Purpose This paper aims to investigate the discursive ways in which racialization affects the integration process of immigrants in present-day Canada. By drawing on a historical analysis, this paper shows how race continues to be impacted by colonial principles implemented throughout the colonization process and during the formation stages of Canada as a nation. This paper contributes to management and organizational studies by shedding light on the taken-for-granted nature of discursive practices in organizations through problematizing contemporary societal and political engagements with “race”. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on critical diversity studies as theoretical framework to problematize a one-dimensional approach to race and diversity. Further, it applies the Foucauldian historical method (Foucault, 1981) to trace the construction of “race” over time and to show its impact on present-day discursive practices. Findings Through a discursive review of Canada’s past, this paper shows how seemingly non-discriminatory race-related concepts and policies such as “visible minority” contribute to the marginalization of non-white individuals, racializing them. Multiculturalism and neoliberal globalization are identified as further mechanisms in such a racialization process. Originality/value This paper illustrates the importance of a historical contextualization to shed light on present workplace discrimination and challenges unproblematic approaches to workplace diversity.

While sustainability has attracted the attention of managers and academicians for over two decades, the macro-level indicators of sustainability are not moving in the right direction. Climate change continues to be an existential threat for humanity and other indicators of sustainability do not fare much better. The logic of the business case and the associated framing of tension between financial outcomes and sustainability have generated a limited and inadequate response to the existential challenges before humanity today. In this essay, we analyze the evolution of sustainability in the business context and call for a recognition that social and environmental outcomes must supersede economic ones in corporate sustainability thinking. We call for a widening of the spatial, temporal, and moral lenses in the formulation and execution of business strategy to ensure that it is in alignment with the needs of current and future generations of humanity and proportionate to planetary conditions.

PurposeThis research attempts to make sense of the experiences of two academic women who become mothers.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is an autoethnography. Applying the autoethnographic method allows us to discuss cultural phenomena through personal reflections and experiences. Our autoethnographic reflections illustrate our struggles and attempts of resistance within discursive spaces where motherhood and our identity as academics intersect.FindingsOur personal experiences combined with theoretical elaborations illuminate how the role of the mother continues to be dominated by such gendered discursive practices that conflict with the work role. Once women become mothers, they are othered through societal and organizational practices because they constitute a visible deviation from the masculine norm in the organizational setting, academia included.Originality/valueThis paper explores how contemporary motherhood discourse(s)within academia and the wider society present competing truth claims, embedded in neoliberal and postfeminist cultural sensibility. Our autoethnographic reflections show our struggles and attempts of resistance within such discursive spaces.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to critically look at how immigrants to Canada are informed and educated about how to become productive members of society. The authors adopted a postcolonial framework to unveil the underlying assumptions embedded in the messages that are conveyed to “teach” and “prepare” immigrants for the Canadian workplace. In particular, the authors focus on non-white immigrants because they form the majority of immigrants to Canada and at the same time data show that they experience particular socio-economic obstacles in their settlement process that European immigrants did not. Design/methodology/approach The authors apply postcolonialism as the theoretical framework. This approach allows the authors to analyze the relationship between the local subject and the encounter with the non-local other, in this case the immigrant who is from a non-European background. The authors conduct a Foucauldian critical discourse analysis on selected texts that serve as information sources for immigrants. These texts include government documents, immigrant information brochures, and workplace information books and booklets. Findings The analysis shows ideological positions that reveal discursive messages representing the non-white immigrant in binary terms. Such immigrants are represented in opposing (and inferior) terms to the local (largely white) Canadian citizen. By adopting a postcolonial lens, the analysis shows that the messages to acculturate immigrants reveal assimilationist features. Research limitations/implications The authors acknowledge that the authors’ own personal socio-political, intellectual, and ideological locations influence the approach, logic, research process, and the interpretation of the findings. For future research, other textual sources should be analyzed with regard to the messages they convey to immigrants as a form of education to see what kind of acculturation is conveyed. Practical implications This paper sheds light on the necessity to develop policies that not only aim to acculturate immigrants using integration strategies but also to carefully communicate and educate newcomers through messages that that do not stem from colonial assumptions. Originality/value This research points out the taken-for granted and oftentimes invisible forms of discriminatory practices in the workplace that appear non-discriminatory on the surface but are rooted in colonial thinking. Consequently, the authors challenge “mainstream” management theories concerning diversity in the workplace by questioning the underlying messages portrayed to immigrants.

Purpose Drawing on a series of RAND interviews with Vietnamese prisoners during the Vietnam War, the paper aims to analyze the role of colonizer–colonized in the production of postcolonial representations (postcoloniality) and the role of the Western corporation in the processes of postcoloniality. Design/methodology/approach Selected RAND interviews are analyzed using a postcolonial lens and explored through the method of critical hermeneutics. Findings The analysis supports the contention that Western othering of Third World people is neither completely successful nor one-sided. It is argued that while the Western corporation is an important site for understanding hybridity and postcoloniality, analysis needs to go beyond focusing on the symbolic and the textual to take account of the material conditions in which interactions between colonizer–colonized occur. Finally, there is support for further study of the socio-political character of methods of research in the study of international business. Research limitations/implications The case suggests further study of colonizer–colonized interactions outside of the context of an on-going war, which may have heightened some forms of resistance and voice. Social implications The paper draws attention to the continuing problem of Western othering of formerly colonized people through military and commercial engagements that are framed by neo-colonial viewpoints embedded in theories of globalization and research methods. Originality/value The paper provides rare glimpses into interactions between colonizing and colonized people, and also the under-research study of the role of the Western corporation in the production of postcoloniality.