Key Dialogue 2: Reorganising Access and Voice in Curricula and Business

Key Dialogue 2: Reorganising Access and Voice in Curricula and Business , (EEST 10.30-11.45, UTC+3)

In this keynote panel, following the theme of the conference "Re-imagine/re-organise/re-build!", we turn our focus to the knowledge production in and around the business school. Colonialism might seem a distant question for many especially in Northern Europe - yet in our teaching and research we reproduce anglophone readings of development and (colonial) histories, often in an uncritical manner. And at the same time Finnish companies are part of an ongoing global 'land rush' purchasing land in South America and Africa, for example in forestry of wood and fibre and/or for carbon sequestration, often situated in contexts with painful colonial pasts (and present). What colonial and neo-colonial dependencies are we reproducing and what would happen to business practice if we break with these dependencies and start 'decolonizing' our ways of knowing? To discuss these questions we are delighted to have prof. Stella Nkomo (University of Pretoria, South Africa ), prof. Juha Suoranta (Tampere University, Finland), and assistant professor Sergio Wanderley (Universidade do Grande Rio, Brazil). The panel facilitated by Associate professor Martin Fougère.

Speaker Bios

STELLA M. NKOMO. Stella is Professor at the Department of Human Resource Management at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her research has focused on diversity, social differences, and race and gender in organisations, particularly the exclusion of marginalized voices in management and organisation studies. She is the co-author of the critically acclaimed book, 'Our Separate Ways: Black and white women and the struggle for professional identity' (Harvard Business School Press). Stella’s current interests are in post-colonialism, racism, and anti-blackness. She is the founding president of the Africa Academy of Management and has received numerous awards for her scholarly contributions. She holds a PhD in Human Resource Management from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA from the University of Rhode Island.

JUHA SUORANTA. Juha is a Professor of Adult Education at Tampere University, Finland. His research interests are critical pedagogy, public sociology, radical adult education, and media education. He has worked as Visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and UCLA and as Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota. He has published over 30 books, including The Havoc of Capitalism (2010), Wikiworld (2010), Hidden in Plain Sight ('How I Sheltered a Refugee', 2011), Artistic Research Methodology (2014), Taisteleva tutkimus (‘Rebellious Research,’ 2014), C. Wright Millsin sosiologinen elämä (‘C. Wright Mills’s Sociological Life,’ 2017), and Paulo Freire- Sorrettujen pedagogi (‘Paulo Freire. A Pedagogue of the Oppressed,’ 2019).

SERGIO WANDERLEY. Sergio is assistant professor at the Graduate Management Program at Unigranrio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His main research interest are the history of management learning and education, and onto-epistemological approaches in organization studies. Sergio is co-author of the recent article “Re-Centering the Global South in the Making of Business School Histories: Dependency Ambiguity in Action” in Academy of Management Learning & Education, and he is a track leader in Management & Organizational History at the EnAnpad conference. He holds a PhD in Management from Ebape-FGV. Before moving to academia, Sergio pursued an extensive executive career in soft commodities business and has served as country manager in Brazil for a British multinational company.