Negotiating rigor and quality in decolonizing management research

Abstract

Purpose This paper examines and problematizes the issue of assessing quality and establishing rigour in decolonizing management research. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a viewpoint essay, a decolonizing critique of decolonising management writing and reviewing practices drawing upon my lived experiences as a teacher, author, reviewer and editor doing this research. Findings The paper introduces the idea of writing as intersubjective co-creation with the author and imagined readers/reviewers, and reviewer and imagined authors coming together to produce a piece of writing. I identify four problems with treating decolonizing management research as a paradigm. I suggest that incommensurabilities are at the level of cosmologies and not at the level of paradigms in the political project of decolonizing management and suggest four solutions drawing upon de Sousa Santos' ecology of knowledges. Research limitations/implications This introduces the idea of co-creation of writing and draws attention to the role of the imagined reviewer and imagined author. It alerts us to be conscious of paradigm incommensurabilities problem. It suggests four ways of understanding quality in decolonizing management research. Practical implications It helps the authors and reviewers be somewhat more conscious in stating their assumptions during the review process. It thereby works towards reducing the Eurocentric bias in research publishing. Originality/value This paper discusses a hitherto ignored topic – assessing and establishing rigour and quality in decolonizing management research. Drawing upon the works of de Sousa Santos on Epistemologies of the South and Gayatri Spivak's catachrestic reading, I write in first person.