DOUBLE TRANSLATION: A POST-COLONIAL APPRAISAL OF MANAGEMENT MODEL TRANSITION IN A MULTINATIONAL COMPANY NETWORK

This study aims to explore how popular management techniques are implemented in firms and how management experts actively manipulate the interplay among multiple competing ideas. Building on trending and semantically related fashion research, we intend to center upon a case study in which one of the leading electronic manufacturers of the World strives to change its implementation focus from Six Sigma to Factory Improvement 11. Thus, we strive to emphasize not only the temporal transition and resistance patterns but also contextual (double) translations that occur in one of the overseas subsidiaries. The case provided us with ample evidence about how the initial resistance to essentialist global rhetoric triggered local translations based on locally enabled bricolage of ideas and practices. We found that experts located in the subsidiaries often enjoyed significant levels of autonomy to display agentic behavior in denouncing/renouncing/editing both symbolic and material components of managerial practices.