Scholarly Management Knowledge in the Periphery: Argentina and Brazil in Comparative Perspective (1970-2005) (Report‪)‬

Introduction In the last decade, there has been growing academic interest in the study of the production, diffusion and consumption of management knowledge (Alvarez, 1998; Sahlin-Andersson & Engwall, 2002). The literature has mainly adopted a neoinstitutionalist approach to map the configuration of an organizational field constituted by diverse individual and collective actors who participate in the construction of management knowledge. Several studies helped to advance our knowledge of the different components of this organizational field, such as consulting firms (Engwall & Kipping, 2003), academia (Augier, March, & Sullivan, 2005) and business schools (Engwall, 2007). However and with few exceptions (e.g., Alvarez, Enrione, & Mazza, 1997; Ibarra-Colado, 2006; Usdiken & Cetin, 2001), these studies have dealt exclusively with developed countries. Thus, and despite recent calls for comparative research aimed at furthering our understanding of how different historical and geographic environments frame the genesis and circulation of management knowledge (Sahlin-Andersson & Engwall, 2002), there is still a significant void of theoretical reflection and empirical analysis on the characteristics of these processes in peripheral or less developed countries [LDCs].