The colony writes back: Organization as an early champion of non-Western organizational theory

In: Organization: the interdisciplinary journal of organization, theory and society, Band 20, Heft 1, S. 91-101

Abstract

It is perhaps a truism that modern organizational theory has tended to objectify the colonized nations, and the subjects of imperialism. Even the critical traditions in OT tend to be mired in Eurocentric assumptions, and many of the issues that affected the 'victims of globalization' simply did not figure in OT debates till the 1980s. In the 1990s, when organizational theorists focusing on workers and subjects from the poorer South began expressly to 'write back', i.e. theorize eloquently on how they could restore their own agency in organizational life, they found a contingent ally in Organization. Not that the Journal did not have its blind spots in this regard, but since its inception in 1994, it has published a number of articles that sought to give voice to those who decentred OT's Eurocentric assumptions. In this brief essay, we attempt to chart that partnership, and speak about a possible role for Organization in furthering this quest.