Gavin Jack

Manifesto for a post‐colonial international business and management studies: A provocation

Purpose – Submitted in the form of a manifesto, this article seeks to make a call to scholars in international management and business studies to embrace post‐colonial theory and to allow it to provide an interrogation of the ontological, epistemological, methodological and institutional resources currently dominating the field.Design/methodology/approach – A manifesto approach is adopted in providing a series of deliberately provocative principles which it seeks to have the field adopt.Findings – The paper finds the field to be currently imprisoned within a limited and limiting paradigmatic and institutional location and offers the resources of post‐colonial theory as a way to interrogate and reconfigure it.Research limitations/implications – The paper points to the limitations of the field and provides the grounds for a radical reconfiguration across all aspects of its knowledge production, dissemination and research practice.Practical implications – The paper offers practical steps which the field can ...

The US commercial-military-political complex and the emergence of international business and management studies

Purpose – This paper seeks to present an analysis of the historical emergence of international business and management studies (IBMS) within the context of the post‐World War II USA. It seeks to show how certain conditions of this time and place shaped the orientation of foundational IBMS texts and set a course for the subsequent development of the field.Design/methodology/approach – The approach is primarily conceptual. The paper pursues both a historical analysis and a close reading of foundational texts within IBMS. It first examines the key conditions for the emergence of IBMS including: the internationalization of the US economy and businesses; the Cold War and perceived expansion of Soviet interests; and finally decolonisation processes around the world. These are interrelated aspects of a commercial‐military‐political complex, which simultaneously enabled and constrained the emergence of IBMS scholarship. The paper moves on to link these conditions to two seminal IBMS texts.Findings – The paper rev...

Pushing speed? The marketing of fast and convenience food

The Menu: This paper explores the complex relationship between the marketing of fast and convenience food, and Western constructions and experiences of time in late Modernity, through a polemical analysis of a set of recent British television advertisements for a variety of brands in this sector. A cursory reading of these ads reveals some apparent contradictions in the deployment of time in fast/convenience food marketing: they seem to celebrate both speed (time as “sameness” and “continuity”) and nostalgia (time as “difference” and “discontinuity”). We go beyond a simple understanding of these alternative tropes as indices of competing brand strategies by interpreting their wider relations to the systemic and cultural vicissitudes of contemporary global capital. We conclude that the temporal articulation of fast and convenience foods presented in the ads is not in fact paradoxical, but dialectical. This dialectical relationship is an essential and continuing ideological structure of late Modernity.

Refining, reinforcing and reimagining universal and indigenous theory development in international management

This article addresses a long-established yet still contentious question in international management scholarship—Is it possible and desirable to create a universal theory of management and organization? Scholarship about the boundary conditions of endogenous theory and the need for indigenous theories of management as well as geopolitical changes in the world order have animated this debate. Five leading scholars discussed this topic at a symposium held at the 2009 Academy of Management meeting. This article presents an analysis of their viewpoints. Three key perspectives were identified in the debate: the refining perspective, the reinforcing perspective, and the reimagining perspective. Using excerpts from the symposium transcript, we outline, compare, and critically evaluate the characteristics and significance of each perspective to advancing theory development. The distinctive contribution of this article lies in its meta-theoretical debate about the relationship between theory, context, and power in the production of global management knowledge.

The development of leaders able to respond to climate change and sustainability challenges: The role of business schools

Purpose – This paper seeks to discuss the role of business academics and business schools in the development of leaders able to respond to climate change and sustainability challenges.Design/methodology/approach – The paper captures contributions made during a panel discussion at the First Academic Symposium on Leadership for Climate Change and Sustainability held at La Trobe University, Melbourne in February 2011. The Symposium preceded the 10th General Assembly of the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI) held in Melbourne and the authors are from GRLI partner organisations.Findings – There is a pressing need for business schools to focus on the development of personal and leadership skills, to draw staff from outside the traditional business disciplines and to reflect the gender and race diversity of the population in which they are located. The change required in business education to develop leaders who can respond to climate change and sustainability challenges is as significant as the c...

Boundary work and identity construction in market exchanges

This paper was published as Marketing Theory, 2010, 10 (3), pp. 227-236. It is available from http://mtq.sagepub.com/. Doi: 10.1177/1470593110373430

Asserting Possibilities of Resistance in the Cross-Cultural Teaching Machine: Re-Viewing Videos of Others

As academics involved in “teaching” international management to under- and post-graduate students on degree courses run in British universities we have become increasingly dismayed by the types of videos offered by the cross-cultural training industry. Although these videos are intended to simulate experiences of what “cultural differences” to “look out for” when embarking on international careers, there is the very real danger that if used as intended, naive management teachers could well perpetuate distorted myths and representations of the cross-cultural Other(s), despite honorable intentions to the contrary.

Dancing with Discrimination: Managing Stigma and Identity

Fans are a group that are stigmatized and discredited, at least to some degree, by their “deviant” and common form of symbolic consumption. At stake in the process of stigmatization is the very identity of the individual fan, and their symbolic and emotional well‐being. This paper reports on an empirical study of one particular group of fans—Star Trek fans (or “Trekkies”)—and explores the complex identity issues articulated by them as they “manage” their problematic public identity. Drawing upon interviews conducted with 18 Trekkies, the article describes how this stigmatic identity is organized within a disciplinary matrix that operates at a micro level through two key processes: humour and self‐surveillance. In particular, we highlight their struggle with the dilemmas of exposing their private “fandom” in a public context, and the highly ambivalent manner in which they seek to escape stigmatization.

The Importance of Place for International Students’ Choice of University A Case Study at a Malaysian University

The scholarly bias toward Western and English-speaking settings in the study of international education overlooks the experiences of international students in emerging education hubs in Asia. To redress this imbalance, this article offers insights into the crucial role of place in the study destination choices of a group of international postgraduate students currently enrolled at a Malaysian university. Findings from semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with 33 students indicated that place—and specifically the pull factors of the country of Malaysia—had a primary role in their choice of overseas university. More significant than the individual attributes of any one higher education institution, key social and cultural pull factors included the sense of Malaysia as a safe environment, shared cultural values with the students’ own background, the financial benefits derived from low tuition fees and low cost of living, proximity to the students’ home country as well as access to culturally important items such as halal and other dietary requirements. Understanding the significance of such national-level pull factors in study destination choice has important implications for the Malaysian government’s strategy of competing in the global market for international students.

Consuming Chavs: The Ambiguous Politics of Gay Chavinism

Paul Johnson’s (2008) article ‘Rude Boys’, published in an earlier issue of Sociology , scrutinizes critically the commodification of the male chav for consumption by middle-class homosexual men. This phenomenon, which Andrew Fraser (2005) calls ‘chavinism’, takes a number of different forms: pornography, sex lines, club nights etc. In part as a response to Johnson’s arguments concerning the ways in which chavinism ‘further devalue[s] the individuals and groups’ it depicts, creating a form of ‘symbolic violence’ (2008: 67), our article speculates further on the ambiguous implications of this minority consumer culture. To do this, we develop Connell’s (1992, 2002; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005) concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ to discuss what gay chavinism might mean for ‘hegemonic homosexuality’.