Recentering the Global South in the Making of Business School Histories: Dependency Ambiguity in Action

Abstract

The histories of Business Schools (BS) are usually produced from US-centric perspectives. Seeking to re-centre the Global South in the making of these histories, this paper aims to analyse the history of BS in Brazil via dependency studies. Dependency is the condition of a hierarchical relationship between two or more economies that become entangled for the benefit of the richer countries. Dependency studies aim to examine dependent conditions prevailing since colonial times to overcome them. We analyse the creation and dissemination of five BS from 1937 to 1961, a period marked by the emergence of the first undergraduate courses in the field and a heavy push towards industrial development in the country. We argue that dependency macro factors were the main drivers behind the creation, implementation, and dissemination of BS in Brazil. We posit local agents performed dependency ambiguity, i.e. exploring context drivers within the Brazilian technological-industrial dependency and seeking external support to establish early BS in the country. We claim that through dependency lenses we can reposition the narratives about the development of BS in the Global South away from an US-centric explanation, emphasizing the role of local contextual factors and actors within Global South countries dependency longue durée.