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The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of decolonial approaches (DAs) such as epistemic locus (Mignolo, 1995, 2000) in studying innovation.

This paper is based on a case study of a stem cell surgical innovation developed in India. A critical hermeneutic analysis method has been followed for data analysis.

Epistemic locus influences the framing of the problem, perceptions of risks/opportunities as well as the envisioning of alternate institutional systems. Persistent and strategic effort at building connections changes local improvisation into a globally legitimate innovation.

It indicates the value of using DAs for innovation studies especially epistemic locus, enactment and connections in understanding knowledge generation and innovation.

Innovation in Global South can be encouraged by giving more space to the innovator to attempt or experiment. More conscious conversation of epistemic locus of the researcher could help.

Countries have to move beyond a mere technological imitation to include discussions on epistemic imitation. Epistemic imitation prevents one from seeing what one has and one only looks at conditions from the eyes of the dominator.

This study documents the development of an innovation from an Indian epistemic locus which differs from a western epistemic locus and the impact this has on an innovation.

This conversation highlights the need to rethink how we approach disaster risk reduction in different South Asian contexts.

This paper is based on the webinar held as part of Asia Week at the University of Copenhagen which was organised by Asian Dynamics Initiative and Copenhagen Centre for Disaster Research on the September 12, 2023.

The prominent themes emerging from this conversation represents hybridity, self-rule and self-recovery. Along with this we suggest a fundamental turn to ensuring hope, solidarity and empathy is part of a post-colonial future.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions on moving away from colonial practices in disaster risk reduction and disaster studies broadly.

Despite the exponential spread of the British Empire by the late nineteenth century, there remained in England a continued indifference to “the Empire”. In 1883, J.R. Seeley, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, had expressed concern because ‘we think of Great Britain too much and of Greater Britain too little’. People had to rethink their understandings of nation and empire, he suggested, and steps had to be taken to modify what he saw as a ‘defective constitution’. Seeley’s lecture series had prompted debate about ‘the imperial question’, but the ‘anomalous political arrangements’ and the reluctance of the people to think imperially persisted. Insularity was not exclusive to the people in Britain, however. Because of their preoccupation with their own local affairs, it was suggested, there had been little opportunity for people from other parts of the empire to devote much time to the larger questions of imperial and common citizenship.

The paper details the construction of a postcolonial feminist approach to ethnography; providing insight into how the researcher developed her ethnographic approach based on her theoretical framework and demonstrating how she undertook this research. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to outline how the researcher identified positionality and representation as the primary challenges of undertaking a postcolonial feminist ethnography with marginalised Maya women in Guatemala, and how she addressed these complexities in the field.

This postcolonial feminist ethnography was conducted over a three-month period in the rural highlands of Sololá, Guatemala. This approach bridges the intersections of postcolonial, feminist, critical and reflexive research.

The account presented in this paper offers insight into the theoretical development of a postcolonial feminist ethnography and its implementation in practice. The researcher demonstrates the importance of addressing the issues of positionality and representation to overcome differences in position, privilege and power when building relationships with participants, and to ensure the participants and their knowledge are accurately represented.

This paper contributes to the growing interest in postcolonial research and proposes a postcolonial feminist ethnography as an alternative approach for engaging in research with the marginalised Other.

Drawing on a series of RAND interviews with Vietnamese prisoners during the Vietnam War, the paper aims to analyze the role of colonizer–colonized in the production of postcolonial representations (postcoloniality) and the role of the Western corporation in the processes of postcoloniality.

Selected RAND interviews are analyzed using a postcolonial lens and explored through the method of critical hermeneutics.

The analysis supports the contention that Western othering of Third World people is neither completely successful nor one-sided. It is argued that while the Western corporation is an important site for understanding hybridity and postcoloniality, analysis needs to go beyond focusing on the symbolic and the textual to take account of the material conditions in which interactions between colonizer–colonized occur. Finally, there is support for further study of the socio-political character of methods of research in the study of international business.

The case suggests further study of colonizer–colonized interactions outside of the context of an on-going war, which may have heightened some forms of resistance and voice.

The paper draws attention to the continuing problem of Western othering of formerly colonized people through military and commercial engagements that are framed by neo-colonial viewpoints embedded in theories of globalization and research methods.

The paper provides rare glimpses into interactions between colonizing and colonized people, and also the under-research study of the role of the Western corporation in the production of postcoloniality.

The purpose of this paper is three‐fold: to extend the scope of postcolonial theory to organizational analysis; to extend the scope of organizational analysis to the study of supranational organizations; and to examine the impact of postcolonial organizational thought on the conception and treatment of the Rwandan people.

Organizational (in)action, both prior to and during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, is subjected to postcolonial organizational analysis.

It is shown that so‐called global organizational relations are mediated by supranational organizations, such as the United Nations, whose organizational structuring and practices are rooted in imperialist and postcolonial thinking.

It is recognised that the account of events presents an alternative but partial history of events in Rwanda.

The response to genocide in Rwanda by the global community represents a challenge to the promise of globalization, which posits that multinational organizational integration based on mutual interest is achievable.

The paper destablizes the notion of globalization and global cooperation by raising questions about the asymmetrical contexts in which supranational organizations operate.

This paper aims at explaining why “Globally Responsible Humanism (GRH)” is presented here as the pivot for a re-foundation of European Business Schools’ culture. Explaining the concept and its difference with traditional European Humanism, the related argumentation is organized around two main parts: the first one explains why the European Union and its business schools do not make sense in a globalization process driven by the financialized economy; the second one shows how a sustainable exposition of European management students to a transcultural approach, a postcolonial perspective, and critical thinking, can lead to their training as future globally responsible leaders in New Business Schools for Societal Studies.

An international political sociology perspective, applied to the interpretation of globalization trends, and a critical thinking approach to education allow for a questioning of the values and contents of mainstream business learning.

The new proposed transversal, postcolonial and interdisciplinary pedagogical approach regarding business education is conducive to closely related operational tracks: on the one hand, how to improve the skills and systemic understanding of students’ global environment; on the other hand, how to lead, organize and manage the coherent “GRH”-driven business school.

The originality of this paper stems from the combination of critical works issued from the social and human sciences realms to revisit business education.

This paper aims to deal with the issue of researchers’ responsibility for the dissemination of ideologies which have led to the cultural marginalisation and categorisation of minority social groups into a dominant/dominated relationship in France. One telling example is the way ethnic segmentation – as now used in marketing – finds its roots in the colonial paradigm.

A critical and analytical review of the literature on ethnic marketing.

The current paradigm which splits the world into centre and periphery or dominant and dominated, in the French context, is not the only existing one. In the framework of postcolonial studies, researchers in marketing now approach the ethnic market by being as close to consumers as possible and by adapting their methodology to the Consumer Culture Theory.

Some researchers have become aware that the feeling of ethnic self-identification would not exist without the involvement of the dominant group who imposes their view on minorities. As to multicultural individuals, minorities have to adjust to a great variety of social situations by drawing from a set of available cultural identities. It is therefore more a question of multiple selves than ethnic identity. Multicultural individuals create their own identity and co-create new social categories from the grey area between dominant and dominated groups. The postcolonial approach raises the question as to whether ethnicity is a mere ideological construct with no underlying reality but the actual domination of minorities.

Through a case study of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), this paper sets out to explore the roots of twentieth century globalization and the postcolonial nature of the trading relations involved.

Drawing on Foucault's broad notion of “the archive” a critical hermeneutics approach is used to examine a series of company‐produced texts, including minutes, travelogues, company narratives, annual reports, film, diaries, and published histories.

The paper argues that Pan Am contributed to the “idea of Latin America” and, in the process contributed to practices of dependency that served the interests of the USA. Drawing on a case study of Pan Am, the paper further argues that multi‐national corporations help to establish the contours of international trade by influencing the very character and boundaries of the territories traded in, with troubling implications for the countries traded in.

As a detailed case study extension of the findings to other global trading arrangements needs to take into account to social‐political context and relational histories of the players involved.

The paper generates insights into the role of rhetoric in developing trading relationships and its roots in embedded notions of postcolonial thinking and generalizations.

The paper contributes to an understanding of the role of language and the social construction of national identities involved in the development of international business.

Embedded in Western scientific rationality, Hofstede's model on national culture is constructed on a quantitative method, which among other things is characterized by its carefully selected sample consisting of a group of well educated white “men” from the middle classes working for the same company and sharing identical or similar occupations. The appointment of well educated men from the middle classes as the norm for national culture might mislead one to believe that Hofstede perceives of culture as equally distributed among men and women and that there are no differences in regard to the possession of power. However, considering that he has dedicated one of his five dimensions to gender and constructed his model on a bipolar distinction between masculinity and femininity this is clearly not the case. The purpose of the paper is to show that Hofstede's masculine/feminine dimension unveils a distinct perception of gender differences, even though women's voices were kept silent in his survey.

The paper approaches Hofstede's masculine/feminine dimension from a postcolonial angle, and focuses on how he discursively makes use of a gender dichotomy in his construction of national culture.

The analysis supports the argument that Hofstede's masculine/feminine dimension contributes to reproducing a collective and prejudiced understanding of both culture and gender.

The value of the paper is in its attempt to urge for a relocation of research on culture and gender from logocentrism and dichotomies to a discourse that take local variations and multiplicity into consideration.