Decolonising MOS as Praxis and an Other Critical Performativity

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of an action research and team-based authoethnographic research project aimed at decolonizing current debates on critical performativity. The literatures on critical performativity and decolonizing management and organizational knowledge have developed in parallel, offering us the opportunity to investigate the nexus of the two. We first identify the Eurocentric conditions of possibility of critical performativity and CMS, and as disruption of these epistemic limits, propose the notion of decolonial praxis as an ‘other’ (pun intended) performativity. We unpack this idea empirically by drawing upon qualitative data and participant and organizer reflections on an academic workshop (co-organized by the authors) held in South Africa on the topic of decolonizing management and organizational knowledge. Our thematic findings draw attention to the embodied, affective nature of such decolonial praxis, as well as the importance of ‘knowing’ and ‘doing things’ with a double consciousness. Organized under two key themes (connected borderlands; phronetic border thinking/doing), these findings enable us to specify some conceptual features of decolonizing (management) practice that exist beyond colonial difference, and to draw out practical implications for management academics and Business Schools seeking to pursue a decolonial agenda.