Call for Chapters
For Book
Business Storytelling and Postcolonialism
Book editors
Ozan Nadir Alakavuklar - Utrecht University, School of Governance
o.n.alakavuklar@uu.nl
Amon Barros - Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV EAESP)
amon.barros@fgv.br
Nimruji Jammulamadaka - Indian Institute of Management Calcutta
nimruji@iimcal.ac.in
Ana Maria Peredo - University of Victoria, Environmental Studies
aperedo@uvic.ca
as a volume of “A World Scientific Encyclopedia of Business Storytelling"
Series Editor David Boje
Since the emergence of business schools and spread of the US model to the world (Khurana, 2007; Westwood and Jack, 2008), a ‘parochial’ way of doing management and organization ‘science’ dominated academic conversations – epistemologically positivist, ontologically realist, methodologically quantitative (Boyacigiller and Adler, 1991; Jack and Westwood, 2006; Murphy and Zhu, 2012). This orthodoxy has been challenged from various positions. Specifically, post and decolonial scholarship problematized the euro-centric Western assumptions about what, whom, and how to think of businesses, managers and organisations in the post/neo-colonial world (Jack, Westwood, Srinivas and Sardar, 2011; Özkazanç-Pan, 2008; Prasad, 2003).
Through different theoretical and methodological traditions (Peredo & McLean, 2013; Young, 2001), post and decolonialism is concerned with identity, subjectivity and agency by problematizing “our relations to specific spaces and locates our-selves in historical, social and cultural conditions” (Wharerata Writing Group, 2018, p. 72). This would mean questioning of ideological constructions, power relations, representations (by the West) and expressing resistance to support the agency of the colonized. Hence, post, de and anticolonial perspectives not only decolonize the already established orthodox assumptions, but also recognizes, acknowledges and promotes alternative epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies for the emancipation of the colonized people and knowledge (Alcadipani, Khan, Gantman and Nkomo, 2012, Ibarra-Colado, 2006). This is where we see the colony writes back, decolonizes the knowledge and construct a new knowledge base for the agency of the colonized from different geographies, epistemes and languages (Dar, 2018; Faria, 2013; Jackson, 2013; Manning, 2018; Mir and Mir, 2013; Nkomo, 2011; Wanderley and Barros, 2019; Westwood, Jack, Khan and Frenkel, 2014).
In his introduction to “Culture and Imperialism”, Edward Said (1994) argues “... that stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become the method colonized people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history” (p. xii) (italics are ours). Hence, stories and storytelling play an important role to keep the memories of the colonised for future generations, organise against the ‘empire’, resist injustices of the past and present, and decolonise the marginalising discourses and practices (Smith, 1999). They create an archive of discourses and practices that allows for the (re)production of new actions (Barros, 2016).
Boje (1991) argues that stories are “the preferred sensemaking currency of human relationships” (p. 106). They are capable of capturing the richness of the organizational life (Rhodes and Brown, 2005), but can also be a methodological tool to study “processes and material conditions” occurring in and around organisations (Rosile, Boje, Carlon, Downs and Saylors, 2013, p. 558). Drawing from various scholars, Beigi, Callahan and Michaelson (2019), define storytelling “as an ongoing (Czarniawska and Jorges, 1997) process of narrative sensemaking (Boje, 1991; Boyce, 1996; Colón-Aguirre, 2015) meaning construction (Czarniawska and Jorges, 1997) and knowledge construction (Gabriel, 2000) among and between the members of an organization to understand the past, share the present, and shape the future (Boje, 2009)” (Beigi et al., 2019, p. 2).
Through storytelling we can retrospectively engage with the past sense-making, distort current living stories of people and link with prospective antenarratives[1] that may help make sense of multiple paths, which would eventually turn into the traditionally accepted ‘beginning, middle, end’ form of narratives (Boje, 2014, p. xxi). Through analyzing antenarratives, we can also understand why a particular story has become dominant/reproduced and why some others did not emerge from alternative discourses.
While the beginning and ending of the stories are implicit, they are processual, open for interpretation and intervention at various levels (Vaara, Sonenshein and Boje, 2016, p. 498). As Boje (1995) demonstrated in the case of Disney, stories are also power-laden ideological structures where they privilege certain meanings and related practices over others through marginalization, totalisms, universalisms and essentialisms.
For critical and postcolonial scholars of management and organization, neither such critique of marginalization, universalism and essentialism is new, nor the rise of critique and multiplicity in the last decades as a reaction to the hegemony of conventional studies is surprising. With this volume, we would like to contribute to and advance this critical strand of post/de/anti-colonial approaches through storytelling. Following Jorgensen, Strand and Boje (2013), we also would like to move beyond the representational focus of storytelling and seek for contributions analysing the material conditions creating meanings and practices for the post/de/anti-colonial struggles.
Considering the extensive canon of postcolonial and decolonial theory, including but not limited to, Said, Bhabba, Spivak, Fanon, Escobar, Dussel, Freire, Mbembe and Chakrabarty, we are open to a wide spectrum of contributions that would challenge, subvert and resist practices of hegemonic organizational/business storytelling practices. In particular, we would like to hear stories from/of alternative epistemologies, ontologies, methodologies and writing styles (Gilmore, Harding, Helin and Pullen, 2019) which would open up space for marginalized and under-privileged voices of the Other and the activist interventions problematizing the post/neo-colonial encounters across the world through stories. This volume will provide insights into stories related, but not limited, to:
- Epistemology, ontology and methodology of postcolonial storytelling
- Indigenous storytelling and its contribution to post/de/anti-colonialism
- Storytelling of ethico-politics of post/de/anti-colonial encounters, struggles and resistance
- Alternate conceptions of story and storytelling such as, questioning enforced linearity, story performance and ‘beginning, middle, end’ forms
- How storytelling methodology enables pursuit of research that has colonial encounter as a central agenda
- Storytelling of organisations, discourses, or even disciplines.
- Storytelling approach that would analyse the relationship between post-, de- and anti-colonial perspectives
- Difficulties in implementing the storytelling approach in colonial and post-colonial contexts.
Overall, with this volume our aim is to encourage conversations and document how storytelling can be used for critique with reference to post/de/anti-colonial theory and practice. We aim for exemplars, but also expect contributions that would theorise and conceptualise ‘how to do’ postcolonial storytelling with a critical ethico-political agenda.
Important dates and submission information:
-Proposals for chapters submission deadline is 15 November 2019. Proposals should be no more than three double spaced pages.
- Full papers deadline submission is 15 May 2020. Submissions should be no more than 25 pages, double spaced (appx. 6500 words, including references), times new roman 12 font, with one-inch margins. Please use APA referencing style.
Proposals and questions regarding chapters should be directed to volume editors Ozan Alakavuklar (o.n.alakavuklar@uu.nl), Amon Barros (amon.barros@fgv.br), Nimruji Jammulamadaka (nimruji@iimcal.ac.in) and Ana Maria Peredo (aperedo@uvic.ca).
Publication of the volume is scheduled for Spring 2021.
References
Alcadipani, R., Khan, F. R., Gantman, E., & Nkomo, S. (2012). Southern voices in management and organization knowledge. Organization, 19(2), 131-143.
Barros, A. (2016). Archives and the “Archive”: dialogue and an agenda of research in organization studies. Organizações & Sociedade, 23(79), 609–623.
Beigi, M., Callahan, J., & Michaelson, C. (2019). A critical plot twist: Changing characters and foreshadowing the future of organizational storytelling. International Journal of Management Reviews, published online before print doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12203
Boje, D. M. (1991). The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(1), 106-126.
Boje, D. M. (1995). Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as “Tamara-Land”. Academy of Management journal, 38(4), 997-1035.
Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative methods for organizational & communication research. Sage.
Boje, D. M. (2014). Storytelling organizational practices: Managing in the quantum age. Routledge.
Dar, S. (2018). De-colonizing the boundary-object. Organization Studies, 39(4), 565-584.
Faria, A. (2013). Border thinking in action: should critical management studies get anything done? V. Malin, J. Murphy and M. Siltaoja (eds.), Getting Things Done (Dialogues in Critical Management Studies), Volume 2 (pp. 277-300). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.
Gilmore, S., Harding, N., Helin, J., & Pullen, A. (2019). Writing differently. Management Learning, 50(1), 3-10.
Ibarra-Colado, E. (2006). Organization studies and epistemic coloniality in Latin America: thinking otherness from the margins. Organization, 13(4), 463-488.
Jack, G., & Westwood, R. (2006). Postcolonialism and the politics of qualitative research in international business. Management International Review, 46(4), 481-501.
Jack, G., Westwood, R., Srinivas, N., & Sardar, Z. (2011). Deepening, broadening and re-asserting a postcolonial interrogative space in organization studies. Organization, 18(3), 275-302.
Jackson, T. (2013). Reconstructing the indigenous in African management research. Management International Review, 53(1), 13-38.
Jorgensen, K., Strand, A., & Boje, D. (2013). Towards a postcolonial-storytelling theory of management and organisation. Philosophy of Management, 12(1), 43-66.
Khurana, R. (2007). From Higher Aims To Hired Hands. The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mir, R., & Mir, A. (2013). The colony writes back: Organization as an early champion of non-Western organizational theory. Organization, 20(1), 91-101.
Murphy, J., & Zhu, J. (2012). Neo-colonialism in the academy? Anglo-American domination in management journals. Organization, 19(6), 915-927.
Nkomo, S. M. (2011). A postcolonial and anti-colonial reading of ‘African’leadership and management in organization studies: Tensions, contradictions and possibilities. Organization, 18(3), 365-386.
Özkazanç-Pan, B. (2008). International management research meets “the rest of the world”. Academy of Management Review, 33(4), 964-974.
Peredo, A. M., & McLean, M. (2013). Indigenous development and the cultural captivity of entrepreneurship. Business & Society, 52(4), 592-620.
Prasad, A. (2003). Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis: A critical engagement. Springer.
Rhodes, C., & Brown, A. D. (2005). Narrative, organizations and research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 7(3), 167-188.
Rosile, G. A., Boje, D. M., Carlon, D. M., Downs, A., & Saylors, R. (2013). Storytelling diamond: An antenarrative integration of the six facets of storytelling in organization research design. Organizational Research Methods, 16(4), 557-580.
Said, E. W. (1994). Culture and imperialism. New York, NY: First Vintage Books.
Smith, L.T. (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.
Vaara, E., Sonenshein, S., & Boje, D. (2016). Narratives as sources of stability and change in organizations: approaches and directions for future research. Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 495-560.
Wanderley, S., & Barros, A. (2019). Decoloniality, geopolitics of knowledge and historic turn: towards a Latin American agenda. Management & Organizational History, 14(1), 79-97.
Westwood, R., & Jack, G. (2008). The US commercial-military-political complex and the emergence of international business and management studies. critical perspectives on international business, 4(4), 367-388.
Westwood, R., Jack, G., Khan, F., & Frenkel, M. (Eds.). (2014). Core-periphery relations and organization studies. Springer.
Wharerata Writing Group (2018). ‘Having an Impact’: Qualitative research traditions in the Critical Study of Management and their modes of influence. C. Cassell, A. Cunliffe, G. Grandy (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Business and Management (pp. 69-85). London: Sage.
Young, R. (2001). Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
[1] Boje (2001) argues antenarrative is the new way of storytelling. “The word “ante” has two meanings: before and bet. Antenarrative, therefore, defines two things: (1) the process of storytelling “before” the narrative takes the form of beginning, middle and end, and (2) “bets on the future.” (Boje, 2014, p. xxi).