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Rethinking Hybridity in Postcolonial Contexts: What Changes and What Persists? The Tunisian case of Poulina's managers

Author

Listed:
  • Hèla Yousfi

    (DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Drawing on postcolonial studies of management, this article highlights the importance of adopting a contextualized approach to hybridization processes that, first, takes into account the importance of the historical and cultural contexts from which hybridity emerges and, second, helps to identify the elements that change as well as those that persist when western management practices are imported into developing countries. Using a discursive analysis, this article shows the ambivalent nature of the accounts given by managers (trained in western traditions) of the Tunisian company Poulina as they explain how they modernized their company through the implementation of a US management model. The managers' ambivalence takes on two distinct forms. First, while they seem to have internalized the rhetoric of modernization in insisting on how they used the US management model to overcome the 'dysfunctional' family-based organizational system, they simultaneously express resistance by detaching themselves from the French colonial organizational model. Second, when they describe the implementation of the US management practices and how workers resisted them, it seems that they have implicitly negotiated and reinterpreted these practices via a local cultural framework of meaning. Based on these findings, I argue that hybridity is best understood as an interweaving of two elements - the transformation of practices and cultural continuity - in which identity construction, local power dynamics and cultural frameworks of meaning jointly shape the hybridization process of management practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Hèla Yousfi, 2013. "Rethinking Hybridity in Postcolonial Contexts: What Changes and What Persists? The Tunisian case of Poulina's managers," Post-Print halshs-00917059, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00917059
    DOI: 10.1177/0170840613499751
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    Cited by:

    1. Lise Arena & Anthony Hussenot, 2021. "From Innovations at Work to Innovative Ways of Conceptualizing Organization: A Brief History of Organization Studies," Post-Print hal-03290300, HAL.
    2. Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee, 2022. "Decolonizing Management Theory: A Critical Perspective," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(4), pages 1074-1087, June.
    3. Sylvie Chevrier & Mary-Yoko Brannen & Carol D. Hansen, 2014. "Uses and Benefits of Qualitative Approaches to Culture in Intercultural Collaboration Research," Post-Print hal-01128194, HAL.
    4. Alawattage, Chandana & Fernando, Susith, 2017. "Postcoloniality in corporate social and environmental accountability," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-20.
    5. Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee, 2022. "Decolonizing Deliberative Democracy: Perspectives from Below," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(2), pages 283-299, November.

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