Time: 4:00 - 6:00pm Venue: FB4.04/08 Francis Bancroft Building, 4th Floor, Mile End Campus
***THIS EVENT HAS NOW BEEN CANCELLED***Speaker: Rafael Alcadipani, Visiting Researcher, Gothenburg Research Institute, University of GothenburgManagement and Organizational Knowledge (MOK) is today a global phenomenon and business schools are central locations where such knowledge is produced and taught. In particular, the U.S. has been a broadcast center from where MOK has traveled to other regions of the world prompting academics to refer to this process as Americanization. The literature on the travel of management ideas has mainly analyzed highly industrialized countries, leaving the 'periphery' underexplored. Focusing on the transference of U.S. MOK to Brazil in the 1950s, this paper draws on an ANT reading of postcolonialism to analyze the consequences of U.S. MOK travel from North America to other parts of the globe. I will explore how a particular practice helped U.S. MOK to travel and, at the same time, enacted asymmetries and hierarchies between Brazil and the U.S. By doing that, I will discuss that centers and peripheries are created and sustained as outcomes of situated practices. I will also argue that organizing is a political process that generates asymmetries, hierarchies and discrepancies, but it also leaves open the possibility of making things different. This seminar is being hosted by the Centre for Research in Management and Organizational History (CMOH).