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In what follows, we present a conversation with Professor Noam Chomsky on the topic of whether the business school might be a site for progressive political change. The conversation covers a number of key issues related to pedagogy, corporate social responsibility and working conditions in the contemporary business school. We hope the conversion will contribute to the ongoing discussion about the role of the business school in neoliberal societies.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of the introduction of a commerical discourse within a scientific context (i.e. a research and development (R&D) setting). It explores the reconstitution of professional identities, becoming customer focused and changing time orientations.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon the concept of recontextualization as a discursive framework for analysis, extensive fieldwork was undertaken in a multinational oil company involving informal conversations, formal interviews with R&D staff (n = 41), secondary data analysis and non‐participant observation.FindingsThe major finding is that the commercialization of R&D operations was resented, but not resisted, by established R&D scientists. The reasons for the absence of resistance are discussed.Originality/valueThis work contributes to the understanding of the recontextualization of discourse in professional settings. It also offers insights into the colonizing and commodifying effects of the commercialization discourse.

PurposeThe institutionalisation of neo‐liberalist discourse has significantly changed the way in which the relationship between government and community organisations is described and regulated in Australia. These changes are most clearly articulated in government policy discourse as a move away from "funding" community service organisations to "purchasing" the delivery of community services. This research aims to explore institutionalisation in the community sector: how institutionalisation interplays with increased central control, the impact on practice and the continued relevance of community organisations.Design/methodology/approachThis research applies critical discourse analysis, within the framework of neo‐institutional theory, to examine data from "conversations" with workers in community organisations.FindingsImposed institutionalisation, seen to threaten flexibility and autonomy, is spurned. However, some evidence of increased internal institutionalisation revealed some potential to strengthen the sector from within.Originality/valueDue to significant devolution of government services, the extent of welfare provision provided by community organisations is now so great that a crisis in the community sector would result in severe disruption in the delivery of welfare services in Australia. An examination of how the community sector can be resilient and relevant in this new policy environment has important practical implications at the local and international level.

PurposeThis paper seeks to confront the orthodoxy of global business education with some insights from postcolonial theory in order to develop a new critical pedagogy adequate for a global sociology of management and accounting.Design/methodology/approachReviewing the state of play in postcolonial theory and noting the new politicisation in that field, the paper asks what relevance this politicisation might have for an alternative to orthodox global business education.FindingsThe paper finds that the texts available to postcolonial theory present a wealth beyond the regulation of colonial and neo‐colonial regimes and in contrast critical management studies do not have texts that express such wealth or reveal global business as the regulator of such a wealth. Instead critique and indeed the anti‐globalization movements risk, appearing as regulators of wealth and business, threaten to emerge as the true carnival of wealth and path to freedom.Research limitations/implicationsTo dissociate critique from regulation and business from wealth, business and management education must seek out these texts in the fantasies among students and in the differences that obtain, as Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued, at the heart of capital.Originality/valueThis article embraces the fantasies of the fetish of the commodity as part of an immanent politics, claiming both an excess of wealth and an access to wealth, based on a new fetish adequate for the globalized limits that students and teachers encounter.

Purpose: This paper seeks to confront the orthodoxy of global business education with some insights from postcolonial theory in order to develop a new critical pedagogy adequate for a global sociology of management and accounting. Design/methodology/approach: Reviewing the state of play in postcolonial theory and noting the new politicisation in that field, the paper asks what relevance this politicisation might have for an alternative to orthodox global business education. Findings: The paper finds that the texts available to postcolonial theory present a wealth beyond the regulation of colonial and neo‐colonial regimes and in contrast critical management studies do not have texts that express such wealth or reveal global business as the regulator of such a wealth. Instead critique and indeed the anti‐globalization movements risk, appearing as regulators of wealth and business, threaten to emerge as the true carnival of wealth and path to freedom. Research limitations/implications: To dissociate critique from regulation and business from wealth, business and management education must seek out these texts in the fantasies among students and in the differences that obtain, as Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued, at the heart of capital. Originality/value: This article embraces the fantasies of the fetish of the commodity as part of an immanent politics, claiming both an excess of wealth and an access to wealth, based on a new fetish adequate for the globalized limits that students and teachers encounter.

This e-book brings together a variety of papers concerning organizations and organizing that are primarily discursive in emphasis, but which nevertheless attempt to address the intersection and interpenetration of discourse with aspects of policy and practice. In doing so, they make a collective contribution to understanding the nature and complexity of the relationship between these intertwined and mutually implicated domains of social activity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine critically both utopian and dystopian discourses of offshoring so that a more considered, nonetheless theoretically informed, view of the global offshore phenomenon can be formed.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon some preliminary research on offshoring ventures from the UK to India, and the extant literature, the practice of business process outsourcing (BPO) via offshoring is explored and critiqued.FindingsIt is argued that neither dream nor nightmare is the adequate discursive metaphor to capture what we have discerned through our research on offshore outsourcing.Originality/valueThe primary contribution of this paper is that demonstrates that utopian and dystopian discourses fail to adequately explain the practice of offshore BPO and that in cultural, economical, ethical, and political terms, it is much more complex.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to briefly explore some recent curious interlocking of the ideology of markets and the practice of policy.Design/methodology/approachThis particular discursive combine has most visibly been apparent in the concatenated birth and death of the US Defense Department's so‐called "Policy Analysis Market" (PAM). Yet PAM is but the most notorious example of a more sustained and pervasive attempt to use the technologies and disciplines of markets to render policy both better informed and more amenable to control through robust and seemingly incontestable systems of accountability. Given its prominence, our way in is through a brief description of PAM's origins and demise.FindingsIt is found that PAM and its similar brethren of markets for use in policy formation and judgement are less concerned with the capture of reality and more with the disciplining power of a curious "objectivity".Originality/valueProjects such as PAM are thus not easily challengeable on grounds of their veracity. Rather research that seeks to interrogate the use of market technologies in policy must look to their context and effects.