ABSTRACT
In 1997 Diana Wong-MingJi and Ali Mir wrote a chapter called ‘How International Is International Management’ (as other chapters in this volume, e.g., Alcadipani’s Chapter 5, have pointed out). In it they surveyed every article in the leading management journals on international management (IM). They tabulated the origins of the research (by institutional affi liation of authors) and the countries that the research was about. Conversely, they also tabulated those countries which, by affi liation of author, had not contributed to the international management literature, and which were not represented in it as research topics. They found the research
is predominantly conducted by scholars from the United States and a small number of western European countries . . . that IM research focuses on generalized and deterritorialized concepts or on matters related to the United States, Western Europe and Japan; [and] IM research draws wholly from sources published in the United States. (1997, 360)
In other words-and they name the countries-IM, as represented in its mainstream management literature, excludes the variously named Third World, South and/or developing countries (see also Jack et al. 2008; the Introduction and Chapter 3 in relation to similar exclusions in international relations). I would add here that their status as such is sustained, even created, by processes of exclusion like this-and inclusions in other, ‘more appropriate’ disciplinary texts.
