Turning a disadvantage into a resource: Working at the periphery

A European, or American or Eastern, or any other approach to management scholarship-like any social identity-does not stand in itself, isolated from other approaches. Academic approaches like other social identities are formed within dialogues and relationships-real or imagined-with and against some Other. If a European approach is the in-group, there must be an out-group against which such a European approach, or an identity of the European scholar, is defined and formed (Lingard, Reznick, & DeVito, 2002; Somers, 1994). A European approach to management scholarship may well exist as scholars from Europe often describe themselves as having to adapt to, struggle with, negate or be measured against some “Other” approach, highlighting both sameness within their imagined community and differences from another community (Benhabib, 1996; De Cillia, Reisigl, & Wodak, 1999). Both approaches-European and non-European-are constituted through such interrelations.