With Special Guest Samantha Ortiz

Eduardo Ibarra-Colado

In Episode 56, we opened a window to the world of African-American studies in management studies when we discussed the work of Charles Clinton Spaulding. We now continue the effort to expand the canon of organization theory and management science, this time focusing on Latin America. Worldwide, much of the theorizing and publishing of research has been greatly influenced by a dominant mode of thought originating in western Europe, the U.S., and Canada. Mainstream journals and institutions located in these centers have produced great scholarship. But its perspective is frequently parochial. Or more specifically, it is assumed to be global despite being based on a particular reality of organizing and managing. Also, the political economy of knowledge is such that scholars in the periphery have been wrapped into colonial dynamics which prevented the emergence of a distinctive body of knowledge reflective of the richness of their contexts.

Such is the critique leveled by Eduardo Ibarra-Colado, whose famous 2006 work “Organization studies and epistemic coloniality in Latin America: thinking otherness from the margins” represents a manifesto and call to action by all scholars to consider how the current paradigm severely disadvantages scholarship in Latin America — a region that includes Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. This region is home to both global enterprises and deeply historic indigenous cultures, each with important stories to tell about organizations and organizing. Ibarra-Colado charges that the current approach to scholarship forces Latin American scholars to forgo their own identity and assume that of what he called the “Anglo-Euro-Centre” that disproportionately controls the generation of knowledge in unhelpful ways.

Joining Pedro, Leonardo, and Tom to discuss this text is our special guest Samantha Ortiz, who joined us for this episode from Mexico City. She is a PhD candidate at EM Lyon Business School and has conducted multiple research projects in Latin America. Samantha is familiar with the situation described by Ibarra-Colado and she shares her take on the matter in this episode.

Part 1. Analyzing epistemic coloniality in Organization Studies (released 10 September 2020)

Part 2. Pursuing a post-colonial research agenda with Ibarra-Colado (released 17 September 2020)

Read With Us:

Ibarra-Colado, E. (2006). Organization studies and epistemic coloniality in Latin America: thinking otherness from the margins. Organization, 13(4), 463-488.

To Know More:

Alcadipani, R., Khan, F. R., Gantman, E., & Nkomo, S. (2012). Southern voices in management and organization knowledge. Organization 19(2), 131–143.

Boyacigiller, N.A. & Adler, N.J. (1991). The parochial dinosaur: Organizational science in a global context. The Academy of Management Review 16(2), 262.

McDonnell, E. M.  (2017). Patchwork leviathan: How pockets of bureaucratic governance flourish within institutionally diverse developing states. American Sociological Review 82(3), 476–510.

Ortiz, C. S. (2020). Caring as an organizing principle: Reflections on ethnography of and as care. Journal of Management Studies. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12614 

Stark, D. (1989). Bending the bars of the iron cage: bureaucratization and informalization in capitalism and socialism. Sociological Forum 4(4), 637–664.