ABSTRACT

What are the othering processes at work in qualitative management research that perpetuate its Eurocentric character? And what do these othering processes mean for non-Western qualitative management researchers who are othered, who have to digest it in their everyday existence? This chapter seeks to explore these questions. Taking cue from the burgeoning work on reflexivity and auto ethnography in Management and Organization Studies (MOS), the author wishes to reflect upon the othering processes that he has been confronting as a follower of orthodox Islam who is engaging with the tribe of Western management qualitative researchers and their totemic knowledge rituals and claims. These reflections yield the identification of ideational and material challenges besetting contemporary qualitative management research. These challenges constitute the othering processes at work in qualitative management research that it is argued are keeping it safely within Eurocentric confines where non-Western perspectives and voices continue to be marginalized, protests to the contrary notwithstanding.