CANCELLED SIBS Research Community Seminar – Professor Mehdi Boussebaa

TO BE RESCHEDULED

Title: Transnational management consulting firms as agents of globalisation: a critical review

Date: 24 April 2024

Time: 16:00-17:00

Location: NUBS.3.15

If you would like to attend, please register using the following link:

Transnational management consulting firms as agents of globalisation: a critical review

Speaker:  Professor Mehdi Boussebaa

Mehdi Boussebaa is Professor of Management (International Business) at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, UK. His research spans the fields of international business and organisation studies and is also informed by postcolonial thought and social science theories of globalisation. It is mainly concerned with the politics of corporate globalisation and management knowledge production, with a specialist focus on professional service firms (especially management consultancies). In recent years, Mehdi has also been active in the ‘decolonising the business school’ movement through writing, workshops and symposia. He has published in journals such as Human Relations, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business and Organization Studies. He serves on the editorial review boards of several major management journals and is also CoEditor-in-Chief of Critical Perspectives on International Business.
Abstract:

Major transnational management consulting firms are often said to play a central role in globalisation. Yet, understanding of the ways in which these firms operate as agents of globalisation remains limited and undertheorized. In this talk, I will present an ongoing critical review of research explicitly or implicitly addressing the issue. Bringing together disparate bodies of literature, including practitioner writings, I will outline three different perspectives on management consultancies as agents of globalisation that can help to advance understanding of the topic: (1) consultancies as diffusers of universalistic business knowledge, (2) consultancies as corporate globalisers and (3) consultancies as neo-colonial actors. I will also argue that the bulk of relevant academic research has adopted the first perspective, and that future research would do well to consider the second and, perhaps more importantly, the third.