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This paper adds to the literature on outward Foreign Direct Investments by Chinese Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in advanced economies. Its objective is threefold: to characterize the subsidiary roles that advanced economy targets of Chinese Multinational Corporations (CMNC) takeovers typically adopt, to assess the position that these subsidiary roles grant them within the CMNCs as a whole and to flesh out how subsidiary actors perceive and make sense of the particular constellation as a subsidiary of a CMNC. Furthermore, this paper aims to contribute to theory development on headquarters‐subsidiary relations by suggesting an additional theoretical lens.

The paper draws on in-depth qualitative case studies from the automotive, mechanical engineering and solar industries and focuses on German firms that have been acquired by Chinese MNCs. Theoretically, the present paper draws on extant post-merger integration (PMI) and subsidiary role research, particularly from a micro-political and sensemaking perspective, refined by adding a neo-imperial dominance – lens.

The paper reveals the subsidiary roles that German subsidiaries of Chinese MNCs typically adopt and discovers the PMI pattern of “reverse integration” delineating quite a particular form of reverse knowledge transfer. Regarding human integration, it emphasizes the importance of neo-imperial attitudes surfacing in the German subsidiaries.

The value of the paper is in contributing to fill the pending research gap on the subsidiary roles that advanced economy subsidiaries of Chinese MNCs adopt, on the resulting positions of these subsidiaries within the overall Chinese groups and the sense that subsidiary actors make of being acquired by a Chinese MNC. The paper also reveals the importance of neo-imperial dominance patterns and attitudes in PMI in the constellation scrutinized.

This paper aims to discuss the context- and power-sensitive approach to the study of multinationals that has emerged in the last decade, argues for the need to supplement it by a clearer focus on the wider geopolitical context in which multinationals operate and outlines the implications for the development of IB research in this area.

The paper provides a summary overview of context- and power-sensitive studies of multinationals before proposing a research agenda for the next decade. In particular, it argues for the need to combine the institutionalist angle taken by context/power analyses with post-colonial theory as a means of bringing geopolitics into the study of multinationals, a task that CPoIB is well positioned to accomplish.

The paper identifies a lack of “criticality” in context/power research and, in particular, a lack of attention to the neo-imperial character of multinationals with specific regards to their management and organisation.

The implications of this paper are that the nature of contemporary multinationals is further illuminated, especially their role in (re-)producing (neo-)imperial relations in a supposedly post-colonial world. Further, the paper suggests an agenda for future research on the relationship between imperialism and multinationals.

The value of the paper is in drawing together more closely the study of multinationals as organizational structures and political systems with the history of imperialism and contemporary post-colonial theorising.

Latin America has been neglected in management and international business (IB) knowledge for a long time. Such a picture reflects the enduring power of the dark side of the geopolitics of knowledge that “international” sub-fields in management knowledge have to tackle as a key condition of possibility for the co-creation of a truly “international” field of “international business”. In this position paper, the authors aim to analyze the extent to which CPoIB has been a key instrument to tackle Anglo-Saxon hegemony in IB knowledge over the last ten years.

The authors follow a decolonizing perspective to analyse the impact of CPoIB for Latin America international business knowledge production.

The paper argues that CPoIB has given voice to authors who are from Latin America and, most important, work in the region. By doing that, CPoIB has triggered the mobilization of mechanisms of recognition and redistribution that are necessary to offset the neo-imperial side of “international business” and management knowledge. The journal has also helped to foster the co-creation of “pluriversal international business”.

The paper uses a decolonial perspective from Latin America in order to open new questions and challenges to the field of IB.

This article reflects on the development and impact of critical perspectives on international business (CPoIB) during its first decade of existence. The influence that the journal has had through its efforts to challenge orthodox understandings of international business (IB) is considered. The evolution of CPoIB is set against the changing global environment. The contributions to this 10th anniversary issue are outlined.

The journal's contents are reviewed and their impact assessed through an analysis of download and citation data. The position of the journal in various journal quality rankings is also examined. The contents of mainstream IB journals are compared to those of CPoIB.

During its short life, CPoIB has had an important impact on the field of IB both directly through the consideration of issues from a critical perspective in the pages of the journal and through its influence on the field of IB and critical management studies.

The conclusions of the research are based on nine years of citation and download data as well as journal quality lists.

The findings of this paper provide valuable information for authors seeking a quality and impactful outlet for their research in the field of critical perspectives on IB and related disciplines. Academic and political activists in the field of IB will find theoretical backgrounds supporting their political campaigns.

This is the only paper to undertake an assessment of the first decade of CPoIB's development, content, and impact.

To review what “quality” meant to universities historically and might mean in the future.

Written as a keynote talk for The Australian Universities Quality Forum 2004, this paper problematizes “universities” and “quality” by reviewing the way changing communication modalities have changed the meaning of the two terms over time.

After reviewing some of the literature forecasting alternative futures of universities, the paper settles on a preferred future in which all education, higher and lower, is driven by the logic, best practices, and evolving technologies of electronic games.

The paper reveals that researchers who compare word‐based educational systems with electronic, interactive sound‐and‐image‐based systems should use measures appropriate for the latter, rather than derived from the former.

The paper shows that educators should take interactive electronic game methods more seriously in thinking about and planning for the futures of universities and their curricula.

This paper provides a contribution to the growing emphasis on making learning interactive, engaging, effective, and fun.

Officially, of course, the world is now post-imperial. The Q’ing and Ottoman empires fell on the eve of World War I, and the last Leviathans of Europe's imperial past, the Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist empires, lumbered into the grave soon after. Tocsins of liberation were sounded on all sides, in the name of democracy (Wilson) and socialism (Lenin). Later attempts to remake and proclaim empires – above all, Hitler's annunciation of a “Third Reich” – now seem surreal, aberrant, and dystopian. The Soviet Union, the heir to the Tsarist empire, found it prudent to call itself a “federation of socialist republics.” Mao's China followed suit. Now, only a truly perverse, contrarian regime would fail to deploy the rhetoric of democracy.

This chapter explores the writings of Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi, especially on the post-colonial state, ethnicity, peasantry and kinship relations. In contradistinction to most (partial) uptakes of Alavi, I evaluate his work as a whole in order to shed light on its continuities and discontinuities. I demonstrate both the strengths and pitfalls of Alavi's theorisation of the post-colonial state, mode of production and ethnicity by placing him in context of wider Marxist debates at the time. I then suggest that Alavi's other work (e.g. on the peasantry and kinship relations) may serve to complement the weaknesses of the former. Thus, by reading Alavi contra Alavi, I advocate for an ‘integral’ perspective on the relations between civil and political society, arguing for a conjunctural awareness of mediations between the same, and their imbrications with differentiated relations of class, ethnicity and kinship.

The purpose of this study is to apply the dominance effect theory and postcolonial notions of “otherness” to critically study the enactment of mimicry at IndianBread, an Indian fast-food chain that has adopted work practices typically found in US fast-food multinational enterprises (MNEs).

The authors used an interpretive sensemaking case study approach and collected qualitative data drawing on observations, notes from the company policy manual and in-depth interviews with eight staff at an IndianBread outlet. Data were also collected during informal interactions with staff at three other IndianBread outlets. The analysis focused on the enactment of mimicry and studied the postcolonial dynamics between managers and migrant workers to explain their resistance to the adoption of US work practices.

Work practices of US fast-food MNEs such as the standardization of workers’ appearance and basic “Englishization” such as greeting customers in English had been adopted at the IndianBread outlet. However, migrant workers resisted enforcement by contesting the superiority and relevance of these US work practices. The workers’ resistance was accommodated by local managers to pacify and retain them.

The analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of resistance to the dominant influence of US work practices in emerging market firms. It expands current notions of “otherness” by presenting the perspective of “local” managers and migrant workers. The authors show how worker resistance embedded in their “identity work” involves contesting notions of “inferiority” of local work practices and selves. In the case of managers, accommodating resistance maintains their “legitimacy of dominance”. To that end, the study explains how the need to mimic US work practices is enforced, contested and ultimately diluted in competitive local firms in rising India.

The organizationally grounded data show how managerial accommodation of workers’ resistance to US practices creates a more flexible working environment that dilutes migrant workers’ sensitivity to their exploitation at the fast-food outlet.

The findings identify the link between mimicry and resistance by the “other,” the ambivalence of the colonizing agent and the ongoing material exploitation within emerging economies.

To that end, the study explains how the need to mimic the US work practices is enforced, contested and ultimately diluted in the context of the competitive local firms in India.

This paper adds to a focus of the social accounting literature (on perceptions and attitudes to social accounting) by seeking to offer insights into Syrian accountants' attitudes towards, and perceptions of, social accounting in Syria in the first decade of the twenty‐first century, with particular attention to its role, future development and implementation.

The paper takes the form of an analysis of interviews of Syrian accountants; contextual analysis (and an appreciation of the prior literature).

Syrian accountants' perceptions are shaped by developments in Syria's socio‐political and economic context, encompassing imperialism/colonialism, globalisation and cultural specificities, including Islam. Interviewees perceived a significant role for a social accounting – that would parallel the Western form of social accounting – in enhancing well‐being in the dynamic context. At the same time, they were reluctant to see the development and implementation of this accounting in Syria as an urgent issue, so that this social accounting might be left initially at least with an even more marginal part to play than in the West. The study suggests that a combination of forces – global developments, Western imperialism and Syria's colonial history – have had a substantively repressive rather than progressive impact on the development of social accounting in Syria vis‐à‐vis its more positive potential.

All limitations of interview research apply. This study focuses on Syria in a context when economic transition was a major issue. Further studies of economies in transition would be of interest.

An awareness of how the local and the global interact in debates over social accounting can provide insights for policy makers concerned with accounting regulation.

The focus on Syria, a non‐Western country, enriches the social accounting literature, which focuses mainly on Western developments.