Indigenous Organization Studies

Indigenous Organization Studies Exploring Management, Business and Community

Tyron Rakeiora Love

Indigenous Organization Studies

Tyron Rakeiora Love

Indigenous Organization Studies Exploring Management, Business and Community

Tyron Rakeiora Love UC Business School University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand

ISBN 978-3-030-01502-2    ISBN 978-3-030-01503-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01503-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018961564 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Ngātata Love

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my family. My grandfather, Ngātata Love, was perhaps the first indigenous professor in business in Aotearoa New Zealand. He was a great storyteller and without him this book would not have been written. I want to  thank Professor C.  Michael Hall from the University of Canterbury, who helped with the crafting of the final version of the book, as well as Jody for her diligence in proofreading. As Professor of Māori Research at the University of Canterbury, Professor Angus Macfarlane remains one of the most important people in indigenous education. I thank him for his continued support and wisdom. I also thank my doctoral researchers and colleagues in the business school at the University of Canterbury for their continued friendship and scholarship. Tyron Rakeiora Love

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Warning Readers should be aware that this book includes names of deceased people that may cause distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other indigenous peoples.

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Contents

1 Contemporary Indigenous Organization Studies 1 2 Theorizing and Its Importance in Indigenous Organization Research15 3 Methodological Guidelines in Indigenous Organization Research31 4 People, Place, and Time in the Study of Indigenous Organization47 5 The Possibilities for Indigenous Organization Studies59 Index73

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CHAPTER 1

Contemporary Indigenous Organization Studies

Abstract  There is a rich, powerful, and diverse pool of research emerging from university business schools in colonial states looking into indigenous people at work, companies and their impacts on indigenous communities, the structure of tribal entities, indigenous management, indigenous business enterprises, indigenous governance, indigenous leadership, and so on. Drawing from this work, along with insights from the expressive voices of indigenous studies researchers outside business schools and the powerful writings of critical organization studies scholars challenging their mainstream peers, this chapter, in the context of this short book, proposes a new field of research: indigenous organization studies. The purpose of this is to explore indigenous peoples at the centre and at the periphery of managing and organizing and to further consider what workplaces and communities might look like when their organizing principles are based on indigenous knowledges and ways of doing things. Keywords  Indigenous organization studies • Management • Managing • Organization • Organizing • Communities • Business • Entrepreneurship • Leadership • Critical management studies • Organization studies • Indigenous studies • Identity

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Introduction Organizations have been, and continue to be, forces of domination and suppression for indigenous peoples as well as for many other minority peoples around the world. For a considerable period of time colonizers and governments have worked in an orderly fashion to suppress indigenous movements and ways of knowing, to replace people and ideas in coordinated and highly organized ways. But the formation of organizations has also been an important part of indigenous peoples’ collective efforts in the struggle for the recognition of rights through the mobilization of people both within and between nation states (Smith, 1999, 2012). Efforts have led to social movements aimed at bringing about essential change for indigenous and other minority peoples in the pursuit of empowerment and emancipation (Kymlicka, 2014). Research too has both a problematic and liberating past and present for indigenous peoples and communities. Speaking about research at a recent forum, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2016) made the biting comment that for indigenous peoples, “research penetrates their bodies and their emotions and their thoughts and … it hurts … research hurts”. For Alaskan Natives, researchers themselves have been likened to mosquitos: “they suck your blood and leave” (Cochran et  al., 2008, p.  22). Yet when done ‘right’, research driven by indigenous people and communities can be a powerful endeavour. That’s probably because indigenous research, and the harnessing of knowledges, “are as old as the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the seas, and the deserts and the lakes that indigenous people bind themselves to as their places of belonging” (Cram, Chilisa, & Mertens, 2013, p. 11). Much like organizations, research projects can be offensive and damaging or they can be natural and organic. Studies on indigenous business, entrepreneurship, leadership, and management—by way of business school research—have offered some interesting and valuable insights over the past few decades (see e.g. Cahn, 2008; Foley, 2005; Haar, Roche, & Brougham, 2018; Henry, Newth, & Spiller, 2017; Julien, Somerville, & Brant, 2017; Peredo, Anderson, Galbraith, Honig, & Dana, 2004; Prendergast-Tarena, 2015; Spiller, Erakovic, Henare, & Pio, 2011). Combined with the inspiring work emerging from indigenous studies (IS) and the stimulating writings of critical management studies (CMS) and organization studies (OS) scholars, I propose a new field of research: indigenous organization studies. The intention with this book is to say some things about it. That is, to say

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something about the study of organizations and organizing insofar as they have relevance for indigenous peoples and their communities. The book doesn’t speak on behalf of indigenous peoples; it’s far more abstract than that. It’s about the kind of study or research that is done in university business schools. It considers indigenous people at the centre and at the periphery of managing and organizing, the ongoing life and ‘functioning’ of organizations and the indigenous people within and around them, and what workplaces and communities might look like when their organizing principles are based on indigenous knowledges and ways of doing things. It also encourages conversations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and researchers. Perhaps ironically, this book is wary of research and scholarship, particularly that research fuelled by many governments, universities, and business schools. As I have already canvassed, indigenous scholars and communities have drawn our attention to the fact that ‘research’ has had a bad reputation among indigenous communities for some time now (Smith, 1999, 2012). Readers of this text should not see it as a ‘license to operate’ or as a ‘right to access’ indigenous communities and peoples. What makes research so appalling at times is when indigenous peoples and communities are treated as commodities in the production of knowledge. From the outset, this text is a warning that any predetermined research agendas driven by business schools—without critical engagements with indigenous peoples and communities—are likely to be met with resistance and disdain. There may be several reasons why you are reading this book and so what follows is a section on who it is for. Given the important role identity plays in indigenous research, two further sections consider identity in doing research as well as the role of the researcher in doing those studies. Towards the end of the chapter the intersection between indigenous and organization studies is touched on to canvas issues and opportunities addressed in the remainder of the text. Finally, as could be expected, there is a conclusion to the chapter.

Who this Book is for If you are an indigenous person with a passion for indigenous knowledges and peoples and you want to research the kinds of things university business schools study, then this book is definitely for you. Māori peoples (Aotearoa New Zealand); Pacific Peoples (Pacific Islands); First Nations,

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Métis, and Inuit peoples (Canada); Native American peoples (USA); and Aboriginal peoples (Australia) are likely to find it most useful. Saami peoples (Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia) and indigenous peoples from the African and Asian continents may also be interested in the book’s content. Some of the writing in this text may also have relevance for the Mapuche peoples (Chile), the Huichol or Wixáritari peoples (Mexico), and the Kichwa/Quichua/Quechua peoples (Ecuador) as their valuable stories, research discourses, and knowledges are part of the fabric of this book. This book is for researchers who wish to prioritize indigenous peoples in their studies of organizations and organizing whether they identify as an indigenous person or not. As such, it is a text for organization researchers who are committed to particular research processes so long as those processes are paired with the aspirations of indigenous peoples and grounded in the research discourses of indigenous scholars who have written—often quite critically—about the role organization(s) and research(ers) have played in crafting knowledges and coming up with solutions to everyday problems or opportunities for self-determination. Parts of this text may be useful in research methods courses run in business schools in colonial and postcolonial countries and territories because the text maintains a healthy-ish respect for established organization and management theories and processes, which often dominate the conversations, whilst tempering those conversations in the pursuit of greater plurality, teasing out their relevance for indigenous organization studies. Academic deans and managers of business and management schools will also find the book useful. In addition, this book is for those who are concerned that indigenous and critical knowledges are not making their way into business school teaching and research curricula. The book is also relevant for managers, advisors, consultants, and practitioners outside academic institutions. Parts of it will be appropriate for those people who may not be part of any formal research institution but have an interest in the business, management, and entrepreneurial practices of organizations and people and whose activities are loosely or closely intertwined with the interests of indigenous peoples. Increasingly, in colonial societies, organizations are employing indigenous peoples as cultural advisors and consultants. Whilst this text deals with research and theory building processes—that might appear to be academic in nature—it does so only insofar as those processes have relevance for practices and which

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seek to uncover the complexity of everyday work operations, solving problems and taking advantage of opportunities. There may be some merit in articulating a hierarchy of research audiences for this text; business schools often maintain the difference between students, junior faculty, senior faculty, and professors. But research hierarchies in business schools have a lot to answer for. These hierarchies have usually determined, either explicitly or implicitly, that particular groups of people are less capable of accomplishing certain tasks. It’s a way of maintaining dependence upon academic systems that I don’t have much time for: ‘student-researchers’ and ‘faculty-researchers’ are researchers, and when it comes to indigenous organization studies, there’s little need to make these kinds of institutional distinctions. We will avoid them as much as possible in this text.

Identity and Doing Research The question of who should study organizations and processes of organizing has a relatively straightforward answer: anyone. But who should study indigenous organizations and processes of organizing? The answer to this question is not so clear. Some researchers in business schools would have reservations about entering indigenous organizations or interviewing indigenous workers as non-indigenous researchers. Such hesitation is warranted given “research has been a source of distress for indigenous people” (Cochran et al., 2008, p. 22). Indigenous researchers working outside of their traditional homelands may also be anxious about their potential intrusion on indigenous peoples, organizations, and communities other than their own. So, who should study indigenous organizations and processes of organizing? This question is a common concern among researchers in business schools when indigenous people are involved. It is also a source of apprehension for researchers whose role it is to provide practical solutions to practical problems when indigenous organizations and workers are involved. Some methodologists look to researchers’ identity for guidance: how researchers identify as indigenous and/or non-indigenous. Some argue that only indigenous people should do indigenous research. I have heard this point made in conversation and some write about it (see Henry et al., 2017; Irwin, 1994). Others suggest there is space for non-­indigenous researchers but only if they have indigenous involvement to guide their

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projects or investigations (e.g. an indigenous advisory or consultative group) (see Smith, 1999, 2012). The measurement of indigenous identity has a complex and, in many ways, a problematic history tied up in problematic systems of human classification which are bound politically and philosophically. Some societies and states measure the amount of blood you have, others rely on self-­ identification, and still others are more interested in historical understandings involving ethnicity and race, social marginalization, the impact of imperialism and colonization, and/or connections to land, and place (Daes, 2000). Many ways of measuring indigenous identities are misguided and intrusive, and as such, the ways indigenous identities are crafted and negotiated deserve further attention. In Aotearoa New Zealand (where I come from), indigenous Māori and non-indigenous Pākehā have intermarried, and it is the prevailing understanding that if you are descended from an indigenous Māori ancestor or ancestors (as I am), then you are an indigenous Māori person (Smith, 2013). Although some are criticized for not being Māori enough, such an assessment is the misguided product of colonization. Of course, few university and business school researchers are clear in their publications about where they come from (Cram et al., 2013). Furthermore, some indigenous peoples may not adopt indigenous research approaches, focus their research on indigenous peoples, or choose to be known as indigenous researchers and there are no doubt multiple and seriously legitimate reasons for this. Human identities are complex, and for the indigenous organization researcher, reducing people to categories of actors and attaching numerical values to them in ways which make broad sweeping cultural generalizations is far from the kind of research advocated for here.

The Role of the Researcher Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, 2012) suggests research has been something ‘done to’ indigenous peoples for the purposes of colonization whilst at the same time denying indigenous peoples their own legitimacy and self-­ determination in the knowledge space. Inspired by the writings of Edward Said (1978), and in particular his work on Orientalism, Smith (1999) creates two different researching peoples to help make sense of the research space: ‘researchers’ and ‘the researched’. ‘Researchers’ are “the human carriers of research” (Smith, 1999, p. 3). These people are the measurers, the comparers, and the extractors of knowledge. The second type are ‘the

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researched’. From their outlook, research is offensive, breeds distrust, and suppresses knowledge. Smith’s (1999, 2012) point is commanding and the lessons are transferable to the kind of research that concerns us in this book. Whether you see yourself as an indigenous researcher, a non-­ indigenous researcher, or a researcher who is both indigenous and non-­ indigenous (or perhaps you reject the binary altogether but see the ‘indigenous’ space as a useful place to start), you have a responsibility to consider the role organizations and organizing play in building strong societies. In other words, your research can become respectful, develop trust, and encourage the sharing of knowledge. If you are someone interested in studying indigenous organizations and forms of organizing, then this book is about you in your role as a researcher, as an inquirer. It is not about the ‘personal you’. It is more occupational than that. It is about the ‘person’ you embrace or become when you formally pursue research processes and activities and as such it’s about the ‘researching you’ (see Allan, 2006). What comes with this label is a whole history of human activities which, for better or worse, have had their part in shaping people and societies for a considerable period of time. As such, choosing to become a researcher is an active subscription to a past and a research field which has been both credited and blamed for the ways we live and interact (see Allan, 2006; Grey, 2005) as indigenous peoples and non-indigenous peoples. So what might that role look like? There is no doubt that doing indigenous organization research is about accepting an ongoing accountability of some kind. You can start a research project and get some agreement with participants and communities but then those people want to know about the research and they’ll ask questions; “they’re gonna be big questions, they’re gonna start with ‘Who are you?’, ‘Who’s this for?’, ‘Why you?’, ‘What are you gonna do about it or what are you gonna do with it?’, ‘Why are you doing it this way?’” (Smith, 2013). And just because someone may be an ‘insider’ (of the same ethnic or cultural identity) does not mean they have unlimited and unrestricted access to those people and knowledges (Geleta, 2014). The role of the researcher and what they are prepared to do are fundamental to the likely ‘success’ of any research project. Researchers whose purposes are honourable and whose practices seek to do right by indigenous people are likely to be important in determining the value of a research project. Ethicists and ethics committees maintain that people have ethical responsibilities as researchers to cause no harm, “but even well-­intentioned research has been a source of distress for indigenous people because of its

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implications, methods, and lack of responsiveness to the community and its concerns” (Cochran et al., 2008, p. 22). Community-based participatory and action research methodologies call for indigenous people to be part of, if not leaders of, research teams in order to build culturally responsive ways of researching and we’ve seen their popularity flourish of late. Yet, no matter how well intentioned we may be, or hope to be, we are mostly ignorant when we walk into communities we don’t belong to and try to engage with people we don’t know that well (Dell, 2017). Some researchers have a preference for scrutinizing the likely consequences resulting from the researcher’s activities. If indigenous people do not benefit, then there is little point carrying out indigenous-focussed research (Walker, Eketone, & Gibbs, 2006). University ethics committees try to keep their researchers honourable in the pursuit of knowledge. But they often get quite defensive when indigenous communities are involved. Predicting the results or outcomes of a research project is difficult. It is probably the reason why ‘quantitative’ and statistical-type research is favoured over ‘qualitative’ research. But quantitative research is often too simplistic and reduces people to products and outcomes—much like when doing identity work—and they don’t engage with people that much. On the other hand, qualitative research can be overly intrusive. Furthermore, the binary opposites can be overly simplistic and unhelpful. Chapter 3 takes this conversation further.

Indigenous and Organization Studies Western science says that the natural and social sciences have different things to achieve. The division is most obvious at university or college where degree programmes are run by schools that separate the sciences out into biology, physics, and chemistry, on the one hand, and arts, sociology, and business, on the other. Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing are not so quick to make the distinction; everything in the world is essentially combined, living together, and interconnected. Indigenous knowledges are about an enduring connection of people with land and other things all of which are animate (living, alive, conscious). To manage the lands and the environments in which they live and depend, traditional indigenous communities rely heavily on the guidance of local and evolved ancestral knowledges. For the Cree of James Bay in Canada, traditional ecological knowledges have been built over a considerable period of time and passed on from generation to generation to navigate the intricate relationships amongst

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objects which are all animate and living (Whiteman, 2004). For Māori people in New Zealand, identity and culture are principally built on the mutual relationships formed with “whanau [extended family] and whenua [land/place]” (Reid, Varona, Fisher, & Smith, 2016, p. 32), a philosophy which places emphasis on “individuals with family, younger generations with older generations, physical health with mental health, and well-being with natural and built environments” (Durie, 2017, p. 22). As Leroy Little Bear (2000, p. x) writes, “the Native American paradigm is comprised of and includes ideas of constant motion and flux, existence consisting of energy waves, interrelationships, all things being animate, space/place, renewal, and all things being imbued with spirit.” This paradigm has important relevance for the ways indigenous peoples see the world and engage in knowledge work. For Gregory Cajete, Native science is located in human participations with nature whereby “the dynamics of this participation are founded on an ancient human covenant with plants, animals, the forces of the earth, and the universe” (Cajete, 2000, p. 5). So, how are these knowledges integrated into the teaching and research curricula of business schools? Anyone who has picked up a management-related textbook as part of a business degree programme will know that Native/indigenous knowledges don’t appear to be the foundation for modern-day forms of operating and organizing. One explanation for their omission is that the world has become overly consumed with ideas of global progress, international markets, and foreign trade to be bothered with local knowledges, Native ways of doing things, and traditional techniques for the preservation of resources and livelihood. Another account is that business school educators have mostly failed to challenge the primacy of ‘classical’ organization and management theorists (e.g. Frederick Winslow Taylor, Max Weber, Henri Fayol, Mary Parker Follett). Whatever the reasons, indigenous knowledges are blatantly omitted and concealed in the narratives of authors who continue to privilege Western forms of business knowledge. This book seeks to do something about that. It also sets out to challenge ‘quantitative’ forms of researching. Attempts by researchers to quantify human, spiritual, and natural things have led to abstract ways of dealing with intimate and local problems. Statistical measurements and social indicators have been particularly damaging, maintaining indigenous peoples and associated social problems as the ills of ‘postcolonial’ societies; people to be helped, social issues to be fixed, problems to be solved, policies to be created in aid, and so on

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(see Crane, 1999; Smith, 1999, 2012). The classical theorists built models and created rules predicated on the assumption that objective factors (e.g. pay, reward, and promotion) were likely to play a significant role in the organization and management of workers from which the quantitative study of managing has emerged. For them, efficiency and effectiveness came down to the operation and, more crudely, the ‘manipulation’ of labour. Quantitative forms of managerial practice and research are under the spotlight here. The legitimacy of indigenous organization research is firmly grounded in indigenous knowledges and processes. In addition, it draws some inspiration from critical organizational scholarship (e.g. Boje, 2019; Clegg, 1990; Clegg & Hardy, 1999; Crane, 1999; Deetz, 1996; Grey, 2005). Like contemporary indigenous thinkers, critical organization theorists have challenged conventional ways of analysing and looking at their subjects of study including organizations and ways of organizing. If indigenous knowledges are integrative and embrace the interconnected nature of indigenous peoples with non-indigenous peoples as well as with the world, the universe, and all things, what do organizations and forms of organizing, as well as studying them, look like? Chapters 2 and 3 consider this question in further detail.

Conclusion When we search for books and articles on ‘colonization’ or ‘indigenous ways of knowing’ from our respective jurisdictions (e.g. New Zealand or Africa or Australia or Canada or America), the results of the searches are anything but open or value-free. Search engines (like Google) know our past searches and give us what they think we want. That is, my search from my computer is likely to reveal a different set of findings to that of another researcher with their history different to mine. As such, this book is the product of the ‘particular’, driven by technology and scrutinized by me producing an output which is distinctive and local. I try to incorporate a variety of indigenous knowledges in this text but the book is grounded in a history of reading and searching which is distinctively Aotearoa New Zealand in nature. As such, Māori knowledges (as told mostly by researchers) and ways of doing things are privileged in this book. I do not apologize for that. Much will be missed. And, as I have mentioned, I do not intend to speak for, or on behalf of, any indigenous peoples, communities, or groups. There is no single ‘right way’ to do

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research on the kinds of things discussed in this book. The book does not present a finite set of steps for creating and producing good research. The aim is more modest than that. The aim is to say some things which might be useful for new indigenous organization researchers. People have more or less useful things to say. In this text I focus on things I think may be more valuable for researchers starting to think about the relevance of organizations and ways of organizing for indigenous peoples. I prefer to mention researchers’ names in full where possible and any key publications in-text. For instance, as you have seen, I frequently refer to Linda Tuhiwai Smith and her 1999 and 2012 books, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, given her significant contribution to the field through this book. Certainly, citations are used (e.g. Smith, 1999), but texts are written by people and it is those people who deserve the acknowledgement, not the dated manuscript itself.

References Allan, K. (2006). Contemporary social and sociological theory: Visualizing social worlds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Boje, D.  M. (2019). Organizational research methods: Storytelling in action. Abingdon: Routledge. Cahn, M. (2008). Indigenous entrepreneurship, culture and microenterprise in the Pacific Islands: Case studies from Samoa. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development: An International Journal, 20(1), 1–18. Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers. Clegg, S. R. (1990). Modern organizations: Organisation studies in the postmodern world. London, UK: Sage. Clegg, S. R., & Hardy, C. (1999). Introduction to studying organization. In S. R. Clegg & C. Hardy (Eds.), Studying organization: Theory and method. London, UK: Sage. Cochran, P. A. L., Marshall, C. A., Garcia-Downing, C., Kendall, E., Cook, D., McCubbin, L., et  al. (2008). Indigenous ways of knowing: Implications for participatory research and community. American Journal of Public Health, 8(1), 22–27. Cram, F., Chilisa, B., & Mertens, D. (2013). The journey begins. In D.  M. Mertens, F. Cram, & B. Chilisa (Eds.), Indigenous pathways into social research: Voices of a new generation (pp. 11–40). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Crane, A. (1999). Are you ethical? Please tick yes or no. On researching ethics in business organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 20(3), 237–248.

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Daes, E.-I. A. (2000). Protecting knowledge: Traditional resource rights in the new millennium. Defining Indigenous Peoples’ Heritage Conference, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Vancouver, February 23–26. Deetz, S. (1996). Crossroads—Describing differences in approaches to organization science: Rethinking Burrell and Morgan and their legacy. Organization Science, 7(2), 191–207. Dell, K.  M. (2017). Te Hokinga ki te Ū kaipō : Disrupted Māori Management Theory: Harmonising Whānau Conflict in the Māori Land Trust. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. Durie, M. (2017). Kaupapa Māori: Indigenizing New Zealand. In A.  Jones & T.  K. Hoskins (Eds.), Critical conversations in Kaupapa Māori (pp.  13–21). Wellington, New Zealand: Huia Publishers Ltd. Foley, D. (2005). Understanding indigenous entrepreneurship. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Geleta, E. B. (2014). The politics of identity and methodology in African development ethnography. Qualitative Research, 14(1), 131–146. Grey, C. (2005). A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about studying organizations. London, UK: Sage. Haar, J., Roche, M., & Brougham, D. (2018). Indigenous insights into ethical leadership: A study of Māori leaders. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10551-018-3869-3 Henry, E., Newth, J., & Spiller, C. (2017). Emancipatory indigenous social innovation: Shifting power through culture and technology. Journal of Management & Organization, 23(6), 786–802. Irwin, K. (1994). Māori research methods and processes: An exploration. Sites Journal, 28, 25–43. Julien, M., Somerville, K., & Brant, J. (2017). Indigenous perspectives on work-­ life enrichment and conflict in Canada. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 36(2), 165–181. Kymlicka, W. (2014, November 25). Multiculturalism’s moral impulse [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W689QD849Y Leroy Little Bear, J.  D. (2000). Foreword. In G.  Cajete (Ed.), Native science: Natural laws of interdependence (pp. ix–xii). Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers. Peredo, A. M., Anderson, R. B., Galbraith, C. S., Honig, B., & Dana, L. P. (2004). Towards a theory of indigenous entrepreneurship. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 1(1/2), 1–20. Prendergast-Tarena, E. (2015). Indigenising the corporation. Indigenous organisation design: An analysis of their design, features, and the influence of indigenous cultural values. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

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Reid, J., Varona, G., Fisher, M., & Smith, C. (2016). Understanding Māori ‘lived’ culture to determine cultural connectedness and wellbeing. Journal of Population Research, 33(1), 31–49. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London, UK: Vintage Books. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonising methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London, UK: Zed Books. Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonising methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). London, UK: Zed Books. Smith, L.  T. (2013, April 29). INQ13 | Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Eve Tuck— “Decolonizing Methodologies” [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIZXQC27tvg&t=2070s Smith, L. T. (2016, November 15). Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith [Video file]. Retrieved from http://mediacentre.maramatanga.ac.nz/content/professorlinda-tuhiwai-smith Spiller, C., Erakovic, L., Henare, M., & Pio, E. (2011). Relational well-being and wealth: Māori business and an ethic of care. Journal of Business Ethics, 98, 153–169. Walker, S., Eketone, A., & Gibbs, A. (2006). An exploration of Kaupapa Māori research, its principles, processes and applications. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 9(4), 331–344. Whiteman, G. (2004). The impact of economic development in James Bay, Canada: The Cree Tallymen speak out. Organization & Environment, 17(4), 425–448.

CHAPTER 2

Theorizing and Its Importance in Indigenous Organization Research

Abstract  With empirical research on indigenous business, entrepreneurship, leadership, and management flourishing, there is an increasing need for theorizations to integrate and weave together the seemingly disparate, yet increasingly complex, elements of indigenous organizations and organizing. To address the need, this chapter considers the importance of theorizing to indigenous organization studies and further assesses the value of discourse and narrative/story to that theorizing. Ideas and concepts drawn from these fields are developed in ways which encourage new researchers to consider theorizing in their research strategy and the role theorizing can play in the construction of indigenous organization knowledges. Keywords  Indigenous organization studies • Management • Managing • Entrepreneurship • Leadership • Organization • Organizing • Communities • Business • Theorizing • Theory • Discourse • Narrative • Story

Introduction If you are interested in pursuing indigenous organization studies as a field of inquiry, you must wrestle with how little we know about the relevance of business, entrepreneurship, leadership, and management for indigenous peoples and their communities, as well with the prejudices, cultural

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preferences, and power dynamics at play that may cause us to think we know more than we do or which force us to use irrelevant or unsuitable research methods for the research objectives we set ourselves as students of indigenous organization. There is no certainty about what indigenous organization is or should be. There are simply more or less useful investigations and conversations which reflect on, contribute to, ignore, and perhaps even discount previous research work. Conversations evolve through emergent vocabularies which seek to elaborate on and discipline researchers’ imaginations, creating the permeable boundaries for what may or may not be possible (see Clegg & Hardy, 1999). The measure of good writing and research, I will try to maintain in this book, is whether writers and researchers have useful and interesting things to say (see Deetz, 1996) when it comes to the study of indigenous organization. I will argue in this chapter, and throughout this book, that the central element behind doing good indigenous organization research is theorizing and that two types of language work in particular—discourses and narratives/stories—are useful components in the process of theorizing. I hope that by discussing them I can draw your attention to their value for studying and writing about the kinds of things that interest us here. Discourse, narrative/story, and theory are of course broad terms or constructs and many researchers and writers have divergent views about them and their role in research and theorizing.

The Value of Discourse The aim of this book is to say something about the study of organizations and organizing insofar as they have relevance for indigenous peoples and their communities. A useful place to start is to consider the role language plays in research processes, and I am an advocate for a particular type of language form: discourse. Influential indigenous researchers such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, 2012) and Cora Voyageur (2015) frequently use the term discourse to help explain the language structures at play ­(academic discourses, scientific discourses, media discourses, colonial discourses, indigenous discourses) which have power and an active and constructive effect on indigenous peoples. Part of understanding language through a discursive lens is to understand how to deconstruct and be critical of them and their use (see Foucault, 1977).

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A discourse is a piece of language (written, verbal, visual) which tells us about something or some phenomenon (e.g. the successes of a group of indigenous people) but also tries to convince of that something (e.g. that a group of indigenous people are successful). That is, discourses have a constructive effect—they both represent and construct things (Hardy & Maguire, 2016). So, people who believe that we live in a discursive world believe that language not only mirrors a lived and perceived world, it also seeks to create and maintain that world as well as challenge and change that world. Discursive language does not “name objects in the world; it is core to the process of constituting objects” (Deetz, 1996, p. 192). Given this line of thought, our understanding of indigenous organizations, management, entrepreneurship, decision-making, and so on is critically and reflexively formed by the discourses of practitioners, writers, researchers, and other commentators who have chosen to say and write things about them. We do not simply adopt their ideas but we engage critically with them, at times rejecting them and so on. Some examples of the many texts which in part construct indigenous organization include academic articles like ‘Centralized Decentralization for Tribal Business Development’ (Barr & Reid, 2014), annual reports such as Indigenous Business Australia Annual Report 2016–2017 (Indigenous Business Australia, 2017), media reports like Boosting Indigenous Businesses in Katherine (Lynch, 2017), YouTube clips such as The New Reality of Aboriginal Business (Gladu, 2015), and conference keynote addresses by people such as Ella Henry and Dennis Foley (2011). A range of practices is also part of constituting indigenous organization. They include the establishment of indigenous entrepreneurship programmes (e.g. The Ahikaa Entrepreneurship Programme), the creation and management of indigenous higher education institutions (e.g. Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi), the establishment of university education programmes (e.g. the Executive MBA in Indigenous Business and Leadership at the Beedie School of Business), managing Native corporations/institutions (e.g. Sealaska), monitoring Twitter accounts (e.g. @ChiefsofOntario), as well as developing websites, drafting reports, and analysing material s­ pecifically relevant to First Nations business, tribal governance, indigenous entrepreneurship, and so on. Some commentators seek to inspire us by offering stories and accounts of indigenous successes and achievements and do so in commanding and authoritative ways. When media outlets, writers, bloggers, tweeters, and so ­ olitical on talk and write about indigenous people, they do so with some p

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intent: to convince us of something often in a pithy way. In many instances, it is to inform us of some particular event, incident, or moment for the purpose of arousing controversy or to create conflict. Some writers offer accounts of avoidance; they seek to warn us of something that has happened and/or about to happen (see Gabriel, 2000). In some cases, these tellings are politically motivated and directed and are intended to help us steer clear of making the same mistakes. One area of investigation for new indigenous organization researchers might be the relationship between power and self-determination at work. As a researcher of indigenous organization you might have an interest in a particular industry (i.e. military, medical, education, penal), and you may look to understand the relationship between people (e.g. indigenous and non-indigenous), in particular roles (e.g. workers and managers), in a certain organization (e.g. a local tribal organization, a small enterprise, a multinational corporation, a government department). Understanding power has been the job of discourse analysts and others and you may decide it is a useful avenue to pursue. For indigenous people, power may and can be an opportunity to self-determine, to determine work on our own terms. But for too long indigenous workers have been told what to do and when to do it in organizations which mostly fail to account for their historical as well as their people and time-honoured values. Discourses are also at play in the research methodology space. A dominant discourse in the area of research methodology is the somewhat artificial quantitative-qualitative binary. The creation of binaries is almost unavoidable in research (Grey, 2005). There has been an ongoing debate about the primacy of quantitative and qualitative studies to get research done. Actually, most researchers new to studying will join one camp or the other and at times will join both and create mixed-method approaches. However, there are some issues in maintaining this binary-opposite and the most obvious is that a lot of qualitative studies quantify things. This normally happens at the level of analysis. So, discourses are prevalent in the day-to-day jobs of workers as well as the day-to-day work of researchers. This is something we will come back to. Discourse analysis has a lot to offer indigenous organization researchers because it draws attention to the kinds of things indigenous researchers have been, and are, dealing with in their studies—the constructive effects of language, the dominance of some discourses, power and hierarchy at work within organizations, to name a few. But not all discourses carry the kind of meaning we are looking for as students of indigenous organization studies.

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The Usefulness of Narrative/Story Narratives and stories are privileged forms of discourses which reveal depth of meaning when they are prioritized in research processes. Narratives and stories are central to indigenous ways of knowing. Many indigenous researchers use storying as a method for exploring and explaining the lived experiences of indigenous peoples. For example, Gregory Cajete (2000) suggests scientific explanations are stories which create the world around us and are central devices for constructing meaning, and in another powerful example, Willox et al. (2012) bring together digital media and storytelling in an innovative way to capture the voices of indigenous people in the Inuit community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada. Narratives and stories are fundamental to the way indigenous people make sense of the world around them in active, contextualized, and living ways (Boje, 2016; Boje & Cajete, 2014). Both narratives and stories (two different but related things), as well as what narrators do (narrative work) and storytellers do (story work), require elaboration and depth of detail. As discourses, narratives and stories both seek to represent and create things. They represent and create states of affairs (incidents and events) which are plotted together into a meaningful whole over time using causal connections involving implicated characters (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1998). It is plotted causality that is central to the narrative device distinguishing it from positivist forms of knowing (Ricoeur, 1991). Thus, the truth of a narrative/story lies in its meaning, not its accuracy (Gabriel, 2000). The narrative/story methodologists, Barbara Czarniawska (1999; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1998) and Steph Lawler (2002) have given similar accounts. Narratives (and stories) seek to explain and educate us researchers. When organizational actors—managers, workers, supervisors, leaders, business people, entrepreneurs—tell us about their working and social experiences, the people they interact with, as well as the incidents and events that take place which consume their working lives, sometimes they narrate or tell stories. There are good narrators and good storytellers, but there are also bad ones and some people are at times both good and bad narrators and storytellers. When we talk or write about our interactions with people, we often describe them (“I saw Jane today, she’s good”). But we can also narrate or story them, something different from description. Think about the last time you walked past someone you knew and you greeted each other with

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a few words and/or facial expressions but continued to move on and go about your day. Your (inter)actions ‘in’ the encounter and reflections ‘on’ the encounter after it happened constitute discursive work as you make sense of the encounter. But would you consider the interaction a narrative or a story? What about the subsequent reflections? Take a popular form of narrative/story in indigenous contexts: the legend. A ‘legend’ has come to mean ‘fictitious’ in a colonial world that has maintained a distinction between fact and fiction. This fact-fiction binary— like the ‘qualitative-quantitative’ one—is misleading in many indigenous contexts. We are taught, at least in mainstream schools, to dismiss things that have not been proven by scientific rigour or said by influential people. The distinction between fact and fiction is mostly irrelevant in indigenous contexts. There are only more or less useful accounts that help us negotiate our indigenous organizational worlds. Yiannis Gabriel (2000) offers useful insights in this domain. There is something else to say here about the types of narratives and stories we encounter as indigenous organization researchers. Often narratives or stories written about indigenous peoples are not good ones as Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, 2012) has drawn our attention to. Accounts authored by the popular press are often particularly damning (Love & Tilley, 2013). They often tell of indigenous people being dislocated from their lands, subjected to domestic violence, and reported in the lower portions of social indicators. They often cast indigenous people as ‘objects’— in a broader and ‘more important’ national agenda—and as ‘radicals’ when we stand up for our rights. Some research perpetuates and directly fuels these kinds of assessments: mostly statistical based, quantitative projects. Andrew Crane (1999) offers a powerful criticism of quantitative research that is worth looking into. One need is for more narrative research which seeks to explore the lived lives of indigenous leaders, workers, managers and entrepreneurs that offer narratives which inspire people into action and level out the preference for narratives which reduce indigenous peoples to numbers and statistics (Gabriel, 2000). Short pithy descriptive accounts—that is, newspaper articles, news bulletins, social media posts, or snippy comments at work—would not be considered narratives or stories. Most of these accounts give us the basic idea about a point a writer/speaker is making. Some points may be embellished for effect, or theatre, to arouse a reaction, to get us to buy into their ideas, or simply to get us to purchase a product. They are discursive. But these brief accounts fall short of convincing us of something and, as David

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Boje (2019) and Gregory Cajete (2000) remind us, leave out most of who we are. Some of us are interested in more detail, in accounts which elaborate on the incidents, the events which took place, the specific people involved, their interactions with others, the emotions they engaged in, their ethics, the places and times the events took place, and so on. Narrators and storytellers offer the detail. Indigenous organization researchers who examine how narrators and storytellers do what they do are called narrative/ story analysts and theorists. Let us take the narrative/story study of indigenous managers as an example. The narratives/stories that indigenous managers produce are privileged forms of language: they are socially produced interpretive devices through which indigenous managers represent themselves, both to themselves and to others, including other workers, researchers, and so on (see Feldman, Skölberg, Brown, & Horner, 2004). To study the narratives/stories of indigenous managers is a serious undertaking. The narratives and stories that they experience in the course of everyday organizational life are inherently related to culture, meaning, and language systems upon which they draw their substance (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). As such, narratives and stories are seen to circulate culturally, to provide a repertoire (though not an infinite one) from which indigenous managers can produce their own narratives or stories (Lawler, 2002). Usefully, they allow us as researchers to make sense of indigenous managers’ experiences. For one thing—and keeping with our interest in the narrative/story work of indigenous managers—a narrative/story approach is useful for understanding the motivations and intentions of indigenous managers because the narrative/story form of knowing is about organizing experience around the intentionality of human action (see Czarniawska, 1999). How indigenous managers attribute motive to themselves (e.g. “my intention was to…”, “I sought to understand…”), their organisations (e.g. “the corporation intended on producing…”, “the business never intended to…”), other workers, actors, agents (“she went about her work…”), including in groups (“they were meant to complete…”), can tell us much about the outcomes people—working independently or in groups—hoped and hope to achieve. Narratives carry other meanings as well. Yiannis Gabriel (2000) usefully refers to narrative work as the attribution of meaning to people, things, incidents, and events. But how do we ‘get’ these narratives or stories as indigenous organization researchers? Methodologists in the South Pacific have some answers. In the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, there is an indigenous data collection

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technique based on Storian (‘stories’) or Talanoa (in Fijian, meaning to talk or speak) which is used as a way of sharing feelings and emotions in a context that challenges the oppressiveness of hierarchical relationships and places emphasis on conversational relationships. It leverages off friendships through the telling of stories. Face-to-face conversations are a privileged form of knowledge creation (Thomas, 2013). In indigenous societies where the full effects of colonization and globalization have been realized, there has been a tendency to move away from face-to-face conversations and to use information technology to create virtual settings. In many ways, virtual settings are problematic because they often encourage us to ‘get to the point’ rather than to create meaningful encounters. There is something else to say here. Computer software is colonizing qualitative narrative and story methods (Boje, 2019). David Boje (2019) writes about the interconnectedness of people, communities, histories, and the earth and therefore stories as living: we live in storytelling worlds; living story has a mind, an aliveness whereby things unfold in the present, in a web of answerable spheres of relationships. Boje (2019) draws our attention to processes of interviewing and warns us of the shallow forms of interviewing which have dominated organizational research methods. Engaging in narrative/story work as an indigenous organization researcher therefore means a commitment to two primary types of research processes: (1) the narrative and storytellings you seek out as a researcher in the organizational field and (2) the narrative and story arguments you craft as a researcher to communicate your research findings. That is, doing narrative/story research is about interweaving the lived experiences of indigenous people and the rigour of research processes for the purpose of stimulating action through processes of theorizing those lived experiences.

The Role of Theory and Theorizing Okay, so if the narratives and stories people tell are insightful and useful to us as indigenous organization researchers, then how do we craft our own research accounts in ways that do not just retell what those people have told us? Well, that’s where theorizing comes in. For some time we have been told that good theory is about explanation and prediction (Bacharach, 1989), and that theorizing is in part a commitment to these two things. The creation of modern theories by indigenous peoples is a very recent phenomenon (Smith, 1999), and they hold significant value for indigenous organization studies. For now, let’s consider a working surface-level defini-

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tion of theory to be ‘a detailed explanation of a particular organizational phenomenon and a prediction about its future state’ and theorizing/theory-work as ‘the research processes involved in making and writing those explanations and predictions’. The point of theory and theorizing is this: when managing and organizing lead to positive outcomes for indigenous people, we want to replicate the working conditions, but if they cause problems then we want to limit any damage; either way, we need them to explain the complex conditions leading to these likely outcomes (see Pentland, 1999). Narrative theories can help identify both the outcomes hoped to be achieved (e.g. an increase  in  Aboriginal employee engagement at work) and the processes that will be explored to explain them (e.g. designing useful work teams). The product of theorizing is often a theoretical statement which parsimoniously organizes a set of concepts or constructs that are being studied and clearly communicates them to an interested audience (Ragins, 2012). Indigenous researcher Angus Macfarlane (2015) puts it well when he suggests that theories are normally taken to be an assimilated set of culturally specific concepts which offer explanations and assist researchers in the prediction of what is to come within a particular social context. Perhaps another way to put this is that theories help us to understand and articulate people’s hopes and fears. Think about the last time you made contact with a government department or perhaps a large corporation and it took forever to get something done. Theories of ‘bureaucracy’ might be responsible for, and therefore explain, your experiences. Theories of bureaucratic function detail how organizations are defined by strict rules and hierarchical relationships. People are drawn to theories because they appear to offer some element of clarity about the worlds we live in. Of course, theories are problematic in some ways because of the way they are used to convince us of their primacy and actively work to dismiss or obscure alternative perspectives, such as those written/ spoken by and with indigenous peoples which often seek to challenge authority and assumed ‘rightness’ (Smith, 1999). Theorizing in the field of indigenous organization studies must consider the power asymmetry of theories. Indigenous peoples frequently theorize since they explain and predict, thereby motivating people into action when they tell stories and make sense of other people’s stories. This is the practical and everyday side to theorizing. However, much of what counts as business school research in the indigenous organization space as published in texts and journals cannot be considered theory work.

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Business and management schools have usually not sufficiently trained researchers to do theory work, to challenge ‘what theory is’, or to write good/strong theory. This is not a problem isolated to indigenous research or even research in business and management schools since the same criticism of social science faculties has been made (Sutton & Staw, 1995), and little seems to have changed over the past few decades. Writing good theory is fundamental to the kind of research that concerns us in the study of indigenous organization, but it is difficult to do and almost impossible to detail. It is important to start teasing this out, so let’s take a look. Doing good theory work is mostly about practising research and committing to being a good writer (Ragins, 2012). I do not have a blueprint for how to do and write good theory. There isn’t one. It would be nice if there was. However, there are quite a few leads. Several management and organization journals—Organization, Organization Studies (OS), Academy of Management Review (AMR), Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ)—have committed to publishing organization theories and the theory work of researchers. They are, of course, mainstream ideas about what constitutes theory. It’s important to both appreciate and question their legitimacy for modern-day organizing as it relates to, and has relevance for, indigenous peoples and communities. Some of these journals have been explicit about how to write good theory for inclusion in their pages—commentaries mostly written by current or past editors and reviewers. We will consider them here but only as a broad overview to get us thinking about some of the broader aspects of theory. In 1995, Robert Sutton and Barry Staw started a conversation in an ASQ forum, titled ‘What Theory Is Not’. In that paper the authors sought to identify specific types of research writings which do not qualify as ­theory. Following up on their arguments, Karl Weick (1995) made the distinction between theory as a product and theorizing as a process maintaining that descriptions (through data, lists, referencing, and the like) may in fact be evidence of meaningful inquiry in the ‘pursuit’ of active theorizing but fall short in some ways. Descriptions are forms of writing which precede theory and doing good theory work is not simply about writing a description of something. Descriptions are, according to Bacharach (1989), forerunners to theory which seek to detail individual actions, behaviours, or events. Descriptions may be part of the early stages of theory building, but they should not be considered theory. Published research on indigenous leadership, management and entrepreneurship has largely engaged in a particular type of

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description to date, ‘empirical description’. By this I mean that researchers have been keen to define the particular lived experiences of people and groups of people who operate Native businesses or where corporations are engaging indigenous communities and to tell their stories or their ways of operating but in a retelling kind of way. Anthropologists who have attempted to relay indigenous cultures back to the West are guilty of this type of writing too (Smith, 1999). Let us take a closer look at types of non-theory descriptions. Briefly referring to other research (findings, arguments, conclusions, even other theories) does not constitute good theory work. Simply citing/ referencing the work of other researchers does not show how you make sense of that work within the context of your study. This is a common form of description. An example will help here. Let’s assume I was carrying out an investigation into the relationship between workplace culture and workers’ satisfaction and I make this statement: ‘my argument is consistent with Haar and Brougham’s (2013) findings that embracing indigenous cultural values at work promotes employee satisfaction’. In this brief account I am making reference to a publication by citing the work and stating a finding. But there is no theory work being done here. I am not explaining why ‘well-being’ arouses ‘satisfaction’ in my study, I am simply stating that it does and that someone else has made a similar observation (before I have). Stating theories, findings, and arguments in the form of sharp statements with reference to other writers’ publications does not constitute good theory work (Sutton & Staw, 1995). It is the kind of stuff that you find in introductions and conclusions to theses or papers, but it should not inform the substantive sections of a paper that is working towards making a strong theoretical statement. Coming up with categories of data collected in the field or through reading (see Sutton & Staw, 1995) does not count as good theory either. Categorizing raw data is to state what the phenomena under investigation are (Bacharach, 1989). The generation and subsequent categorization of raw data precedes theory. Plenty of research in the management and organization fields categorize or classify peoples’ personalities, thought processes, actions, or behaviours. Those of you who have sat in an introductory management class may be able to recall the functions of management (planning, organizing, leading, controlling), the roles of managers (interpersonal, informational, decisional), and maybe the skills needed by managers (conceptual, human, technical) (Samson & Daft, 2009). Henri Fayol, Henry Mintzberg, and Robert Katz have been credited with these

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categorizations or classifications respectively (see Samson & Daft, 2009). But the ways these categorizations/classifications (re)appear in modern management textbooks cannot be considered theory. They are too simple and the elements too disconnected from the originals to be considered as theory. Metaphors are useful for surface-level interpretations, but they do not often constitute theory either. Indigenous knowledges and concepts are frequently used in metaphors, for example, in Aotearoa New Zealand. James Kerr (2013) likens the New Zealand rugby team’s etiquette to the tikanga (rules or ways of doing) governing a whare (a meeting house) whereby everyone in the team is given an opportunity to speak. The metaphor (team etiquette: whare tikanga) helps to draw attention to an indigenous Māori concept, but it does little to further explain the idea of how giving people the opportunity to speak in ways akin to whare tikanga contributes to an effective team culture or player well-being or some other outcome hoped to be achieved. Furthermore, it does little to explain how the two are related. A metaphor is a declaration which maintains that two otherwise unrelated phenomena share similar properties (Bacharach, 1989). They are useful insofar as someone who is well versed in whare tikanga might now better understand the etiquette of the Aotearoa New Zealand rugby team, but beyond that, they are not terribly useful unless they carefully explain in detail how these otherwise unrelated notions are (dis)similar—not just that they are—and why it is important to make the (dis)connection. This is not a criticism of Kerr (2013), as his book does not seek to theorize and offers interesting insights about the purposes he intends. But metaphors rarely offer anything insightful in theorizing. Presenting diagrams and figures in papers have similar flaws to referencing, categorizing, and metaphors: they present simple, seemingly unproblematic constructs/concepts in ways suggestive of a neatly defined and organized world. They may help tell or illustrate a theory, but they do not in themselves provide one. Even when researchers draw diagrams to show the relationship between hypotheses, we cannot consider this to be theory since they fail to explain how the various constructs are related to one another. Furthermore, they rarely explain the conditions under which we are likely to see the relationships occurring; or why patterns will be observed (Whetten, 1989). There is one further point to make on what does not constitute good theory work: irrelevant theory-work. Let’s take a pervasive organization theory: stakeholder theory. Stakeholder theory has its roots in the work of

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R. E. Freeman (1984). I am a fan since his work has been a powerful tool for the development of the kind of research that cuts through mainstream shareholder views of the firm. But few indigenous peoples identify as stakeholders of firms. Rather, they consider themselves as integral people to their lands (Bruijn & Whiteman, 2010; Whiteman, 2009). Stakeholder theory will only work, for our purposes, if indigenous people, organizations, tribal groups and communities become central to theorizing, as opposed to acting as lenses from which to make descriptive assessments of indigenous peoples and communities and their relationship to powerful and central corporate entities (see Banerjee, 2000). By addressing what theorizing/theory-work is not, or not yet, it is possible to see what it might be. In addition to providing good explanations and predictions, crafting good theory is also about writing and Belle Rose Ragins has some important things to say on the subject. For her, good theory writing is about knowing who your readers are. Most readers want you to express your “ideas with clarity, directness, and precision” (Ragins, 2012, p. 494). It is important to recognize that “theory construction is a cooperative venture between author and readers” (DiMaggio, 1995, p. 396). You write for your readers and your readers write for you. It is reciprocal in that sense.

Conclusion Theorizing is fundamental to doing good indigenous organization research, and researchers have different ideas about what does and does not constitute good theorizing. It is important for any indigenous ­organization researcher to consider the arguments. I hope that by discussing them I have drawn your attention to their potential value for studying and writing about the kinds of things that interest us here. This chapter has presented two types of language—discourses and narratives/stories— which are considered useful components in the process of theorizing. Discourse, narrative/story, and theory are of course broad terms/constructs and many researchers and writers have divergent views about them and their role in research. We have only touched the surface in this chapter, and there is much more to explore about the role they can play in the study of organizations and organizing for indigenous peoples and their communities. If indigenous organization research based on indigenous knowledges is about connections and interrelatedness, then we might accept what organization and management researchers and writers have said about theory,

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since theorizing is mostly about making connections between disparate elements in the explanation and prediction of indigenous organization phenomena. Chapter 3 will consider narrative theorizing in the indigenous organization studies research process.

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Ricoeur, P. (1991). Time and narrative (K. McLaughlin & D. Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Samson, D., & Daft, R. L. (2009). Management (3rd Asia Pacific ed.). Melbourne: Cengage Learning Australia. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonising methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London, UK: Zed Books. Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonising methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). London, UK: Zed Books. Sutton, R. I., & Staw, B. M. (1995). What theory is not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371–384. Thomas, A.  K. L. (2013). The process that led me to become an indigenous researcher. In D. M. Mertens, F. Cram, & C. Bagele (Eds.), Indigenous pathways into social research: Voices of a new generation (pp. 41–58). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Voyageur, C. (2015). Restorying the leadership role: Indigenous women in politics and business and Canada. In C. Voyageur, L. Brearley, & B. Calliou (Eds.), Restorying indigenous leadership: Wise practices in community development. Banff, Canada: Banff Centre Press. Weick, K.  E. (1995). What theory is not, theorizing is. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 385–390. Whetten, D. A. (1989). What constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 490–495. Whiteman, G. (2009). All my relations: Understanding perceptions of justice and conflict between companies and indigenous peoples. Organization Studies, 30(1), 101–120. Willox, A. C., Harper, S. L., Edge, V. L., & ‘My Word’: Storytelling and Digital Media Lab, Rigolet Inuit Community Government. (2012). Storytelling in a digital age: Digital storytelling as an emerging narrative method for preserving and promoting indigenous oral wisdom. Qualitative Research, 13(2), 127–147.

CHAPTER 3

Methodological Guidelines in Indigenous Organization Research

Abstract  Researching in the emerging field of indigenous organization studies is an exciting and valuable prospect, but it can be a chaotic, frustrating, and time-consuming endeavour when engaging with people, collecting their stories, interpreting their knowledge work, and making sense of it for presentation to academic and practitioner audiences. In order to assist researchers new to the field, this chapter offers a broad set of methodological guidelines to help negotiate some of the terrain. Methodological guidelines are the elements which increase the value of a research project. While certainly not an exclusive list, several key elements are put forward relating to the broad area of study, the phenomenon of interest, reviewing established knowledges, engaging in narrative theorizing, and determining research purpose. Keywords  Indigenous organization studies • Theorizing • Theory • Methodology • Methodological guidelines • Research phenomena • Research design • Research outcomes • Research impact

Introduction What does research mean for indigenous people? The acquisition of knowledge for the purposes of organization research or business research or management research may cause some unease and even resentment among indigenous peoples. Critical and indigenous methodologies question ‘assumed right’ and ‘prevailing’ ways of knowing organizations, processes © The Author(s) 2019 T. R. Love, Indigenous Organization Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01503-9_3

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of organizing, and the relevance they have for indigenous peoples (see Denzin, Lincoln, & Smith, 2008). As the authors maintain, this line of inquiry “must be ethical, performative, healing, transformative, decolonizing, and participatory. It must be committed to dialogue, community, selfdetermination, and cultural autonomy. It must meet people’s perceived needs” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008, p. 2). Caught between mainstream constructions of organization studies and indigenous criticisms of research in general, this book works to assist and support researchers in the arbitration of contested ideas, and in this chapter, several key elements are put forward to assist researchers with their broad research strategy and process. Those elements relate to the broad area of study, the phenomenon of interest, reviewing established knowledges, engaging in narrative theorizing, and determining research purpose. The chapter deals with elements which precede methods for collecting and analysing empirical material or data.

Locating the Project in a Broad Area of Study Most organizational researchers researching in business schools locate their work in a broad area of study—management, administration, organization, economics, accounting, information systems, entrepreneurship, innovation, finance, and so on. With those areas of study come a whole history of writing and scholarship offering guidance on how to proceed with new projects. Indigenous researchers, as well as non-indigenous researchers engaging in projects relevant for indigenous peoples, have embraced those traditional business school disciplines whilst at the same time recognizing and building studies which see the world as essentially interconnected and not so easily confined into ‘areas of study’. We established this in Chap. 1. However, specific areas of organizational study relevant for indigenous peoples have emerged over the years which may interest you and guide your research processes. Indeed, many seek to ­challenge their prevailing fields of research. Let us consider some of the more salient here. For example, you may locate your study in the broad field of entrepreneurship. Indigenous entrepreneurship has become a popular area of study over the past few decades (see Nandu-Templeton, Vanderklei, de Vries, Love, & Hamilton, 2017; Peredo, Anderson, Galbraith, Honig, & Dana, 2004; Reinert, 2006; Scheyvens, Banks, Meo-Sewabu, & Decena, 2017), probably because it allows indigenous peoples to exercise self-­determination

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in business and researchers have been keen to track it. In Aotearoa New Zealand, ‘Māori entrepreneurship’ is a form of enterprise distinguished from mainstream forms and is often shaped by Kaupapa Māori ways of doing things: retaining indigenous identities, focusing on the development of Māori people, interacting with broad systems, engaging in reciprocity, maintaining spiritual life-forces, and retaining power and authority with the people, place, and their lands (Awatere et al., 2017). Some of the most prominent Māori academics refer to these kinds of entities as Māori-­ centred entrepreneurship/business (Durie, 2003), or Kaupapa Māori-­ attuned entrepreneurship (Henry, 2007). Your work may be grounded in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate citizenship, business ethics, or corporate accountability. Studies considering the impact of corporate operations on indigenous communities have drawn a lot of attention in recent years (see Ali et al., 2014; Calvano, 2008; Chilisa, Major, & KhuduPetersen, 2017; Crawley & Sinclair, 2003; Ruckstuhl et  al., 2013). Alvarado (2009), for example, examines the development of the fair trade movement through the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region, an association of small coffee-growers in Mexico and a main actor in the creation of the first fair trade seal in the world. Eveline Bruijn and Gail Whiteman’s (2010) case study on the Machiguenga tribe, to take another example, examined a remote indigenous tribe affected by the Camisea Gas Project in Peru. Another example of an important project in this area of study is Banerjee’s (2000) case analysis on the Mirrar people (Aboriginal Australian) and the Jabiluka uranium mine. You may locate your study in the broad area of culture. Perhaps you will study a tribal organization to explain its culture and the shared values that people hold within it (see Marsh, 2009; Prendergast-Tarena, 2015; Reid, Varona, Fisher, & Smith, 2016). Here you are in the company of ‘integrationists’ (Schneider, Ehrhart, & Macey, 2013). Perhaps you are interested in those things that deviate from a ‘shared tribal organization’—if so, then you might be approaching culture from a fragmented perspective. This view of culture deliberately denies the need for sharedness (Schneider et al., 2013). It is unlikely, from a fragmented view of organizational culture, “that people in an organization at different levels and in different positions/occupations—and with different personalities—would have the same experiences and attach the same meaning to the organization and what it values” (Schneider et al., 2013, p. 370).

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If you believe that people share values within the cultural, tribal, or family organization you are studying but that those shared values are unique to particular groups within—that is, based on their occupation, or their gender, or their pay levels, or where they sit in the tribal hierarchy— then you might be approaching your research from a perspective of cultural differentiation. You’ll notice here that a differentiated position is a compromise position between integrated and fragmented; “it notes that people occupy subcultures in organizations … and thus may have different experiences and may even attach different meaning to the same events” (Schneider et al., 2013, p. 370). From there, and in line with your feelings about those different strategies, you might want to consider the cultural elements you’ll explore, observe, and consider as the conceptual background for your study. Broad areas of study offer guidance on the specific phenomena researchers investigate.

Identifying the Phenomenon of Interest Identifying a specific phenomenon is one of the most important tasks in the creation of a research project because it defines the boundaries of the thing to be studied. A phenomenon is a subject of study, and I am using the word phenomenon because it has its roots in the philosophy of phenomenology which essentially rejects the presence of an objective world free from human consciousness and values (Allan, 2013). This way of thinking ties more closely to indigenous ways of knowing. So, what specific element or phenomenon of indigenous organization are you interested in studying? Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis (2008) suggest that the study of organizations can be about exploring individual members of organizations, organizational practices, or the implications of organizational forms and designs on people. Let’s consider their advice in the context of indigenous organization research. You might be interested in studying indigenous people as individual members of organizations. This is a popular stream of research amongst indigenous organization researchers already (Haar & Brougham, 2011; Haar, Roche, & Taylor, 2012; Kuntz, Näswall, Beckingsale, & Macfarlane, 2014; Reid, 2011). These are the kinds of projects that, traditionally, organizational psychologists and behaviourists engage in to find out how indigenous workers and managers perceive their workplaces, value their colleagues, and make sense of their surroundings. It includes research in the broad field of human resource management (HRM) which looks at

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how indigenous managers, employees, and personnel are selected, recruited, trained, and developed as organizational members and how industrial relations, employment laws, union memberships, and industry trends impact those indigenous people. It has to do with organizational and indigenous cultural identities, values, and personalities (i.e. work and non-work) which are often fragmented, varied, and differentiated but all of which play out in organizations for indigenous people. Your interest may be in understanding organizational practices which affect and are affected by indigenous people. The most salient “practices shaping organizations are those of power, politics and decision-making” (Clegg et al., 2008, p. xxii). These are the acts that people are involved in when being organized and when organizing others. They involve such things as power and politics, communications, knowledge and learning, CSR, sustainability, ethics, and innovation and change (Clegg et  al., 2008). In organizations, we at times accept other peoples’ ideas and decisions and at other times we resist them, reject them, and actively do things to change the ways organizations impact our lives through their practices. Organizations, through human decision-making, also engage in practices which impact indigenous and non-indigenous communities. For example, when we question corporations for their lack of ethicality, their failure to address environmental and ecological issues, their neglect and perpetuation of social problems, and when we laud them for their acts of charity and philanthropy, we are blaming and/or crediting organizational practices (Gabriel, 2000). Organizational practices also have to do with the ways organizations accomplish things through their communicating and also in the ways they innovate and work to create and retain individual and collective organizational knowledges. Understanding how organizational power, politics, and decisions affect indigenous people is the job of the indigenous organization researcher. Studying the implications of organizational forms and designs for indigenous peoples is a third type of indigenous organization research. Most organizations run on a certain set of assumptions which guide the people and practices discussed earlier. Call it a philosophy of organization. These are deeply rooted in the historical landscape of organizations and are often reflective of a one best way to organize. As such, when we explore organizations we see evidence of bureaucratic-, adaptive-, system-, and virtual-type organizational forms/designs. Most organizations see evidence of one or more of these types, even contemporary indigenous tribal-based organizations (see Prendergast-Tarena, 2015). These organizational forms/designs say

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something about the ways people should engage to get things done in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Of course, we are right to question such objectives. Researchers have as their object ‘the organization’: a bounded entity (or set of entities) with certain administrative and economic functions which seek to achieve particular ends or goals that people hope to realize and bring about (see Cooper & Burrell, 1988). Understanding the implications of these organizational forms and designs for indigenous peoples is the job of the indigenous organization researcher. How they promote and inhibit self-determination is an important question. A phenomenon must be researchable (see Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008). This is about identifying the boundaries of the phenomenon to be researched and theorized. Setting boundaries is about moving from the abstractness of a topic to a theorizable phenomenon that can be managed as a research project. It is easier said than done of course: ‘Aboriginal employee engagement at work’ is likely too broad for a topic, whereas ‘Aboriginal employee engagement in group-related tasks in predominantly western organizations and the role work team design plays in fostering engagement’ may be more researchable (though more longwinded!). Identifying a phenomenon of interest takes time and practice but is essential work. Reading research and seeking to understand how other indigenous organization researchers craft their phenomena is the key to identifying your own.

Reviewing Established Knowledges A useful way to think about an entire research project is to set a research question. Research questions are useful to guide projects, although they frequently change. They are created, or constructed, by researchers through their thorough engagement with prior knowledges and core topic literatures and the inclusion of a purposeful element. It might be problems faced, limitations identified, or opportunities spotted by other researchers that form the basis for question(s). Or, it might be anomalies or shortcomings recognized by the researcher themselves that inspire research question(s) for investigation. Indigenous organization research should work to build, complement, extend, or challenge current conceptualizations, models, and theories. In order to do this, researchers must have a good understanding of established knowledges. What have people said and written about your phenomenon prior to your interest in it? Often one of the first tasks for a new researcher to their

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broad area of study is to do a literature review of their phenomenon. Business schools generally maintain this expectation. What constitutes a legitimate source of knowledge in business schools is the writings of researchers which have managed to make their way into ‘top’ academic journals. In short, it is the writings of scholars whom new researchers do not know that well which are considered the source of valid knowledge in business schools. For indigenous organization research, engaging people you do not know that well does not make a lot of sense. When we are young we seldom go to a stranger in the street and ask for something; most often we go to our parents or to other elders. When doing research in business schools, we are often asked to consult the work of strangers. It is their knowledge and the institutional processes of scholarship that they go through which determine the legitimate sources of knowledge in the academic world. Nevertheless, engaging prior knowledge is fundamental to good research. Some refer to this as a literature review. The ability of indigenous organization researchers to make sense of their topic depends on the models, frameworks, vocabularies, and theories they expose themselves to, choose to work with, and seek to engage with at an intellectual and critical level. These preunderstandings constitute the foundation for theory development, and without that foundation, theorizations run the risk of offending people or at best duplicating knowledge in ignorance. But Western research often reduces knowledge to written, peer-reviewed, and documented accounts of knowledge. Of course, people (living and passed) and stories are the source of knowledge for indigenous peoples. Others are a little more disconnected to the past but are seeking to return to it. Importantly, indigenous knowledges are legitimate knowledges in the pursuit of organization research and theory. But sometimes business schools fail to recognize them and fail to consider how they can be an invaluable part of theorizing. Let me give an example. I have had a series of discussions with an indigenous doctoral researcher which speaks to this notion of knowledge legitimacy. We had been talking about the ‘structure’ of her research proposal which would set the tone for her study, but we were having difficulty with negotiating the knowledge grounds upon which the student’s study would be legitimized. At the outset, we (the ‘supervisors’) were asking her to ‘review the literature’ and to come up with a series of research questions: that is, we started with the prevailing prescription of legitimizing her proposed research with established written topic-based literatures. As we had more and more face-to-face conversations (and some would last more than

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three  hours), the student’s powerful and commanding narrative was exposed: she had been brought up in one of the last totally immersed indigenous communities in Aotearoa New Zealand where it was the knowledge of her ancestors, not other people’s (and certainly not those she did not know) ancestors, which had legitimacy for her. It was a failure early on, on my part, to explore, to take the time to discover, and to recognize and to acknowledge the legitimacy of her ancestral knowledges. Ancestral legitimacy in organization research has to be a viable route. And who will be the audience of this research? That will be a serious consideration also. Our ancestors offer us lessons, teach us how to negotiate our lives, how to live, and warn us about obstacles we might face. Business schools, academies, publishers, and other research institutions often neglect to consider ‘ancestral’ knowledges as legitimate sources of knowledge from which indigenous researchers build their investigations and contribute their analyses, findings, conceptualizations, models, and theories. Researching in the field of indigenous organization studies is about reviewing and working with established knowledges, but challenging what constitutes an ‘established knowledge base’ is fundamental to good indigenous organization research. If we look back to what constitutes the prevailing knowledge base of Western organization and management thought, we find the so-called classical theorists who have held prime of place over the past century or so since the industrial revolutions. In 1911 the American industrialist Frederick Winslow Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management. Taylor’s (1911) aim was for national efficiency, in much the same way Adam Smith (1776) intended, through the cooperative efforts to train competent ‘men’ in the systematic management of organizations. It was a response—or a remedy as he puts it—to the inefficiencies of daily work activities in America. The best way to respond to them, he said, was to set a foundation of scientific principles for managers with “clearly defined laws, rules, and principles” (Taylor, 1911, p.  7) for managing workers’ behaviour. In General and Industrial Management (1949), another organization theorist, Henri Fayol, was very clear about the kind of organization we should undertake as humans in the management of industry. It was about control. His argument was one for the ‘administration’ of entities and his theory was a unified one—one which would explain how all forms and types of organization should be managed. There was a clear distinction

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between those in authority and those who have none. People were of value to an organization insofar as they contributed something useful to a coordinated effort, all of whom were accountable to the head of the organization, a ‘chief’, an executive. There were ‘subordinates’ and ‘superior officers’. It was a consequentialist plan for organizations and one which set out a linear path for the purposes of carrying out various administrative tactics with a clear present with a past and a future. Most organizations are run using these models today—on theories of corporate efficiency and administrative control. Many business schools have sought to maintain their legitimacy. Indeed, several theories have sought to challenge this mainstream managerialist thought recently: social responsibility, corporate citizenship, stakeholder theory, and other agendas with critical and emancipatory intent. But they have largely failed to “contribute to a critical understanding of the consequences of managerial decision-making” (Banerjee, 2000, p.  30). Certainly, the relevance of these models for indigenous communities is questionable. It’s important, therefore, to engage in new forms of theorizing and to write from perspectives other than the mainstream, to be suspicious of the answers we get, to ask why certain questions are being asked and why other questions are not, and to look for omissions in managerial thinking (Banerjee, 2000).

Engaging in Narrative Theorizing Narrative theorizing (see Cornelissen, 2017; DiMaggio, 1995; Pentland, 1999) involves the “sequenc[ing] of events that leads to a particular outcome an author is seeking to explain” (Cornelissen, 2017, p. 5). As such, narrative theorizing is distinguished from cause-effect forms of knowing (Ricoeur, 1991). A narrative type of theory explains a process or series of incidents and events (DiMaggio, 1995; Pentland, 1999), treating theory “as an account of a social process” (DiMaggio, 1995, p. 391) and is “the specification of a process model that lays out a set of mechanisms explaining events” (Cornelissen, 2017, p. 3). Causality in narrative work explains how and why various parts (people, places, times) are related (Pentland, 1999). In theorizing, the researcher is looking at and seeking to explain how people talk about their experiences through a “simple chain of causes and effects” (Gabriel, 2000, p.  37). Time and context also feature prominently in this style and are often written into the script of theoretical explanations (Cornelissen, 2017). Narratives/stories (particular types of discourses) are central to creating

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useful theories (Pentland, 1999). They must be interesting enough to warrant attention though, otherwise they run the risk of being shelved. I’ll come back to this. Indigenous people are storytelling/narrating people and decolonization researchers have been critical of some forms of theorizing. Theory and narrative represent two of the most important aspects of doing good indigenous organization research. According to Pentland (1999), a theory is an explanation of what is causing the observed outcomes. For Sutton and Staw (1995, p.  378), “theory emphasizes the nature of causal relationships … identifying what comes first as well as the timing of such events”. Doing good indigenous organization theory work is trial and error. It takes time to explore people’s insights, to interpret them, to write about them, to recognize shortcomings in your own work, and to repeat and enrich the processes. Theory building processes—such as narrative theorizing—have the ability to advance prevailing management and organization research in the indigenous space where empirical description has largely outperformed theorization to date. Many of the papers published within the indigenous organization studies field have brought forward insights which I consider to be candidates for narrative theory-work but fall short of offering theories. Let’s consider two examples. In their paper exploring the impact of natural gas exploration and transportation on the Machiguenga tribe in Peru, Eveline Bruijn and Gail Whiteman (2010) start to engage in narrative theorizing. They sequence identity work processes—or what they call ‘overlapping phases’—to build a picture of a reaction to a threatening situation for this particular tribe. They show how a corporate venture led to the weakening of, and challenge to, the tribe’s cultural identity which further led to a resistance movement, the subsequent creation of an ‘us versus them’ binary creating the separation of tribe-corporate identities and the resulting collective organization of tribal members and solidarity to oppose the threat. In short, a ‘reaction (to an initial threat)  -  resistance (to the ongoing threat) - separation (of tribe from corporate identity) - solidarity (among tribal members to oppose the threat)’  -type narrative which goes some way towards, I would say, a narrative theory of ‘collective tribal identity work in a corporate-threat arena’. The paper’s findings, which show how engaging in different forms of identity work over time, allowed the Machiguenga tribe to negotiate a difficult, confronting, threatening, and enduring situation. That’s the explanation.

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The prediction (or one prediction) is that other tribal leaders could build collective tribal solidarity over time in their communities faced by similar threats through identity work by supporting their people through similar (transitioning from phase to phase) ‘reaction-resistance-separation-­solidarity’-type processes as experienced by the Machiguenga people and which Bruijn and Whiteman (2010) have so usefully narrated for us. Other papers hold significant promise. Patricia Widener’s (2007) photographic essay exploring the impact of oil exploration on the indigenous Kichwa communities (Sarayacu and Canelos) in Amazonian Ecuador is a powerful example. Widener shows how these communities first resisted the seismic testing by large oil multinationals, went on to build strong strategic alliances with advocacy groups in the USA and Europe and then succeeded in blocking oil extraction in their communities. In a ‘resistance - alliance building - blocking’-type narrative. The only part missing is the theory work and the connection between these moments and events to stitch them together to achieve explanatory power. Needless to say I am glossing over the tribal experiences and intricate details of the papers above and I have not done them justice but I feel there is a point to be made about the value of narrative-theory building.

Determining the Research Purpose Big ideas, as with big governments, mostly fail people, so doing indigenous organization research is more so about small wins as distinct from ‘emancipating indigenous peoples’ and ‘creating a better world’. The ‘lack’ or ‘paucity’ of indigenous organization research is not an acceptable justification for doing it either. The reason for engaging in indigenous organization studies must be more ardent than solving mega problems or filling a gap. An indigenous organization theory should be useful. That is, it must have utility for indigenous people. The claim that theory should command the attention of indigenous organization researchers is risky as it is vulnerable to criticisms that theory serves the interests of academic audiences and suppresses the welfare of those practitioners we look to for empirical insights. But theory can be useful; it can have utility. In fact, Bacharach (1989) commands it. As a researcher it might be your intention to reduce workplace racism. What processes might you look at in order to help you explain how indigenous people experience racism (explanation) and how managers may be able to reduce workplace racism in

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future (prediction) (Opie & Roberts, 2017)? Utility is what binds theories to the everyday organizational lives of people and comes by way of explanation and prediction (Bacharach, 1989). When theories predict without explaining, they lack utility. As an indigenous organization studies researcher, there is an important question to ask: how is your research likely to benefit indigenous peoples? In the USA, research has set out to serve the Navajo uranium workers and their families (see Dawson, 1992). A laudable agenda. Writing of research and its controversial nature for American Indian nations, Champagne (2007, p. 355) notes: “if researchers are generating theory and empirical knowledge that is made accessible to American Indian nations and constructive publics, then they are fulfilling their role as researchers.” In order to ensure the relevance of research for indigenous communities, some Native American communities have implemented ethical review boards to embrace tribal ways of doing things (Champagne, 2007). An indigenous organization theory should offer interesting and enlightening explanations and predictions which encourage us to see organizations and organizing in ways which take into account indigenous peoples’ aspirations. The test is not whether your study can provide more accurate accounts of indigenous organizational phenomena. As such, here the test will be whether you and your research programme in your business school can offer some things which are stimulating and thought-provoking. A point well made by Stanley Deetz (1996). Good theory should enlighten; by enlighten I mean that it should ‘shed light on’ a particular phenomenon in a way that challenges the preconceived ideas of the theory’s intended audiences. Proposing a theory that is novel and interesting to your readers is a difficult thing to do. Theory should be written in a way that both links to conventional wisdoms and pushes beyond the boundaries of ­common-­held understandings without sounding too outrageous or unbelievable. The key is to balance old ways of knowing with new insights. Paul DiMaggio (1995) has made these useful comments on the art of building stable theory. Of course, not all theory building projects produce papers which enlighten their readers, but as theory writers you should seek to engage in research processes which are likely to provoke novel thoughts about the indigenous organization phenomenon you are seeking to theorize. An indigenous organization theory should answer why and how questions. For example, when corporations lay pipelines through Native lands and indigenous people (as well as others in support of their cause) protest

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them, then we need to ask questions. Why protest? This may seem like a stupid, rhetorical, and even offensive question, but I think it’s a worthy one. Perhaps it has something to do with ‘maintaining the dignity of a tribal group’s ancestors’, or ‘upholding the rights of all indigenous peoples globally’, or ‘bringing down corporations’, or ‘taking aim at government policies’, or ‘exercising a legal duty’, or ‘retaining economic control of lands’. Perhaps all of the above or something else entirely. The reasons may be varied and changing over time as new issues arise, but as a researcher you must consider asking these kinds of questions in order to understand the reasons why people do what they do.

Conclusion As an indigenous organization researcher and theorist, you are in a powerful position to affect the ways indigenous people and others see and engage with the organizational worlds they live in. An important aspect of doing good research is communicating the decisions you make as a researcher and theorist to your readers—the broad area you are following, the phenomenon you are researching, the knowledges you are engaging with, the form of theorizing you are doing and the reasons for them. By doing so, you place boundaries around the research and theories you are seeking to create and share which help your readers with contextualizing your research writing. When we read through journal articles and books, it is often quite difficult to get a sense of researchers’ decisions. That’s because researchers infrequently state what their decisions are as they relate to their social and organizational worlds in their publications as well as the things they value in research processes which make them hard to assess. In fact, many of the ways by which knowledge is assessed and disseminated via academic ­journals and ‘conventions’ can actively work against such perspectives. Being explicit about decisions made is important because theories are intimately human; “the idiosyncratic product of the theorist’s creative imagination and ideological orientation or life experience” (Bacharach, 1989, p. 498).

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References Ali, S. H., Jorgensen, M., Kalt, J. P., Krakoff, S., McInnis, A., Medford, A. B., et  al. (2014). On improving tribal-corporate relations in the mining sector: A white paper on strategies for both sides of the table. Cambridge, MA: The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Allan, K. (2013). Contemporary social & sociological theory: Visualizing social worlds (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Alvarado, J.  (2009). Fair trade in Mexico and abroad: An alternative to the Walmartopia? Journal of Business Ethics, 88(2), 301–317. Awatere, S., Mika, J., Hudson, M., Pauling, C., Lambert, S., & Reid, J. (2017). Whakatipu rawa ma ngā uri whakatipu: Optimising the “Māori” in Māori economic development. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 13(2), 80–88. Bacharach, S.  B. (1989). Organizational theories: Some criteria for evaluation. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 496–515. Banerjee, S.  B. (2000). Whose land is it anyway? National interest, indigenous stakeholders and colonial discourses: The case of the Jabiluka Uranium Mine. Organization & Environment, 13(1), 3–38. Bruijn, E., & Whiteman, G. (2010). That which doesn’t break us: Identity work by local indigenous ‘stakeholders’. Journal of Business Ethics, 96(3), 479–495. Calvano, L. (2008). Multinational corporations and local communities: A critical analysis of conflict. Journal of Business Ethics, 82(4), 793–805. Champagne, D. (2007). Social change and cultural continuity among native nations. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Chilisa, B., Major, T. E., & Khudu-Petersen, K. (2017). Community engagement with a postcolonial, African-based relational paradigm. Qualitative Research, 17(3), 326–339. Clegg, S., Kornberger, M., & Pitsis, T. (2008). Managing & organizations: An introduction to theory & practice (2nd ed.). London, UK: Sage. Cooper, R., & Burrell, G. (1988). Modernism, postmodernism and organizational analysis: An introduction. Organization Studies, 9(1), 91–112. Cornelissen, J.  (2017). Editor’s comments: Developing propositions, a process model, or a typology? Addressing the challenges of writing theory without a boilerplate. Academy of Management Review, 42(1), 1–9. Crawley, A., & Sinclair, A. (2003). Indigenous human resource practices in Australian mining companies: Towards an ethical model. Journal of Business Ethics, 45(4), 361–373. Dawson, S. E. (1992). Navajo uranium workers and the effects of occupational illnesses: A case study. Human Organization, 51(4), 389–397. Deetz, S. (1996). Crossroads—Describing differences in approaches to organization science: Rethinking Burrell and Morgan and their legacy. Organization Science, 7(2), 191–207.

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Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2008). Introduction: Critical methodologies and indigenous inquiry. In N.  K. Denzin, Y.  S. Lincoln, & L.  T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Denzin, N. K., Lincoln, Y. S., & Smith, L. T. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 1–20). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DiMaggio, P.  J. (1995). Comments on “what theory is not”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 391–397. Durie, M. (2003). Ngā kāhui pou: Launching Māori futures. Wellington: Huia. Eriksson, P., & Kovalainen, A. (2008). Qualitative methods in business research. London, UK: Sage. Fayol, H. (1949). General and industrial management (C.  Storrs, Trans.). London, UK: Pitman & Sons. Gabriel, Y. (2000). Storytelling in organizations: Facts, fictions, and fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haar, J.  M., & Brougham, D. (2011). Consequences of cultural satisfaction at work: A study of New Zealand Māori. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 49(4), 461–475. Haar, J. M., Roche, M., & Taylor, D. (2012). Work-family conflict and turnover intentions of indigenous employees: The importance of the whanau/family for Māori. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(12), 2546–2560. Henry, E. (2007). Kaupapa Māori entrepreneurship. In L.-P.  Dana & R.  B. Anderson (Eds.), International handbook of research on indigenous entrepreneurship (pp. 536–548). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Kuntz, J.  R. C., Näswall, K., Beckingsale, A., & Macfarlane, A.  H. (2014). Capitalising on diversity: Espousal of Māori values in the workplace. Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 55, 102–122. Marsh, C. (2009). ‘Don’t call me Eskimo’: Representation, mythology and hip hop culture on Baffin Island. MUSICultures, 36, 110–129. Nandu-Templeton, J., Vanderklei, M., de Vries, H., Love, T., & Hamilton, R. (2017). Interpreting the narratives of Māori entrepreneurs. MAI Journal, 6(2), 164–179. Opie, T., & Roberts, L. M. (2017). Do black lives really matter in the workplace? Restorative justice as a means to reclaim humanity. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 36(8), 707–719. Pentland, B.  T. (1999). Building process theory narrative: From description to explanation. Academy of Management Review, 24(4), 711–724. Peredo, A. M., Anderson, R. B., Galbraith, C. S., Honig, B., & Dana, L. P. (2004). Towards a theory of indigenous entrepreneurship. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 1(1–2), 1–20. Prendergast-Tarena, E. (2015). Indigenising the corporation: Indigenous organisation design: An analysis of their design, features, and the influence of indigenous cultural values. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Canterbury.

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Reid, J., Varona, G., Fisher, M., & Smith, C. (2016). Understanding Māori ‘lived’ culture to determine cultural connectedness and wellbeing. Journal of Population Research, 33(1), 31–49. Reid, L. (2011). Looking back to look forward: Māori cultural values and the impact on career. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 1(3), 187–196. Reinert, E. S. (2006). The economics of reindeer herding: Saami entrepreneurship between cyclical sustainability and the powers of state and oligopolies. British Food Journal, 108(7), 522–540. Ricoeur, P. (1991). Time and narrative (K. McLaughlin & D. Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ruckstuhl, K., Carter, L., Easterbrook, L., Gorman, A. R., Rae, H., Ruru, J., et al. (2013). Māori and mining. Te Poutama Māori, University of Otago, The Māori and Mining Research Team. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle. net/10523/4362 Scheyvens, R., Banks, G., Meo-Sewabu, L., & Decena, T. (2017). Indigenous entrepreneurship on customary land in the Pacific: Measuring sustainability. Journal of Management & Organization, 23(6), 774–785. Schneider, B., Ehrhart, M. G., & Macey, W. H. (2013). Organizational climate and culture. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 361–388. Smith, A. (1776). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Raleigh, NC: Alex Catalogue. Sutton, R. I., & Staw, B. M. (1995). What theory is not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371–384. Taylor, F.  W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New  York, NY: Harper & Bros. Widener, P. (2007). Oil conflict in Ecuador: A photographic essay. Organization and Environment, 20(1), 84–106.

CHAPTER 4

People, Place, and Time in the Study of Indigenous Organization

Abstract  This chapter looks at the part people, places, and time play in theorizing and research processes. It attempts to spell out these three conceptually distinct yet empirically related elements. It is argued that researchers new to indigenous organization studies might consider them carefully when making decisions about the nature of them in their theorizing processes. It is further argued that perspectives which treat indigenous peoples, the places important to them, and their conceptions of time as objective and value-free continue to make elementary methodological mistakes. Keywords Indigenous organization studies • Theorizing • Theory • Methodology • People • Place • Time • Theory • Theorizing • Research

Introduction Indigenous organization research matters. Indigenous realities are in some ways different to non-indigenous but little research in the organization space has considered them and very little makes its way to high-impact business studies journals. Nevertheless, indigenous peoples’ experiences are likely to inspire novel ideas about organizations revealed through narratives which crystallize around certain events revealing preferences which challenge prevailing notions of work and through the narrative theorizing

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indigenous organization studies researchers do. When indigenous peoples and their priorities are privileged, researchers are likely to make new theoretical discoveries altering the way we see organizations and ways of organizing. The purpose of this chapter is to say some things about the nature and role of people in organizations and indigenous organization theorizing, to comment on the connection indigenous people have to places where organizations and organizing happen, and to examine the role time or temporality plays in making sense of organizational worlds and work. As such, this chapter puts forward a number of things to consider when prioritizing indigenous peoples and knowledges when studying organizations and organizing.

People and the Roles They Play The social and economic marginalization of indigenous people in many modern states—Canada (see Julien, Somerville, & Brant, 2017), Australia (see Paradies, Franklin, & Kowal, 2013), and Guatemala (see Gavillan & Hosni, 2018), for example—is all too clear and apparent. Meta-statistical measures (particular forms of discourses) have had a negative constructive effect on indigenous peoples. The use of statistics often presented by government agencies and the media not only reflect on but actively construct some of the predicaments faced by indigenous peoples. That is, some forms of quantitative research discourses have had a destructive impact on indigenous peoples. Particular forms of research oversimplify the organizational lives of indigenous peoples. Statistical analyses, for example, often collected by government agencies, consider what indigenous people do (start businesses, earn degrees, change careers). They are easily accessible sources of organizational data. That’s because patterns of conduct are usefully documented and subjected to statistical and scientific analyses. The outcomes of those analyses are pithy statements about the successes or predicaments of abstracted groups of indigenous peoples which can be effortlessly communicated (Canadian Human Rights Commission, 2011; Indigenous Business Australia, 2017; United Nations, 2014). They are handy for informing government policies but the contention in this text is that they do little to inform organizational practices. That’s why, in the study of organizations, we need to carefully consider the role people play in our theorizations. Researchers have debated the role people play in organizations and in their studies for a considerable

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period of time. With terms like people, agents, persons, entities, human beings, individuals, characters, subjects, and so on, comes a whole bunch of assumptions about the nature of people in the world and what it means to research with them. Sometimes people are referred to as agents or actors in or of organizations. In fact, terms like ‘in’ and ‘of’ have significant meanings too. Take the term ‘agent’, for example. Some researchers reflect on organizations which create contractual-type arrangements between people. The well-known economic theorist, Milton Friedman (1970) crafted people in this way arguing that managers are ‘agents’ of the proprietors of a business and that managers have an obligation to carry out their duties in accordance with their desires. The notion of organization-as-agent and its agency has received considerable attention too; the idea that corporations and collective entities can intend and are therefore agents and selves in their own right (Arnold, 2006) has attracted a significant amount of scholarship. Some researchers prefer the term ‘actors’ and I’ll use it loosely to refer to people who are intentional actors as opposed to acted-upon or contractual agents. From there it is useful to consider the things people-as-actors do as actions (as distinct from behaviours) and also to consider how actors attribute meanings to themselves and others in organizational and organizing contexts (Silverman, 1970). Another question in indigenous organization studies is, which people—acting either individually or in concert—will be part of your research and your theorizing? We touched on this earlier. The answers might be people in particular roles or professions (as a manager, an employee, a chief, an elder), groups (e.g. work groups, clans, mobs), and/or organizations (e.g. tribal entities, Western organizations, small enterprises). It’s an important question and one worthy of serious consideration. There are plenty of other considerations for your research when taking into account the role and place of people in organizations, in organizing contexts, and in theorizing. In their work on Indigenous Pathways into Social Research, Fiona Cram, Bagele Chilisa and Donna Mertens (2013) draw our attention to the problematic nature of attributing ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ to people. This is important for the indigenous organization studies researcher. Cram et  al. (2013) argue, with insights from Gould (1981), that use of the term ‘race’ stems from a deliberate attempt to control people’s identities and behaviours (cited in Cram et  al., 2013). Through processes of colonization, the language associated with race continues to classify humans according to their appearances (physical characteristics) enabling Europeans to make sense of, and communicate,

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human diversity within their own Western-centric frames primarily through a hierarchy of mankind placing white people at the top and others lower down. What makes race even more problematic is that “from this, it is often assumed that biology determines other factors (e.g. intelligence, musical talent, propensity toward violence)” (Cram et al., 2013, p. 13). To draw on a point made at the start of this chapter and earlier on in this text, “government classifications of race and ethnicity have been used to deny rights to groups of people based on biology or physical characteristics” (Cram et al., 2013, p. 13). Although research in management and organization studies  often engages a number of people as participants in research processes, the value of research fundamentally stems from its prospect to generate useful and enlightening insights into the particular phenomenon under investigation. When seeking to explore the ways people craft their organizational lives, the narratives one or two  participants tell  might be just as revealing as what 20 participants might tell. Furthermore, predicting the amount of time needed to talk with participants may not be that helpful; predicting the number of people to consult and the time to consult them are the products and remnants of positivistic-type research which indigenous researchers have been wary of (see Smith, 1999, 2012). An example may help here.  Groot, Hodgetts, Nikora, and Leggat-­ Cook’s (2011) ethnographic account of a homeless indigenous woman, Ariā, provides important insights into the indigenous research process. Using casual conversations, biographical interviews, photo-elicitation interviews and follow-up interviews—along with indigenous principles for analysis—the researchers reveal how the cultural practices of this one indigenous woman shaped her efforts to preserve a confident sense of identity and place despite being homeless. A powerful and touching account which can usefully inform organizational research and which reminds us that considerable insight and meaning can come from powerful engagements with an individual (Groot et al., 2011). Theory building in the field of indigenous organization studies should be concerned with the meaningful actions of people. Sometimes researchers see actions as different from behaviours because of the meanings people attribute to them. Research grounded in observable behaviours can be useful, but people should be consulted on the meanings they attach to their own and others’ actions. Although at times behaviours and actions are used by researchers as synonyms.  The point to make here is that researchers should be concerned with the ways in which people define the situations they find themselves in (Silverman, 1970).

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The early decades of the twenty-first century have seen a dramatic change in the ways people communicate: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram command our attention on a regular basis and for some of us we are consumed by pithy accounts or photos revealing snapshots of our lives and the things we do, or at least what we want people to see. Some forms of research (positivist, statistical) take this kind of material at face value, as a taken-for-granted insight into the complex lives of people and preferences and so on. For indigenous researchers, more direct meetings hold prime of place. In a cross-cultural project carried out by an indigenous and a non-indigenous researcher, Carpenter and McMurchy-Pilkington (2008) advocate for he kanohi kitea (face-to-face interaction, a face to be seen), engagements with people. Such interactions are also essential in the development of trust between actors. Some of the elements of doing research in this book stem from social constructionist thought. Social constructionism urges us to “take a critical stance toward our taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world” (Burr, 2003, p. 2), and while it teaches us to question the existence of an unproblematic world, it warns us to be suspicious of our own critical assumptions. Social constructionism is also concerned with meaning and understanding as the fundamental features of human experience, and it is the language-based interactions between human beings that allow us to create meaning and understanding (Allan, 2006). Certain events and experiences and ways of understanding them are, social constructionists maintain, defined by time and place and as such vary across and within cultural contexts (Lock & Strong, 2010). With the attention to people in this section comes the risk of omitting other living things. But the meanings people attribute to those living things are what should interest us as indigenous organization studies researchers. They are important insofar as indigenous people, and other people, make them important through the narratives people tell. Importantly, that includes the places indigenous people reside, work, care for, protect, and embrace with energy and spirit.

Connections to Places The places where organizing is done are important for indigenous peoples; tribal places, home places, meeting places, workplaces, marketplaces, and community places all have significance for indigenous people because of the meanings people attach and have attached to them and the significance

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of them for past, current, and future generations. In the indigenous Māori language we have different names and terms for place; whenua and turangawaewae (Love, Tutua-Nathan, Kruger, & Barnes, 1993), among others. Places have significance for people because of the meanings those places had for those who came before and for those people will come. They are the places where organizing is done—where people work, provide for families, seek shelter, create memories and stories, and so on—and they are important for indigenous peoples, as well for other living things. Of course, competing narratives can work to disrupt indigenous people’s attachment to places. Even in nation states like India, where colonial rule has been replaced by political sovereignty, the residue of colonial narratives still lingers (Ashar, 2015). There is no shortage of scholars who have pointed out that the “post in postcolonialism is problematic” (Banerjee, 2000, p. 5). That’s because ‘post’ suggests after and therefore attempts to dislocate the issues of colonialism, maintaining it as a thing of the past without consequences for the present. Worst still, colonialism is masked in the organization and business space specifically by the use of such terms as economic and social progress (Banerjee, 2000; Said, 1978; Smith, 1999). For many Aboriginal people, place defines who they are. In 1993 when the Australian High Court recognized native title it only drew attention to the fact that Australian land had been regarded as ‘belonging to no one’ (terra nullius) up until that point in a misguided legal sense. Ever since the High Court’s decision, national interests (including business, commercial, and political interests), have continued to trump Aboriginal interests in Australia. Banerjee (2000) makes the commanding point that part of what has made many mining corporations so wealthy in Australia, and elsewhere, has been the profits procured from indigenous lands by entities legally sanctioned to use those lands in spite of indigenous disapproval. Indigenous peoples see lands in complex and holistic ways which is the reason why it is important to engage in in-depth conversations about the meanings people attach to place. Indigenous peoples of the Pacific embrace land and people and the connections between them using terms such as “vanua in Fiji, fonua in Tonga, enua in the Cook Islands, whenua in NZ” (Scheyvens, Banks, Meo-Sewabu, & Decena, 2017, p. 777). One of the noticeable place/spatial tensions that arise between Aboriginal peoples and commerce is when a business wants to mine indigenous lands for its minerals as Banerjee (2000) has pointed out. Often government officials, managers, and lawyers take an exclusionary approach by identifying which group has rights over a particular piece of property and

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therefore which group does not. This is an exploitative exercise in the delineation of territory which runs counter to traditional ways of communal occupation (Ali, 2016). There is clearly an opportunity for indigenous organization studies researchers and practitioners to work in this space (Banerjee, 2000; Boje, 2018; Love & Tilley, 2014). The beauty of narrative theorizing is that to engage in narrative ways of thinking is to both explain phenomena in depth and to limit those explanations in terms of place/spatial boundary assumptions thereby restricting the empirical generalizability of any theory statement (Bacharach, 1989). Some research is defined, bounded, and combined by space (spatiality). For example, research might be confined by country and territory locations like Canada and the Black Lake, to a specific industry like tourism, to a particular type of organization like a start-up, and be relevant to a particular group of indigenous peoples like the Dené people in Saskatchewan. Research which establishes these kinds of spatial limitations is more likely to create useful depth. Good theory building research details and elaborates on a specific situation (Bacharach, 1989). Time is also a particularly important construct for indigenous peoples.

The Importance of Time The consequences of generational oppression have resulted in the lack of transmitted indigenous ways of knowing over time. We see this in the disruptions between generations of indigenous peoples. But so too, in the isolation of indigenous peoples from broader society and markets, noticeable in the lack of wealth derived from business practices, the low numbers of board and managerial level organizational appointments, and the few students and staff who roam the halls of our universities and higher education institutions, including business schools. One of the most salient cultural differences between indigenous and nonindigenous peoples lies in their temporalities or the ways they make sense of time. The colonizers were and are obsessed with dates, years, decades, centuries, and progress over time. In Western discourses, Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus are often lauded for their ‘time at sea’, ‘enduring adventures’, and ‘periods of discovery’. For these European navigators, and the people who have talked about their accomplishments since, time was/is linear (events progress in a straight timeline), periodic (events repeat regularly over time), and chronological (events are located in historical time).

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These are the “enduring discursive tools of colonialism, and have some ongoing divisive and destructive effects” (Love & Tilley, 2013, p. 174). Those colonial ideas of time have been institutionalized in modern forms of organization and are regarded as essential to industrial organization and logistics; they dominate the way we work and the ways we are managed as people, as indigenous people. Cunliffe, Luhman, and Boje (2004) refer to this as objective or clock time. Modern forms of managing and organizing reduce our interactions to ‘blocks of time’ determined not by our relationships with one another but with clocks and calendars. In various countries there have been discussions challenging the ‘five-day working week’ but often only to replace them with ‘four-day working weeks’. Some have advocated a four-day working week or a reduction in the ‘number’ of hours worked. But these seemingly revolutionary, pioneering initiatives still maintain our reliance on abstract notions of time to get ‘work done’. Think about when you woke up this morning. Did you wake to an alarm clock? Did someone or something else wake you? Did you simply get up when you felt ready? Perhaps you did not wake up at all because you stayed up all night: maybe yesterday has suddenly turned into today. How you woke up (or stayed awake) has a lot to say about how we experience time. So far in this text we have come across a few binaries (e.g. indigenous/ non-indigenous), and here we’ll consider a few more (and prominent authors who have created them) as they have to do with time: objective/ subjective time (e.g. Cunliffe et al., 2004) and monochronic/polychronic time (e.g. Hall, 1984). Alarm clocks, and clocks in general, have a lot to do with objective time according to Cunliffe et al. (2004). Clocks and watches (clock time) have generally consumed us and how we work. When researching and writing theories, indigenous organization researchers should seek to understand how people experience time. People experience time in different ways and much of it has to do with cultural differences. As Edward T. Hall (1984, p. 3) made apparent, “a complicating factor in intercultural relations is that each culture has its own time frames in which the patterns are unique”. He further suggests that “they see time as a constant in the analysis of culture, and they also see western science and western thought as more advanced than other systems of thought” (Hall, 1984, p. 5). Indigenous peoples holding true to their traditions have different preferences for the ways events and things are managed and organized in terms of time. Lives are less tied to clocks and abstract mechanical devices. Time has been, and in some cases is, oriented around human intentionality

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and experience. Take Māori (indigenous New Zealand) time for example. For Pākehā (non-Māori), Māori time often refers to Māori people’s supposed lack of regard for time and implies laziness and unreliability. For Māori, Māori time values the time taken for human relating, discussion, and collective consensus (Walker, 1982, cited in McKay & Walmsley, 2003). Let us consider the relevance of this for researching. Say you are studying indigenous people as entrepreneurs in the fishing industry and you are interested in how they make sense of time in relation to their entrepreneurial activities. Indigenous peoples who have become entrepreneurs in coastal areas have profound knowledge of the seas, plants, and animals in and around them. Their ‘work time’ might revolve around the ‘rhythms’ of the time (Hall, 1984) to harvest shell fish on exposed beaches at low tides (tidal clocks). Or perhaps work revolves around the warmth or coolness of the sea which might determine migration patterns and so the time to fish is determined in part by those patterns. For example, Inuit whalers will have significantly different conceptions about time to those of the indigenous worker in the office block of a firm in central Manhattan. For some indigenous entrepreneurs engaged in harvesting natural resources, for example, their season may only last a ‘short time’ as determined by quotas imposed by government agencies—an altogether different notion of time; perhaps a conception of time attached to bureaucracy and/ or sustainability. As such, time may be determined by people’s own physical bodies, how they feel on a particular day or occasion (body time), the level of the seas (tidal time), migration patterns of fish species (migratory time), government quotas (bureaucracy/sustainability time), and so on. These notions of time are also becoming harder to predict. These various time elements have different implications for how indigenous entrepreneurs make decisions and manage their lives. They have an impact on their families, tribes, communities as well as other managers, entrepreneurs, businesses, and the world around them. Often, in ‘culture-free’ organizational analyses we see the term day-to-day activities used. But for indigenous peoples engaged in organizational activities revolving around different notions of time, it might make more sense to say moment-to-­ moment actions. We can see how these time concepts have real relevance for indigenous gardeners and farmers (planting and harvesting) as entrepreneurs as time is more negotiable. But also within larger corporate structures we can explore how indigenous managers and workers make sense of time in relation to other

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­ eople (coffee time, time to socialize) and leave-based time; parental p leave can be understood and interpreted not by a clock but by maternity/ paternity (maternal/paternal time)  for example. How do these events impact indigenous people’s cultural working lives? Economic and government notions of time may determine ‘26 weeks paid parental leave’ as a form of clock time in some jurisdictions, but for some people it may be less tied to specific months and more so to how they feel about their parenting duties (parental time) or whether that time is lengthened/shortened. What implications might these experiences of ‘time’ have for your work as a researcher? If you’re a patient person, it’s likely that you will take the time to engage and learn from others and attend to their narratives and the meanings they attribute to their complex organized lives. If you are impatient, then you may miss moments to listen and to learn. Let’s take the example of age and the ageing of physical structures. With some Western conceptions of building and age comes deterioration, whereas with some indigenous conceptions of age comes strength, perseverance, and resistance. In these conceptions, ancient structures are  sometimes lauded for their ability to stand up to the destructive forces of the elements as well as the human forces of colonization. Time is a particularly interesting aspect of indigenous organization. You may be interested in how indigenous people experience time at work or in a tribal community, how time-flexible workplaces lead to or obstruct indigenous employee happiness, or how well-being is affected by ideas of productivity in a ‘time is money’ kind of way. Time and temporality should be serious considerations in indigenous organization studies.

Conclusion The past few decades have seen the emergence and rise of indigenous knowledges in mainstream social research publications; some of which have fuelled decolonial and anti-colonial discourses. We could say that researchers in the indigenous organization studies space are venturing into new-ish territory and this is the case if researching in a formal capacity in a business school or as a research consultant. But if research is simply about understanding people and the roles we play in society through the places we attach ourselves to over enduring periods of time from generation to generation, then it is safe to assume that indigenous peoples are the architects of historical organization and modern forms of organizing.

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This short chapter has presented people, place, and time as key elements in the research and theorizing of indigenous organization. They are important considerations because the way they are treated by researchers has serious implications for teasing out the relevance of organizations and ways of organizing for indigenous peoples.

References Ali, S. H. (2016). The ethics of space and time in mining projects: Matching technical tools with social performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 135(4), 645–651. Allan, K. (2006). Contemporary social and sociological theory: Visualizing social worlds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Arnold, D. G. (2006). Corporate moral agency. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 30, 279–291. Ashar, M. (2015). Decolonizing what? Categories, concepts and the enduring ‘not yet’. Cultural Dynamics, 27(2), 253–265. Bacharach, S.  B. (1989). Organizational theories: Some criteria for evaluation. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 496–515. Banerjee, S.  B. (2000). Whose land is it anyway? National interest, indigenous stakeholders and colonial discourses: The case of the Jabiluka Uranium Mine. Organization & Environment, 13(1), 3–38. Boje, D. M. (2018). Organizational research methods: Storytelling. New York, NY: Routledge. Burr, V. (2003). Social constructionism (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Canadian Human Rights Commission. (2011). Report on equality rights of Aboriginal people. Canadian Human Rights Commission. Carpenter, V. M., & McMurchy-Pilkington, C. (2008). Cross-cultural researching: Māori and Pākehā in Te Whakapakari. Qualitative Research, 8(2), 179–196. Cram, F., Chilisa, B., & Mertens, D. M. (2013). The journey begins. In D. M. Mertens, F. Cram, & B. Chilisa (Eds.), Indigenous pathways into social research: Voices of a new generation (pp. 11–40). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Cunliffe, A.  L., Luhman, J.  T., & Boje, D.  M. (2004). Narrative temporality: Implications for organizational research. Organization Studies, 25(2), 261–286. Friedman, M. (1970, September 13). The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. The New York Times Magazine. Gavillan, J.  R., & Hosni, D. (2018). Equality of opportunity: The case of Guatemala. Equal Opportunities International, 17(6), 1–5. Gould, S. J. (1981). The mismeasure of man. London: Pelican. Groot, S., Hodgetts, D., Nikora, L.  W., & Leggatt-Cook, C. (2011). A Māori homeless woman. Ethnography, 12(3), 375–397.

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Hall, E. T. (1984). The dance of life: The other dimension of time. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Indigenous Business Australia. (2017). Indigenous Business Australia Annual Report 2016–2017. Australian Government. Julien, M., Somerville, K., & Brant, J. (2017). Indigenous perspectives on work-­ life enrichment and conflict in Canada. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 36(2), 165–181. Lock, A., & Strong, T. (2010). Social constructionism: Sources and stirrings in theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Love, M. T., Tutua-Nathan, T., Kruger, T., & Barnes, M. (1993). Ngaa Tikanga Tiaki I Te Taiao: Issues of significance to Māori for the inclusion in the Bay of Plenty regional policy statement. Whakatane: Nga Tikanga Tiaki i te Taiao. Love, T., & Tilley, E. (2013). Temporal discourse and the news media representation of indigenous-non-indigenous relations: A case study from Aotearoa New Zealand. Media International Australia, 149(1), 174–188. Love, T., & Tilley, E. (2014). Acknowledging power: The application of Kaupapa Māori principles and processes to developing a new approach to organisation– public engagement. Public Relations Inquiry, 3(1), 31–49. McKay, B., & Walmsley, A. (2003). Maori time: Notions of space, time and building form in the South Pacific. Retrieved from http://www.idea-edu.com/ Journal/2003/Maori-Time-Notions-of-Space-Time-and-Building-Form-inthe-South-Pacific Paradies, Y., Franklin, H., & Kowal, E. (2013). Development of the reflexive antiracism scale—Indigenous. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 32(4), 348–373. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London, UK: Vintage Books. Scheyvens, R., Banks, G., Meo-Sewabu, L., & Decena, T. (2017). Indigenous entrepreneurship on customary land in the Pacific: Measuring sustainability. Journal of Management & Organization, 23(6), 774–785. Silverman, D. (1970). The theory of organisations: A sociological framework. London, UK: Heinemann Educational. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London, UK: Zed Books. Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonising methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). London, UK: Zed Books. United Nations. (2014). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples. United Nations.

CHAPTER 5

The Possibilities for Indigenous Organization Studies

Abstract  Indigenous organization theories may be employed in distinctly differing ways for manifestly differing ends by a wide range of people— community members, managers, employees, entrepreneurs, academics, policymakers, and so on. They are inherently practical. But to craft them, researchers new to the field (indigenous and non-indigenous) require the support of certain researching institutions and educational processes. In this chapter, academic institutions in colonized states are placed under the spotlight. The point is made that the educational programmes and processes of these institutions—most resembling colonial forms of research education—have comprehensively and consistently struggled to demonstrate their relevance for indigenous peoples. However, plenty of indigenous and critical organization researchers have sought to challenge those same institutions offering hope in the development of indigenous organization studies as a field of scholarly endeavour. Keywords  Indigenous organization • Business schools • Universities • Colleges • Institutions • Education • Critical management • Organization studies

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Introduction Many different forms of organization exist in relation to indigenous people: in Aotearoa New Zealand indigenous Māori people have organized land marches to protest the legislative acts of governments; in Australia indigenous people are well represented as employees in the Australian Football League (Ferrer & Turner, 2017); in Canada we’ve seen the devastation of residential schools (Julien, Somerville, & Brant, 2017); and in the Amazon misguided pharmaceutical companies have taken advantage of indigenous peoples’ knowledges to exploit native plants for human consumption without proper compensation (Cajete, 2000). In part, indigenous organizing has been about the fight for justice, the mobilization of activism, the rejection of dominance, and the reform of institutions. Indigenous and non-indigenous people have fought hard for changes in the ways organizations impact indigenous peoples. This short book has been about the study of organizations and ways of organizing which are affected by and affect indigenous people as leaders, managers, owners, entrepreneurs, workers, community members and so on. It deals with things that might interest researchers in contemporary business schools as well as practitioners seeking to better understand their organizations and industries and how those institutions might impact indigenous people in (post)colonial states. The field of study this book is focussed on—indigenous organization studies—is an emerging field of research. There is no definitive body of scholarship. Yet, no organizational researcher or theorist in a colonized nation state can avoid considering the relevance of their work for indigenous peoples and communities, nor can any practising manager for that matter. The things briefly highlighted in this book appear to be relevant for a whole range of researchers and practitioners.

Revisiting Indigenous Organization Studies This book is about indigenous peoples, organizations and ways of organizing. Powerful discourses bring indigenous organization into being and are initiated by particular texts and practices which work to craft its identity as a field of scholarship. It’s also about theorizing these things. Theorizing can seem to be a hard, uniform scientific agenda that lacks the diversity required to convince researchers outside the mainstream to engage in its processes. As with researching, theorizing has a problematic history for indigenous peoples. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p.  38) has

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made clear the point that “indigenous peoples have been, in many ways, oppressed by theory”. However, theorizing can be a powerful research tool when grounded in indigenous peoples, priorities, and knowledges (Irwin, 1994), particularly for the study of organizations and organizing. That’s because, at its simplest, “new ways of theorizing by indigenous scholars are grounded in a real sense of, and sensitivity towards, what it means to be an indigenous person” (Smith, 1999, p. 38). So, how important are non-indigenous organization theories (theories created largely outside of the wisdom of indigenous people and ways of knowing) for doing indigenous organization theory-work? As Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p. 39) has also made clear, “decolonization … does not mean and has not meant a total rejection of all theory or western knowledge. Rather, it is about centring our concerns and worldviews and then coming to know and understand theory and research from our perspective and for our own purpose”. As such, non-indigenous driven research and theory-work has a place. It is an important place because ideas and theories are meant to be challenged and contested and therefore the more opportunities to engage in open and substantive conversations the better. Establishing methodological guidelines increases the value of a research project and in this short book we considered several key elements: broad areas of study, phenomena of interest, reviewing established knowledges, engaging in narrative theorizing, and determining research purposes  to name a few. Of course, as Alvesson and Kärreman (2007) suggest, a research agenda should not be fully determined a priori and should be open to change. While this book places an emphasis on theorizing it does so only in so far as theorizing is considered a contested idea.

The Role of Research Exemplars A number of texts have helped stimulate and promote thinking for indigenous organization research and theorizing. These texts (formalized research discourses) have created a substantial conversation in the fields of indigenous studies and organization studies. For example, Stewart Clegg (1990) once made the point that organizations and ways of organizing are represented less as empowering and generous phenomena and more as things which are constricting and coercive. His work, as well as the work of others in the critical organization space, have important things to say for indigenous organization research. Some of these critical texts have the potential to inspire new indigenous organization studies researchers to think about important aspects of

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organization and organizing for indigenous peoples. Researchers and writers have made substantial contributions to their fields of research, offering provocative thoughts, thereby encouraging us to rethink the way we see phenomena and/or do research. They are centred around concerns for workplace practice and research which are relevant for indigenous organization studies. Take, for example, the research work on prevailing economic structures and the challenge from indigenous scholars. This subject is addressed in Mānuka Hēnare’s (2014) work on economic forms as well as in more recent publications (see  Dell, Staniland, & Nicholson, 2018). Hēnare’s (2014) argument is that settler economies are mostly grounded in broad underlying philosophical ideals concerning the manipulation of people through labour efficiencies, the promotion of self-interest, and the privileging of free, unregulated market capitalism. He refers to this as the “economy of exploitation” (Hēnare, 2014, p. 67). Hēnare (2014) crafts an altogether different form of economy which both precedes this economic form and continues to operate alongside it. That form is entrenched in spirituality and ancestry, the past as well as current and future generations, notions of ecology, relationships formed and maintained through reciprocity, and the redistribution of resources in the pursuit of holistic well-being. This form, Hēnare (2014, p.  67) argues, represents the “economy of affection” found mostly in indigenous societies. The intricate interrelationship between indigenous organization and prevailing economic structures driven by indigenous methodologies and theorizing processes is worthy of further investigation. Take, as another example, the research work which is challenging the way managers use and think about theories. Some managers use theories as indefinite solutions to finite problems but such use ignores the reality that, for indigenous peoples, organizations are temporary structures and organizational life is constantly changing. Yiannis Gabriel (2002) says that managers seek to discipline and control organizational abnormalities by latching on to theories. He puts it eloquently when he writes, “the image of practitioners using theories to tame irregularity and achieve control is severely at odds with the precarious qualities of life in contemporary orga­ rganization nizations.” (Gabriel, 2002, p. 146). The job of the indigenous o theorist is not only to provide guidance for practising managers and other organizational actors in dealing with the challenges of everyday work but so too to offer insights into when and how to use them since theories are more “temporary solutions” than “scientific absolutes” reflective of organizational life (Gabriel, 2002, p. 146).

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Organizational culture is an obvious area of research of relevance for indigenous organization studies: the ways people regularly interact; the social interactions which take place; how people use visual, verbal, and other types of language to connect; the consistency with which they use them as well as the ways people think about their interactions; and perhaps the kinds of identities they hope to portray are all important considerations. Sociologists such as Erving Goffman (1956) and George Herbert Mead (1913) are some of the classic writers on this stuff. Consider the organized celebrations organizations and communities engage in as a further illustration of interesting research. Rituals, festivals, carnivals, celebrations, and other ceremonies such as powwow and smudging ceremonies have significant importance for the ways people come together and relate to one another and with spirits to create meaningful encounters both between people and with place. Islam, Zyphur and Boje (2008) have explored the role carnivals have played in forming activist groups opposing corporate actions, for instance. The United Nations (UN) (2007) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a useful place to identify topics that may be of interest. The declaration embraces topics and issues of relevance and importance to indigenous peoples. We see evidence of the declaration’s articles in the topics addressed by people doing indigenous organization research. Topics abstracted from the early articles in the declaration such as economic, social, and cultural development (Article 3) have been hot topics for research. But what about the more obscure articles? The importance of indigenous spirituality at work (Article 25) and the role of military work concerning indigenous peoples (Article 30), for example?  There are numerous sources from which to garner research inspiration. These are the examplars for indigenous organization research to come. 

Building Research Careers Researchers can only offer more or less interesting and useful interpretations and can never speak with absolute authority or finality about someone or something. Colonialism has been a particularly aggressive form of oppression on a vast scale, seeking to write particular uncontested histories in the states they sought to control. There is no need to replicate such offensive conditions in the research we do as indigenous organization researchers.  Building a research career is about engaging in processes which are respectful and considerate of people.

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If you can write clearly for your readers then much of the hard work is being addressed. Of course this is easier said than done and being a good writer is more about developing writing styles suitable for readers than ‘perfecting’ the art of writing at a certain point in time. For any reader, the appeal of clear writing is that it creates almost ‘effortless reading’ (Ragins, 2012). Think about the last time you picked up a book and had to re-read a passage because it did not make sense to you the first time. It was most likely the fault of the writer and not you as the reader. It is the writer’s job to make their point apparent the first time. Perhaps you persevered or perhaps you gave-up. Either way, reading in this kind of manner can be a frustrating and time-wasting exercise. Of course, if you had a hard night the evening before or were distracted by an explosion in the street then perhaps you will forgive the writer in that instance. What is important here is that if the main points you wish to make are not communicated clearly to your intended audiences—taking into account the diversity of your readers and their experiences—then you may as well not write them at all. There is another important point to make; if you uphold the integrity of writers who have written before you then you are likely to create a space whereby people are willing to continue to share their insights with you. That does not mean that you should not be critical of their work. Realizing those ancestors and others who have contributed knowledges for what their contribution was in their time and in their moment in history is important to respect. Some we can condemn. But for the majority, we should do what we can to maintain their place in history. In the indigenous Māori language, Ngahuia te Awekotuku once said, “kaua e takahia te mana o te tangata” (as cited in Smith, 1999, p. 120). That is, do not trample on the mana (or the ‘integrity’) of the people (Smith, 1999). Doing indigenous organization research and theory work should be an exercise in humility. There is a whakatauki (saying) in Māori culture, “Kāore te kūmara e whāki ana tana reka, the sweet potato does not need to say how sweet he is” (Kerr, 2013, p. 19). Doing your own independent study, thinking and writing early on in your career can be a valuable approach because you can really test your own voice and thoughts. Collaborating with other researchers can be rewarding when starting a research career too since you can learn from their experiences and mistakes and share in their rewards. However, collaborations often require a suppression of ideas about what constitutes reality (ontology), the nature of knowledge (epistemology) and how to go about creating knowledge (methodology). They also force you to contend with different notions of

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ethics—for business, for research institutions, for indigenous peoples, and your own personal ethics—and with the differences that may exist between them (Hall, 2010). In that sense, indigenous research is quite political. Building a research career can be difficult, especially when there is little institutional support and recognition for indigenous voices.  Tribal and indigenous knowledges are practical knowledges with deep theoretical and philosophical roots, yet business/management schools have largely ignored them. We established this earlier. First Nations business, Aboriginal management, tribal governance, indigenous leadership, and indigenous entrepreneurship have not become any substantial part of the curricula in the vast majority of universities and institutions of higher education; they remain on the very margins of even the most critical of organization and management schools and academies. Indigenous organization researchers are in part charged with the responsibility of understanding and explaining how indigenous peoples organize differently.  We see this in very practical ways in society.  For Champagne (2007, p. 353), Native American nations form clear and distinct cultural and political groups which operate at odds with “surrounding nation-states that prefer assimilation and political inclusion to recognition of indigenous goals and values”. We cannot overlook the fact that indigenous people are not homogenous and their experiences different (Smith, 1999). With indigeneity comes heterogeneity and many researchers make clear the need to “appreciate the differing responses of indigenous groups” (Bergmann, 2008, p. viii). This too is important to acknowledge in the building of research careers.

More on the Academic Side of Things The institutionalization of ethics—in particular through committees—in universities and higher education institutions has brought about barriers to the ways we do indigenous organization research. People on ethics committees are mostly well intentioned but the ethical processes in which ethics committees are grounded are often archaic, at best offensive, and at worst suppress the kind of research being advocated for in this book. For one, prescribed ethics application forms and review processes mostly assume indigenous peoples are participants, not the leaders, of research investigations. The pervasive first step of ‘doing a literature review’ has too many connotations and fails to recognize the complexity of the researcher and what they hold to be legitimate forms of knowledge too. We also established

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this earlier. Often literature is taken to mean written forms of scholarship in peer/editor-reviewed topic-based publications. But other forms of knowledge have authenticity for indigenous organization researchers. For indigenous people as researchers, the knowledge of elders and chiefs and the verbal and spiritual tellings passed on from generation to generation— which often do not make their way into books or journals in the form of the written word—are genuine, authentic, and appropriate forms of knowledge. An enduring journey of self-reflection, discovery, rediscovery, and so on would appear to be a better process than doing a literature review for some indigenous researchers, particularly those who have grown up surrounded by elders and ancestral knowledges. The traditional disciplines of business, management, entrepreneurship, strategy and so on become less relevant for the researcher of indigenous organization because those disciplines are mostly constructs of universities, governments, and other large bureaucratic organizations seeking to maintain size, exert influence, and uphold control over people and resources: banks, fast-food companies, car companies, and so on are particularly notorious for sustaining their position and influence in society. Business schools and academic institutions need to rethink the way they organize their research programmes, allowing and encouraging researchers to move across traditional areas of study and continually thinking critically about the institutions they create, maintain and uphold. Today, management textbooks still tell students that management is a set of functions carried out by people in authority who plan, organize, lead, control, or something like this. We might consider this the prevailing paradigm. Everything students learn from there is essentially a product of those functions which writers and book publishers have succeeded to reduce management to ever since Henri Fayol (1949) and others during and before his time so eloquently detailed it. Various historical periods are paraded in front of students as distinct views on management but the post-­ text is that all have relevance for managing today. However, such an approach has sidelined indigenous and other cultural perspectives. Indigenous researchers are often at the margins of their respective academic disciplines (Smith, 1999). This is certainly the case for indigenous researchers in business and management schools; in fact, they can also be further marginalized from the indigenous centre. That is, departments where most indigenous researchers reside within universities and colleges (such as indigenous, education, and health studies) often operate in isolation from business schools.

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One of the criticisms levelled at business schools and their programmes which support indigenous students (through scholarships and affirmative action) is that by doing so they ‘privilege’ indigenous people. However, what critics do not realize is that most business schools are massive systems of institutional privilege for the majority. Canadian philosopher Will Kymlicka (2008) has made this commanding point. When we walk into business schools in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and elsewhere, we often hear people talking in the colonizers’ language. The walls, ceilings, and artefacts are mostly colonial too and the taught curriculum draws mostly on Anglo-American theories that provide pre-eminence to the rationally maximizing individual rather than highlighting the significance of collective behaviours and the contingencies of culture, place, and time. Furthermore, very few deans and chancellors are people who identify as the original inhabitants of the areas they now work in. As such, we are right to question these educational institutions and the norms they largely maintain. There is little doubt that the growth of indigenous organization research will be linked to a broader recognition among indigenous studies and organization studies researchers that binaries—for example, indigenous versus non-indigenous, colonial versus decolonial—have their place but that an over-reliance on them will continue to wash away the intricate detail upon which good theorizing depends. Further, that research power lies with indigenous peoples, groups, and organizations at the centre of the research and less with researching institutions, governments, and money-driven funding bodies whose agendas are reflective of more mainstream ideas about social progress (see Deetz, 1996). Some researchers have maintained the notion that indigenous knowledge systems have been relegated in the order of knowledge as a fascinating add-on instead of something that has its own realities and knowledge traditions (see Cram, Chilisa, & Mertens, 2013; Kovach, 2009; Wilson, 2008). But  Native researcher Gregory Cajete makes the commanding point that “Native American Science is incomprehensible to most ­westerners because it operates from a different paradigm” (Cajete, 2000, p. x). And as Leroy Little Bear says, “measurement is part of Native American science but does not play the foundational role it plays in western science. Measurement is only one of many factors to be considered” (as cited in Cajete, 2000, p. x).  Indigenous knowledges are powerful knowledges and the same can be said of indigenous organization research which has important things to achieve amidst the academic institutions charged with the responsibilities for its success.

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On the Practical Side of Things The UN and its adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 13 September 2007 is an example of a recent initiative that will encourage business schools to consider how their research and teaching programmes acknowledge the rights of indigenous peoples. The declaration is practical in that sense. It emphasizes the need for institutions, like business schools, to consider their value to indigenous communities. Business schools and indigenous organization researchers have a role to play in organizational practices beyond academic institutions. The research findings and arguments scholars make inform the everyday practices organizations and organization actors engage in. There are some important things to say about organizational practices which may not have much research weight behind them but are important to acknowledge nonetheless. For example, every organization with a governance board in a postcolonial state should have an indigenous member or consultant; someone who is connected to the ancestral knowledges of lands, the environment, plants, animals, spiritual forces, and the people who have maintained a connection to those places and things over a considerable period of time. Most organizations recognize this but few have invested in processes to operationalize it. Another practical issue worth re-considering is nepotism. Sometimes in Western management, nepotism is seen as an illegal act referring to managerial bias, discrimination against people, and the preferential treatment towards a family member or close friend (cronyism). Often seen as a pejorative term in Western thought, it is almost mandatory in indigenous contexts. The role of family and family-like relationships is fundamental to indigenous forms of organizing. Up against a legislative world where these kinds of relationships are considered problematic, further indigenous ­organization research needs to consider the complexities.  How do we negotiate these kinds of differences between Western and indigenous thought and practice? Organizations can also play a vital role in the revitalization and preservation of indigenous languages. However, in many contexts (business, global, trade), ‘native languages’, along with cultural heritages, are not highly appreciated or respected by governments and industry mostly because they are considered “languages of the vanquished” (Alvarado, 2009, p. 304), and irrelevant for modern-day organizing and managing in a globalized world where uniformity and consistency of communication is privileged

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over the ‘antiquated’. Nevertheless, there is increasing recognition in the value of indigenous language in some regions. For example, the use of Gaelic in Scotland by businesses and organizations was found to have the potential to generate up to £148.5 million a year according to a project led by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (BBC, 2014). This was in addition to the undoubted value of language for culture, identity, and creativity. Perhaps at no other point in human history have organizations and ways of organizing been more pivotal to the lives of indigenous people and communities than they are now. In colonized societies, people and organizations (schools, students, teachers) are revitalizing indigenous languages, tribal entities are managing ancestral assets, governance boards are being put in place to control treasured natural resources and health centres are being run on native wisdoms and traditional knowledges. All of which take advantage of opportunities to enrich and change indigenous peoples’ lives in practical and substantive ways. Indigenous organization research must be a part of it. 

Conclusion Are we seeing an indigenous research revolution? Thomas Kuhn (1962) in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, suggested that a shift in ways of knowing is initiated by an emerging logic that an established ‘paradigm’ has failed to maintain its status in the assessment to which the “paradigm itself had previously led the way” (Kuhn, 1962, p. 92). Perhaps one is on the way. I am hopeful that mainstream theorizing is being challenged and that indigenous forms and preferences for researching will be afforded the room to make their case in academic circles of the future. Like other Palgrave Pivot texts, this book has been pithy in its delivery and I am grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for its commitment to publishing in this way. For writing style, I have  drawn on the pioneering work of Chris Grey (2005) and the Sage series, ‘A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About…’. In some places the book is fairly derivative: points are made which reflect the work of other, well-­established, indigenous and non-indigenous writers. I encourage you to engage their writings first-hand and consider their ideas. This book is for researchers, students, and practitioners. It is a short book: it is brief in its delivery of important considerations when doing indigenous organization research, studying indigenous organization and thinking about the ways organizations run and for whom.

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This text has drawn its strength from indigenous and non-indigenous scholars who have listened to people and have sought to make research a space for indigenous empowerment as opposed to a space for indigenous exploitation (see e.g. Chilisa, 2012; Kovach, 2009; Ruwhiu & Cone, 2010; Smith, 1999, 2012). Indigenous organization studies has not been a strong area of influence among the disciplines for indigenous well-being. This book applauds people who have written and said important things in the context of contemporary indigenous and critical organization research. But there is plenty more to be done in this space.

References Alvarado, J.  (2009). Fair trade in Mexico and abroad: An alternative to the Walmartopia? Journal of Business Ethics, 88(2), 301–317. Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. (2007). Constructing mystery: Empirical matters in theory development. Academy of Management Review, 32(4), 1265–1281. BBC. (2014, November 12). Study suggests Gaelic worth up to £148.5m a year to economy. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ukscotland-highlands-islands-30004483 Bergmann, W. (2008). Foreword. In C. O’Faircheallaigh & S. H. Ali (Eds.), Earth matters: Indigenous peoples, the extractive industries and corporate social responsibility (pp. vii–viii). Sheffield, South Yorkshire: Greenleaf Publishing Limited. Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers. Champagne, D. (2007). Social change and cultural continuity among native nations. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous research methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Clegg, S. R. (1990). Modern organizations: Organisation studies in the postmodern world. London, UK: Sage. Cram, F., Chilisa, B., & Mertens, D. M. (2013). The journey begins. In D. M. Mertens, F. Cram, & B. Chilisa (Eds.), Indigenous pathways into social research: Voices of a new generation (pp. 11–40). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Deetz, S. (1996). Describing differences in approaches to organization science: Rethinking Burrell and Morgan and their legacy. Organization Science, 7(2), 191–207. Dell, K., Staniland, N., & Nicholson, A. (2018). Economy of mana: Where to next? MAI, 7(1), 51–65. Fayol, H. (1949). General and industrial management (C.  Storrs, Trans.). London, UK: Pitman & Sons. Ferrer, J., & Turner, P. (2017). Indigenous player inclusion in the Australian Football League. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 36(6), 519–532.

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Gabriel, Y. (2002). Essal: On paragrammatic uses of organizational theory—A provocation. Organization Studies, 23(1), 133–151. Goffman, E. (1956). The presentation of self in everyday life (Monograph No. 2). University of Edinburgh, Social Sciences Research Centre, Edinburgh. Grey, C. (2005). A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about studying organizations. London, UK: Sage. Hall, C. M. (2010). Researching the political in tourism: Where knowledge meets power. In C.  M. Hall (Ed.), Fieldwork in tourism (pp.  53–68). Abingdon: Routledge. Hēnare, M. (2014). The economy of mana. In D. Cooke, C. Hill, P. Baskett, & R. Irwin (Eds.), Beyond the free market: Rebuilding a just society in New Zealand (pp. 65–69). Auckland, New Zealand: Dunmore Publishing. Irwin, K. (1994). Māori research methods and processes: An exploration. Sites Journal, 28, 25–43. Islam, G., Zyphur, M. J., & Boje, D. M. (2008). Carnival and spectacle in Krewe de Vieux and the Mystic Krewe of Spermes: The mingling of organization and celebration. Organization Studies, 29(12), 1565–1589. Julien, M., Somerville, K., & Brant, J. (2017). Indigenous perspectives on work-­ life enrichment and conflict in Canada. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 36(2), 165–181. Kerr, J. (2013). Legacy: 15 lessons in leadership: What the All Blacks can teach us about the business of life. London, UK: Constable & Robinson. Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations, and contexts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kymlicka, W. (2008, June 8). Philosophy bites: Minority rights [Podcast]. Retrieved from http://philosophybites.com/2008/06/will-kymlicka-o.html Mead, G.  H. (1913). The social self. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 10(14), 374–380. Ragins, B. R. (2012). Editor’s comments: Reflections on the craft of clear writing. Academy of Management Review, 37(4), 493–501. Ruwhiu, D., & Cone, M. (2010). Advancing a pragmatist epistemology in organisational research. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 1(3), 154–166. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London, UK: Zed Books. Smith, L.  T. (2012). Decolonising methodologies: Research and indigenous people (2nd ed.). London, UK: Zed Books. United Nations. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, 13 September 2007. Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Winnipeg, Canada: Fernwood Publishing Limited.

Index

B Business, 2–6, 8, 9, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23–25, 31–33, 37–39, 42, 47–49, 52, 53, 55, 56, 60, 65–69 Business schools, 2–6, 9, 23, 32, 37–39, 42, 53, 56, 60, 66–68 C Colleges, 8, 66 Communities, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 15, 16, 19, 22, 24, 25, 27, 32, 33, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 51, 55, 56, 60, 63, 69 Critical management, 10, 61, 65 Critical management studies (CMS), 2 D Discourse, 4, 16–19, 27, 39, 48, 53, 56, 60, 61

E Education, 17, 18, 53, 65, 66 Entrepreneurship, 2, 15, 17, 24, 32, 33, 65, 66 I Identity, 3, 5–9, 33, 35, 40, 41, 49, 50, 60, 63, 69 Indigenous organization, 5–7, 10, 11, 15–28, 31–43, 47, 48, 54, 56, 57, 61–69 Indigenous organization studies, 2–11, 15, 16, 18, 24, 38, 40–42, 47–57, 59–70 Indigenous studies (IS), 2, 61, 67 Institutions, 4, 5, 17, 37, 38, 53, 60, 65–68 L Leadership, 2, 15, 17, 24, 65

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M Management, 2, 4, 9, 10, 15, 17, 24–27, 31, 32, 38, 40, 50, 65, 66, 68 Managing, 3, 8, 10, 17, 23, 38, 54, 66, 68 Methodological guidelines, 31–43, 61 Methodology, 8, 18, 31, 62, 64 N Narrative, 9, 16, 19–23, 27, 28, 32, 38–41, 47, 50–53, 56, 61 O Organization, 2–11, 15–18, 20–28, 31–43, 47–54, 56, 57, 60–70 Organization studies (OS), 2–5, 8–10, 15, 18, 22–24, 28, 32, 38, 40–42, 48–51, 53, 56, 60–63, 67 Organizing, 3–5, 7, 9–11, 16, 21, 23–25, 27, 32, 35, 42, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 60–62, 66, 68, 69

P People, 2–11, 15–27, 31–43, 47–57, 60–70 Place, 2, 6, 7, 9, 16, 19, 21, 22, 33, 38, 39, 43, 47–57, 61, 63, 64, 67–69 R Research, 2, 5–6, 15–28, 31–43, 47, 60–65 design, 34, 36 impact, 35 outcomes, 8 phenomena, 34, 36 S Story, 4, 16, 17, 19–23, 25, 27, 37, 39, 52 T Theorizing, 15–28, 32, 37, 39, 40, 43, 47–49, 53, 57, 60–62, 67, 69 Theory, 4, 10, 16, 22–27, 36–43, 49, 50, 53, 54, 61, 62, 64, 67 Time, 2, 3, 5–8, 17–19, 21–23, 32, 35, 36, 38–41, 47–57, 64, 66–68