False binaries in management history, and the scope for a postcolonial project

This study aims to offer a postcolonial approach that goes past current management history controversies.

Discussion of current management history controversies with examples.

Post-colonial approaches to management history enable engagement with questions of power and knowledge in the management discipline.

Further historical research is needed that considers the interplay of disciplinary knowledge and the historical events under question, especially in post-colonial settings.

It is essential to engage with historical texts and interpretations to better understand the contextual limitations to management as a discipline: a better understanding of disciplinary pasts enables us to better understand the present.

By considering management’s pasts, this paper can acknowledge more closely how the discipline continues to retain colonialist assumptions that need to be challenged and changed.

Examples of management history from formerly colonized regions.