Abstract
This paper contributes to the drive to decolonize management and organization knowledge by unpacking the role played by indigenous managerial elites in the global managerial colonization of the Global South. We focus on the narratives managerial elites construct to legitimate managerialism to a dissenting population. We conducted an ethnographic study of efforts by members of the city council of Yaoundé, in Cameroon to implement and legitimate a global managerial intervention. Our findings show that to successfully legitimate the imposition of managerialism to a dissenting populace, managerial elites construct hybrid narratives. These hybrid narratives are not ignorant of the local context and are particularly potent because of the manner in which they factor in some local concerns, making the managerialist intervention more palatable to locals and yet continuing to impose a foreign way of life.
Highlights
Chinua Achebe’s highly influential novel Things Fall Apart, highlighted the nature of early colonial encounters between Africans and Europeans through the eyes of its local protagonist Okonkwo
Based on the understanding that local managerial elites play an important role in the managerial colonization of the Global South and the adaptability of the colonial matrix of power (e.g. Quijano, 2007; Yousfi, 2014), we sought to unpack the narratives they construct to legitimate global managerialism to a resisting population
Our study finds that local managerial elites in Cameroon construct hybrid narratives that give global managerialism a local face, making it appear less alien to resisting populations, which awards it a particular potency
Summary
Chinua Achebe’s highly influential novel Things Fall Apart, highlighted the nature of early colonial encounters between Africans and Europeans through the eyes of its local protagonist Okonkwo It highlighted how the success of Europeans’ colonial project often rested upon the successful co-option and participation of local elites. Did colonialists actively co-opt existing elites, they embarked on creating a new form of indigenous elite, educated and trained in the mother countries (Fanon, 2007). These newly minted administrative elites became key cogs of the colonial machinery (Garrett, 2005). From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam. . .’ (Fanon, 2007: 6)
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