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Institutional voids and organization studies: Towards an epistemological rupture

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posted on 2019-01-21, 13:26 authored by Joel Bothello, Robert S. Nason, Gerhard SchnyderGerhard Schnyder
In this essay, we critique the usage of the term ‘institutional void’ to characterize nonWestern contexts in organizational studies. We explore how ‘conceptual stretching’ of institutional voids – specifically, the theoretical and geographic expansion of the concept – has led not only to poor construct clarity, but also pejorative labeling of non-Western countries. We argue that research using this term perpetuates an ethnocentric bias by deifying market development and overlooking the richness and power of informal and non-market institutions in shaping local economic activity. We call for an ‘epistemological rupture’ to decolonize organizational scholarship in non-Western settings and facilitate contextually grounded research approaches that allow for more indigenous theorization.

History

School

  • Loughborough University London

Published in

Organization Studies

Volume

40

Issue

10

Pages

1499 - 1512

Citation

BOTHELLO, J., NASON, R.S. and SCHNYDER, G., 2019. Institutional voids and organization studies: Towards an epistemological rupture. Organization Studies, 40 (10), pp.1499-1512.

Publisher

© The Authors. Published by SAGE Publications

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-11-11

Publication date

2019-01-31

Notes

This paper was published in the journal Organization Studies and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840618819037.

ISSN

0170-8406

Language

  • en

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