Purpose This paper analyzes how information systems (IS) can serve as tools of neo-colonial control in offshore outsourcing of research and development work. It draws on critical work examining business and knowledge process outsourcing. Design/methodology/approach The paper reports an empirical study of how laboratory information management systems (LIMS) shape offshore outsourcing practices involving Western client firms and Indian contract research organizations (CROs) in the pharmaceutical industry. The study adopted a multi-actor perspective, involving interviews with representatives of Western clients, Indian CROs, system validation auditors, and software vendors. The analysis was iterative and interpretative, guided by postcolonial sensitivity to themes of power and control. Findings The study found that LIMS act as tools of neo-colonial control at three levels. As Western clients specify particular brands of LIMS, they create a hierarchy among local CROs and impact the development of the local LIMS industry. At inter-organizational level, LIMS shape relationships by allowing remote, real-time and retrospective surveillance of CROs’ work. At individual level, the ability of LIMS to support micro-modularizing of research leads to routinization of scientific discovery, negatively impacting scientists’ work satisfaction. Originality/value By examining multiple actors’ perceptions of IS, this paper looks beyond the rhetoric of system efficiency characteristic of most international business research. As it explores dynamics of power and control surrounding IS, it also questions the proposition that outsourcing of high-end work will move emerging economies upstream in the value chain.

This article analyses neo-colonial dynamics at peripheral units of a Western global professional service firm. Drawing on postcolonial theory, an empirical study at global news agency Reuters' subsidiaries in Mumbai and Bangalore shows how socio-ideological and technocratic control mechanisms allow subsidiary workers to elevate their status, while still cementing their role as dominated in the global hierarchy and silencing any resistance. Thus, on the one hand, it might appear that the global service firm provides periphery units the opportunity to become equals of core units, representing a 'nurturing' role achieved by instilling aspirational values and shaping imaginations. On the other hand, coercive and universalising routines such as performance assessments highlight the ambivalent nature of global firm initiatives to incorporate the periphery on an equal footing with core units, demonstrating the countervailing nature of contemporary power relations.

No abstract

This study analyses how the mutual imbrication of organizational and postcolonial power along with the micro-embedding of actors’ shape and structure power struggles in multinational corporations. Drawing on the case of news agency Reuters’ internationalization and centralization approach at its Indian subsidiaries in Mumbai and Bangalore, our research explores how subsidiaries mobilize resources to pursue their interests in a landscape shaped by clashing professional institutional logics and organizational control systems reflected in quality control and performance assessment. Our findings shows that the power struggle and (professional) identity position of both subsidiary staff differs as they face different organizational, institutional and (neo)colonial pressures and are othered in different ways. We argue that as a site of “value production,” both subsidiaries are qualified and disadvantaged in distinct ways. Our study emphasizes the importance of understanding diverse colonial experiences and the mainstreaming of postcolonial insights in the analysis of power in MNCs.