Māori and Pacific
Development and founder Director of the Mira Szászy Research Centre
for Māori and Pacific Economic Development. He is an Indigenous
anthropologist and historian, specialising in Māori and Pacific anthro-
pology and history. Henare joined the Department of Management and
International Business in 1996 as a Senior Lecturer in Māori Business
Development. He teaches Māori business and economics, culture and
society, and tribal histories. He lectures in Development Studies on
culture, religion and economic development and sustainability and
Indigenous thinking. He has a specialist knowledge of the writings of
Tamati Ranapiri on hau and mauri.
Bob Hodge is currently a Research Professor at the Institute for Culture
and Society, University of Western Sydney, Australia. He was educated
ix
x Notes on Contributors
the centre (UK), the periphery (Macau, Fiji) and the semi-periphery
(Hong Kong) as well as in Australia – with varying degrees of comfort
and unease. He was woken up to the conditions of postcoloniality and
his own condition of privilege 30 years ago by a Fijian colleague who
queried “What the hell are you doing in my country?” as they consumed
a couple of Fiji Bitters together. In addition to the critical interrogation
of management and organisation studies through the resources of post-
colonialism, Bob has also researched and published in the spheres of
language and organisation, organisational humour, popular culture and
organisations, gender and organisation, and issues around identity and
the meaning of work.
List of Abbreviations
xiv
1
Situating Core-Peripheral
Knowledge in Management and
Organisation Studies
Robert Westwood, Gavin Jack, Farzad Rafi Khan and
Michal Frenkel
Introduction
1
2 Robert Westwood, Gavin Jack, Farzad Khan and Michal Frenkel
2003; Connell, 2007). As Connell (2007, p. vii) notes: ‘Its [social science’s]
dominant genres picture the world as it is seen by men, by capitalists,
by the educated and affluent. Most important, they picture the world
as seen from the rich capital-exporting countries of Europe and North
America’. A key result of such ‘world-picturings’ is the delegitimisa-
tion, marginalisation, distortion or silencing of local/Indigenous (non-
centre) epistemologies and worldviews. In exploring knowledge from
the periphery of MOS and the global social sciences, this book attempts
to reconfigure such Eurocentric pictures of the world, and to redress the
‘legitimacy gap’ between knowledge produced in the centre, and knowl-
edge produced in peripheral locations within our discipline.
In colonial history, the attempted imposition of colonial ideology and
colonisers’ belief in the superiority of their own knowledge provided
the foundation for various forms and practices of cultural imperialism
(Said, 1993) that set out to civilise and to bring modernity, order and
progress to the natives (McClintock, 1995). A Eurocentric teleology in
which Europe/Western civilisation considered itself more advanced
and evolved than other societies placed a mobile West at the vanguard
of history and trapped an immobile colonial Other into tradition and
non-modernity (Chakrabarty, 2000). Akena (2012) illustrates how such
cultural imperialism worked in the historical context of formal education
and schooling in Uganda (a former British colony). Akena’s historical
study describes and critiques the beliefs and practices of indoctrination
and evangelisation of the first Christian missionaries who arrived in
Uganda from Britain in 1877. Convinced that local Ugandan knowl-
edge, spirituality and religious values were inferior, Akena details how
the missionaries built elementary and industrial schools and churches
that would serve to
( ... ) they were confused whether they belonged to the African or the
European world, which did not quite fully accept them. Cut off from
the mass of the African population but always looking to their newly
acquired colonial masters for instruction and guidance, the disori-
ented and alienated African pupils from their traditional cultures
were left without proper anchors. (p. 610)
Akena’s analysis highlights not only the vital role played by schooling
and education in the propagation and transmission of colonial ideology,
but also the psychological damage inter alia caused by the simultaneous
internalisation of the coloniser’s knowledge systems and the denigra-
tion of one’s own.
If we move from nineteenth-century missionaries and the emergence
of formal education in Uganda, to twentieth and twenty-first-century
writers and educators of management and organisation, a similar story
could be told, even if the actors and the locations are different. As a site
for the production and regulation of legitimate knowledge, the manage-
ment academy is certainly not exempt from the propagation and ensuing
effects of core-periphery dynamics. It is well accepted that MOS is domi-
nated by centres of knowledge and Eurocentric theoretical frameworks
from the Global North (specifically the United States and to a lesser
extent Western Europe) (Alcadipani and Reis, 2011; Frenkel & Shenhav,
2006) and reflective of the development of Western modernist narra-
tives of science and progress (Calás & Smircich, 2003). Ibarra-Colado
(2008), for example, describes the workings of core-periphery in MOS in
the context of Latin America. He writes that:
acknowledgement of, and limited attention to, the complex and deep
imbrication of MOS and the conditions of its emergence in the colo-
nial, neo-colonial and imperial projects of the past four centuries or so.
There is an erasure of the development of key aspects of contemporary
Western management and administration in and through the colonial
project – in the mundane practices of colonial control and administra-
tion, the innovations in plantation management, the operations of the
slave trade (Cooke, 2003a), the logistics of the opium trade and by the
appropriative operations of Western-based trading companies such as
the East India company inter alia. A kind of pretence has been sustained
that academic MOS discourse arose under conditions of scientific objec-
tivity, scholarly distance and disengagement, and that professional prac-
tice came forth as a set of impersonal and rational-economic responses to
purely business/management exigencies. The conditions of emergence
are characterised as ones of neutrality and innocence – decontextualised
and de-historicised from the imperial encounter between the West and
the rest.
To facilitate a reflexive focus that brings to the fore the ideological,
cultural and historical provenance of MOS and to interrogate critically
its assumptions, some scholars have turned to postcolonial theory as a
rich reservoir of resources. Postcolonial theory has a long history and, as
is typical of its engagement with intellectual currents relative to other
fields and disciplines, MOS has belatedly recognised its critical potential.
Young’s (2001) exacting historical account sees the term ‘postcolonial’
(or rather post-colonial) first used in relation to Marxist-inflected anal-
ysis of postcolonial states in the 1950s. As Young (2001) notes:
1. The creation and use of strategies that will ‘liberate the captive mind
from oppressive conditions that continue to silence and marginalise
the voices of the subordinated, colonized, non-Western societies that
encountered European civilization’.
2. The ‘restoration and development of cultural practices, thinking
patterns, beliefs, and values that were suppressed but are still relevant
and necessary’. (p. 14)
and analytical tasks of each chapter mean that while the authors share
a common goal of decentring MOS and pressing for the legitimacy of
knowledge produced in the periphery, there are tensions and challenges
between them. In Chapter 2, ‘Can the Periphery Write Back?’ Periphery-
to-Centre Knowledge Flows in Multinationals Based in Developing and
Emerging Economies’, Michal Frenkel re-visits the binary distinction
between core and periphery and asks what happens when the core of the
multinational corporation – its headquarters – is located in the global
periphery. Situated in the nascent academic literature on multinationals
based in emerging and developing economies (so-called DE-MNCs), as
well as public discourse surrounding the expansion of such firms into
the ‘developed’ world, she explores the possibility for a cross-national
transfer of management knowledge between the two locations. In this
case, the transfer involves knowledge developed in former colonies such
as India, Brazil and others to the global centre. She found that DE-MNCs
are reluctant to impose their home country managerial practices upon
their ‘first-world’ foreign units, and that managers and workers in these
foreign units are highly resistant to any such potential transfer. To
explain she applies the notion of the ‘postcolonial imagination’. While
their economic success could make DE-MNCs a role model for other
firms to follow, this postcolonial cognitive map that scholars of interna-
tional management and actors in the field are still clinging to seems to
prevent a counter-flow of management knowledge from the periphery
to the core. Such actions effectively reproduce the hierarchy of knowl-
edge that takes for granted the universality and superiority of manage-
ment knowledge produced at the global core.
Seeking to decolonise management knowledge, Robert Westwood’s
‘De-centring Management and Organisation Studies: On the Eccentricity
of US-based Management and Organisation Theory and Practice’
(Chapter 3) turns the postcolonial gaze from the colonies towards the
‘empire’ of MOS itself: US-based management and organisation theory and
practice. Analysing mainstream US-based MOS, he shows that contrary
to explicit or implicit universalist assumptions, much of US-developed
and disseminated theory, particularly in the organisational behaviour
domains, articulates modes of being and behaving that are distinctive
and ineluctably provincialised. That is to say, they are tied to the values,
ideologies and sets of relevancies that prevail in the United States. These
theories and practices are therefore less relevant for the rest of the world
in which they are commonly studied and implemented. This insight
impels a reconsideration of the field which, through a distorted politics
of knowledge – itself related to a distorted geo-politics – propagates the
20 Robert Westwood, Gavin Jack, Farzad Khan and Michal Frenkel
alternative Indigenous values. The authors use the notion of the ‘meta-
phoric mind’ to illustrate with interview material the interconnections
of the human, metaphysical, spiritual and cosmological domains of
human existence. Through their analysis, they develop the notion of
ancestral leadership which suggests that leadership is grounded in the
traditions of Indigenous spiritual philosophies and, to use their words,
‘nurturing relational engagement with deitic energies’. In developing
this concept of leadership, Kelly et al. join the previous chapter in
pushing forward the idea that by introducing the experiences and
knowledge of the periphery, scholars may add to the development of
management knowledge and practices that are far richer and more
universally applicable than the core-based hegemonic MOS.
In Chapter 9, ‘Voices That Matter: Speaking up for the “Indigenous”
in Business Education’, Diane Ruwhiu moves beyond the presentation
of Māori knowledge as alternative management knowledge, to critically
consider current attempts in New Zealand business schools to introduce
such Indigenous content into the curriculum. Whilst Ruwhiu welcomes
this development, she has certain concerns about how this might be
working in a context where the ideological and paradigmatic Western
frames of business and management education are strongly entrenched
in New Zealand’s business schools. Her chapter does not prescribe steps
for the introduction of Māori content into the curriculum. Instead, it
encourages readers to recognise the already hybridised nature of colo-
nial and Indigenous knowledge and to use this as the basis for critical
reflection on curriculum development. Furthermore, she asks educators
to consider for themselves the answers to the two following questions
about the development of Māori curriculum into business schools: What
does Indigenous knowledge in the context of business education look
like? What are the consequences and/or outcomes for students and
educators?
Finally, in Chapter 10, ‘Sorry, the Network Society has Already been
Invented: Why Management Education Needs Indigenous Input’, Bob
Hodge provides another example of how Indigenous knowledge is far
more sophisticated in developing relevant practices of organisation than
the core’s most ‘advanced’ theories. Developing a postcolonial critique
of the claimed ‘network revolution’ in contemporary global business,
he argues that Aboriginal network practices in Australia and ‘knowledge
from the margins’ need to be recognised and valued as fundamental
dimensions in management education today. Network models have been
defining elements in such Indigenous cultures for millennia. Yet main-
stream management and organisation studies still barely understand
Situating Core-Peripheral Knowledge in Management 23
Notes
1. Wallerstein’s framework also refers to semi-peripheral countries.
2. Hoogvelt (2001) goes on to critique Wallerstein’s analysis. She argues that
radical structural changes have occurred in the world system and incorpora-
tion is no longer a systemic aim. She says that a geographic core-periphery
divide is being replaced by a social one. A ‘new global configuration drives a
politics of exclusion, contrasted with the politics of incorporation (and ‘devel-
opmentalism’ in the broadest sense) that marked previous period of capitalist
expansion’ (pp. 64–65).
References
Adanhounme, A.B. (2011). ‘Corporate social responsibility in postcolonial Africa:
another civilizing mission?’ Journal of Change Management, 11(1), 91–110.
Agrawal, A. (1995). ‘Indigenous and scientific knowledge: some critical
comments’. Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, 3(3), http://app.iss.
nl/ikdm/ikdm/ikdm/3–3/contents.html (Accessed 12 June 2013).
Ahiauzu A.I. (ed.) (1986). Management and Organisation in Africa. New York:
Sharp.
Akena, F.A. (2012). ‘Critical analysis of the production of western knowledge and
its implications for indigenous knowledge and decolonization’. Journal of Black
Studies, 43(6), 599–619.
Al-Araf, M. (2006). The Essential Ideals of Islamic Philosophy. Lewiston, NY: Edwin
Mellen Press.
Alatas, S.F. (2003). ‘Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the
social sciences’. Current Sociology, 51(6), 599–613.
Alatas, S.F. (2000). ‘Intellectual imperialism: definition, traits, and problems’.
Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 28(1), 23–45.
Alatas, S.H. (1977). Intellectuals in Developing Societies. London and New York:
Routledge.
Alatas, S.H. (1974). ‘The captive mind and creative development’. International
Social Science Journal, 36(4), 691–700.
Alcadipani, R. (2010). ‘From Latin America to the world: notes on the (possible)
Latin American management styles’, in A. Guedes and A. Faria (eds), International
Management and International Relations: A Critical Perspective from Latin America.
London and New York: Routledge, 102–145.
Alcadipani, R. and Caldas, M.P. (2012).‘Americanizing Brazilian management’.
Critical Perspectives on International Business, 8, 37–55.
Alcadipani, R., Khan, F.R., Gantman, E. and Nkomo S. (2012). Southern voices in
management and organization knowledge’. Organization, 19(2), 131–143.
24 Robert Westwood, Gavin Jack, Farzad Khan and Michal Frenkel
Cooke, B. (1999). ‘The flag on the cover, part one: once a slavedriver?’ Manchester,
First Critical Management Studies Conference.
Coronado, G. (2012). ‘Constructing the “neo-colonial” manager: orientalizing
Latin America in the textbooks’, in A. Prasad (ed.), Against the Grain: Advances
in Postcolonial Organization Studies. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School
Press, 155–176.
Cram, F. (2001). ‘Rangahau Māori: Tona tika, tona pono – the validity and
integrity of Māori research’, in M. Tolich (ed.), Research Ethics in Aotearoa New
Zealand. Auckland: Reed Publishing Ltd., 35–52.
Dar, S. and Cooke, B. (2008). The New Development Management: Critiquing the
Dual Modernization. London: Zed Books.
Das, D., Dharwadkar, R. and Brades, P. (2008). ‘The importance of being “Indian”:
identity centrality and work outcomes in an off-shored call center in India’.
Human Relations, 61(11), 1499–1530.
Denzin, N., Lincoln, Y. and Smith, L.T. (2008). Handbook of Critical and Indigenous
Methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Eades, S.J. and Stanley, F.J. (2013). ‘Improving the health of first nations children
in Australia: regular monitoring and supportive federal and state public policy
are critical to closing the gap’. Medical Journal of Australia, 199(1), 12–13.
Ehrenreich, B. and Hochschild, A. (eds) (2003). Global Woman: Nannies, Maids,
and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Macmillan.
Ellen, R., Parkes, P. and Bicker, A. (eds) (2000). Indigenous Environmental Knowledge
and its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives. Newark, NJ:
Harwood.
Eze, E.C. (ed.) (1997). Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Faria, A. (2013). ‘Border thinking in action: should critical management studies
get anything done?’, in V. Malin, J. Murphy and M. Siltaoja (eds), Getting Things
Done (Dialogues in Critical Management Studies), Volume 2. Bingley, UK:
Emerald Group Publishing, 277–300.
Faria, A., Wanderley, S., Reis, Y. and Celano, A. (2013). ‘Can the subaltern teach?
Performativity otherwise through anthropophagy’, in V. Malin, J. Murphy
and M. Siltaoja (eds), Getting Things Done (Dialogues in Critical Management
Studies), Volume 2. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, 205–224.
Figueroa, R. and Harding, S. (eds) (2003). Science and Other Cultures: Philosophy of
Science and Technology Issues. New York: Routledge.
Fitzgibbons, D. and Humphries, M. (2011). ‘Enhancing the circle of life: manage-
ment education and Indigenous knowledge’. Journal of Management Education,
35(3), 3–7.
Fougere, M. and Moulettes, A. (2007). ‘The construction of the modern west and
the backward rest: studying the discourse of Hofstede’s Culture’s Consequences’.
Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 2(1), 1–19.
Frank, A.G. (1978). Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment. New York:
Monthly Review Press.
Frank, A.G. (1967). Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York:
Monthly Review Press.
Frenkel, M. (2008). ‘The multinational corporation as a third space: rethinking
international management discourse on knowledge transfer through Homi
Bhabha’. Academy of Management Review, 33(4), 924–942.
Situating Core-Peripheral Knowledge in Management 27
Jack, G., Zu, X., Barney, J., Prichard, C., Brannen, M.J., Singh, K. and Whetten, D.
(2013). ‘Refining, reinforcing and reimagining universal and indigenous theory
development in international management’. Journal of Management Inquiry,
22(2), 148–164.
Jackson, T. (2013). ‘Reconstructing the indigenous in African management
research’. Management International Review, 53(1), 13–38.
Jackson, T. (2012). ‘Postcolonialism and organizational knowledge in the wake of
China’s presence in Africa: interrogating south-south relations’. Organization,
19(2), 181–204.
Jackson, T., Amaeshi, K. and Yavuz, S. (2008). ‘Untangling African indigenous
management: multiple influences on the success of SMEs in Kenya’. Journal of
World Business, 43(3), 400–416.
Kelly, E.S., Mills, A.J. and Cooke, B. (2006).‘Management as a Cold War phenom-
enon?’ Human Relations, 59(5), 603–610.
Khan, F.R. and Koshal, B.B. (2011). ‘Lenin in Allah’s court: Iqbal’s critique of
Western capitalism and the opening up of the postcolonial imagination in
critical management studies’. Organization, 18(3), 303–322.
Khan, F.R. and Lund-Thomsen, P. (2011). ‘CSR as imperialism: towards a phenom-
enological approach to CSR in the developing world’. Journal of Change
Management, 1(1), 73–90.
Khan, F.R., Westwood, R.I. and Boje, D.M. (2010). ‘“I feel like a foreign agent”:
NGOs and corporate social responsibility interventions into Third World child
labour’. Human Relations, 63(9), 1417–1438.
Kipping, M., Engwall, L. and Üsdiken, B. (2008). ‘Preface: the transfer of manage-
ment knowledge to peripheral countries’. International Studies of Management
and Organization, 38(4), 3–16.
Kovach, M.E. (2010). Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and
Contexts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
Leavitt, H.J. (1957). ‘On the export of American management education’. The
Journal of Business, 30(3), 153–161.
Locke, R.R. (1996). The Collapse of the American Management Mystique. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Mabogunje, A.L. (1980).‘The dynamics of centre-periphery relations: the need for
a new geography of resource development’. Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, New Series, 5(3), 277–296.
Mandiola, M.P. (2010). ‘Latin America’s critical management? A liberation gene-
alogy’. Critical Perspectives On International Business, 6(2/3), 162–176.
March, J. (2004). ‘Parochialism in the evolution of a research community: the
case of organization studies’. Management and Organization Review, 1(1), 5–22.
Marsden, D. (1991). ‘Indigenous management’. The International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 2(1), 21–38.
Mayasandra, R., Pan, S.L. and Myers, M.D. (2006). ‘Viewing information tech-
nology outsourcing organisations through a postcolonial lens’, in E. Trauth,
D. Howcroft, T. Butler, B. Fitzgerald and J. De Gross (eds), Social Inclusion,
Societal and Organisational Implications for Information Systems. Berlin: Springer,
381–396.
McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial
Conquest. New York and London: Routledge.
Situating Core-Peripheral Knowledge in Management 29
Rethinking empires
In their book The Empire Writes Back, Ashcroft et al. (1989) remind us
that the after-effects of colonialism are not limited to the colonies; they
also flow back to reshape the imperial metropole as well. In manage-
ment and organisation studies, scholars have shown that the bureau-
cratic experience in the colonies (e.g., Frenkel & Shenhav, 2006) and the
experience acquired in the management of slaves in southern planta-
tions (Cooke, 2003a), for instance, actually contributed to shaping the
‘Western’ (or Northern) canon of management theory. In this constella-
tion, the subaltern’s impact on the coloniser is always bottom up, and
is always mediated through the active role taken by the coloniser in
developing new types of knowledge that are grounded in his encounter
with the ‘Other’.
33
34 Michal Frenkel
It was Frantz Fanon, in his The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon, 2005,
published in French in 1961), who first emphasised the importance of
imagination in the reproduction of colonial hierarchies and domination
and in the potential struggle against colonialism. Fanon himself never
defined the notion of imagination, nor did he use the phrases ‘post-
colonial imagination’ or ‘colonial imagination’. However, his call for
the colonised imagination to ‘roam outside the colonial order’ (p. 129)
and his claim that the inability of the colonised and the colonisers to
imagine a decolonised world was an important factor in preventing the
liberation of the colonised have inspired recent scholars of postcoloni-
alism, who themselves use the concept of imagination to refer to two
somewhat contradictory phenomena: (1) The ability to think outside
of the colonial order (Kwok, 2005; Prasad & Prasad, 2003); and (2) the
restrictions of one’s limited imagination that force one to take colonial
hierarchies and distinctions for granted.
In relation to the former, Pui-Lan Kwok (2005, p. 2) has defined the
postcolonial imagination as ‘a desire, a determination and a process of
disengagement from the whole colonial syndrome’. Following Stuart
Hall, Kwok argues that decolonisation involves the deconstruction of the
dominant western regime of knowledge by ‘examining the interdepend-
ence of the cultural terrain traversed by both colonizers and colonized,
as well as how the colonial systems of knowledge cast their impact long
after the colonizers are gone’. Seeing the development of a ‘postcolonial
imagination’ as the role of intellectuals, Kwok hopes to allow readers to
‘imagine that an alternative world and a different system of knowing
are possible’.
Developing the second understanding of the notion of postcolonial
imagination mentioned above, Kanu (2003) sees postcolonialism as the
after-effects of the colonial encounter, and is interested in how cultural
frameworks developed as part of the colonial world still shape and
restrict peoples’ abilities to imagine a different world and act upon this
imagination. Building on Popkewitz’s (2000) definition of imagination
as ‘how people come to know, understand and experience themselves as
members of a community’, Kanu argues that imagination functions to
form individuals into the seam of a collective narrative, and helps them
generate conceptions of personhood and identity (p. 68). Citing Rizvi
(2000), he claims that ‘imagination is the attempt to provide coherence
between ideas and action, to provide a basis for the content of rela-
tionships and the creation of categories with which to understand the
Can the Periphery Write Back? 37
world around us. What is imagined defines what we regard as normal’ (my
emphasis). We should add that in Rizvi’s formulation, imagination is
not an attribute possessed by a few endowed individuals or intellectuals,
but instead ‘denotes a collective sense of a group of people, a commu-
nity that begins to imagine and feel things together’ (Rizvi, 2000, p. 223
cited in Kanu, 2003).
Both conceptualisations of the postcolonial imagination – seeing
it as a desired ability to liberate oneself from the restrictions of the
‘colonial imagination’, or as the general failure to do so owing to the
cultural power of the colonial framework even after the colonisers are
gone – emphasise the fact that imagination does not necessarily reflect
an objective ‘reality’ of west-rest relations. In both cases, imagination
explains people’s action, or lack thereof.
In this chapter, I adopt Kanu’s working definition of the postcolonial
imagination and argue that while control over their western subsidi-
aries and other foreign units, together with their proven success, could
have allowed DE-MNCs to implement in their foreign units HR knowl-
edge and practices developed in their headquarters, the postcolonial
imagination shared by the MNCs’ headquarters, their home countries,
the foreign units’ managers and workers, and the units’ host countries
prevent the DE-MNCs from attempting to export their knowledge and
the units from accepting such knowhow in the few cases in which it
is circulated. Moving beyond the original definition of imagination,
whereby it is attributed to individuals, I argue that organisational and
state actors also share these conceptual frameworks and that they deter-
mine their own operations in the global sphere.
In what follows, I offer some preliminary thoughts about the ways in
which the postcolonial imagination places limitations on international
management mainstream scholarship, DE-MNCs’ managers, foreign
units and workers when considering the possibility of exporting and
importing non-western organisational practices.
competitive advantage of the firm and its different foreign units (e.g., De
Cieri & Dowling, 2006; Taylor et al., 1996). In most cases, organisational
policies in general, and HRM practices in particular, are seen as contrib-
uting to the headquarters’ success and growth. Their transfer to the
MNC’s foreign units is said to improve their performance and increase
intra-firm homogeneity, which in turn is seen as contributing to better
communication between units, the smoother transfer of workers from
one unit to the other and a reduction in the transaction costs associated
with internationalisation (Taylor et al., 1996).
Scholars of strategic international HRM have identified three main
strategies that characterise MNCs’ efforts to design managerial practices
in their overseas units: exportive, adaptive and integrative (Taylor et al.,
1996). MNCs adopting the exportive strategy believe that their own strat-
egies are both the best and universal and that they can contribute to the
success of the overseas units regardless of their institutional and cultural
environment. The adaptive strategy takes the host country’s cultural
and institutional environment into consideration and allows for intra-
organisational managerial diversity such that each unit can adopt the
policies and practices that best fit its own environment. The integrative
approach goes back to the adoption of a single best practice, but it need
not necessarily be associated with the MNC’s home country; instead, it
is chosen based on merit alone, regardless of the context from which it
originated. While in theory all three strategies may be adopted by MNCs
regardless of whether they are based in traditionally central or peripheral
countries, studies suggest that this is hardly the case. Thus, for instance,
in their study of the country of origin effect, Edwards and Ferner (2002)
and others (Almond et al., 2005; Noorderhaven & Harzing, 2003) indi-
cate that US-based firms are more likely to adopt an exportive approach
than UK-based ones. Other studies suggest the European MNCs tend to
adopt an adaptive or integrative approach when operating in core coun-
tries and a more exportive approach when operating in developing and
emerging economies. Specifically, when operating in the US and Europe,
they allow local units to maintain their own managerial practices, which
are seen as befitting the local institutional environment, but in devel-
oping countries they seem to be more involved in shaping management
practices as part of their efforts to make local units more modern and
rational (Ferner et al., 2001). In the absence of empirical studies which
focus specifically on DE-MNCs, Thite et al. (2012) speculate that much like
their first-world counterparts, DE-MNCs would attempt to control their
DE-based foreign affiliates and abstain from doing that in first-world-
based ones. Yet, adhering to the postcolonial imagination imperative,
Can the Periphery Write Back? 43
Workers’ imagination
Nothing works properly, systems are developed with no input from the
users so you are actually prevented from being efficient. All decisions
Can the Periphery Write Back? 45
when they are mentioned, they are often seen as passive and irrational
actors who are limited in their understanding of the firm’s interests and
strategies, and managers of foreign subsidiaries and units – be they local
or foreign – are usually seen as rational actors who apply professional
judgement when choosing whether to implement a specific practice or
to adjust it to fit local conditions. While the complex position of local
and foreign managers of foreign units of DE-MNCs in first-world coun-
tries has not yet been studied systematically, existing work indicates
that their decisions regarding the implementation of managerial prac-
tices in their firms may be affected by their own postcolonial imagina-
tion and by their view of the ways in which their immediate local and
foreign environments might perceive them in light of their decisions to
adopt or reject a DE-MNC’s management style. Given prevalent stere-
otypes of the third world and its (lack of) management skills, the deci-
sion to adopt a managerial practice or technique associated with Korean,
Chinese, Indian or Brazilian management style may bear personal and
professional consequences for expat representatives of the headquarters’
home culture and for local managers working in its affiliates.
As mentioned earlier, professional management is closely associated
in the postcolonial imagination of management studies with ‘western’
culture. Managers trained outside the west are often seen as profession-
ally inferior and as bad at their jobs. An example of this common view is
found in the following quotation from an article by Shambaugh (2012)
about Chinese multinationals. Under the somewhat derogatory title ‘Are
China’s multinational corporations really multinational?’, Shambaugh
argues that ‘[t]he Achilles heel of Chinese multinationals is human
resources – particularly management. Multilingual and multicultural
managers are few and far between, and all assessments of Chinese corpo-
rations note this to be a fundamental weakness’.
To overcome this problem, Shambaugh suggests, Chinese managers
should be trained abroad or by foreigners. ‘As a result, Chinese students
are flooding into foreign MBA programs as well as business schools
in China. Distance-learning MBAs tailored to the Chinese market are
also taking off. But classroom training alone will not suffice because
there is no substitute for extensive international experience.’ Since their
experience in China cannot prepare Chinese managers for an interna-
tional career, Shambaugh argues that ‘[s]ome Chinese companies have
taken advantage of the global financial downturn by hiring (preferably
young) laid-off staff in New York, London, Hong Kong and elsewhere’.
Thus, while Chinese managers whose experience is limited to their
home country cannot be seen as adequate candidates for multinational
Can the Periphery Write Back? 47
Concluding remarks
MNCs, managers and workers in the north and the south experience
themselves and the ‘Other’ through the codes that have been developed
both in management studies and in public discourse, and that can be
traced back to the colonial era. The postcolonial imagination mediates
corporate reality for both ex-colonisers and the ex-colonised, leading
both parties to analyse each and every move of the other in cultural
terms and to associate every managerial decision and the workers’ reac-
tions to it to the other’s cultural heritage rather than to his/her interests,
individual personality or professional judgement.
The phenomenal prosperity of DE-MNCs and their growing direct
investment in the first world should have challenged these ready-made
underlying assumptions and stylised stereotypical views. After all, against
all odds and in contrast to stereotypical predictions, firms emerging from
the south have shown that they can sometimes play the free market
game of the north even better than the (northern) Indigenous people
(or firms) themselves. Surprisingly (or not), this fact has yet to transform
the ways in which north and south conceptualise themselves and each
other. While in other fields, such as cultural consumption (like food
and fashion) and body maintenance (medicine and diet), alternatives
from the developing world have gradually gained legitimacy and respect
(deluded, transformed and translated as they may have been), northern
business and management practices seem to have maintained their
exclusive prestige, even in the face of the unarguable success of firms
with other managerial styles. The large industry devoted to the export
of northern managerial ideas and practices to developing and emerging
countries – which includes transnational consultancy firms, interna-
tional business schools and aid agencies – as well as the close associa-
tion of management with western rationality, may comprise some of the
forces behind the continual rejection of the alternative managerial prac-
tices to have emerged in DE-MNCs and the reproduction of the strict
distinction between core and periphery in our collective imagination.
This strict divide, I argue, continues to be reproduced because most
stakeholders – international management scholars, DE-MNC headquar-
ters, managers at foreign units, workers and host countries – all seem to
adhere to a view of a world that no longer exists. As Fanon (2005) himself
predicted, sometimes our imagination is harder to transform than reality.
Nonetheless, the growing presence of DE-MNCs in first-world countries
and their striking success may force IM scholars, managers and workers
to change the way these firms’ managerial techniques are perceived and
study them for their own merit, regardless of the context in which they
have evolved.
Can the Periphery Write Back? 49
Note
1. Because the theoretical distinctions between them are still under debate, in
this chapter I use the binary oppositions of west/rest, global north/south,
centre/periphery and first world/third world interchangeably.
References
Agtmael, A. van (2007). The Emerging Markets Century: How a New Breed of World-
Class Companies Is Overtaking the World. New York: Free Press.
Ailon-Souday, G. and Kunda, G. (2003). ‘The local selves of global workers: the
social construction of national identity in the face of organizational globaliza-
tion’. Organization Studies, 24, 1073–1096.
Alcadipani, R., Khan, F.R., Gantman, E. and Nkomo, S. (2012). ‘Southern voices in
management and organization knowledge’. Organization, 19, 131–143.
Almond, P., Edwards, T., Colling, T., Ferner, A., Gunnigle, P., Muller-Camen, M.,
Quintanilla, J. and Wächter, H. (2005). ‘Unraveling home and host country
effects: an investigation of the HR policies of an American multinational in
four European countries’. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society,
44, 276–306.
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. and Tiffin, H. (1989). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London and New York: Routledge.
Bae, J. (2004). Globalization of Human Resource Management: The Cases of Korean
MNCs in the UK and Thailand. Conference Paper, The IIRA Regional Congress,
Seoul, Korea, June 23–36.
Banerjee, S.B., Chio, V.C. and Mir, R. (2009). Organizations, Markets and Imperial
Formations: Towards an Anthropology of Globalization. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Publishing.
Banerjee, S.B. and Linstead, S. (2004). ‘Masking subversion: neocolonial embed-
dedness in anthropological accounts of indigenous management’. Human
Relations, 57, 221–247.
Bartel-Radic, A. (2009). ‘Adaptive capability abroad of Brazilian MNCs: the role
of IHRM and Brazilian national culture’. 5ème colloque de l’IFBAE – Grenoble, 18
et 19 mai 2009.
Berrill, J. and Mannella, G. (2012). ‘Are firms from developed markets more inter-
national than firms from emerging markets?’ Research in International Business
and Finance, 27(1), 147–161.
Buckley, P.J. (2009). Multinational companies from emerging economies:
Composition, conceptualization and direction in the global economy.
Book review: An article from: Transnational Corporations. United Nations
Publications.
Calás, M.B. and Smricich, L. (1999). ‘Past postmodernism? Reflections and tenta-
tive directions’. Academy of Management Review, 24, 649–672.
Casanova, L. (2009). Global Latinas: Latin America’s Emerging Multinationals.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chang, Y.Y., Mellahi, K. and Wilkinson, A. (2009). ‘Control of subsidiaries of MNCs
from emerging economies in developed countries: the case of Taiwanese MNCs
in the UK’. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20, 75–95.
50 Michal Frenkel
Chang, Y.Y., Wilkinson, A.J. and Mellahi, K. (2007). ‘HRM strategies and MNCs
from emerging economies in the UK’. European Business Review, 19, 404–419.
Chattopadhyay, A., Batra, R. and Ozsomer, A. (2012). The New Emerging Market
Multinationals: Four Strategies for Disrupting Markets and Building Brands. McGraw-
Hill.
Cooke, B. (2003) ‘The denial of slavery in management studies’. Journal of
Management Studies, 40(8): 1895–1918.
De Cieri, H. and Dowling, P.J. (2006). ‘Strategic international human resource
management in multinational enterprises: developments and directions’, in
G.K. Stahl and I. Bjorkman (eds), Handbook of Research in International Human
Resource Management. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 15–35.
De Maria, B. (2008). ‘Neo-colonialism through measurement: a critique of the
corruption perception index’, Critical Perspectives on International Business,
4(2/3), 184–202.
Edwards, T. and Ferner, A. (2002). ‘The renewed “American challenge”: a review
of employment practice in US multinationals’. Industrial Relations Journal, 33,
94–111.
Fanon, F. (2005). The Wretched of the Earth. Reprint Edition. New York: Grove
Press.
Ferner, A., Quintanilla, J. and Varul, M.Z. (2001). ‘Country-of-origin effects, host-
country effects, and the management of HR in multinationals: German compa-
nies in Britain and Spain’. Journal of World Business, 36, 107–127.
Frenkel, M. (2008). ‘The multinational corporation as a third space: rethinking
international management discourse on knowledge transfer through Homi
Bhabha’. Academy of Management Review, 33, 924–942.
Frenkel, M. and Shenhav, Y. ( 2006). ‘From binarism back to hybridity: a postco-
lonial reading of management and organization studies’. Organization Studies,
27, 855–876.
Goldstein, A. and Pusterla, F. (2010). ‘Emerging economies’ multinationals:
general features and specificities of the Brazilian and Chinese cases’, International
Journal of Emerging Markets, 5(3/4), 289–306.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-
Related Values. New York and London: Sage.
Jack, G. and Westwood, R. (2009). International and Cross-cultural Management
Studies: A Postcolonial Reading. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kajembe, G.C. (1994). ‘Indigenous management systems as a basis for commu-
nity forestry in Tanzania: a case study of Dodoma urban and Lushoto districts’.
Tropical Resource Management Paper. Number 6. Wägeningen Agricultural
University, The Netherlands.
Kanu, Y. (2003). ‘Curriculum as cultural practice: postcolonial imagination’.
Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 1(1), 67–81.
Kwek, D. (2003). ‘Decolonizing and re-presenting culture’s consequences: a post-
colonial critique of cross-cultural studies in management’, in A. Prasad (ed.),
Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 121–146.
Kwok, P.L. (2005). Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press.
Marsden, D. and Wright, S. (1994). ‘Indigenous management and the manage-
ment of indigenous knowledge’, in S. Wright (ed.), Anthropology of Organizations.
London, New York: Routledge, 41–55.
Can the Periphery Write Back? 51
53
54 Robert Westwood
Westwood and Jack (2008, p. 377) argue that these two foundational
texts establish three interrelated themes that have continued to reso-
nate in MOS and development thinking: ‘(1) an industrialization thesis
which assumes the quality of an imperative with significant teleological
overtones; (2) a convergence thesis; and (3) an inherent universalism
and ethnocentrism germane to both theses’. The texts are explicit with
respect to the first two:
the spread of communism and socialism (Westwood & Jack, 2008). The
same is true of early enunciations of US managerialist discourse from
influential advocates such as Drucker who expressly related the values
of freedom, individuality and democracy to the development of busi-
ness and practice of management. Harbison and Myers (1959) similarly
drew on early Human Relations thinking concluding that worker moti-
vation occurred in the context of democratic leadership and a culture
of consent.
This initiates a binary that has been repeated through MOS’s history
wherein the centre’s democratic values of leadership are contrasted
with authoritarian, autocratic, paternalistic or even despotic leadership
claimed to be pervasive in the non-centre. Indeed, there is a more or
less explicit denigration of the non-centre from Harbison, Myers and
colleagues with assertions that ‘traditional’, patrimonial and ‘polit-
ical’ forms of leadership are incompatible with modernising manage-
ment. It was also argued that those who resisted industrialisation and
this form of development were ‘“static” minorities such as aristocrats,
landowners and “medicine men”’ (Kerr et al., 1960). Such denigrations
persist and the binary so constituted is resonant with Saidean orientalist
tropes (Westwood, 2001, 2006a). Inglehart (1990, 1997) and colleagues
(Inglehart & Welzel, 2005) have more recently made somewhat similar
arguments about the logic of industrialisation which is held to require
changes to socio-cultural and political values in fairly predictable and
patterned ways. As societies continue to develop into post-industrial
phases, there is a further socio-cultural shift, this time away from instru-
mental rationality and into a postmodern zeitgeist and towards indi-
vidual autonomy, gender equality, greater democracy and the secular. It
is another convergence model constructed in and through the particular
history and discourse of the centre. A similar argument can be found
in contemporary management research literature (e.g., Ralston et al.,
1997).
Central to the logic of industrialisation and the convergence thesis is
the insistence on universalism, something that has also persisted within
MOS (Kwek, 2003; Lubatkin et al., 1997; Mintzberg, 1973; Redding, 2005;
Salk & Brannen, 2000). Universalistic claims have been central to the
development and practice of MOS, explicit in earlier texts but persistent
less explicitly right through MOS’s history. A prevailing assumption
has been that whatever can be said about organisations, organisational
behaviour, management and business within the context of the United
States has relevance, applicability and significance in any other part of
the world. In this sense the knowledge claims of the centre have been,
58 Robert Westwood
and continue to be, totalising and invasive. Not only has universalism
been asserted or assumed, but US economic, business and management
models are positioned as a standard that needs to be adopted by others
elsewhere if they are to achieve the modernisation and development
it is assumed they crave. The centre stands as example and model,
offering universalistic solutions for others to emulate. But, as Jamieson
(1980) notes, these imperatives, whilst claiming universality, are in fact
highly parochial and ethnocentric expressions of American geo-polit-
ical self-interest; a manifestation of the values and discourse of post-war
American industrial capitalism. Current debates about globalisation
often trace a similar path. Assertions of inevitability and proposals of
a form of economic order and consumer capitalism that is specific to
the political and economic interests of the countries and organisation
of the centre, masquerades as an ineluctable and logical development.
Included are transnational bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank
that apply theories, models and solutions constructed in the centre as
if they are universally applicable (Lubatkin et al., 1997). This persistent
universalism is despite recurrent contestation and not infrequent accu-
sations of ethnocentrism. Such critiques have particularly emerged from
those scholars, even within the United States, within the field of ‘inter-
national business/management’ going back to early critiques from the
likes of Boyacigiller and Adler (1991), Adler (1986) and Hofstede (1980a),
Kanungo & Jaeger, 1990; through to more recent times (Brohman, 1995;
Clark et al. 1999; Ozbilgin, 2004). It is a message that has infrequently
been heeded by the mainstream.
It is noteworthy that when scholars of the periphery submit articles
dealing with their specific part of the world, let’s say a paper on human
resources practices in Sri Lanka, they are required to contextualise their
findings and assertions. In other words, the specificity of human resources
practices in Sri Lanka needs to be accounted for. Such is not the case for
work produced in the United States or other parts of the centre. A paper
presuming to explain aspects of human resource practices within the
United States is very rarely met with requests for contextualisation and
justification, and assertions and findings are allowed to stand without
qualification. By the time we get to abstractions into theory then the
contextual requirements seem to fall away completely and US manage-
ment theory is presented universalistically with few caveats about loca-
tion and context. This is troublesome for those from the periphery for
their work is not only required to be contextually located, but also theo-
retically located within the Western canon and literature. The difficul-
ties of writing and publishing from the periphery in MOS have been
De-centring Management and Organisation Studies 59
world, and certainly the periphery; that its own position is not at the
centre, but is rather off-centre, is eccentric. This needs to be put against
the persistent universalism of the centre’s management knowledge
discourse and practice, its auto-positioning as ‘standard’ or exemplar,
and its imperialistic promulgation around the globe.
Clustering of cultures
et al.’s (1966) study of employee work values and attitudes reveals a clear
cluster comprising just the United States and the United Kingdom. A
cluster that includes India, Chile and Argentina is most distant from
the ‘Anglo’ cluster, but it is also distinct from the clusters of Northern
European countries and Southern European countries as well as Japan.
A smallest space cluster analysis of data from Sirota and Greenwood’s
(1971) study of work-related attitudes shows another separated cluster
of mostly Anglo countries (United States, United Kingdom, Australia,
New Zealand, Canada and South Africa). This cluster is distinct from
other revealed clusters – ‘Nordic’, ‘Germanic’, ‘Latin American’ and
‘Latin European’. This mirrors the Hofstede (1980a) study where there
is an ‘Anglo’ cluster (United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa), distinct from ‘Germanic’,
‘Nordic’, ‘Latin European’, ‘Latin American’, ‘Near Eastern’ and ‘Far
Eastern’ clusters. Ronen and Shenkar’s (1985) meta-analysis revealed
nine clusters: Anglo, Germanic, Near East, Nordic, Arab, Far Eastern,
Latin European, Latin American and Independent.
Hofstede’s work has been the most extensively cited and used model
of cross-cultural difference in MOS for three decades. It has been hugely
influential and continues to be made use of in research and business
training.2 I am not going to explore or critique Hofstede,3 but note
the same type of clustering structure. Hofstede (1983) provided one
representation of the clusters, plotting country scores on two of his
culture dimensions successively. In relation to the Power Distance-
Individualism dimensions there is a clear ‘Anglo’ cluster that includes
the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada
and within the cluster the United States, Britain and Australia are the
closest having the highest Individualism scores. In a separate but proxi-
mate cluster sharing small power distance/high individualism scores are
a further nine4 countries, mostly Northern European countries of the
centre. There are twenty-two countries mostly from the periphery in
Asia and South America that cluster together in a large power distance/
high collectivism grouping. Sharing the same quadrant is a cluster of
a further ten countries, also mostly countries from the periphery or
semi-periphery. It is clear that the majority of countries/cultures in the
world are at some distance from the United States and an Anglo cluster.
Plotting Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance also reveals that
virtually all the developed countries of the centre are on one side of
a dividing line which positions them as weak uncertainty avoiding,5
all the other countries of the world are shown as strong uncertainty
avoiding, including all those in the periphery (exceptions noted). An
62 Robert Westwood
‘Anglo’ cluster of the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and
New Zealand (although it does also include Norway and the Netherlands
with the United Kingdom in another cluster, but adjacent) is revealed in
the Low Power Distance, Weak Uncertainty Avoidance quadrant. Once
again the largest number of countries (twenty-eight), mostly countries
from Asia and Latin America, many from the periphery, are in a quite
different location within a Large Power Distance/Strong Uncertainty
Avoidance quadrant. There is a further Anglo cluster when Masculinity-
Femininity6 dimension scores are plotted with Uncertainty Avoidance.
This cluster has the United States, Great Britain, Australia, South Africa,
Canada, New Zealand and Ireland together – but does also include India
and the Philippines. The largest cluster is in the strong Uncertainty
Avoidance/Feminine quadrant and consists mainly of Latin European
and Latin American countries.
This highly influential work, like those that preceded it, reveals that
the ‘Anglo’ cultures of the centre form a distinct and separate cluster;
sometimes joined by cultures over which they exerted colonial domi-
nance. This cluster is shown to be quite different from the rest of the
world and frequently the majority of the world’s nations/cultures,
particularly those of the periphery, cluster together in a quite different,
sometimes a polar opposite, space.
The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour
Effectiveness) study was a large-scale, multi-centred research project
that included 61 countries (House et al., 2004). It generated data on
nine value/attitudinal dimensions (including versions of Hofstede’s):
power distance, uncertainty avoidance, gender egalitarianism, institu-
tional collectivism, in-group collectivism, future orientation, perform-
ance orientation, assertiveness and humane orientation. Initiated and
coordinated by House, the project had colleagues from all countries
involved (House et al., 2004). A cluster analysis revealed ten culture/
country clusters: Nordic, Latin European, Germanic, Eastern European,
Latin American, Sub-Saharan African, Arab/Middle Eastern, South East
Asian, Confucian and Anglo. The Anglo cluster included England,
Australia, South Africa (white sample), Canada, New Zealand, Ireland
and the United States.
There are many issues one could address in relation to this work that
is problematical, but to reiterate, my aim is to point to what mainstream
literature generated from the centre declares about cultural clusters
and what is then said on the basis of that. Using Multi-dimensional
Scaling Smallest Space Analysis (MDS-SSA) and Hierarchical Cluster
Analysis (HCA) a re-test of the GLOBE data for clusters was conducted
De-centring Management and Organisation Studies 63
are other countries and regional areas from the global south in this space,
but not clustering (e.g., Morocco, Philippines, East and West Africa).
In addition to working with Hofstede, Minkov (2011) has also analysed
and further developed cultural dimensions related to Trompenaars
and Hampden-Turner’s work (1997), the GLOBE study (House et al.,
2004) and the World Values Survey (Inglehart, 1997; Norris and
Inglehart, 2009) deriving four cultural dimensions – exclusion versus
universalism, indulgence versus restraint/industry, monumentalism
versus flexumility/self-effacement and hypometopia versus prudence.
Cluster analyses reveal a similar story to other analyses (Littrell, 2012,
p. 25). Again there is a clear Anglo cluster as well as Middle Eastern and
Latin American clusters. However, and importantly, there ‘are indica-
tions of a west [including the USA] and north Europe cluster’ (ibid.), a
global northern countries cluster that is at a distance from all the other
countries, almost all of which are from the peripheralised global south
or from Southern Europe.
The circumplex nature of the Schwartz (2006) values model makes
for a degree of complexity. Indeed, Schwartz argues that he views
‘cultural dimensions as forming an integrated, non-orthogonal system’
in distinction from the independent dimensions assumed by Hofstede
or Inglehart’s orthogonal dimensions (p. 142). This notwithstanding,
Schwartz (1999, p. 37) does suggest ‘the existence of broad cultural
groupings of nations’ and these include an English-speaking cluster
that comprises the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and
the United Kingdom. The other groupings are the nations of Western
Europe, Eastern Europe, Far East, Latin America and Islamic nations. He
maintains that the ‘English-speaking nations tend to emphasise Mastery
and Affective Autonomy values at the expense of Conservatism and
Harmony values’ (p. 38). The Eastern Europe group is depicted as repre-
senting an obverse value structure. The Anglo cluster is proximate to
the Western European cluster and shares preferences for Autonomy and
Mastery in contrast to much of the rest of the world, the Far Eastern,
Islamic and the African countries – countries of the periphery – which
emphasise Conservatism/Embeddedness and Harmony.
The World Values Survey (WVS) (Inglehart, 1997; Inglehart & Welzel,
2005) includes 53 countries and has been subjected to cluster analysis
with ‘cultural maps’ produced (Inglehart & Welzel, 2010, 2005). A
cultural map plotting country scores in a two-dimensional space with the
‘survival-self expression’ dimension on the horizontal axis and the ‘tradi-
tional values – secular-rational values’ on the vertical axis is produced in
Inglehart and Welzel (2005). This reveals an ‘English-speaking’ cluster
De-centring Management and Organisation Studies 65
What is at issue here is not simply these clustering structures, but what is
said about management and organisation in the light of them. This was
the project of Hofstede and others, to argue that aspects of management
and organisation behaviour exhibit difference as a function of cultural
context. Hofstede’s project, at least initially, was also to challenge the
universality and portability of US MOS theory and practice (Hofstede,
1980a, 1980b, 1983, 1987, 1996). Arguments for the impact of culture
have been applied across a wide spectrum of management behaviours
and practices from recruitment, to negotiation, to accounting, adver-
tising, consumer behaviour and structure, but as the title of Hofstede’s
66 Robert Westwood
One wonders how the United States or the United Kingdom would
respond to the articulation of theories of leadership based on these
opposites and on authoritarian tendencies and the promulgation and
imposition of such a model through all the paraphernalia of a knowl-
edge system comprised of a global publishing machine, educational
framework, various practice regimes, including consulting firms, and
research dogma? In other words how palatable would a reversed episte-
mological imperialism be?
The same dynamics I have just explored with respect to leadership
can be witnessed in relation to a panoply of other areas of manage-
ment theory and practice. For example, the significance of relation-
ships to work and business practices is an obvious area. Again, one can
find persistent references in the western literature to the reliance on
personalistic relationships for work and business practice in cultures of
the non-centre. Personalism is held to be pervasive in all manner of
practices from employment and recruitment, through to leader-follower
exchanges, organisational commitment, business negotiations, succes-
sion planning, strategic information gathering, business partnering and
De-centring Management and Organisation Studies 71
and which has a place for a negativity of motivation and for motiva-
tion based in a sense of obligation – a deontological form of motiva-
tion. Once more it is the presumptive dominance of the centre and the
promulgation of a truncated view of motivation that is at issue. It is a
view of motivation that really only fits within the United States and
a few other cultures of the centre. For much of the world, including
the countries of the periphery, a more relational, social, contextualised
view of motivation, one more rooted in social obligation is more reso-
nant and awaits a fuller explication.
Conclusion
Notes
1. We need to be mindful of other colonial empires that preceded that of the
Western European nations from the fifteenth century on.
2. A search of Proquest (the search was of ProQuest using ‘Hofstede’ as the search
term with scholarly and peer-reviewed options selected. The period was ‘the
last 12 months’ from June 2013) for just the last year on ‘Hofstede’ revealed 24
papers: 18 empirical studies using Hofstede scales and dimensions in part or in
full, 2 proposed empirical studies, 2 literature reviews of empirical work using
Hofstede, 1 theoretical paper and 1 prescriptive paper advocating the value of
the Hofstede framework.
3. For sound critiques, see Ailon (2008) and McSweeney (2002) .
4. The original study, the results of which are being drawn on here, included
data from 50 countries and 3 ‘regions’ – Arab countries, East Africa and West
Africa. There have been additions and higher levels of specificity since.
5. Jamaica and Costa Rica are exceptions and Argentina is on the weak UA side,
but only marginally.
6. I note that the label has been changed, but this is the labelling from the source
I am referring to.
7. Including the sixth dimension results in some overlapping with parts of the
‘Latin’ cluster.
74 Robert Westwood
References
Adler, N. (1986). International Dimensions of Organisational Behaviour. Boston:
Kent Publishers.
Ailon, G. (2008). ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall: culture’s consequences in a value
test of its own design’. Academy of Management Review, 33(4), 885–904.
Amdam, R.V. (1996). Management Education and Competitiveness: Europe, Japan and
the United States. London and New York: Routledge.
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. and Tiffin, H. (2000). Post-Colonial Studies: The Key
Concepts. London and New York: Routledge.
Bass, B.M. (1997). ‘Does the transactional-transformational leadership paradigm
transcend organizational and national boundaries?’ American Psychologist,
52(2), 130–139.
Bass, B.M. (1985). Leadership and Performance beyond Expectations. New York: Free
Press
Bass, B.M. and Avolio, B.J. (eds) (1994). Improving Organizational Effectiveness
through Transformational Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bass, B.M. and Riggio, R.E. (2006). Transformational Leadership, 2nd ed. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Bendix, R. (1964). Nation Building and Citizenship. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-
Hall.
Bhabha, H.K. (ed.) (1990). Nation and Narration. London and New York:
Routledge.
Blaut, J.M. (1993). The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and
Eurocentric History. New York: Guilford Press.
Boyacigiller, N.A. and Adler, N.J. (1991). ‘The parochial dinosaur: organisational
science in a global context’. Academy of Management Review, 16(2), 262–290.
Brodbeck, F.C., Frese, M., Ackerblom, S., Audia, G., Bakacsi, G. and Bendova, H.
(2000). ‘Cultural variation of leadership prototypes across 22 European coun-
tries’. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 73, 1–29.
Brohman, J. (1995). ‘Universalism, Eurocentrism, and ideological bias in devel-
opment studies: from modernization to neoliberalism’. Third World Quarterly,
16(1), 121–140.
Chan, L., Shaffer, M. and Snape, E. (2004). ‘In search of sustained competitive
advantage: the impact of organizational culture, competitive strategy and
human resource management practices on firm performance’. International
Journal of Human Resource Management, 15(1), 17–35.
Clark, T., Grant, D. and Heijltjes, M. (1999). ‘Researching comparative and inter-
national human resources management: key challenges and contributions’.
International Studies of Management and Organization, 29(4), 6–23.
Den Hartog, D.N., House, R.J., Hanges, P.J., Ruiz-Quintanilla, S.A. and Dorfman,
P.W. (1999). ‘Culture specific and cross-culturally generalizable implicit leader-
ship theories: are attributes of charismatic/transformational leadership univer-
sally endorsed?’ Leadership Quarterly, 10, 219–256.
Dorfman, P.W., Hanges, P.J. and Brodbeck, F.C. (2004). ‘Leadership and cultural
variation: the identification of culturally endorsed leadership profiles’, in R.J.
House, P.J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P.W. Dorfman and V. Gupta (eds), Culture,
De-centring Management and Organisation Studies 75
Lord, R.G., De Vader, C.L. and Alliger, G.M. (1986). ‘A meta-analysis of the rela-
tion between personality traits and leadership perceptions: an application of
validity generalization procedures’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 402–410.
Lubatkin, M., Ndiaye, M. and Vengnoff, R. (1997). ‘The nature of managerial
work in developing countries: a limited test of the universalist hypothesis’.
Journal of International Business Studies, 28(4), 711–734.
McSweeney, B. (2002). ‘Hofstede’s model of national cultural differences and
their consequences: a triumph of faith – a failure of analysis’. Human Relations,
55(1), 89–118.
Meriläinen, S., Tienari, J., Thomas, R. and Davies, A. (2008). ‘Hegemonic academic
practices: experiences of publishing from the periphery’. Organization, 15(4),
584–597.
Minkov, M. (2011). Cultural Differences in a Globalizing World. Bingley, UK:
Emerald Publishing Group Ltd.
Mintzberg, H. (1973). The Nature of Managerial Work. NY: Harper Collins.
Noble, D. (2002). Death of a Nation: American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Norris, P. and Inglehart, R. (2009). Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity
in a Globalized World. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ozbilgin, M. (2004). ‘“International” human resource management: academic
parochialism in editorial boards of the top 22 journals on international human
resource management’. Personnel Review, 33(2), 205–221.
Petitjean, P., Jami, C. and Moulin, A.M. (eds) (1992). Science and Empires: Historical
Studies about Scientific Development and European Expansion. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Porter, M.E. (1996). ‘What is strategy?’ Harvard Business Review, November, 70–81.
Porter, M.E. (1991). Towards a dynamic theory of strategy’. Strategic Management
Journal, 12 (Winter Special Issue), 95–117.
Prebisch, R. (1950). The Economic Development of Latin America and Its Principal
Problems. New York: United Nations.
Ralston, D., Gustafsori, D., Elsass, P., Cheung, F. and Terpstra, R. (1992). ‘Eastern
values: a comparison of managers in the United States, Hong Kong, and the
People’s Republic of China’. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 664–671.
Ralston, D., Holt, D., Terpstra, R. and Kai-Cheng, Y. (1997). ‘The impact of
national culture and economic ideology on managerial work values: a study
of the United States, Russia, Japan, and China’. Journal of International Business
Studies, 28(1), 177–207.
Redding, S.G. (2005). ‘The thick description and comparison of societal systems
of capitalism’. Journal of International Business Studies, 36(2), 123–155.
Ronen, S. (1986). Comparative and Multinational Management. New York: John
Wiley and Sons.
Ronen, S. and Shenkar, O. (1985). ‘Clustering countries on attitudinal dimen-
sions: a review and synthesis’. Academy of Management Review, 10(3), 435–454.
Rydell, R.W. (2001). ‘Science in the service of empire: empire in the service of
science’, in G. Blue, M.P. Brunton and R.C. Crozier (eds), Colonialism and the
Modern World: Selected Studies. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 219–233.
Said, E.W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.
Salk, J. and Brannen, M. (2000). ‘National culture, networks, and individual influ-
ence in a multinational management team’. Academy of Management Journal,
43(2), 191–202.
78 Robert Westwood
Introduction
The centre of global management knowledge, that is, the North Atlantic
countries, usually generates context-specific knowledge which aims at
understanding local phenomena with inductive research, and, therefore,
may not involve explicit contextualisation because the context is taken
for granted by the researcher (Tsui, 2004, p. 498). Through the mecha-
nisms of intellectual imperialism and academic dependency (Alatas, 2000;
Alatas, 2003; Altbach, 1987; Selvaratnam, 1988), scholars in peripheral
and semi-peripheral countries generally employ theories developed by the
centre in this way in investigating organisational phenomena in their own
contexts without recontextualising them (Kipping et al., 2009). The result
is the generation of knowledge that neither helps understanding organ-
isational facts embedded within the native contexts nor contributes to
the conceptual development of global organisational knowledge. What is
needed, according to Tsui (2004), is more context-specific, or indigenous,
research that involves the highest level of contextualisation by going
beyond the bounds of existing theories. However, this does not mean that
management scholars outside the central countries should close their
minds to genuine knowledge from any part of the world. Alatas (2000,
p. 27) suggests that scholars at the periphery should assimilate as much
as possible from all sources, from all parts of the world, but they need to
do this with an independent critical spirit. It is also suggested that indig-
enous research may begin with an existing model or constructs; however
they should also strive not to be bound by a priori conceptual frameworks
(Tsui, 2004, p. 501). This requires a critical evaluation, or recontextualisa-
tion, of organisation theories developed at the centre before using them
to understand local phenomena at the periphery.
79
80 Şükrü Özen
Although there has not been an explicit claim in the new institutionalism
literature that its assumptions, constructs and models have universal
applicability, it has also been the case that there has been little reflec-
tion on the context-specificity of theories about US or North-American
polities. In contrast, its focus on such supposedly universal social and
political processes as modernisation and rationalisation generates a
false impression that its arguments would be valid for every context in
which these processes have been experienced. However, the new insti-
tutional studies have implicitly invoked liberal polity assumptions to
underpin its main arguments. These assumptions are apparent and can
be explored in both theoretical and empirical studies in the new institu-
tional literature.
According to the classics of NIT (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio
& Powell, 1991), the state is a rationalising and homogenising actor
affecting the emergence and diffusion of formal organising in order to
standardise and control social units. The state, together with the profes-
sions, is ‘the great rationalizer’ of modern nation-states (DiMaggio &
Powell, 1991, p. 64). The state and the professions ‘construct and legiti-
mate organizational goals, standardize and distribute resources (tax laws,
monetary policy, support for the banking system), and develop and
maintain systems of bureaucratic control (personnel policy and labor
law)’ and create the corporate form (Powell, 1991, p. 188).
82 Şükrü Özen
critical studies on the US polity have long argued that the people at
the pinnacles of political, economic and military institutions, and inter-
organisational networks have dominated the US political economy
(Benson, 1975; Mills, 1959; Zeitlin, 1974). Therefore, it may be naive
to believe that the US government is a mere neutral arbitrator between
the social classes, although the US polity has always been concep-
tualised as a typical liberal polity (for instance, Jepperson & Meyer,
1991). NIT has long been criticised for neglecting the power structure
in society. For instance, Perrow (1986) and Hirsch (1997) are critical
of NIT for neglecting how institutions are shaped by the power elites,
and for being persistently indifferent to the strong capacity of large and
powerful organisations to influence governmental policies. To investi-
gate why NIT neglects power structures is beyond the scope of this study.
However, what immediately comes to mind as one of the reasons for this
neglect is the institutional structure that has conditioned the production
of management knowledge. First, organisation theories have generally
been produced within business administration departments that have
typically been dependent upon funds provided by the powerful organi-
sations that have a stake in maintaining the existing system. Therefore,
this dependence may have blocked the generation of knowledge critical
of the existing system. Second, the hegemony of liberal ideology and the
structural-functionalist paradigm in US organisational scholarship (see
Üsdiken & Pasadeos, 1995) may have conditioned scholars’ conceptu-
alisations of state in a liberal way, even if the reality may not match this
conceptualisation in some respects.
What is more important for the present chapter is, in fact, the conse-
quences of, rather than the reasons for, the current polity bias in NIT.
Western theoretical models are too frequently taken for granted by
scholars in the periphery without independent critical spirit, and applied
to their native context (Alatas, 2003), although there have been a few
instances of resistance (see Srinivas, 2009). This academic dependency
has, among other things, resulted in a displacement of attention from
the issues that should be of vital concern to the countries of the periphery
(Alatas, 2000). In other words, since the scholars at the periphery look
at their reality through lenses borrowed from the North Atlantic centre,
they may conceive local facts in a partial, distorted or irrelevant way.
To give an example for new institutional theory, which is the focus of
this chapter, taking for granted the polity assumptions implicit in NIT, a
scholar from the periphery may irrelevantly preoccupy themselves with
such topics as conformity, isomorphism and stable institutionalisation
Recontextualising the New Institutional Conception 85
in the role of the state is that formal organising in society may be isomor-
phic to the state structure in some fields as usually happened in the statist
polity (Jepperson & Meyer, 1991, p. 223), but in some other fields may be
isomorphic to foreign organisational structures imported by local actors
from the West. In other fields it may emanate from informal organising
embedded in the structure of social relations. This signals the prevalence
of diversity, rather than isomorphism, in the fields in Turkey.
the Council of State and administrative courts for the closure of a gold
mine. The uncertainties that are created by this opportunistic style of
the state may also lead to opportunistic behaviours on the part of indus-
trial firms. Özen and Akkemik (2012) suggest that illegitimate corporate
behaviours in the Turkish context, such as speculation, rent-seeking and
pursuing non-operating revenues, may have been institutionalised as a
behaviour that is continuously reproduced by industrial firms in order to
survive under the circumstances where there have been both uncertain-
ties and opportunities largely created by the statist polity characteristics
such as strong state with a weak policy-making capacity, patrimonialism
and clientelism. Thus, the Turkish case implies that opportunism itself
may have been institutionalised.
Another consequence of the persistent instability caused by state-so-
ciety conflict would be a widespread decoupling. Jepperson and Meyer
(1991, p. 224) suggest that, given societal opposition to organisational
structures defined by the state, there is an extensive ‘decoupling’ in the
statist polity: society pretends to adopt, or ceremonially adopt (Meyer,
1977), structures or practices imposed by the state in a top-down fashion
by decoupling them from the actual activities for the sake of opti-
mising legitimacy and efficiency concerns. Recent research has shown
that extensive decoupling has occurred in the process of adopting
environmental protection measures (Küskü, 2001), corporate govern-
ance (Üsdiken & Yıldırım-Öktem, 2008) and total quality management
(Özen, 2002b) in Turkey. For instance, although the Turkish govern-
ment has forced family-owned big business groups to increase the ratio
of independent members within their boards of directors as a corporate
governance practice, business groups ceremonially adopted this prac-
tice by including more ‘independent’ members in boards. However,
they were not actually independent due to their close informal ties with
owning family, thus maintaining owning families’ dominance in the
boards of directors (Üsdiken & Yıldırım-Öktem, 2008). Similarly, most
Turkish industrial companies adopted TQM ceremonially by pretending
to conform to a complete model of TQM without any customisation,
but implementing it in a limited number of departments in their organi-
sations (Özen, 2002b).
Conclusion
should say that the propositions developed in this study cannot be easily
generalised to other peripheral countries with a statist polity. Hence,
scholars from other peripheral countries should recontextualise NIT by
considering the polity characteristics prevalent in their own countries.
The contribution of this study would be more significant if it can inspire
these efforts.
References
Alatas, S.F. (2003). ‘Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the
social sciences’. Current Sociology, 51, 599–633.
Alatas, S.H. (2000). ‘Intellectual imperialism: definition, traits and problems’.
Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 28(1), 23–45.
Altbach, P.G. (1987). Higher Education in Third World: Themes and Variations. New
York: Advent Books.
Barley, S.R. (2010). ‘Building an institutional field to corral a government: a case
to set an agenda for organization studies’. Organization Studies, 31(6), 777–805.
Baron, J.N., Dobbin, F.R. and Jennings, P.D. (1986). ‘War and peace: the evolu-
tion of modern personnel administration in US industry’. American Journal of
Sociology, 92(2), 350–383.
Başkan, F. (2010). ‘The rising Islamic business elite and democratization in
Turkey’. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 12(4), 399–416.
Benson, J.K. (1975). ‘The interorganizational network as a political economy’.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 20, 229–249.
Berkman, Ü. and Özen, Ş. (2007). ‘Culture and management in Turkey: state-
dependency and paternalism in transition’, in E. Davel, J.-P. Dupuis and
J.-F. Chanlat (eds), Gestion en Contexte Interculturel: Approches, Problématiques,
Pratiques et Plongées. Québec: Presse de l’Université Laval et TÉLUQ/UQAM,
chapter VI.4.
Brint, S. and Karabel, J. (1991). ‘Institutional origins and transformations: the case
of American community colleges’, in W.W. Powell and P.J. DiMaggio (eds), The
New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 337–360.
Buğra, A. (1998). ‘Non-market mechanisms of market formation: the develop-
ment of the consumer durables industry in Turkey’. New Perspectives on Turkey,
19, 1–28.
Buğra, A. (1994). State and Business in Turkey. Albany: State University of New
York Press.
Buğra, A. and Savaşkan, O. (2010). ‘Yerel sanayi ve bugünün Türkiye’sinde iş
dünyası’. Toplum ve Bilim, 118, 92–123.
Campbell, J. (2004). Institutional Change and Globalization. Princeton: New
Jersey.
Child, J., Lu, Y. and Tsai, T. (2007). ‘Institutional entrepreneurship in building
an environmental protection system for the People’s Republic of China’.
Organization Studies, 28, 1013–1034.
Clegg, S. (2010). ‘The state, power, and agency: missing in action in institutional
theory?’ Journal of Management Inquiry, 19(1), 4–13.
96 Şükrü Özen
Jepperson, R.L. and Meyer, J.W. (1991). ‘The public order and the construction
of formal organizations’, in W.W. Powell and P.J. DiMaggio (eds), The New
Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
204–231.
Kalemci, A.R. and Özen, Ş. (2011). ‘Türk sinemacılık sektöründe kurumsal
değişim, (1950–2006): Küreselleşmenin sosyal dışlama etkisi’. Amme İdaresi
Dergisi, 44(1), 51–88.
Kipping, M., Engwall, L. and Üsdiken, B. (2009). ‘Preface: the transfer of manage-
ment knowledge to peripheral countries’. International Studies of Management &
Organization, 38(4), 3–16.
Koç, U., Aytemur, J.Ö. and Erdemir, E. (2011). ‘The weakness of a powerful
state: the un-institutionalization history of Turkish football field’, 27th EGOS
Colloquium, Gothenburg, Sweden, 7–9 July.
Koç, O. and Vurgun, L. (2012). ‘Managing the rivalry of antithetic Institutional
Logics: a qualitative study in the scope of Turkish healthcare field’. The
International Journal of Economic and Social Research, 8(1), 157–174.
Krücken, G. (2007). ‘Organizational fields and competitive groups in higher educa-
tion: some lessons from the bachelor/master reform in Germany’. Management
Revue, 18(2), 187–203.
Küskü, F. (2001). ‘Sorumluluk mu, zorunluluk mu? Türk otomotiv sektöründeki
işletmelerin çevre yönetimi stratejileri açısından değerlendirilmesi’, 9. Ulusal
Yönetim ve Organizasyon Kongresi, May 24–26, 155–169.
Lawler, E.E., Mohrman, S.A. and Ledford, G.E. (1992). Employee Involvement in
Total Quality Management. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Meyer, J.W. (1977). The effect of education as an institution. American Journal of
Sociology, 83, 55–77.
Meyer, J.W. and Rowan, B. (1977). ‘Institutionalized organizations: formal struc-
ture as myth and ceremony’. American Journal of Sociology, 83, 340–363.
Mills, C.W. (1959). The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
Özen, Ş. (2008). ‘The cross-national transfer of institutions in the EU context:
mimicry, translation, bricolage or what?’ European Union Center Seminar,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 5 December 2008.
Özen, Ş. (2002a). ‘Toplam kalite yönetiminin Türkiye’de yeniden kurgulanması:
Koşulbağımlı türdeşleşme tezinin bir testi’. Amme İdaresi Dergisi, 35(1),
105–142.
Özen, Ş. (2002b). ‘Bağlam, aktör, söylem ve kurumsal değişim: Türkiye’de toplam
kalite yönetiminin yayılım süreci’. Yönetim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2(1), 47–90.
Özen, Ş. and Akkemik, K.A. (2012). ‘Does illegitimate corporate behavior follow
the forms of polity? The Turkish experience’. Journal of Management Studies,
49(3), 515–537.
Özen, Ş. and Berkman, Ü. (2007). ‘The cross-national reconstruction of manage-
rial practices: TQM in Turkey’. Organization Studies, 28(6), 825–851.
Özkara, B. and Özcan, K. (2004). ‘Bir kurumsal alanın doğuşu ve evrimi: Türkiye’de
muhasebenin meslekleşmesi’. Yönetim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 4(2), 129–169.
Özen, Ş. and Özen, H. (2009). ‘Peasants against MNCs and the state: the role of
the Bergama struggle in the institutional construction of the gold-mining field
in Turkey’. Organization, 16, 547–573.
Perrow, C. (1986). Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay, 3rd ed. New York:
Random House.
98 Şükrü Özen
The recent global financial crisis has revealed that the application of
ahistorical and grossly generalised lessons and methods from studies on
core National Business Systems (NBS) to understand countries on the
European periphery does not generate explanations about the ‘leaping’
back and forth of systems from the periphery to the semi-periphery.
Research on peripheral countries is limited, and most NBS literature
focuses on advanced-core or semi-peripheral systems. There have been
several studies on Asian peripheral countries, including China, Japan,
Hong Kong and South Korea (Witt & Reading, 2012; Černíková, 2010;
Bendt & Sanne, 2010; Tipton, 2009; Carney, 2005; Yeung, 2000; Whitley,
1991) as well as comparative studies (Casson & Lundan, 1999) and fewer
studies on European and South American peripheral countries in the last
decade (Gabrisch et al., 2012; Černíková, 2010; Psychogios & Szamosi,
2007; Amable, 2003). Furthermore, the definition of ‘periphery’ in these
studies has been confusing, as the same economies have sometimes
been perceived as peripheral and sometimes as semi-peripheral or core
(Italy and Spain). For example, the European periphery was thought
to comprise the countries of Eastern Europe (the Balkans, including
Greece) or the former Soviet Empire (Poland), while countries areas
on the European semi-periphery are declining cores – Portugal, Spain,
Italy, southern Germany and southern France (Chase-Dunn et al., 2000).
However, other studies include Greece as part of the semi-periphery
(Prokou, 2003; Wallerstein, 1974, 1997).
Careful analysis of (semi)peripheral NBS is frustrated by two presump-
tions embedded in the study of core NBS: (1) the presumption of
100
The Historical Trajectory 101
The NBS model shows the ways that institutions merge into a cumu-
lative bundle of economic activity to support organisational practices
(Morgan, 2007). However it is an ‘ideal’ type of institutional model,
constructed eclectically in order to avoid the infinite combinations of
institutional components (Whitley, 1999, 2000). This ideal model makes
sense only out of the structures of advanced systems presumed to be
‘coherent’, where institutional parts function in close interdependence
with each other based on the premise of self-reinforcing integration and
unidirectional relationships that achieve optimal wealth-maximising
results (Lundvall, 1999; Mayer & Wittington, 1999). In reality, an NBS
is neither a coherent nor an optimal system; rather it is an evolutionary
system with many interfaces and paths of action that develop through
time. Ideal configurations that are ‘optimal’, ‘stable’ and ‘coherent’ by
definition do not sufficiently explain why institutional paths in highly
volatile environments are likely to be ‘crooked’ (Djelic & Quark, 2007) or
the effects of (re)combinations of institutional interests and the accu-
mulation of struggles in developmental paths.
To deal with the presumption of incoherence, studies have looked
into systems that are profoundly non-optimal. Djelic and Quark (2007),
Martin (2008) and Wood and Frynas (2006) propose a model of the
102 Maria Kapsali and Rea Prouska
1900–1974 1974–2010
EU patronage,
supranational ‘allies’
1830–1900 1900–1950 and pressures of
Debt and political patronage – Violent 1950–1974 global competition –
foreign kings interventions and Control of the economy the government is
and foreign policies – periodic loss of and civil society – a negotiator – low
State government is an intermediary control – divisions divisions investment and debt crisis
Role, policies and public Foreign political patrons – the Due to patrons’ wars King, military, state wars, Restoration of democracy
administration ‘Great Powers’ – control (Balkan wars, world recurring regime change, using foreign Central
Elites and power domestic affairs – the patrons wars, Civil War, government infighting European models
structures chose foreign kings as head of Depression, Cold War, led to dictatorship (French and German),
state etc.) and civil disputes The United States replaced abolition of monarchy,
Public sector: Ottoman-style (National Schism, the British and European Europeanisation of the
government corruption military coups), state allies as the new state – the EU replaced
hybridised with Bavarian infrastructure was ‘patron’ – invasion of the patronage of the
hierarchy allocating resources destroyed several Cyprus and interference Great Powers and
using patronage and clientelist times – no continuity in domestic affairs the United States –
relations with elites of industrial compliance with EU
Feudalist policies are not modern policy, constant rules and policies
by foreign standards – policies reconstruction, debts Relative political stability,
(education, investment) – Flux back and but still social division –
land redistribution set back forth intensifies a legacy of mistrust and
initiatives for industrialisation partisanship and fractured class/political
corruption divisions. Redistribution
policies used for
reconciliation – social
unrest when the state
tries to cut back – no
overall design or policy
continuity
Legacy of clientelist
relationship with the
electorate
The Historical Trajectory 105
400 years. Thus, the Bavarian bureaucracy did not make processes trans-
parent but created a hybrid system of overlapping corrupt practices.
1900–1974 1974–2010
Emergence of middle-class
investors- credit-based
1830–1900 financing and savings
War debts and 1900–1950 dominate – market-based
insolvency – missed Loss of control with 1950–1974 stock exchange boost that
opportunity for periodic revivals – more Regaining control – collapsed due to weak
Financial systems industrialisation debts – periodic boosts credit-based booms regulation
Sources of financing The economy started Markets and production Marshall Plan partly Reallocation of industrial
Debt or market functioning with a destroyed by recurring implemented sectors – agriculture
Production and market investment deficit due to war debts wars Protectionist policies gradually disappeared,
to London banks State unable to repay led to rapid business weak industrial and
Due to lack of loans, loss of markets development innovation sectors –
investment, the (domestic and Boosts industries – service boosts
country had to rely on foreign) – further debt economy entered State used monetary
recurring debts Lack of investment due a capitalist phase policies to attract
Land redistribution to war shocks – the with high levels investment and
confined investment state used monetary of investment in to make services
to small plots – lack of policies to raise industry, tax credits competitive until the
middle-class investors revenues – more debt and protectionism, euro was adopted
and poor market Injection of labour and the emergence Redistribution policies
financing through mass of monopolies – due to social
Trade, shipping, sporadic immigration led to investment still credit- divisions – led
industrialisation based short boom for small based to savings rather
on funds from political businesses – retail- Businesses continued than stock market
elites – or loans oriented to invest little – investment – black
opportunistic economy
industrialisation– Self-employment, no
service sector large companies to
invest, mainly SMEs
Did not attract much
investment
Table 5.3 The path of the labour institutions (education, training, unions) with indicators by Hotho (2009) (evidence from Prouska
& Kapsali, 2011)
1900–1974 1974–2010
Influx of educated people – Increase in university education,
1830–1900 establishment of education asymmetric labour pool,
Educating the illiterate but not for business incomplete protection of
Skills development system masses professions workers
State of literacy, labour pool Diaspora of educated people Destruction of Smyrna, huge No calibration of market demand
Strength of education and training Population was illiterate, influx of new labour refugees and education planning
systems (availability and accessibility of uneducated – confined to contributed to business Most of the population was
education) agrarian professions and banking, they are well- educated (undergraduate and
Adoption of a free education educated and entrepreneurial, postgraduate degrees), educated
system, modernisation of labour became cheaper, small foreign labour, new skills
language businesses rose (services), vocational education
Gradual population growth Frequent changes to government weak (little in-house training)
cannot create predictable inhibited a long-term Increased labour costs due to
skills policies education policy for business social policies, unionisation
and industrial professions – and poor demand for many
classical ‘professional’ business-related professions led
education (doctors, lawyers, to high unemployment among
etc.) was preferred educated young people
Until the 1950s – investment in Policies for unemployment and
skills lagged behind industrial protection of employee rights
development improved but were not fully
Changes in market practices, implemented. Insurance and
unstable labour markets, pensions needed to be reformed
cannot industrialise Greater demand for tertiary
No social welfare for the education spawns controversy
unemployed, but over private university
establishment of insurance education – a great deal of
and pension systems income spent at foreign
universities
Table 5.4 The path of the firms’ institutionalised practices with indicators by Hotho (2009) (evidence from Prouska & Kapsali,
2011)
1974–2010
Structures continued to bear
power conflicts – employer/
employee regulations,
efforts for gender equality
and similar policies only
1830–1900 1900–1974 partially implemented –
Unregulated power Formation of structures – marginal unemployment
Trust and relations with distance – family craft some medium-sized policies – family businesses
authorities and trade businesses industries – majority continue to dominate
Business practices of authorities – Bavarocracy, the rule of Bavarocracy lives on, the Public sector organisations,
power distance patronage and bribery state became the main the state was now the
Willingness to delegate decision- Autocratic leadership employer largest employer that
making and family-oriented Small family businesses generated debt
Faith in formal institutions structures – great power dominated the private SMEs unable to work
distance, not much sector in cooperatives or
delegation Start of larger enterprises/ clusters due to lack of
Trade, shipping, no demand for more intermediary institutions
industrialisation, short- professional expertise and mistrust/greater
term orientation and Social divisions/great power distance between SMEs
opportunistic emergence distance between public and larger oligopolistic
of industry and private workers and firms
employers Labour and social security
policies still not fully
implemented – great
power distance –
autocratic practices/series
of strikes and industrial
actions
110 Maria Kapsali and Rea Prouska
war with Turkey, 13 military coups during the National Schism (1924–
1935), the Great Depression (1929), the Civil War (1945–1950), the Cold
War (1950–1970) and a seven-year dictatorship (1967–1974) (Kapsali
& Butler, 2011). The country had been in war for most of the twen-
tieth century, with 34 isolated years that were free of serious domestic
or external conflict. The pattern of dependency continued during this
period, including more war, reconstruction debts and heavy external
interference in domestic affairs, especially by the United States after the
Civil War (Weiner, 2007; Legg, 1969), leading to loss of internal control
and often of sovereignty as well. The country was exploited in various
ways by its allies, adding to violent conflicts between the externally
imposed monarch and the population. These conflicts consumed the
resources of the state while continually fragmenting business infrastruc-
tures and institutions.
The state continued to play the role of power broker, this time as an
intermediary between conflicting or overlapping domestic and foreign
vested interests. Governments backed up the police state and distorted
democratic processes. State regimes and economic philosophy, as well
as policy formation and implementation, changed so many times that
the only efficient way of conducting business was by means of clientelist
and particularistic practices (Taylor-Gooby, 2006) allied with personal
networks, and with the public sector as the main distributor of resources
(Table 5.1). Thus, the absence of a stable, sovereign political order had a
segmenting effect on business practices.
Legacy 1 Legacy 1
the power broker state the patron state
Legacy 2
the social-political and economic division created by clientilistic and patronage politics
the
alienated
firms
Figure 5.1 Legacies and paths creating the Greek segmented peripheral NBS
Source: The authors.
References
Agriantonis, C. (1991). ‘Hellenic industry in the 19th century, prospects and
problems of integration’, in G. Dertilis and K. Kostis (eds), Modern Greek History
Themes (18–19th Centuries). Athens: Tipothito.
Agriantonis, C. (1986). The Beginning of Industrialization in Greece in the Nineteenth
Century. Athens: historical files of the Commercial Bank of Greece.
Alogoskoufis, G. (1995). ‘The two faces of Janus: institutions, policy regimes and
macroeconomic performance in Greece’. Economic Policy, 10(20), 149–192.
Amable, B. (2003). The Diversity of Modern Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Amatori, F., Bugamelli, M. and Colli, A. (2011). Italian firms in history: size, tech-
nology and entrepreneurship, Quaderni di Storia Economica (Economic History
Working Papers), Number 13.
Bendt, F. and Sanne, J. (2010). ‘The Korean business system: national character-
istics and the impact of the FTA between Korea and the EU from a European
The Historical Trajectory 117
Whitley, R.G. (1999). Divergent Capitalisms: The Social Structuring and Change of
Business Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whitley, R.G. (1991). ‘The social construction of business systems in East Asia’.
Organization Studies, 12(1), 1–28.
Witt, M. and Redding, G. (2012). ‘Asian business systems: institutional compar-
ison, clusters, and implications for varieties of capitalism and business systems
theory’, INSEAD Working Paper No. 2013/05/EPS/EFE.
Wood, G. and Frynas, G. (2006). ‘The institutional basis of economic failure:
anatomy of the segmented business system’. Socio-Economic Review, 4(2),
239–277.
Yeung, H.W.C. (2000). ‘The dynamics of Asian business systems in a globalizing
era’. Review of International Political Economy, 7(3), 399–443.
6
Governing the Global Periphery:
Socio-economic Development in
Service of the Global Core
Sammy K. Bonsu
Introduction
121
122 Sammy K. Bonsu
when imperial Europe defined the conduct of the peoples in their colo-
nised countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas (Boahen, 1987; Falola,
2005; Rodney, 2012). Some have argued that colonialism has given way
to contemporary globalisation that affords an enhanced potential for
equality among nations. Others (e.g., Bonsu, 2009) have noted that
while the brutalities of colonialism may no longer be in direct use, the
colonial legacy maintains a core-periphery relationship that fosters the
continued subjectivisation of the ‘colonies’. Decolonisation of the mind
has not been successful and so assaults on the mind continue unabated
and those at the periphery are encouraged to assume that western norms
are better than local ones. The results are manifested in economic terms
too as square development pegs are forced to fit into round develop-
ment holes.
Consider this gloomy picture of Africa painted by Paul Lubeck in 1992:
continental Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita declined by
an annual average of 0.7 per cent between 1986 and 1990; the ratio of
gross domestic investment to GDP declined from 23.9 per cent (1980)
to 17.6 per cent (1989); gross domestic savings declined from 24 per
cent (1980) to 16 per cent (1989); and real net resource flows to Africa
declined from $24.6 billion in 1986 to $23.3 billion in 1990. This is not
a pretty picture. Two of the world’s foremost institutions dedicated to
poverty alleviation (The United Nations Organization and the World
Bank) admitted openly to the failure of their strategies to ‘stem the
tide of rising human misery’ in the 1980s (Lubeck, 1992, p. 521). The
failure was not restricted to Africa as similar conditions were observed in
varying degrees across the globe, especially in Asia and Latin America.
Attempts to mitigate this condition and its effects have included
many African countries’ adoption of structural adjustment programmes
(SAPs) sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank Group (WBG). In Ghana, for instance, the restructuring of
the country’s economic system began in the 1980s under the Rawlings
regime. Economic development was to be achieved through a formula
proposed by international bodies at the core of the global economy,
supported by countries of the north. At the heart of the strategy was the
sale of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the proceeds of which would be
used to support governments’ regulatory role. In essence, the private
sector would replace the state as the primary engine for socio-economic
development. As in the colonial era, the imperial order commanded the
African socio-economic agenda of the 1980s. This time around, privatisa-
tion was the theme for action. Although there is talk of improved devel-
opment and hence an improvement in the conditions of the world’s
Governing the Global Periphery 123
poor today, the overall picture of global poverty is not much different
from the 1980s (e.g., Collier, 2007; Nussbaum, 2011; UNDP, 2008).
Still, efforts to reverse the appalling trends in human misery are contin-
uing. The most conspicuous of these attempts in recent memory was the
meeting of 147 heads of state and government at the United Nations
in September 2000 to fashion what would be called the Millennium
Declaration that outlined specific actions for getting the world out of
poverty by the year 2015 (Millennium Development Goals or MDGs).
Notice the active involvement of the global north in these affairs. This
and earlier efforts have been assumed under the general rubric of ‘devel-
opment’, which is aimed at eradicating poverty and increasing the
productive/consumption lot of all. Development, as an institutional
force, is expected to improve human existence through:
Modern development
On this basis, I have to agree with Dossa (2007) in his argument that
development was just plain wrong – pure and simple.
Governing the Global Periphery 127
Neo-liberal development
Adam Smith’s classic liberal principle called for individuals and firms to
be set free to make profit and accumulate wealth, consulting only their
own interests, that is, the market is supposed to be the dominant logic
for all human activity, considering only individual rights. Neo-liberalism
has extended this principle into placing such high authority in the free
market that all matters of development are intended to be regulated by
market forces (Harvey, 2007). It perceives the state as a tyrannical entity
that constrains the freedom of the individual to pursue and accumu-
late wealth. That is, the state curtails the freedom of the individual by
interfering in the choices and opportunities that would otherwise be
open to that individual. Government must therefore be constrained and
the invisible hand of the market allowed free reign to manage what the
government is likely to mismanage – scarce resources. A government’s
only role is to facilitate the work of the private sector in encouraging
entrepreneurship among the under-developed (Hart, 2007). Individuals
and firms are, thus, relieved of all government encumbrances and
supported in their wanton pursuit of profits and wealth.
Building on the colonial legacy, neo-liberal development has taken
on a stronger market inflexion. Thus, contemporary design and prac-
tice of development emphasise material well-being (branded clothes, big
houses, all-terrain cars, etc.) at the expense of the non-material (envi-
ronmental sustainability, spirituality, community, etc.), in the name of
profits. For instance, it requires the transformation of agricultural land
into residential developments, forcing local self-sustaining communities
to engage in unsustainable practices just to survive (see UNCTAD, 2012).
128 Sammy K. Bonsu
them into a series of discrete flows. These flows ... can be scrutinized and
targeted for intervention’. Thus, development programs’ incorporation
of electronic monitoring systems allows for ease of surveillance and
carefully considered development interventions. Removing the human
face of development, as such data are apt to do, allows for deepening
the fabrication of intended beneficiaries in the under-developed world.
As Beckett (2012, p. 4) notes, regimes of governmentality reflect on the
nature of the governed subjects and the types of behaviour the governor
seeks to promote. Targets routinely reflect on their performances in rela-
tion to the defined norms in efforts to conform.
It is quite common to constitute targets as free and empowered agents
whose input into their own development is required. Triantafillou and
Nielsen (2001) reported on how Moroccan and South-East Asian women
were deemed empowered through participatory practices to facilitate
their development. The researchers observed that the inclusive efforts
‘serve to install and maintain norms of activism and self-assertion. It is
through the group that the individual woman [ ... ] subjectives herself
as a citizen’ (2001, p. 80) and takes responsibility for her development.
They concluded that empowerment in this context does not mean
transfer of power to those who had little or none, but as a technology
seeking to create self-governing and responsible individuals.
Constitution of the development beneficiary as an individual respon-
sible for his or her own well-being is at the core of many discussions on
the nature of contemporary development. Problems with such consti-
tution include the assumed equity of access to the requisite resources
for material well-being. As it is, the privileged who has better access to
resources (education, support funds, etc.) will remain privileged while
those with little or no access might remain under-privileged forever.
Worse still, all risk associated with human existence is shifted to the
individual who must now find interesting ways to survive without the
support of the commons.
In this regard, Bonsu and Polsa (2011, p. 4) recognise the Base-of-
the-Pyramid (BoP) strategy as a development strategy that supports the
vicious circle of poverty for the under-privileged as the strategy recon-
ceptualises development as ‘a purposeful crafting of the poor as part-
ners in a mutually beneficial set of market processes, yielding enhanced
value that is shared – albeit inequitably – among partners’.
The ideals of the market logic rest within the confines of the freedom
that are allowed for the target as beneficiaries of development are
expected to behave in specific ways: accepting norms and practices
often handed down by external stakeholders (e.g., Kang, 2012), working
actively to help the individual and the firm assume more control while
134 Sammy K. Bonsu
minimising the role of the state (Bonsu & Polsa, 2011) and assuming an
entrepreneurial stance and hence more risk in all relevant transactions.
Indeed, it is quite common in development circles for funding to be
contingent on certain conditions specified by the donor. Consider yet
again Canada’s foreign aid policy that rendered ineligible for Canadian
aid any country that allowed legal abortions (Smith, 2010). Here was
a partner from the north using development aid to force a particular
type of behaviour, thereby constituting beneficiaries as anti-abortionists
who, once normalised into this way of thinking, would take it upon
themselves to police anti-abortionist behaviour in their home countries.
These sponsored modes of behaviour and other aspects of a development
project may be in conflict with the locals’ views and expectations (e.g.,
Kang, 2012; Rossi, 2004). However, the political power of the sponsor
renders the locals impotent to defend themselves against the global
north. Once again, we observe a sponsored development frame from the
core disseminated to the periphery in the service of the sponsor.
Concluding remarks
References
Alderson, W. (1957). Marketing Behavior and Executive Action: A Functionalist
Approach to Marketing Theory. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin.
Anderson, D.A. (1970). Marketing and Development: The Thailand Experience. East
Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Beckett, A. (2012). ‘Governing the consumer: technologies of consumption’.
Consumption Markets & Culture, 15, 1–18.
Boahen, A.A. (1987). African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Bonsu, S.K. (2009). ‘Colonial images in global times: consumer interpretations
of Africa and Africans in advertising’. Consumption Markets & Culture, 12, 1–25.
Bonsu, S.K. and Belk, R.W. (2012). Redemptive Materialism in the New African
Pentecostalism. Toronto: York University, Schulich School of Business.
Governing the Global Periphery 137
139
140 Maria Humphries and Amy Klemm Verbos
With waves rising ever higher ... the oceans are ... sending a signal that
something is seriously wrong with our current model of economic
development.
Ban Ki Moon, the United Nations secretary general, Pacific Forum
Address, September 2011
The Logic of the Centre that generates, manifests and polices this
system of development has overshadowed and disciplined to subju-
gation all other possibilities. We posit that the values and interests of
self-proclaimed free-marketeers have been enabled and endorsed by
national governments and international instruments of legitimacy.
They have become so embedded in so many communities, organisa-
tions and personal identities that they appear like immutable aspects of
an assumed natural order.
The Logic of the Centre, we posit, is a logic that serves the privileged
few most consistently. It is a logic that disciplines and orders both the
centre and the periphery – but not uniformly. Elevated to an all-en-
compassing ethos, neo-liberal ideas manifest as heightened competi-
tive individualism and accelerated consumerism made palatable by a
simultaneous promulgation of the myth of meritocracy. This achieve-
ment includes the selective harnessing of neo-liberal values, the skilful
assimilation or tolerance of some obvious paradoxes, contradictions,
and aspects of diverse value systems. This expansion of the reach of the
Logic of the Centre gives a semblance of inclusion of diverse individuals,
once excluded ethnic groups, newly available workforces, and distant
Transforming the Institutional Logic 141
change that may come about from dialectic tension between competing
institutional orders that can be detected at the global, national, regional,
local, organisational and community levels, each with both consistent
and contradictory material and symbolic elements within and across
fields (Thorton et al., 2012). This recognition of the possibility for new
sense-making in generally accepted ways of being that may be generated
from inevitable cognitive tensions invites the examination of the scope
for change in a vested order. It alerts us to the out-workings of vested
interest and unequal formal and informal power and influence in the
enactment or resistance to institutional change.
Over several hundred years, various capitalist formations have
emerged with expressed emancipatory values. They have been justified
as a system of social cohesiveness and integration by some, and criti-
cised as inherently divisive and exploitative by others (Sennet, 2006).
Corporate business activities, their enabling legislatures and the social
norms that sustain their legitimacy are similarly perceived and assessed
in a variety of ways. We take the position that the predominant form of
capitalism being intensified the world over is generated from an instru-
mental, seemingly amoral market logic that claims legitimacy through
its association with the emancipatory values of neo-liberalism. The
institutional logic that drives this form of capitalist expression selec-
tively promulgates the neo-classical economic view that social and envi-
ronmental considerations must be kept external to the business realm
(cf. Marcus et al., 2010) but that isolation of market orientation is to
diminish the isomorphism of the various instruments of social co-or-
dination, vested interests and embedded power. ‘Modern societies are
typically more influenced by the logics of the state, the professions,
the corporation, and the market’ argue Thornton et al. (2012, p. 12).
We agree with them to some extent but we posit that the corporation’s
influence is eclipsing all others, and in its justification for survival and
control, expansion and intensification, the corporate logic harnesses
and subjugates all other influences to its service. Observers of these
dynamics call this ‘predatory capitalism’ which, though not referring
to a new form of corporate activity, has come under more intense scru-
tiny as banks, financial institutions and corporations deemed too big to
fail are bailed out by taxpayers’ dollars and losses are worn by millions
of small shareholders and pension fund holders. Breakouts of reactions
and protests provide momentary glimpses of media interest and hopeful
demands for change – but order is soon restored. The hegemony of the
Centre, while never water tight, is soon made secure. We offer as an
illustration of such a system-preserving dynamic through a focus on the
144 Maria Humphries and Amy Klemm Verbos
Jennie Green, a lawyer with the Centre for Constitutional Rights who
initiated the lawsuit in 1996, said: ‘This was one of the first cases
to charge a multinational corporation with human rights violations,
and this settlement confirms that multinational corporations can no
longer act with the impunity they once enjoyed’.
The deal follows three weeks of intensive negotiation between the 10
plaintiffs, mainly drawn from relatives of the executed Ogoni nine,
and Shell. The oil giant, and its Nigerian subsidiary Shell Petroleum
Development Company, continue to dismiss all the claims made
against them, saying they played no part in the violence that swept
southern Nigeria in the 1990s.
Transforming the Institutional Logic 145
Shell and their shareholders cannot deny that the devastation of the
Ogoni and their lands has enriched them. Their abdication from liability
and rejection of responsibility for the ongoing consequences of their
activities would seem contradictory to a worldview espousing inclusion
in the benefits of development and opportunities from market engage-
ment. The discussion of the case in the media ought perhaps to have
generated an external jolt to our collective conscience, a conscience
pricked each time we tank up at Shell. The outcome ought, perhaps,
to invite us into a deep enquiry into the institutional logic that allows
Shell to walk away from any ongoing responsibility for the well-being
of the Ogoni people and their lands. The Logic of the Centre, however,
prevails. From exploration to exploitation, from drilling to hanging,
from wealth extraction for distant investors to local poverty entrench-
ment, all is justified as reasonable, just and right.
The potentially transformational call to our collective conscience
and to the Shell stakeholders in particular was soon absorbed into the
stabilisation of Shell and the incremental securing of the corporate capi-
talist agenda in general. Shell, the Nigerian government and the Dutch
Court appear to be unwilling or unable to fully restore the conditions for
healthy living for the people of Ogoniland. Governments, their courts
and powerful corporations appear to see the world through the Logic of
the Centre in which corporate profits are the priority and responsibilities
are defined. Shell may well argue that it is now using its massive surpluses
146 Maria Humphries and Amy Klemm Verbos
The very noticing that the origins of any human logic originates in
the human imagination and may have local variations and contingen-
cies opens all logic to challenge and potential transformation. While
a prevailing institutional logic that attains a privileged position or a
hegemonic state can confer legitimacy, order and ontological security
at micro, meso and macro levels during a particular historical period,
such dominant institutional logics may be contested by competing or
conflicting logics that shift over time, sometimes in response to exog-
enous jolts (Glynn & Lounsbury, 2005). Recent economic and environ-
mental crises may be the type of jolts that might begin to shift dominant
institutional logics towards a position of vulnerability. To date, these
jolts, particularly visible in the repercussions of the sub-prime debacle
and worldwide recession, have, however, been met with pressure on
various populations to accept austerity measures, reduced incomes and
diminished conditions of service. Exorbitant executive salaries appear
to be sacrosanct.2 It seems that for now the Logic of the Centre has
survived this current spate of crises reasonably intact.3
Seo and Creed (2002) remind us that no matter how robust a hegem-
onic order may appear no hegemony is ever water tight. Any hegemony
may be unsettled by rising tensions from within or disruption from
without. Such hegemony may be challenged by strategically planned
or inadvertent confrontation of ideas forged at the periphery. The case
for the Ogoni people, however, would suggest that the systemic Logic
of the Centre is remarkably impervious to such challenges. We suggest
that while the internal contestations to injustices must persist, there
may be more fruit in bringing about a deep shift in the consciousness of
humanity – a transformation of the very institutional logic that supports
the Logic of the Centre. It is to this aspiration we now turn our attention
by adding our voice of Indigenous peoples who insist on maintaining
the integrity of their traditional and spiritual values and kin-connection
with a living Mother Earth.
Dr. Chellie Spiller posits that closer attention to the values of Indigenous
people may hold more transformational traction in the transformation
of the life destroying outcomes of the Logic of the Centre. She writes:
humans (or business) to survive. Without us, she may better regenerate
it would seem.
The instrumental ethic generated to support a mandate of growth in
production and consumption serves economic priorities expressed as
the Logic of the Centre even as the Centre claims to be concerned with
sustainability and justice. In contrasting this dominating ethic with
wide reaching relational ethical systems relegated to the periphery, a
creative tension may be set up. This tension may have the potential to
call us to reflection and to inspire new ways of being human. We call
for an emphasis on relational ethics to counter the prevailing instru-
mental ethics of the Logic of the Centre that seems to govern almost
all institutions – be they institutions of markets, religion or culture. In
proffering a reflection on Indigenous knowledge systems and wisdom,
we are mindful and respectful of the unique and diverse expressions
and concerns across and within Indigenous communities and among
western thinkers whose ethics stand in contrast to the amoral instru-
mentality associated with the market logic that underpins much
western organisational theory and practice. We believe, however, that
there are commonalities that provide wisdom for common exploration.
In such traditions, communities were and are organised through a rela-
tional logic. This perspective assumes the interdependence and inter-
connectedness of all, responsibility to and respect for all living things
and the Earth, and a metaphysical dimension that links past, present
and future together (Cajete, 2000; Cordova, 2004; Cordova, 2007; Spiller
et al., 2011a, 2011b; Williams et al., 2012). This latter element extends
responsibility to honour the past and to ensure sustainability for future
generations. It is expressed by Māori Marsden who draws on Einstein for
a parallel: ‘[T]he rhythmical patterns of pure energy’ woven together by
a voice of the Universe into a fabric of relationships (Royal, 2003, pp.
xiii–iv). Under a relational ethic, Shell’s responsibility would extend to
all future generations affected by its past, present and future actions.
A relational ethic characterises the expression of many Indigenous
cultures the world over. This ethic emphasises the interconnectedness of
all things. This interconnectedness carries with it responsibilities. Thus,
humans are embedded in natural systems rather than being external to
them. The values include care, respect, humility and balance in human
and non-human relationships (Cajete, 2000). For instance, humility
means that humanity is not superior to other creatures, and responsi-
bility for those creatures is encompassed in care and respect. Moreover,
the spiritual, natural and social realms are not severable or differentiated
notions of value and wisdom but are inextricably intertwined (Cajete,
150 Maria Humphries and Amy Klemm Verbos
2000). This is in stark contrast with the Logic of the Centre in which
spiritual matters are relegated to the periphery. All parts of creation are
infused with spirit and are accorded respect. The amplification of this
ethic provides an opportunity to make a shift from typical postcolo-
nial marginalisation, silencing and exclusion of Indigenous peoples,
perspectives and interests, to respect and inclusion through active
participation. Thus, it is one possible path to transcend the privileging
of corporate market interests over that of Indigenous and societal inter-
ests in natural resources. It is expressed in its most explicit and applied
sense in Bolivia’s recent commitment to enshrining the rights of Mother
Earth in law and policy (Vidal, 2011). In places as diverse as Africa,
Canada, the United States, Asia, the Pacific and the northern reaches of
Scandinavia, Indigenous people are raising their voice in insisting that
the Logic of the Centre does not serve them, and at times does them
grievous harm. There is now a substantial literature on aboriginal land
and water management. Learning from Indigenous traditional practices
to improve contemporary organisational practice appears to be on the
rise (see, e.g., Baker et al., 2001; Luckert et al., 2007; Taylor, 1995). In
management education this discussion has reached conference calls and
specialist journals that reach beyond the specific needs and interests of
Indigenous communities (see, e.g., Fitzgibbons & Humphries, 2011).
Indigenous people are calling for the enforcements of the rights to live
out their own institutional logics (Humphries & Verbos, 2011; Verbos
& Humphries, 2011). One way this call has been made much more
accessible to a wider world is through the United Nations Declaration
of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We develop our considerations to
make our contribution to the growing influence of this Declaration. As
a macro-level legitimising mechanism, the Declaration provides a basis
for asserting the underlying Indigenous rights in relation to corporate
actions that affect them. In December 2012, the Global Compact prom-
ulgated an exposure draft of a Business Reference Guide to advance the
Declaration through the Global Compact,5 a move that we applaud.
Shell is a corporation that espouses good corporate citizenship in
the global context. Shell is a signatory to the Global Compact. Yet, we
suggest, while the legal decisions that have been made with regard to
Shell’s culpability and responsibility for the situation in Ogoniland may
well be correct in law, justice has not been delivered to the people of the
Ogoni region. Land and waterways remain polluted. Opportunities for
secure livelihoods and healthy lives are severely curtailed. Shell’s actions
during their time in the Niger Delta are not right actions. How might
a relational ethic provide a different kind of guidance to our decisions
Transforming the Institutional Logic 151
about right actions? For this part of the discussion we turn to the pollu-
tion of waterways of a different country, Aotearoa/New Zealand, a
land that prides itself on its clean green image. Here the worldview of
Māori, the Indigenous people of this land, has influenced significantly
the prevailing colonial power as evidenced in the increased visibility of
Māori claims for restitution of breaches of justice and their insistence on
the integration of Māori values in the many institutions that combine
to constitute the Logic of the Centre – most recently in determination to
co-govern major waterways of the country.6 Māori offer ways to rethink
not only our attitudes to water, but a worldview that may offer radical
remedies for the devastations that flow from the effects of an unbridled
neo-liberalism and it thriving on unequal relationships. We provide a
small and humble outsider explanation of how Te Ao Māori (The Māori
World) is being articulated in the wider contemporary Aotearoa/New
Zealand. We do so in order to introduce Tarawera, river and source of
life.
forms. Through a balance between the market and relational hulls, navi-
gation to a destination of universal good is possible. As an illustration,
we now turn our thoughts to Tarawera, a river system in the Bay of
Plenty region of the North Island of New Zealand. The river is the life-
blood of the region but she has been subject to industrial pollution for
over five decades. Industries in the region have been flushing their waste
into the river, particularly the pulp and paper industry. Our illustration
is not unique to this region. This story is playing out the world over as
access to water becomes a high priority for investors of all types (Griffin,
2005; UNESCO, 2009, 2012).
The geographic region through which Tarawera flows is vibrant with
numerous entrepreneurial ventures. Some activities are led by Indigenous
people who seek to provide alternative ways of thriving. These include
activities and attempts at governing projects with non-Indigenous part-
ners that provide the means by which the Indigenous people of this
region can exercise what they understand to be their responsibility to
Earth as a priority. They describe a relationship with Earth (and thus
with Tarawera) as a living being whose thriving is essential for the well-
being of the generations to come. Activities with Tarawera must first and
foremost demonstrate responsibility for their part in her well-being.
Taking our guidance from our understanding of what might be
described as Māori institutional logics, we re-(in)state Tarawera’s identity
not as the sluice drain typical of corporate need for waste disposal, but
as an energetic channel of anima mundi (Reason and Bradbury, 2001) an
idea also endemic in Indigenous relational ethics and ways of knowing
in many regions of the world (Broomfield, 1997; Cajete, 2000; Cordova,
2007).
Notes
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/30/january/2013/shell-acquitted-
nigeria-pollution-charges.
2. http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/editorials/nation-of-inequality-
exorbitant-ceo-pay-is-a-festering-problem-632933.
3. http://www.economist.com/node/4424657.
4. http://www.fulbright.org.nz/grantees-alumni/profiles/nzscholars/chellie-
spiller.
5. http://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/issues_doc/human_rights/UNDRIP_
Business_Reference_Guide.pdf.
6. http://www.alternative.ac.nz/journal/volume8-issue2/article/key-actors-
waikato-river-co-governance-situational-analysis-work-0.
160 Maria Humphries and Amy Klemm Verbos
References
Baker, R., Davies, J. and Young, E. (2001). Working on Country: Contemporary
Indigenous Management of Australia’s Lands and Coastal Regions. Melbourne:
Oxford University Press.
Bargh, M. (2007). Resistence: An Indigenous Response to Neo-liberalism. Wellington,
NZ: Huia.
Boele, R., Fabig, H. and Wheeler, D. (2001). ‘Shell, Nigeria and the Ogoni. A study
in unsustainable development: II. Corporate social responsibility and “stake-
holder management” versus a rights-based approach to sustainable develop-
ment’. Sustainable Development, 9(3), 121–135.
Broomfield, J. (1997). Other Ways of Knowing: Recharting Our Future with Ageless
Wisdom. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.
Brown, K.M. (2006). ‘Leadership for social justice and equality: evaluating a trans-
formative framework and andragogy’. Educational Administration Quarterly,
42(5), 700–745.
Cajete, G. (2000). Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. Sante Fe, NM:
Clear Light Publishers.
Cordova, V.F. (2007). ‘Against the singularity of the human species’, in K.D. Moore,
K. Peters, T. Jojola and A. Lacy (eds), How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of
V. F. Cordova. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 159–165.
Cordova, V.F. (2004). ‘Ethics: the we and the I’, in A. Waters (ed.), American Indian
Thought. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 173–181.
Durie, M. (2005). Nga Tai Matatu: Tides of Māori Endurance. Melbourne: Oxford
University Press.
Fitzgibbons, D.E. and Humphries, M. (2011). ‘Enhancing the circle of life: manage-
ment education and indigenous knowledge’. Journal of Management Education,
35(1), 3–7.
Fox, M. (2002). The Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen. Rochester, Vermont: Bear
and Company.
Freire, A. and Macedo, D. (2001). The Paulo Freire Reader. New York: Continuum.
Gergen, K.J. (2009). Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Glynn, M.A. and Lounsbury, M. (2005). ‘From the critics’ corner: Logic blending,
discursive change and authenticity in a cultural production system’. Journal of
Management Studies, 42(5), 1031–1055.
Greenwood, R., Diaz, A.M., Li, S.X. and Lorente, J.C. (2010). ‘The multiplicity
of institutional logics and the heterogeneity of organizational responses’.
Organization Science, 21(2), 521–539.
Griffin, R.C. (2005). Water Resource Economics: The Analysis of Scarcity, Policies, and
Projects. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Habermas, J. (1981). The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume One. Reason and
the Rationalization of Society. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Hosking, D.M., Dachler, H.P. and Gergen, K.J. (1995). Management and Organization:
Relational Alternatives to Individualism. Aldershot: Avebury/Ashgate.
Transforming the Institutional Logic 161
Humphries, M.T. and Grant, S. (2010). ‘In The Subaltern Voice, third sector calling
from the margins’, Ninth International Conference of International Society for Third
Sector Research (ISTR). Istanbul, 7–10 July.
Humphries, M.T. and Martin, B. (2005). ‘Diversity ethics: a compass pointing
to relationality and reciprocity for navigating turbulent seas’. The International
Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management, 4, 1235–1240.
Humphries, M.T. and McNicholas, P. (2009). ‘Communication towards justice
in The Subaltern Voice (TSV)’. Communication Journal of New Zealand, 10(2),
58–74.
Humphries, M.T. and Verbos, A.K. (2011). ‘Harmonizing the wisdom of all the
ancients for human organisation and organizational management and environ-
mental responsiveness’. Stream 28: Wisdom, Management, and Organization. 7th
International Critical Management Studies Conference. Italy: Naples July 11–13.
Jonas, H. (1984). The Imperative of Responsibility. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Jones, C. and Livne-Tarandach, R. (2008). ‘Designing a frame: rhetorical strategies
of architects’. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29(8), 1075–1099.
Kelsey, J. (2002). At the Crossroads. Auckland, NZ: Bridget Williams Books.
Korten, D.C. (2001). When Corporations Rule the World. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-
Koehler.
LaDuke, W. (1999). All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge,
MA: South End Press.
Luckert, M.K., Campbell, B.M., Gorman, J.T. and Garnett, S.T. (2007). Investing in
Indigenous Natural Resource Management. Darwin: CDU Press.
Marcus, J., Kurucz, E.C. and Colbert, B.A. (2010). ‘Conceptions of the business-
society-nature interface: implications for management scholarship’. Business &
Society, 49(3), 402–438.
Marsden, M. and Henare, T.A. (1992). ‘Kaitiakitanga: A definitive introduction to the
holistic world view of the Maori’, Ministry for the Environment.
Mehl-Madrona, L. and Mainguy, B.J. (2012). ‘North American Indians, connec-
tivity and human ecology’, in L. Williams, R. Roberts and A. McIntosh (eds),
Radical Human Ecology: Intercultural and Indigenous Approaches. Surrey, UK:
Ashgate.
Meyer, R.E. and Hammerschmid, G. (2006). ‘Changing institutional logics and
executive identities – a managerial challenge to public administration in
Austria’. American Behavioral Scientist, 49(7), 1000–1014.
Moore, K.D. and Nelson, M.P. (2010). Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in
Peril. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press.
Orange, C. (1987). The Treaty of Waitangi. Wellington, NZ: Allen and Unwin.
Pilkington, E. (8 June 2009). ‘Shell pays out $15.5m over Saro-Wiwa killing’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/08/nigeria-usa (Accessed 5 May
2013).
Rao, H., Monin, P. and Durand, R. (2005). ‘Border crossing: Bricolage and the
erosion of categorical boundaries in French gastronomy’. American Sociological
Review, 70(6), 968–991.
Reason, P. (2007). ‘Education for ecology – science, aesthetics, spirit and cere-
mony’. Management Learning, 38(1), 27–44.
Reason, P. (1998). ‘A participatory worldview’. Resurgence Magazine, 168, 42–44.
Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (2001). Handbook of Action Research. London: Sage.
162 Maria Humphries and Amy Klemm Verbos
Reay, T. and Hinings, C.R. (2009). ‘Managing the rivalry of competing institu-
tional logics’. Organization Studies, 30(6), 629–652.
Royal, T.A.C. (2003). The Woven Universe: Selected Writings of Rev. Maori Marsden.
Otaki, New Zealand: Estate of M. Marsden.
Sennet, R. (2006). The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven/London: Yale
University Press.
Seo, M.G. and Creed, W.E.D. (2002). ‘Institutional contradictions, praxis, and
institutional change: a dialectical perspective’. Academy of Management Review,
27(2), 222–247.
Speth, J.G. (2004). Red Sky at Morning. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Spiller, C., Erakovic, L., Henare, M. and Pio, E. (2011a). ‘Relational well-being and
wealth: Māori businesses and an ethic of care’. Journal of Business Ethics, 98(1),
153–169.
Spiller, C., Pio, E., Erakovic, L. and Henare, M. (2011b). ‘Wise up: creating organi-
zational wisdom through an Ethic of Kaitiakitanga’. Journal of Business Ethics,
104(2), 223–235.
Statistics_New_Zealand (2012), ‘Tatauranga Umanga Māori – Consultation Paper.’
Wellington: Statistics New Zealand.
Stewart-Harawira, M. (2012). ‘Returning the sacred: indigenous ontologies in
perilous times’, in L. Williams, R. Roberts and A. McIntosh (eds), Radical Human
Ecology: Intercultural and Indigenous Approaches. Surrey, UK: Ashgate.
Stiglitz, J.E. (2012). The Price of Inequality. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Stiglitz, J.E. (2010). ‘Freefall: America, free markets, and the sinking of the world
economy’. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Suddaby, R. and Greenwood, R. (2005). ‘Rhetorical strategies of legitimacy.’
Administrative Science Quarterly, 50(1), 35–67.
Taylor, P. (1995). Caring for Country Strategy: An Indigenous Approach to Regional and
Environmental Programs Summary Report. Darwin: NLC.
Thomas, A. and Humphries, M.T. (2010). ‘Raising one’s voice to the insistent
hand of neo-colonialism’, Ninth International Conference of International Society
for Third Sector Research (ISTR). Istanbul, 7–10 July.
Thornton, P.H., Ocasio, W. and Lounsbury, M. (2012). The Institutional Logics
Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
UNEP (2011). Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland. Nairobi: United Nations
Environment Programme.
UNESCO (2012). WWDR4: Managing Water Under Uncertainty and Risk. Paris:
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
UNESCO (2009). ‘WWDR3: Water in a Changing World. Paris: United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Verbos, A.K. and Humphries, M.T. (2012). ‘Decoupling equality, diversity, and
inclusion from liberal projects: hailing indigenous contributions to institu-
tional change’. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 31(5/6),
506–525.
Verbos, A.K. and Humphries, M.T. (2011). ‘The confluence of institutional logics
in co-governance: ancient wisdom for modern times’, Stream 31 27th EGOS
Colloquium. Sweden: Gothenburg, 7–9 July.
Transforming the Institutional Logic 163
Vidal, J. (2011). ‘Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for
Mother Earth’. The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/
apr/10/bolivia-enshrines-natural-worlds-rights (Accessed 4 November 2012).
Wheeler, D., Rechtman, R., Fabig, H. and Boele, R. (2001). ‘Shell, Nigeria and the
Ogoni. A study in unsustainable development: III. Analysis and implications of
Royal Dutch/Shell group strategy’. Sustainable Development, 9(4), 177–196.
Williams, L., Roberts, R. and McIntosh, A. (2012). Radical Human Ecology:
Intercultural and Indigenous Approaches. Surrey: Ashgate.
8
‘He Apiti Hono, He Tātai Hono’:
Ancestral Leadership, Cyclical
Learning and the Eternal
Continuity of Leadership
Dara Kelly, Brad Jackson and Manuka Henare
164
‘He Apiti Hono, He Tātai Hono’ 165
Introduction
Within the core of leadership studies, that is, the dominant Western
discourse of leadership, history has not played a major role in shaping
the field (Goethals & Sorenson, 2006; Grint, 2011). Most leadership
research has been conducted in the post-war period and has largely
confined itself to analysing contemporary phenomena (Collinson et al.,
2011). The link between the academic literatures on leadership and
history is surprisingly underexplored. The key academic reference works
in leadership studies pay only scant attention to history (Antonakis
et al., 2004; Northouse, 2011). Historical perspectives on leadership have
‘He Apiti Hono, He Tātai Hono’ 167
Prior to 2003, there were very few studies on Māori leadership, with
the exception of Ella Henry’s Master’s thesis (1994). Scholarly research
that was available largely focused on ways of outlining ‘traditional’
Māori leadership styles with little discussion about the complex nature
of contemporary leadership challenges (Mahuika, 1992; Walker, 1993;
Winiata, 1967). Increasingly, there are more studies emerging with partic-
ular focus on Māori and other global Indigenous leadership approaches
(Bordas, 2012; Mead et al., 2006; Spiller & Stockdale, 2013; Warner &
Grint, 2006) as well as research that explores other areas of organisa-
tion studies (Pio et al., 2013; Verbos et al., 2011; Verbos & Humphries,
2012). The unique value of these contributions to leadership and busi-
ness research is that they involve a process of stepping back to fully
understand the diverse global contexts in which Indigenous people now
live. The contemporary professional contexts of the interview partici-
pants in this research are no exception. However, rather than focus on
the individual, we have explored ways of knowing from sources above
and beyond the human experience in business.
‘He Apiti Hono, He Tātai Hono’ 169
I look back at how our grandparents and ancestors led, and there
are people portrayed in this very whare, like the likes of Kawiti – he
stood for Māori rights and that won’t change. It hasn’t changed in
our time ... moving into the future, I think those things will endure.
its structure and kawa, tikenga and ritenga – the protocols on the marae.
The interviews conducted in this research inside of Mōtatau Wharenui
in Ngāti Hine tribal territory were actually conducted inside the body of
an ancestor – a reflection of the corporeal nature of ancestral knowledge
and evidence of the on-going exchange between the human, the cosmos
and the divine.
Pita observes the notion of change in his excerpt presented earlier.
Despite the changes that Māori have faced through the generations,
the poupou as visual representations of tūpuna (ancestors) in the whare
(house) points to a set of foundational Māori values that are unchanging;
they are values that indicate whakapapa (genealogy) is something that
is accessible and open to be referenced and explored at any time. The
poupou (carved ancestral posts) in Mōtatau Wharenui are a distinct visual
representation of Ngāti Hine tūpuna. Many of the carvings reflected the
facial characteristics of specific people as distinctly human, unlike many
that reflect tūpuna in an abstract style. These carvings at Mōtatua had
the effect of blurring the distinction between human and spirit forms,
acknowledging the fourth dimension of humanity – the spirit world.
The way that stories containing ancestral knowledge are told in
different contexts facilitates change across time and generations. This
point is important to remember in acknowledging the diversity across
Māori realities from generation to generation. Although poupou designs
change and reflect generations of carving styles, their purpose remains.
The persistence and active transfer of ancestral knowledge by way of
whakapapa (genealogy) as a reference system across generations helps
guide how symbolic ancestry is interpreted. Not only is there the poten-
tial for Māori to literally interpret concepts and philosophy differently,
but particularly with visual means of cultural preservation (such as
inside of whare), what one person sees is different from the next.
For example, Maxine Shortland comments below on how change
takes shape in storytelling:
She is confirming that a Māori cultural lens does not prescribe dupli-
cate vision; rather, it provides for shared understanding of foundational
‘He Apiti Hono, He Tātai Hono’ 175
The reality of who your ancestor was, or who your ancestress was, is
how one translates that reality from your own personal knowledge
of who they were, and how you actually translate that out through
your own life, living with your own people and with the rest of New
Zealand.
saying to me, was if we did it, or if our grandmothers did it, then you
certainly can as well. That’s how we were, that’s how I learned, it was
terrifying in many ways, and you know, you learn.
Conclusion
Notes
1. Our purpose is not to carve out a set of leadership values from the ancestral
context provided in this research and proclaim it to be the ‘enduring’ compo-
nents of leadership. We seek not for widespread and generalisable applica-
tion of our findings as might be the case with a positivist research tradition.
Instead, our approach to research incorporates Indigenous methods (including
a Kaupapa Māori approach) and interpretivist methods that allow the findings
to illuminate a previously under-recognised perspective on leadership.
2. Marae are an ancient Polynesian institution encompassing the entire sacred
grounds upon which the sacred house sits among other structures affiliated
with marae activities.
References
Antonakis, J., Cianciolo, A.T. and Sternberg, R.J. (2004). The Nature of Leadership.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Avolio, B., Walumbwa, F. and Weber, T. (2009). ‘Leadership: current theories,
research, and future directions’. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 421–449.
Bishop, R. (2008). ‘Freeing ourselves from neocolonial domination in research: a
Kaupapa Māori approach to creating knowledge’, in N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln
(eds), The Landscape of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
145–184.
Blakesley, S. (2008). ‘Remote and unresearched: educational leadership in
Canada’s Yukon Territory’. Compare, 38, 441–454.
Bolden, R., Hawkins, B., Gosling, J. and Taylor S. (2011). Exploring Leadership:
Individual, Organizational, and Societal Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Bordas, J. (2012). Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age. San
Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Cajete, G. (2000). Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. Santa Fe, NM:
Clear Light Publishers.
Cajete, G. (1999). A People’s Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living. Sante Fe,
NM: Clear Light Publishers.
Cajete, G. (1994). Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education. Skyland,
NC: Kivaki Press Inc.
Chen, M. and Miller, D. (2010). ‘West meets east: toward an ambicultural approach
to management’. Academy of Management Perspectives,17–24 November.
Chhokar, J.S., House, R.J. and Brodbeck, F.C. (eds) (2007). Culture and Leadership
across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies, LEA’s
182 Dara Kelly, Brad Jackson and Manuka Henare
Ladkin, D. and Taylor, S.S. (2010). ‘Enacting the “true self”: towards a theory of
embodied authentic leadership’. Leadership Quarterly, 21, 64–74.
Mahuika, A. (1992). Leadership: Inherited and Achieved. Auckland: Reed Books.
Marsden, M. (2003). The Woven Universe: Selected Writings of Rev. Māori Marsden.
Otaki: Te Wānanga-o-Raukawa.
Mead, H., Stevens, S., Third, J., Jackson, B. and Pfeifer, D. (2006). Māori Leadership
in Governance. Wellington: Centre for the Study of Leadership.
Mihesuah, D.A. (2003). Indigenous American women: Decolonization, Empowerment,
Activism. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Muniapan, B. (2009). ‘The Bhagavad-Gita and transformational “leaders devel-
opment”’, in S. Singh-Sengupta (ed.), Integrating Spirituality and Organizational
Leadership. Delhi: Macmillan Advanced Research Series.
Northouse, P.G. (2011). Introduction to Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Pihama, L.E. (2001). ‘Tihei mauri ora! Honouring our voices: Mana wahine as a
Kaupapa Māori theoretical framework’, Education. Auckland: The University of
Auckland.
Pio, E., Waddock, S., Mangaliso, M., McIntosh, M., Spiller, C., Takeda, H.,
Gladstone, J., Ho, M. and Syed, J. (2013). ‘Pipeline to the future: seeking wisdom
in indigenous, eastern, and western traditions’, in J. Neal (ed.), Handbook of
Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace: Emerging Research and Practice. New York:
Springer, 195–219.
Riggio, R.E. (2011). ‘The management perspective: engineering effective leader-
ship in organizations’, in M. Harvey and R.E. Riggio (eds), Leadership Studies:
The Dialogue of Disciplines. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 119–128.
Ruwhiu, D. and Wolfgramm, R. (2006). Kaupapa Māori research: A Contribution to
Critical Management Studies in New Zealand. Auckland: Massey University, 9.
Shirres, M.P. (1997). Te tangata: The Human Person. Auckland: Accent
Publications.
Sinclair, A. (2007). Leadership for the Disillusioned: Moving beyond Myths and Heroes
to Leading that Liberates. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Smith, A. (2007). ‘Native American feminism, sovereignty and social change’, in
J.A. Green (ed.), Making Apace for Indigenous Feminism. Black Point: Fernwood
Publishing, 93–107.
Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples.
London & Dunedin: Zed Books Ltd. and University of Otago Press.
Spiller, C. and Stockdale, M. (2013). ‘Managing and leading from a Māori perspec-
tive: bringing new life and energy to organisations’, in J. Neal (ed.), Handbook of
Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace: Emerging Research and Practice. New York:
Springer, 149–174.
Tapsell, P. (2008). ‘Service after death: the art of Māori leadership in marae
contexts’, in E. Griffey (ed.), The Power of Portraiture. Auckland: University of
Auckland Business School and David Ling Publishing, 18–32.
Tapsell, P. and Woods, C. (2010). Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Self
Organisation in an Indigenous Context. Auckland: University of Otago &
University of Auckland.
Verbos, A.K., Gladstone, J.S. and Kennedy, D.M. (2011). ‘Native American values
and management education: envisioning an inclusive virtuous circle’. Journal
of Management Education, 35, 10–26.
184 Dara Kelly, Brad Jackson and Manuka Henare
Verbos, A.K. and Humphries, M.T. (2012). ‘Decoupling equality, diversity, and
inclusion from liberal projects: hailing indigenous contributions to institu-
tional change’. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 31,
506–525.
Villegas, M.M. (2010). ‘500 PhDs in five years: insights from a successful indig-
enous higher education intiative’. Graduate School of Education. Boston: Harvard
University, 311.
Walker, R. (1993). Changes to the Traditional Model of Māori Leadership. Wellington:
Te Puni Kokiri.
Warner, L.S. and Grint, K. (2006). ‘American Indian ways of leading and knowing’.
Leadership, 2, 225–244.
Winiata, M. (1967). The Changing Role of the Leader in Māori Society: A Study in
Social Change and Race Relations. Auckland, NZ: Blackwood.
Wren, J.T. (2011). ‘Of history and leadership: the discipline of history and the
understanding of leadership’, in M. Harvey and R.E. Riggio (eds), Leadership
Studies: The Dialogue of Disciplines. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 66–81.
Wren, T., Hicks, D. and Price, T. (2004). The International Library of Leadership.
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
9
Voices that Matter: Speaking Up
for the ‘Indigenous’ in Business
Education
Diane Ruwhiu
Introduction
The British took over Aotearoa, made it New Zealand and shaped it in
their own image as though those who were resident did not matter. Māori
are now saying that being Māori does matter and that the education
system, especially through the compulsory years of schooling, must
do much better in incorporating a Māori knowledge base through
pedagogies based on Māori aspirations.
Penetito, 2010, p. 255; italics in original
Until the 1990s, the New Zealand education system ignored ‘the Māori’,
effectively silencing the existence of an Indigenous community of people
and relegating them to some mystical enclave in the nation’s past that
had long since disappeared from its shores. At school I learnt that since
there were no more full-blooded Māori left in New Zealand, we were all
one people and to succeed in the world I had to forgo my Māori-ness
and conform to this vision of ‘one-people’ in New Zealand. This under-
standing was made even more difficult with the ‘half-caste’ identity that
was applied as an official label of my ethnicity. I wasn’t Diane, a student
with Māori heritage. I was Diane, the half-caste. As you can imagine this
led to a deep sense of uneasiness and disconnection about who I thought
I was and how I should fit into the world. While New Zealand’s educa-
tion system has moved beyond what it once was, that uneasy feeling
remains as the business school in which I am a lecturer has committed
to the introduction of Māori content into its curriculum. Don’t get me
wrong! I am not opposed to it at all. However, it does highlight the
critical importance of an education system that speaks to and hears from
silenced voices within our society. In the context of our business school
185
186 Diane Ruwhiu
Smith (2012, p. 20) states that ‘imperialism frames the indigenous expe-
rience’. Therefore, when we consider educational practices deployed in
our New Zealand business schools, we must understand its location
within a history of colonial repression that has shaped the New Zealand
188 Diane Ruwhiu
undergraduate business studies during the 1990s, there was very little
exposure to Māori culture or practice (which is slowly being addressed,
e.g., see Amoamo, 2011; Ruwhiu & Cone, 2012; Spiller & Stockdale, 2013;
Verbos, Kennedy & Gladstone, 2011). However, the problem remains
in the managerial discourse evident in business textbooks, which are
prime instruments that not only legitimise hegemonic ideologies, but
also represent cultures ‘through ahistoric, highly selective statements as
facts’ (Coronado, 2012, p. 162).
As an example, I was both intrigued and horrified when I came across
an excerpt in a textbook that was required reading in one of our interna-
tional business communication courses:
In this example, the authors have denigrated two sacred rituals in Māori
society as being akin to a handshake. In its construction business educa-
tion is contradictory and ambivalent, wherein ‘the “signs” of culture
can be appropriated, translated, re-historicised and read anew’ (Bhabha,
1994, p. 37). The Indigenous voice is not only lost, it is badly misrepre-
sented. In addition, the ‘voice’ heard and represented in business educa-
tion is white, Anglo-American, Christian, patriarchal and predominantly
English-speaking (Coronado, 2012; Penetito, 2010; Verbos, Kennedy &
Gladstone, 2011). Critically, the problem remains that the decision of
whose knowledge is included in the curriculum is inherently political
and ideological, and taken by the dominant population.
Based on the conviction that the contemporary New Zealand educa-
tion system cannot be disassociated from its roots in the colonial schema
of imperialism, there continues to be a deeply embedded privileging of
power and knowledge in our educational institutions that benefit some
groups at the expense of others (Frenkel, 2008; Ibarra-Colado, 2006).
Therefore, education in general, and business education in particular,
continues to fail the developmental and aspirational needs of Māori,
and other Indigenous communities. This is not a proposition. This is
a fact. Indigenous peoples typically have lower entry numbers into
tertiary education and once there they have higher failure rates. Those
that do reach the completion of a degree, for a variety of reasons, are
Voices that Matter 191
object that is ‘new, neither the one nor the other’ (Bhabha, 1994, p. 37)
alienating our socio-cultural expectations, and changes, as it must, the
very forms of reconciliation, which in this instance must occur in our
business schools. In the following discussion I provide a brief overview
of how Māori culture is currently being introduced into New Zealand
business education. I then focus on two thematic questions directed
at the epistemological and ontological space that I argue is crucial to
our further understanding of core-periphery relations in business and
management education.
Māori aspirations for the twenty-first century are based on greater
control over their own destinies and resources. Contribution to and
participation in New Zealand’s higher education system is a vital ingre-
dient in the achievement of these aspirations. In education we have
seen the articulation of these aspirations in the form of the kaupapa
Māori paradigm in education and legislative requirements to include
Indigenous Māori knowledge and practice. Kaupapa Māori is ‘the Māori
way’ (Henry & Pene, 2001, p. 235), informed by collective and inter-
generational wisdom, and is therefore foundational to Māori ways of
thinking, being and doing. The kaupapa Māori perspective is grounded
in Māori cosmological and epistemological thinking. In education, this
perspective has driven the agenda to develop Māori language nests (Te
Kohanga Reo) set in Kura Kaupapa Māori Elementary Schools (Māori
immersion philosophy and practice schools), Kura Tuarua (Māori immer-
sion secondary school options) and Whare Wananga (Māori Tertiary
options). These institutions operate separately to mainstream educa-
tion institutions. The objective is to sustain Māori education through
alternative structures to those within the dominant domain, as a means
of revitalising Māori language, knowledge and culture (Penetito, 2010).
The kaupapa Māori paradigm has been extensively explored and is
well-established within the New Zealand and international educational
domains (for more detail, see Bishop, 2003, 2008; Pihama et al., 2004;
Smith, 2012).
Legislatively, New Zealand’s system of higher education is informed
by a unique set of social and political institutional arrangements, specif-
ically the Education Act (1989), which accepts the legitimacy of a Māori
worldview and creates expectation that it is included in university educa-
tion and research. This requires, at the very least, University Councils to
acknowledge the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and to take account
of the treaty in their defining documents, including mission statements,
charters and profiles (Walker, 1990). One such example is the University
of Otago Māori Strategic Framework, which outlines seven aspirational
196 Diane Ruwhiu
Poroporoaki
References
Amoamo, M. (2011). ‘Tourism and hybridity: re-visiting Bhabha’s third space’.
Annals of Tourism Research, 38(4), 1254–1273.
Bliuca, A..M., Ellis, R., Goodyear, R. and Hendres, D. (2011). ‘The role of social
identification as university student in learning: relationships between students’
social identity, approaches to learning, and academic achievement’. Educational
Psychology, 31(5), 559–574.
Banerjee, S. and Prasad, A. (2008). ‘Introduction to the special issue on “Critical
reflections on management and organizations: a postcolonial perspective”’,
Critical Perspectives on International Business, 4(2/3), 90–98.
Baxter, J. (2010). Presentation to Manu Ao Academy – Reflection on a New Curriculum
in Hauora Māori for Early Learners in Medicine, http://www.manu-ao.ac.nz/
massey/fms/manu-ao/documents/JBaxter%20Powerpoint.pdf.
Voices that Matter 201
Bhabha, H. (1983). ‘The other question ... Homi Bhabha reconsiders the stere-
otype and colonial discourse’, Screen, 24(6), 18–36.
Bhabha, H. (1984). ‘Of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse’,
October, 28, 125–133.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. (1996). ‘Culture’s in-between’, in S. Hall and P. Du Gay (eds), Questions
of Cultural Identity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 53–86.
Bishop, R. (2008). ‘Te Kotahitanga: Kaupapa Māori in mainstream classrooms’, in
N. Denzin, Y. Lincoln and L.T. Smith (eds), Handbook of Critical and Indigenous
Methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 439–458.
Bishop, R. (2003). ‘Changing power relations in education: Kaupapa Māori
messages for “mainstream” education in Aotearoa/New Zealand’. Comparative
Education, 39(2), 221–238.
Clegg, S.R. and Ross-Smith, A. (2003). ‘Revising the boundaries: management
education and learning in a postpositivist world’. Academy of Management
Learning & Education, 2(1), 85–98.
Coronado, G. (2012). ‘Constructing the “neo-colonial” manager: orientalizing
Latin America in the textbooks’, in A. Prasad (ed.), Against the Grain: Advances
in Postcolonial Organization Studies. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School
Press, 155–176.
Cunliffe, A., Forray, J. and Knights, D. (2002). ‘Considering management educa-
tion: insights from critical management studies’. Journal of Management
Education, 26(5), 489–495.
Denzin, N., Lincoln, Y. and Smith, L. (2008). Handbook of Critical and Indigenous
Methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Durie, M. (2005). ‘Indigenous knowledge within a global knowledge system’.
Higher Education Policy, 18, 301–312.
Durie, M. (2001). Te mana, te kāwanatanga: The politics of Māori self-determination.
South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Fanon, F. (2004). The Wretched of the Earth (trans. R. Philcox). New York: Grove
Press.
Faria, A., Ibarra-Colado, E. and Guedes, A. (2010). ‘Internationalization of manage-
ment, neoliberalism and the Latin America challenge’, Critical Perspectives on
International Business, 6(2/3), 97–115.
Fitzgibbons, D. and Humphries, M. (2011). ‘Enhancing the circle of life: manage-
ment education and indigenous knowledge’, Journal of Management Education,
35(3), 3–7.
Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Foucault, M. (1982). ‘The subject and power’. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–
1977 (trans. C. Gordon). New York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M., Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. (1991). The Foucault Effect:
Studies in Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel
Foucault. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Frenkel, M. (2008). ‘The multinational corporation as a third space: rethinking
international management discourse on knowledge transfer through Bhabha’.
Academy of Management Review, 33(4), 924–942.
202 Diane Ruwhiu
Networks are a good site for exploring this paradox. The ‘digital revo-
lution’ and the ‘network society’ are trumpeted as the new basis for
globalisation, a combination of technology and management practices
that justifies global capitalism in its claimed right to lead the world.
Yet Management and Organisation Studies (MOS) was dominant many
decades before digital technology arrived, before networks were cele-
brated. Was this earlier form of management defective? Conversely,
Indigenous societies lacked digital technologies but had highly devel-
oped forms of network organisation. Were they organisationally supe-
rior in some respects to the dominant western forms of organisation? Is
it possible that western forms have still not caught up? Should modern
organisations and management educators seek to learn from groups and
practices that have hitherto been marginalised and despised?
It is important to avoid simplistic binaries. Turning back the clock
is not an option. Justice and mutual respect are needed as humanity
confronts a world that is new and challenging for everyone. To cope with
that world requires respectful collaboration, to co-construct a network
imagination across core-periphery systems of a global world.
204
Sorry, the Network Society has Already been Invented 205
sense reason for inverting the assumption that MOS textbooks must be
right because they are close to centres of power. As Wallerstein points
out, this can be a limitation. For instance, Davidson and Griffin or Hill
and McShane do not recognise ‘deep conflict’ as a relevant framework,
and they assume that managers have no ‘hypocrisies’ to expose.
Wallerstein analyses world-systems in terms of movements between
centres, semi-peripheries and peripheries, important categories in his
theory. However, a more fundamental term for him is system. ‘System’
comes from the Greek syn, together, and tem, to hold, and captures
the theoretical and empirical fact that all elements in a system hold
together, affecting each other. In this view, centres cannot act directly
and unilaterally on peripheries. Action takes place through networks
of exchange, which are overlaid but not replaced by structures dictated
from the centre, reinforcing its powers and privileges. Wallerstein’s
‘system’ contributes to the ‘network imagination’ in the new paradigm.
Far from seeing the canonical core-periphery system of the twentieth
century as an irresistible monolith, Wallerstein sees it as under terminal
stress from structural problems of command-and-control models.
Dominance is only ever partial and temporary. New centres challenge
the old, and one-way structures of command are unsustainable. In this
situation, the MOS model of managerialism, extrapolating from small-
scale command-and-control models to global management, is a poor
guide.
Edward Said’s (2003/1978) concept of ‘Orientalism’ complements
Wallerstein’s framework by identifying the ideological forms through
which imperial centres exercised rule. He outlined the set of discur-
sive strategies through which European colonial powers constructed
‘the east’ (the Orient) in the interests of governance, which he called
‘Orientalism’.
He did not use the term ‘ideological complex’, but central to his
account of Orientalism is his identification of its core contradiction:
romanticising subordinated cultures but silencing and marginalising
their voices. These societies were represented as fascinating but inher-
ently inferior to the European colonisers, incapable of ruling themselves
and so justly submitted to European dominance. The contradiction
was managed by an ideological sleight-of-hand, by the claim that these
earlier societies could not understand themselves until the advent of
the colonisers, and they still needed the colonisers to understand and
explain them.
For those positioned on the margins Orientalism needs to be disman-
tled, because it captures in a pure form the structures of legitimacy
210 Bob Hodge
that devalue their experience and capacity to know and act on their
own behalf. Orientalism operates on the already limiting terms of
core-periphery models to shrink them into a closed binary (two-term)
model, of Self (European power) and Other (colonised peoples), with a
one-way flow of knowledge and legitimacy, from above to below, from
core to periphery, with no shades of grey in between. The model assumes
no possibility of reciprocal knowledge from below to above, because it
envisages no real knowledge from below. And although world-systems
are constituted by networks of exchange, which rely on reciprocal action,
this binary model of the world has no room for any kind of network:
only for the assertion and acceptance of power.
As Frenkel argues in this book (Chapter 2, p. 33), this map of the
world is unsustainable in the light of the economic clout of formerly
orientalised nations like China and India. But the structure is still used
of Indigenous peoples, constructed by the same Ideological Complex.
Said’s Orientalism has been adapted to describe analogous ideolog-
ical structures and processes applied to Australia’s Indigenous peoples
(Hodge and Mishra, 1991) and Native Americans (Williamson, 2011),
and incorporated into Linda Tuhawai Smith’s authoritative book (1999)
on de-colonising methods of research. The best antidote to Orientalism’s
damaging effects on thought and action from the margins is to disrupt
its closed binary structures with a dynamic model of a single system
linked by reciprocal flows and networks.
I now turn to the ‘network society’ and the ‘digital revolution’, as material
realities and as constructed in MOS, illustrated from my sample manage-
ment textbooks. In these we find some mention, but not prominently.
The digital is present, but not up-front, usually carried by a single letter,
e, as in ‘e-business’. ‘Information’ and its management are there, too,
but the new forms are not presented as posing new problems. ‘Networks’
are almost absent. They are not mentioned in Davidson and Griffin, and
have only a minor role in Hill and McShane (2008, p. 482), associated
with traditional forms, not with digital technologies: ‘Network building.
Actively seeking and establishing relationships with people who may
prove useful in the future’.
I admit I was surprised by this. Given so much buzz about networks
I expected more comprehensive treatment of this theme. If a creative
understanding of networks should be part of the conceptual equip-
ment for new managers, then these textbooks are seriously deficient.
Sorry, the Network Society has Already been Invented 211
would seize up, as it did. But in influential work on disasters and organi-
sations, sociologist Charles Perrow (1999) proposed that organisations
are especially prone to disasters if they are highly complex, and tightly
coupled. Neo-institutionalist theorists Greenwood and Hinings (1996)
propose a similar model when describing the capacity of different kinds
of organisation to respond to pressure for change. For both theorists,
tightly coupled organisations with strong command-and-control link-
ages are less flexible and more prone to disastrous change.
Bringing these theories together we can suggest that it is likely that
when complex organisations use digital technologies to maintain
control against pressures for change, the result is a predisposition to
major failure and collapse. This principle applies equally to SMEs, MNCs,
state-managed economies and colonial empires. In most instances, it
is the whole system which collapses, so those on the margins suffer a
double penalty. First they are marginalised and exploited during the
period of dominance of the system, and then they inherit fragments of
a distorted, dysfunctional system.
I have argued thus far that MOS models in management education are
ideological and one-sided, poor guides to effective and just manage-
ment, with especially serious deficiencies around the concept of
networks, lacking a network imagination. Like others in this book (espe-
cially Ruwhiu, chapter 9). I have suggested that Indigenous wisdom is
an important source for more adequate alternative models. Network
thinking is embedded in Australian Aboriginal ways of thinking (Myers,
1986), and expresses what Verbos and Humphries (2013) call ‘relational
logic’ as characteristic of many Indigenous people. It is shared by Native
Americans, according to Cajete (1999), and by Maori according to Verbos
and Humphries (2013).
In this final section I sketch ways management classrooms could draw
on Indigenous works, and the ‘ancient wisdom’ on the network world
that it can promote, to complement and correct the faltering emergence
of a ‘network imagination’ in Western sociology so lacking in MOS. I do so
via four case- studies, geared to present to management classes to promote
discussion and debate, and push the limits of management classrooms.
Kooralia, the central circle, was a sacred site for Leura, its centrality
signifying its importance. It is surrounded by many concentric circles,
signifying importance, and it connects in eight directions, with twelve
links. ‘Kooralia’ means the Seven Sisters constellation, so this place is a
vertical link with the heavens.
It is connected to other sites in a rectangular grid, a grid that continues
in all directions outside the frame of the picture. The network as a whole
potentially goes across Australia and beyond. So the centre at Kooralia
is a provisional centre, a local configuration of a larger pattern, repre-
senting intense commitment to a local space and global awareness. This
network has larger and smaller nodes but no dominating centre, unlike
MOS centre-periphery organisational forms. Nor is power or control
associated with the centre. Centrality signifies significance, not power.
As an organisational map it uses a different iconography for a different
conception of organisational structures, yet it represents solutions to
problems of modern organisations, in this case tensions between local
and global locations, mobility and belonging. As an exercise, students
might use Leura’s notation to map standard organisational charts as in
Davidson and Griffin or Hill and McShane.
I have not reported the meaning of this picture because I do not know
it. Like other artists in this tradition, Leura only gives enigmatic clues
as to what his painting is about. Kooralia is where he was born, and it is
sacred to the Pleiades. That is all. Contesting the practices of Orientalism,
Leura refuses to allow the dominant to speak on his behalf, to claim to
know more than he does about what he means. This painting represents
and uses slow networks, counter-weights to the fast, unstable networks
of electronic networks.
Art is also business. In Leura’s case the Pupunya Tula corporation he
helped found in 1972 still operates 41 years later, with 49 shareholders
and 120 artists. Its artists work in ‘remote’ Australia, but they can be
accessed with a click at http://papunyatula.com.au/.
are complex and demanding. For instance, Verran and Christie (2008)
worked with elders in a Northern Territory community who responded
cautiously to the enthusiasm of young people for the new technologies.
The problem was the importance of ‘slow’ networks in traditional knowl-
edge. Yet this was something to negotiate, not a rejection of technology.
Combinations of slow and quick networks are something mainstream
culture also needs and finds hard, as we have seen.
My third case-study is a report by anthropologist Eric Michaels,
employed in the 1980s to determine how the unrolling of a televi-
sion service would impact on Indigenous societies. His report title, The
Aboriginal Invention of Television (1986), captured his most important
insight: his anti-Orientalist claim that Aboriginal people were far from
being passive, ignorant users of this new medium, as the government
had assumed. On the contrary, they had a rapid, creative uptake of new
media, inflected and enhanced by traditional habits of perception.
The cover of his report had an image that could sustain a rich discus-
sion about networks in a management classroom (Figure 10.2). This
image has the same iconographic elements as Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri
with the same meanings, but this is specifically a functional map, for
the distribution of sites around Yuendumu at the centre. The sites are
of three different sizes, radiating out from the centre, not a grid as in
Leura’s map. But this image carried the same organisational message,
that subsidiary sites were themselves complex nodes, responsible for
relaying media materials more widely.
Michaels (1986, p. 154) tried to promote a new model, a ‘reciprocal
media system’ which would have been cheaper than what the govern-
ment ultimately accepted, and would have empowered the local
communities. Yet this second quality was the problem, for a govern-
ment used to think in terms of core and periphery, geared to control
not empowerment, so they rejected a cheaper and better solution. This
combination makes this a good case to discuss, alongside Davidson and
Griffin’s example of ‘Andrew’, the Aboriginal who did not turn up to
work enough: with the same prompt question: ‘Do you think (Michaels)
has a case? Why?’
Conclusion
References
Brynjolfsson, E. and McAfee, A. (2012). ‘Race against the machine’. MIT Sloan
Management, Cambridge: Digital Frontier Press.
Bushell, S. (2005). ‘A monumental and catastrophic failure of IT governance’.
CIO Magazine.
Cajete, G. (ed.) (1999). A People’s Ecology. Santa Fe: Clear Light Books.
Castells, M. (2002). The Internet Galaxy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
222 Bob Hodge
Introduction
223
224 Michal Frenkel, Gavin Jack, Robert Westwood and Farzad Rafi Khan
match conditions there but rather the ‘liberal political ideology and
functionalist paradigm dominant among the North American scholars’.
Recontextualising from a statist policy perspective might repair the gap
constituted by the absence of power in the theory, a charge which critics
have persistently levelled. Whether this can effect a repair or deliver a
fatal blow by revealing institutional theory’s provincialism, as well as its
ideological and paradigmatic proclivities, is questionable.
The heart of the matter here is the scholarly inclination to remain
within the theory – and language – of the centre. It could be argued that
since the dominant theory was developed in the centre it is inherently
infused with the language of the centre, and, perforce, the epistemo-
logical assumptions, values, ideology, grammar of motives and practical
exigencies that resonate in the centre. Özen at least partially asserts this.
But in doing so, is the scholar of the periphery trapped in a prison house
of that language? Are we compelled to at least partial articulations from
within that language, struggling to find a voice and a language that
is independent of it? It can be observed that Özen is working within
the theories of the centre; not just institutional theory, but also theo-
ries of politics and economics that surround and support institutional
theory. Crucially, though, we need to remember that his aim was not
to invalidate institutional theory, nor to re-construct it. Özen is specifi-
cally pointing to the failure of its US-based variety to explain things
in Turkey adequately. It is within this specific purview that he urges
scholars to become more locally focused – on the complexities, nuances
and particularities of their own contexts. The consequence might well
be not a reconfiguration of institutional theory, but the development of
a different theory more properly anchored to and informing of the local
context.
The potential ‘prison house’ of language is also an issue in Kapsali and
Prouska’s chapter about the Greek NBS. While their careful historical
analysis highlights the endemic features of the Greek case, the theoret-
ical vocabulary available to them through the NBS literature constrains
the capacity to underscore the differences between this semi-periph-
eral system and central ones. The most striking example pertains to
the foundational notions of ‘the state’ and ‘bureaucracy’. Kapsali and
Prouska trace the transformations in the ways the state – which they
take as the unit of analysis in line with conventional NBS approaches –
intervened in the local economy of this geographically defined territory.
Yet, the NBS approach is framed by underlying assumptions that the
characteristics of states which have formed the dominant focus of atten-
tion (e.g., that systems are stable and coherent over time) are applicable
Carrying across the Line 233
cultures and environments by the march of this logic, with the extrac-
tive industries – and Royal Dutch Shell and their actions in the Niger
delta as a cause célèbre – seen as an apotheosis of that. They seek to place
in productive adjacency the relational logic of an Indigenous ontology,
epistemology and ethos and the dominant logic of the centre. The
ravages of Shell, permitted by the dominant logic of economic ration-
alism, are contrasted with the care of the environment and of other
persons deemed to be inherent to the relational logic of the Māori world-
view. They illustrate this with a vignette, a short account of Tarawera, a
river system of significance to the Māori, which is impacted negatively
by extractive and manufacturing industry and which Māori activity
seeks to preserve.
Humphries and Verbos suggest that there is an inherently alter-
native relation to the environment and to other people within the
Māori system, one that expresses a unifying cosmology. Attempting to
avoid the betrayal aspect of translating the periphery for the centre,
Humphries and Verbos’s writing seeks to maintain a non-linear style
that, from their point of view, better represents the logic they seek to
present. Their strategy is not to openly and expressly criticise the domi-
nant logic, nor to put the two logics into a contrastive frame so that one
can be made to appear better than the other. Rather they seek to have an
adjacency – using the metaphor of a twin-hulled vessel – work a produc-
tive relationship and to reveal inconsistencies and incoherencies in the
dominant logic. The conditions of possibility for translational work are
radically altered from this purview; knowledge systems become irreduc-
ibly different and a logic of equivalence is thus occluded.
In synthesising this section, a central theme of the chapters covered
is the postcolonial problematic of finding a way to formulate and
express ideas beyond the dominant discourses of the centre, as captured
earlier in Spivak’s provocative question. The persisting difficulties of
the travel of ideas from the periphery to the centre are acknowledged.
However, the contributors sustain a rather positive, hopeful posture.
Rather than concentrate solely on a critique of the centre and a lament
for the exclusion and suppression of the periphery, they seek to locate
ways of speaking that give voice to the periphery without that voice
being consumed, appropriated and re-configured through the domi-
nant discourses of the centre. Whether this be via metaphor or via
other modes of language and representation, the intention is to locate
a viable alternative. The aim is not to critique and supplant – not to
replay the destructive dynamics of the past – but to generate a healthy
adjacency or to welcome and acknowledge hybridity in the production
238 Michal Frenkel, Gavin Jack, Robert Westwood and Farzad Rafi Khan
This discussion surfaces again the extremely vexed issue of what modes
of resistance and transformation are most viable and efficacious. As a
collective, the chapters make it apparent that there is no single answer
here and that modes of resistance and transformation are varied across
situations. It is conceivable that multifaceted or multi-modal forms
need to be considered. We have already encountered variant forms of
resistance such as metaphor, silence, hybridisation and creative adja-
cency. Another response to the issue of the form of resistance, critique
and transformation in the face of dominant discourses is offered by the
postcolonial critic Edouard Glissant (1997). In confronting the dilemma
he also proposes a different mode of language and representation to
evade capture by the language of the dominant centre. In his case it
is not so much Indigenous language that offers the bypass, but rather
the language of poetry and the poetics of resistance. He seeks to find a
register and form of language that expresses the experiences and condi-
tions of the colonised and offers prospects of self-understanding, if not
reconfiguration or re-appropriation. The choice not to translate, or to be
translated, is a powerful one.
Conclusion
p. 9) argues, Indigenous people are still ‘at the far economic margins
of the nation state, so there is nothing post about their colonisation’.
We would concur with that and do not intend our use of postcoloni-
alism to be read as depicting historical periodisation. Nor do we want to
be seen as suggesting that the postcolonial or the state and experience
of indigeneity are monolithic and invariable; this is clearly untenable.
However, here is not the place to rehearse these longstanding termino-
logical and conceptual debates about the meaning and scope of post-
colonialism/post-colonialism (for elaborations on such debates, see the
readers edited by Adam & Tiffin, 1991, and Goldberg & Quayson, 2002).
The labels ‘postcolonial’ and ‘indigenous’ are clearly a convenience and
perhaps can be viewed as strategically enabling heuristic devices.
For some of the contributors to this book, such as Diane Ruwhiu, there
is perceived, if cautious, merit in making use of postcolonial theories in
relation to Indigenous thinking for the purposes of critical engagement.
For others, such as Humphries and Verbos, an Indigenously informed
voice is given space in what is hoped to be productive adjacency with
the dominant voices of the centre. It was the intention of the book to
create an opportunity whereby different lines of engagement (or indeed
disengagement) could be entertained. We hoped to broaden and deepen
the critical possibilities of both postcolonial organisational analysis and
of an Indigenous voice and perspective. In our view the emerging value
of postcolonially informed MOS is given further weight and impetus by
its engagement with Indigenous epistemology and ways of thinking and
practice. Indigenous thinking and epistemology has great value both
through offering alternative forms of knowledge, but also as a source of
critique for a more reflexive MOS. This is part of a wider project to not
only provincialise the centre’s orthodoxy, with respect to MOS, but to
open it up to varied and more heterodox modes of thinking (Jack et al.,
2011). Engagement with world-systems theory is also a contribution of
this text; it is not something that has been much apparent in postcolo-
nial organisation studies to date.
Inherent in many of the contributions in the book has been issues
revolving around translation. The problems of possibilities of translation
have exercised many both within postcolonialism and without, and it
has been a consistently present issue for Spivak throughout her expan-
sive ruminations. It resonates, naturally enough, with the classic ques-
tion of ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ A number of our contributors have
worried about the issue of what it means to speak from the periphery.
In speaking out and engaging with the dominant centre, what is lost
in translation and what is at risk? Can an Indigenous and peripheral
Carrying across the Line 245
voice speak outside the discourses of the centre? Will translating for the
centre result in an act of betrayal, or of appropriation? Will it stymie
an emancipatory trajectory and further lock the Indigenous into struc-
tures and patterns of dominance and dependency? There are attempts
to speak out from the periphery in this book and various possibilities
are revealed. One can speak autobiographically, or through adjacency,
or reflexively. Speaking in your own tongue, and keeping within your
own lines, is another possibility however. We believe that exploring the
issues around translation within this book offers up additional possi-
bilities for theoretical engagement within not only international and
cross-cultural management studies, but for all of MOS. We feel we have
only really scratched the surface here and there are many further critical
avenues to explore.
The limitations of this book will doubtless be apparent to the reader.
In terms of the politics of knowledge, we have sought to acknowledge
that this is, in fact, a project from within the centre and the attendant
risks and limitations of that. The book and the project is precisely an
exemplar of the tensions inherent in any centre-periphery dynamic.
Indeed, centre-periphery is a double bind in Spivak’s (2013) sense and
like her, we are doubtful that it is a dissolvable double bind. Rather,
as Spivak suggests, what we witness in some of our contributions is a
playing of/with the double bind and, hopefully, a shifting of value codes
across the line. However, this does not alter the fact of the specific loca-
tion of this text within the topography of a politics of knowledge. It is
written and published in English by a publishing house well within the
ambit of the centre’s knowledge machine. A weakness of the book is that
whilst language and translation is central to its ruminations, the issue of
multilingualism has not been fully addressed.
Another weakness is not only the risk of essentialising and homog-
enising Indigeneity and the periphery, but the fact that there is a
slanted representation of Indigenous and peripheral communities.
The book contains a preponderance of contributions from Aotearoa/
New Zealand. A wider range of contributions across the periphery and
Indigenous communities would have been welcome, and that is an area
for future development and elaboration. We also feel that there is more
scope for work that defamiliarises and provincialises the theory of the
centre. There are contributions here, including Özen’s interrogation of
new institutional theory and Westwood’s playful reflecting back of the
centre’s own empirics to question its claim to centre and standard. This
is work that needs to continue and doubtless will as the global socio-
economic order continues to shift and alternative conceptualisations,
246 Michal Frenkel, Gavin Jack, Robert Westwood and Farzad Rafi Khan
theories and practices continue to emerge that call into question the
universalising inclinations of the work from the current centre.
We hope that this book has made a contribution in these areas, but
look forward to a continuing broadening and deepening of MOS as it
becomes more open and heterodox with respect to differences and alter-
natives from around the world. There is a need for more peripheral and
Indigenous voices to be heard and we need to create ways in which
such articulations can occur with less risk and more open receptivity.
We anticipate that theory will travel in new directions as global shifts
continue, but we need to remain vigilant against a freshly re-configured
geo-politics of knowledge that re-instantiates new rigidities, asymmetries
and dependencies. We hope that within MOS into the future we can let
a thousand flowers bloom in equanimity.
Note
1. In this chapter, we use the terms ‘core’ and ‘centre’ interchangeably.
References
Adam, I. and Tiffin, H. (eds) (1991). Past the Last Post: Theorizing Postcolonialism
and Postmodernism. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Alatas, S.F. (2003). ‘Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the
social sciences’. Current Sociology, 51(6), 599–613.
Alatas, S.F. (2000). ‘Intellectual imperialism: definition, traits, and problems’.
Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 28(1), 23–45.
Alcadipani, R., Khan, F.R., Gantman, E. and Nkomo, S. (2012). ‘Southern voices in
management and organization knowledge’. Organization, 19(2), 131–143.
Alcadipani, R. and Reis, Rosa, A. (2011). ‘From grobal management to glocal
management: Latin American perspectives as a counter-dominant management
epistemology’. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences/Revue Canadienne Des
Sciences de l’Administration, 28(4), 453–466.
Basalla, G. (1967). ‘The spread of Western science’. Science, 156 (May), 611–622.
Bassnett, S. and Trivedi, H. (1999). Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice.
London and New York: Routledge.
Benjamin, W. (1970). The Task of the Translator, in Illuminations (trans. H. Zohn).
London: Fontana/Collins, 69–82.
Bhabha, H. (1984). ‘Of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse’.
October, 28, 125–133.
Boisot, M. and Child, J. (1996). ‘From fiefs to clans and network capitalism:
explaining China’s emerging economic order’. Administrative Science Quarterly,
41(4), 600–628.
Callon, M. (1986). ‘Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of
the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay’, in J. Law (ed.), Power, Action
and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
196–233.
Carrying across the Line 247
Meyer, J.W., Boli, J., Thomas, G.M. and Ramirez, F.O. (1997). ‘World society and
the nation state’. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144–181.
Niranjana, T. (1992). Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial
Context. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African
Literature. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers KL Ltd.
Oommen, T.K. (1991). ‘Internationalization of sociology: a view from developing
countries’. Current Sociology, 39(1), 67–84.
Ouchi, W.G. (1980). ‘Markets, bureaucracies and clans’. Administrative Science
Quarterly, March, 129–141.
Prakash, G. (1999). Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (2006). On Translation. London: Routledge.
Said, E. (1983). ‘Travellling theory’, in E. Said (ed.), The World, The Text, and The
Critic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 157–181.
Shenhav, Y. (2013). ‘Beyond “instrumental rationality”: Lord Cromer and the
imperial roots of Eichmann’s bureaucracy’. Journal of Genocide Research, 15(4):
339–359.
Shenhav, Y. (2012). ‘The politics and theology of translation: how do we translate
Nakba from Arabic to Hebrew’. Israeli Sociology, 14, 157–184.
Slaughter, S. and Leslie, L.L. (1997). Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the
Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Spivak, G.C. (2013). An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press.
Spivak, G.C. (2001). ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2197–2208.
Srinivas, N. (2008). ‘Mimicry and revival: the transfer and transformation
of management knowledge to India, 1959–1990’. International Studies of
Management and Organization, 38 (4), 38–57.
Thomas, R., Tienari, J., Davies, A. and Merilainen, S. (2009). ‘Let’s talk about
“us”: a reflexive account of a cross-cultural research collaboration’. Journal of
Management Inquiry, 18(4), 313–324.
Tsui, A.S. (2004). ‘Contributing to global management knowledge: a case for high
quality indigenous research’. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 21, 491–513.
Üsdiken, B. and Wasti, S.A. (2009). ‘Preaching, teaching and researching at the
periphery: academic management literature in Turkey, 1970–1999’. Organization
Studies, 30(10), 1063–1082.
Westwood, R.I. and Jack, G. (2008). ‘The US commercial-military-political complex
and the emergence of international business and management studies’. Critical
Perspectives on International Business, 4(4), 367–388.
Index
249
250 Index