Transnational Capitalism After Postcolonialism: Researching the Interfaces in Global Supply Chains

Abstract Management and organisation studies (MOS) increasingly recognises the interconnected and globalised nature of business dynamics, yet nuanced power disparities concerning stakeholders from the Global South often remain under-examined. Such power differentials can have ethical implications for researchers studying transnational business relations including the potential for epistemic violence within research endeavours. We argue for a more nuanced understanding of power in ‘transnational interfaces’: spaces where Global North and Global South actors meet and negotiate capitalist relationships. Drawing on Chibber’s (2013) landmark revisiting of postcolonial theory, we interrogate how simplistic binaries such as ‘oppressed’ vs. ‘empowered’ or ‘insider’ vs. ‘outsider’ obscure ethical and structural complexities of transnational capitalism. Through a case study of the Bangladesh Accord, established in response to the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, the article follows Chibber in asking what a Marxian analysis of the relationships of those negotiating the Accord reveals regarding power dynamics. In calling for analysis of the class, labour and capitalist relationships embedded in this instance of transnational capitalism, and not just taking postcolonial theory as a discursive or cultural corrective that risks flattening into identity politics, we also address an ethical tension inherent in MOS research, wherein scholars must navigate their own embeddedness within the capitalist system while critically examining its power dynamics. By arguing for Marxian analysis alongside postcolonial theory, the article contributes to ongoing discourse in MOS about how scholars can explore ethical questions of representation, justice and responsibility when researching capitalist dynamics involving relationships between Global South and Global North actors.