Presenta: Felipe Symmes, EGADE Business School, Tec de Monterrey
Abstract: We propose a Mestizo-inspired vista to navigate the tensions between contextual relativism and decontextualized universalism that scholars encounter when studying organizational phenomena in Latin America. This vista is rooted in the region’s complex legacy of mestizaje, a colonial process involving the (often-violent) fusion of Indigenous, African, and European cultural and racial groups. Drawing on social science scholarship and the work of Mexican intellectual and poet Octavio Paz, we argue that a Mestizo-inspired vista enables scholars to reconcile aesthetics (subjective positionings stemming from feelings and affections) with rationality (the power of reason in search of objective or scientific truth) when studying organizations in the region. Such a vista would account for the ontological, epistemological, and methodological consequences of mestizaje through three orientations: a) embracing radical relational lenses that transcend binary thinking and methodological individualism; b) making rational and aesthetic epistemological assumptions transparent; and c) integrating scientific and aesthetic methods.
