This paper discusses the current state of Organization Studies in Latin America, disclosing the epistemic coloniality that prevails in the region. Adopting an approach based on the recognition of the relevance of the geopolitical space as place of enunciation, the paper sustains the relevance of the ‘outside’ and ‘otherness’ to understand organizational realities in America Latina. The argument is developed in three sections. The first section establishes the main characteristic of the development of Organization Studies in Latin America as its tendency towards falsification and imitation of the knowledge generated in the Centre. The second section recognizes the role played by the term ‘organization’ as an artifice that facilitates the comparison of different realities through their structural variables, but also the inability of this term to recognize any reality that escapes instrumental rationality and the logic of the market. It also articulates the increasing importance of such a concept in the context of neo-liberalism. The third section concludes by renewing the urgency of appreciating the organizational problems of Latin America from the outside by proposing a preliminary research agenda built from original approaches that recognize otherness.

Abstract. The paper discusses three related issues that have a growing importance in the light of current developments in the contemporary

This paper examines ethics in organizations in relation to the subjectivity of managers. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault we seek to theorize ethics in terms of the meaning of being a manager who is an active ethical subject. Such a manager is so in relation to the organizational structures and norms that govern the conduct of ethics. Our approach locates ethics in the relation between individual morality and organizationally prescribed principles assumed to guide personal action. In this way we see ethics as a practice that is powerfully intertwined in an individual's freedom to make choices about what to do and who to be, and the organizational context in which those choices are situated, framed and governed.

PurposeThis paper aims to problematize the lack of different worldviews on international management (IM), and the virtual silence in Latin America regarding this field within the context of the ongoing crisis of neoliberal policies and discourse.Design/methodology/approachThis paper embraces a decolonial Latin American perspective based on developments in international relations (IR). A major reason for this dialogue is that critical debates within IR have been overlooked by both mainstream and critical literature on management, despite the intrinsic relation between decolonial arguments and IR and the increasing importance of management, and IM, within the realm of international relations to both “centers” and “peripheries”.FindingsThe interdisciplinary dialogue put forward in this paper goes beyond those borders established by the “center” and imposed on subalterns. Accordingly then, this might be taken as a particular way of putting into practice a decolonial Latin American perspective. It aims to go beyond some “universal” standpoint as the IR literature shows that the universal standpoint in relation to the “peripheries” tends to be mobilized by the “centers”. It is understood that the construction of a critical Latin American perspective is a way of creating better conditions for “cross‐cultural encounters” not only in global terms, but also within Latin America.Practical implicationsRethinking IM through a critical perspective inspired by IR has implications for teaching, research and other types of practice in both IM and IR in Latin America.Originality/valueThe paper aims to foster a Latin American perspective rather than a general perspective. Instead of merely disengaging the “center”, the paper embraces, from a critical position inspired by IR, the current argument in US literature that the core of IM comprises a strong commitment to cross‐cultural issues, diversity, and eclecticism.

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