This article contributes a critical discussion of postcolonial theory. It opposes the binary nature of much contemporary discussion of the topic in theory and in organization and management theory in particular. We identify the challenges facing postcolonial theory, which we identify in epistemological terms. The dualism of “colonial” and “postcolonial” theory masks considerable diversity that the binary logic occludes. In place of this dualism, we introduce the notion of epistemological third spaces. As a theory of this third space, we introduce the indigenous theory of southern Africa, Ubuntu, discussing its interaction with more conventional Western management and organization theory. We also highlight a case in which the notion of epistemological third spaces would have been valuable had it been applied to the spread of the Nile River virus. We conclude the article with a discussion of the potential links between epistemological third spaces.

The paper contributes to literatures on settlements and institutional maintenance work. It does so by unpacking post-settlement legitimation efforts required to maintain contentious institutions between previously conflicting actors. Settlements often necessitate the maintenance of institutions from the past whose legitimacy is dubious for the new regime. We study the role played by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in re-legitimating and maintaining the institution of the armed forces in the transition from apartheid to democracy. Maintaining this legitimacy required collaboration between the incoming government as well as the apartheid era armed forces. We term these unexpected collaborative efforts “reluctant accommodation work”. Our findings show that the lines of allegiance may be more fluid than currently depicted in the literature. Actors that previously conflicted need to find an interest in collaborating in their efforts to shape central institutions. Second, we show that for settlements to shape the field, they need to agree on the terms of collaboration, what we term “passage points” as well as engage in public ceremonies to broadly legitimate the settlement and the institution it seeks to preserve.

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This paper contributes to the drive to decolonize management and organization knowledge by unpacking the role played by indigenous managerial elites in the global managerial colonization of the Global South. We focus on the narratives managerial elites construct to legitimate managerialism to a dissenting population. We conducted an ethnographic study of efforts by members of the city council of Yaoundé, in Cameroon to implement and legitimate a global managerial intervention. Our findings show that to successfully legitimate the imposition of managerialism to a dissenting populace, managerial elites construct hybrid narratives. These hybrid narratives are not ignorant of the local context and are particularly potent because of the manner in which they factor in some local concerns, making the managerialist intervention more palatable to locals and yet continuing to impose a foreign way of life.

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