Defending the decolonial option in administration/management

Abstract

In response to an enduring situation of asymmetry and injustice in the field of Management and Organization Studies (MOS), sustained by the radicalization of universalization of Euro-American knowledge, as well as the corresponding subalternation of diverse types of knowledge from the rest of the world, this article analyzes the marginal position and the potential of the decolonial perspective in Brazil. Analysis suggests the co-construction of a broad agenda in MOS in and from Brazil which fosters knowledge and practices informed by the decolonial option from a transcosmopolitan perspective. Taking into account multiple obstacles for the legitimation of alternatives to Eurocentrism and contemporary challenges faced by academics and practitioners within the context of radicalization of hypermodernity, this article highlights the potentialities of the decolonial option to interconnected communities of both victims and builders of alternatives on a global scale. Such decolonial agenda in MOS draws not on a re-articulation of essentialist revisionisms, but on the promotion of transcosmopolitan of advances in three interconnected realms: (a) academic – by fostering multiple political identities from a transmodern perspective; (ii) educational – by rescuing, co-constructing, and legitimizing, and disseminating knowledge connected to local realities and alternatives, and (iii) social – by co-constructing decolonial knowldege engaged with colonial-decolonial dynamics faced by society and academia on a global scale.