A critical analysis of North American business leaders’ neocolonial discourse: global fears and local consequences

Abstract

Using a postcolonial analytic frame and critique this article investigates the nature of the discourse used by 24 North American business leaders to describe, understand and make sense of the economic development of China and India and contemporary international encounters. In particular the article investigates how business leaders discursively characterize this 'threat', how they (re)present China and India and, how they discursively construct the requirements of a response to this 'threat'. An analysis of the interviews indicates the persistence of the discourse of (neo)colonialism (Orientalism) in the construction of the Other within the context of a view of China and India as developing and progressing towards a North American ideal. Despite this, North American business leaders also show ambivalence and uncertainty towards China and India. On the one hand they laud their success while damning them for their apparently exploitative social, economic and workplace systems and practices. Moreover, while they promote a Western development discourse concerning China and India, North American business leaders recognize that China and India are becoming centres of global economic power that are increasingly challenging the global hegemony of the United States. The article ends with a conclusion on the contribution of the article and in particular points to the value of Bhabha's notion of the in-between' spaces as a way forward for understanding developments in the global business environment.

Information technology offshoring in India: a postcolonial perspective

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Englishization in offshore call centers: A postcolonial perspective

“…This influence is also clearly evident in postcolonial organization studies where the bulk of research has adopted a discourse-analytical approach, investigating the ways in which West/Rest power relations are (re-)produced in text and talk about international business (see e.g. Fougère & Moulettes, 2012;Frenkel & Shenhav, 2006;McKenna, 2011). However, as is the case in postcolonial studies more generally, materialist formulations (e.g.…”

Workplace emotions in postcolonial spaces: Enduring legacies, ambivalence, and subversion

“…A study by McKenna (2011) in the North American context revealed similar dynamics of binary oppositions and Othering by senior executives in the US or Canada, in their accounts of China and India. McKenna's results bear similarity to the analysis of Abhinav, as he observes in his data, 'A neocolonial reading of the discourse makes it possible to identify the ambivalence of admiration for the Chinese and Indian worker, yet also the threat that they pose … to admire them yet see them as a threat, perpetuates and feeds the paranoia of those in the West about the Other.…”

“…Postcolonial analyses of organizations may be strengthened further by more empirical studies of people's lived experiences. Recent work has begun to address this point, such as the contributions in the 2011 postcolonial Special Issue of Organization, as discussed by Mir and Mir (2013): 'The [2011] issue went beyond a mere accounting of postcoloniality into a pushing of its boundaries, challenging postcolonial theorists of organizational studies to avoid the traps of empty theorizing that remained unconnected to lived organizational experience ' (2013: 97).…”