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This viewpoint adds context and variety to the “decolonizing international business” debate by engaging in a discussion of the decolonial thinking approach and proposing a broader framework for analysing the link between international business (IB) activities on the one hand and colonisation and decolonisation on the other. The purpose of this paper is to inspire a more intensive engagement of IB scholarship with issues related to colonisation and decolonisation.

This paper involves taking a reflexive review on recent calls to decolonise IB, contextualising and extending the decolonisation debate in the academic field of IB.

This paper argues that the current discussion of decolonisation should be extended beyond the decolonial thinking approach and its focus on knowledge and the cultural dimension towards a broader framework that covers both colonisation and decolonisation as well as the respective economic, political, social and cultural dimensions. It introduces the varieties of colonisation and decolonisation approach, which considers the complexities of the phenomenon and covers the economic, social, political and cultural dimensions.

Through its focus on foreign market expansion, international trade, global value chains and formal and informal institutions in the business environment, the academic field of IB provides several starting points for research on the link between IB activities and colonisation and decolonisation. The decolonisation debate can be used to inspire future research in IB, for example, with respect to the role of multinational corporations in colonisation and neo-colonisation processes and the implications of the emerging multipolar world order for IB.

IB scholars will be better informed when engaging in discussions on decolonisation and the decolonise IB project. This paper suggests considering both colonisation and decolonisation processes as well as the respective economic, political, social and cultural dimensions in research and teaching. The varieties of colonisation and decolonisation approach provides a comprehensive and flexible alternative framework to analyse issues related to colonisation and decolonisation.

A balanced view of the implications of colonisation and decolonisation with respect to economic, political, social and cultural dimensions may suitably be incorporated in the field of IB and contribute to tackling grand societal challenges. This applies likewise to past, current and future processes of colonisation and decolonisation.

This paper contextualises and adds a new perspective and variety to the current debate on decolonising IB. This is valuable for engaging in discussions on decolonisation and future conceptual and empirical research on the topic.

This paper aims to offer practical, data-led guidance for the decolonisation of marketing strategy, especially as it relates to customer engagement. It does so with an acute understanding of the constraints of brand legitimacy.

The findings of this paper are informed both by a conceptual unpacking of institutional, decolonisation and customer engagement literature, as well as an empirical methodology that presents an embedded single case study of a top-ranking banking brand, using in-depth qualitative interviews as well as content analyses of brand communications.

The paper examines the notion of institutional brand legitimacy alongside the decolonisation of customer engagement. It offers five empirically driven decisions that marketers must consider when they attempt to decolonise their customer engagement strategies. These revolve around a decolonised bottom-up approach; establishing new biases for customer insights; the management of opposing forces; being strategically transformative; and going beyond diversity.

A single brand case study is offered that uses a relatively small sample of interviewees and does not include customers of the brand. Further research is therefore needed to reflect other organisational contexts and stakeholders. Just so, the paper specifically looks at the ways in which decolonisation and institutional legitimacy intersect for customer engagement. Further studies that focus on other organisational concepts impacted by decolonisation would be thought-provoking.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical investigation that offers practical guidance for the decolonisation of marketing strategies – as it relates to customer engagement or any other facets of marketing.

The legacy of colonisation and apartheid in South Africa has resulted in a radical challenge to the public universities. The successful #FeesMustFall campaign that took place in 2015 accentuated several aspects of post-apartheid transformation that have not been adequately attended to. The public universities are now faced with meeting the needs of students and interested parties who would like to see transformation at various levels, in particular, the decolonisation of knowledge. This paper aims to present an approach to address the decolonisation of knowledge.

Shifting universities’ approach to teaching and learning is a challenging endeavour, especially as it entails an embrace of previously ignored worldviews. Taking a metaphoric approach, an analysis of this problem is presented in systemic terms from a family therapy approach adhering to second-order cybernetics. A solution to bridging the disconnect between the participants in the decolonisation of knowledge in a South African context is presented.

Early successes were attained on the back of a therapeutic approach to meeting the needs of students who took part in curriculum and policy changes. The findings suggest that for a transformation to take place, all the participants in the university should acknowledge that the problem (which may have different forms) is a shared one and that decolonisation requires the participants to learn about other participants in the system. Reflecting on historical narratives and its present status quo from the epistemology of the directly affected parties is suggested as an indispensable step that should occur prior to the implementation of any solutions. Without the reflection process, the other members of the system may not understand the context and reasoning for the decolonisation, resulting in friction and fear, in turn mitigating the decolonisation process.

Methods of empathetically engaging people who have been discriminated against is important in the goal of restoring equality and social justice. Family therapy is presented as a vehicle for communal dialogue in a therapeutic empathetic context. This approach has value in many settings other than in the education arena.

Legacies of apartheid are still in effect in the South African public university system. Decolonising knowledge is one topic that may address social justice which helps to diffuse social tension and subsequent protest action.

Family therapy as an approach to decolonisation of knowledge and as an approach to appeasing social tension in the educational context is unique.

The purpose of this study is to bring attention to the topics of colonization and decolonization in libraries by helping librarians to see how many library practices and policies are embedded in and arise from the dominant culture and can unwittingly function to subjugate the culture, language and worldview of indigenous peoples.

This column defines colonization and decolonization, demonstrates how and why libraries are agents of colonization and examines examples of practices and policies in need of decolonization.

While it may be challenging for librarians to detect colonizing elements in libraries because most of them are embedded in the dominant culture, it is possible to learn how to find them by listening to indigenous communities and gaining a better understanding of their worldview. Even so, decolonization is not an easy task because so much is already invested in the status quo and libraries often function with minimal or diminishing resources.

While there have been studies writing about specific aspects of bias and colonization in libraries, there is not much attention paid to the bigger picture of this topic. For example, the idea that the book-based culture of libraries conflicts with some facets of indigenous oral cultures is not widely discussed elsewhere, but it is addressed in this column.

The purpose of this paper is to show, with reference to the writings of important decolonization theorists and liberationists, how Nazism in Europe and the establishment of the UN had a significant impetus in awakening the sense of injustice in colonised peoples in Africa and the Lesser Antilles. Colonized peoples were denied human rights through a process of dehumanization, which involved seizing “native” histories and representing them as backward, depraved and savage, awaiting the arrival of European civilization. Marxism, further supported this narrative by denying that “primitive” peoples had histories, and being unable to account for race and racism because of its emphasis on class. Colonization evolved, not into decolonization, but neo-colonialism because of the complicity of “native” bourgeois elites.

The methodology combines historical narrative with theoretical insight from the point of view of the colonised, such as Fanon, Cabral, Mimmi, Ceasare, Nkrumah, etc. It is hermeneutic in its methodology.

Peoples of the Lesser Antilles and Africans were dehumanized; denied human rights; and dehistoricized. Prominent liberation theorists develop these themes and reject elements of Marxism in order to reflect the unique experiences of the colonised. Colonization gets under the skin of the colonised and persists in contemporary societies. Colonization was replaced by neo-colonialism, not decolonization.

The implications are to bring to the fore the importance of colonialism in relation to western practises of anti-Fascism and the promotion of human rights, while perpetrating Fascist modes of behaviour and denying human rights in colonised countries. Far from being simply an historical phenomenon the insidious implications persist.

The demonstration of how deep the roots of colonialism go, and how difficult the task of decolonization has become as a consequence of systematic western “penetration”.

It looks at colonialism and its widespread injustices through the activists who suffered at the hands of a system of rule based exploitation and dehumanization effected not only by seizing their land, but also their history language and culture, ensuring that decolonization became transformed into neo-colonialism.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical account on the contemporary architecture of Cairo with emphasis on the past three decades, from the early 1990s to the present. The paper critically analyses narratives of the plurality of “isms”, within architectural vocabulary and discourse, that resulted from the contextual particularities that shaped it.

Three lines of inquiry are envisioned as overarching aspects of architecture: the chronological, the interventional and the representational. These discussions are underpinned by the discourse of decolonialisation and cosmopolitanism, posited sequentially by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), and Ulrich Beck in The Cosmopolitan Vision (2004). The analysis expands to interrogate these two notions as prelude for reflecting on representations of selected projects: The Smart Village (2001); the Great Egyptian Museum (2002), Al-Azhar Park (2005), American University in Cairo New Campus (2008/2009), and the New Administrative Capital (2018).

The investigation on the interventional and the representational levels via aspects of discursivity and contradictions highlights that decolonisation and cosmopolitanism are two inseparable facets in the architectural practice in Egypt’s 21st century. These indivisible notions are based on idiosyncratic core to human experience, which emerged from concurrent overturning historical and secular everyday life striving to suppress ideological supremacy.

Further detailed examples can be developed to offer discerning elucidations relevant to both notions of cosmopolitanism and decolonialisation.

The paper offers novel theoretical analysis of Cairo’s most recent architecture. The reflection on the notions of decolonialisation and cosmopolitanism is a timely example of the complex cultural encounters that have shaped the Egyptian architecture, given the recent interventions by the “Modern State” that legitimised such notions.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The paper discusses the idea of decolonization in marketing and explores its tensions with institutional legitimacy. The research also offers five key considerations for managers in relation to decolonizing customer engagement strategies.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists, and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian plurality has stalled. While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Calls to Action could be a focusing event, creating a window of opportunity for transformative social innovations; we see coalescing of interest, social capital and investment in decolonization and indigenization in the proliferation of professorships, programs, installations and statements. However, Blackfoot (Siksika) Elder Roy Bear Chief raised significant concerns that Indigenous knowledge, experiences and people are not yet seen as relevant and useful in higher education; such marginalization must be addressed at a systems level for authentic reconciliation at any colonial university. The purpose of this paper was to explore this dual goal of exploring barriers to and opportunities for Indigenous knowledges and knowledge holders to be valued as relevant and useful in the Canadian academy, using a complexity- and systems-informed lens.

Local Indigenous Elders provided guidance to reflect study purpose and target audience of academics, with an approach that respectfully weaved Westernized research methods and co-learning through indigenous knowledge mobilization strategies. This analysis extends results from a qualitative grounded theory study to explain social processes of professors and administrative leadership in a Canadian mid-sized university regarding barriers and facilitators of implementing TRC Calls to Action. This further interpretation of applied systems and panarchy heuristics broadens understanding to how such micro-social processes are positioned and influence larger scale institutional change.

This paper discusses how the social process of dominionization intentionally minimizes meaningful system disruption by othering indigenous knowledge and knowledge holders; this form of system-reinforcing boundary work contributes to rigidity and inhibits potentially transformative innovations from scaling beyond individual niches and moments in time. Elders’ consultation throughout the research process, including co-learning the meaning of findings, led to the gifting of traditional teachings and emerging systems and multi-scale framework on the relevance of indigenous knowledges and peoples in higher education.

This study was performed in one faculty of one Canadian institution; an important and potentially widely-present social process was identified. Further research is needed for greater generalizability. Conditions that led to this study are increasingly common across Canada, where at least one third of higher education organizations have explicit indigenization strategies and internationally where the rights and self-determination of indigenous peoples are growing.

Insights from this study can inform conversations about social innovation in institutional settings, and the current systems’ resistance to change, particularly when exploring place-based solutions to national/international questions. These initiatives have yet to transform institutions, and while transformation is rarely rapid (Moore et al., 2018), for these potential innovations to grow, they need to be sustainable beyond a brief window of opportunity. Scaling up or deep within the academy seems to remain stubbornly elusive despite attention to the TRC.

This study contributes to a growing literature that explores the possibilities and opportunities between Indigenous epistemologies and social innovation study and practice (McGowan, 2019; Peredo, McLean and Tremblay, 2019; Conrad, 2015), as well as scholarship around Indigenization and decolonization in Canada and internationally.

The purpose of the paper is to challenge and address the limitations of the traditional system of knowledge production that is embedded in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It argues that knowledge production in research processes conforms to colonialist thinking or west-inspired approaches. Such a system often results in the omission of crucial information due to a lack of participation, inclusion and diversity in knowledge production.

The paper proposes practices and recommendations to decolonise knowledge production in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It provides a brief literature review on the concepts of decolonisation of knowledge and epistemological freedom, and its origins; assesses the need for knowledge decolonisation, emphasising on the integration of local knowledge from grassroots women-led initiatives in instances where disasters and crises are being investigated in vulnerable communities, especially in the Global South; and finally the paper proposes to decolonise knowledge production through activating co-learning and co-production. The practices have been developed from the work of relevant authors in the field and case studies.

Through a brief literature review on previous discourses on the topic of knowledge decolonisation and analysis of recent case studies on disaster and crisis management and community resilience, the paper finds that there exists a lack of pluralism and inclusion in epistemology which limits the pursuit to obtain the whole truth in the production of knowledge in research studies.

This paper adds to the discussion of decolonisation of knowledge in the field of disaster and climate change research studies, and research processes in general. It provides in-depth analyses of recent case studies of emerging community resilience and local practices that were crucial in the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

The aim of this paper is to introduce a holistic decolonial lens for Library and Information Studies (LIS). As such it centres in the following questions: what does decolonisation mean in the context of LIS? How can a holistic approach help improve our understanding of the field?

This is a conceptual paper that draws on theoretical analysis and discussion with in-depth examination of two cases of librarianship and information for development.

The paper presents a decolonial framework for interpreting and comprehending LIS-specific issues. As a result, we believe it is critical to recognise three interconnected types of colonial legacies and identify ways in which LIS academics and practitioners can consider these in the context of their research and work.

The paper introduces a holistic framework for thinking about decoloniality in the LIS discipline. Further work should consider how this framework can be useful for other LIS fields.

The framework is of practical significance for LIS academics and practitioners who wish to take a decolonial approach to their research and thinking. We provide questions intended to lead to action.

The paper provides a holistic decolonial approach to critically reflect on research and teaching practices in the context of LIS.