Creating the Periphery in Management and Organizational Knowledge

Abstract

Management and Organizational Knowledge (MOK) is today a global phenomenon and business schools are central locations where such knowledge is produced and taught. In particular, the U.S. has been a broadcast center from where MOK has traveled to other regions of the world prompting academics to refer to this process as Americanization. The literature on the travel of management ideas, however, has mainly analyzed highly industrialized countries, leaving the 'periphery' underexplored. Focusing on the transference of U.S. MOK to Brazil in the 1950s, this paper draws on an ANT reading of postcolonialism. I will explore how a particular practice helped U.S. MOK to travel and, at the same time, enacted asymmetries and hierarchies between Brazil and the U.S. By doing that, I will show how centers and peripheries are created and sustained as outcomes of situated practices. I will also argue that organizing is a political process that generates asymmetries, hierarchies and discrepancies, but also leaves open the possibility of making things different.