Management education remains deeply entrenched in colonial and neoliberal epistemic traditions, and privileges Eurocentric managerial paradigms while marginalising alternative knowledge systems. This paper outlines two levels of decolonisation: (a) surface-level interventions that introduce non-Western perspectives without challenging dominant frameworks and (b) deep-level transformations that fundamentally restructure curricula, pedagogy and institutional priorities. Drawing on decolonial and critical management studies, we identify three key mechanisms through which management education reproduces colonial and neoliberal hierarchies: (1) epistemic colonialism, (2) the exclusion of decolonial management models, and (3) the hegemony of Anglo-American institutional frameworks. We propose a decolonial approach which integrates Indigenous, feminist, and Southern epistemologies and challenges the neoliberal metrics governing management education. We adopt a multilevel perspective, as disrupting the reproduction of coloniality and neoliberalism demands coordinated epistemic, curricular, and institutional interventions. We highlight that decolonisation must go beyond tokenism to dismantle the ideological apparatuses sustaining racial capitalism and global economic asymmetries. In this sense, business schools can serve as sites of epistemic justice, which would foster alternative economic rationalities rooted in sustainability, relationality, and communal well-being.
This research explores the #ULSB16 movement as a form of digital academic resistance and envisions the future of higher education that is shaped by the interests of university leaders. The movement was motivated by the University of Leicester leaders' decision to dismiss lecturers and revoke scholarships for students researching political economy and critical perspectives on management and accounting, and led to various actions in the digital space. To achieve this goal, we used critical netnography methods, combining social movement analysis with Gramsci's theory of hegemony and social movements theory. Based on the analysis results, we identified solidarity actions from various groups aimed at fighting for academic freedom. These actions are not only realised through social media, but also through open letters and demonstrations. This movement is consistent with social movement theory and reflects a counter-hegemonic response to the university leaders' decision. However, these actions have not been able to change the decisions of university leaders due to the lack of political support.
This study examines how adversity in post-conflict Syria has generated alternative forms of educational practice, knowledge production, and collective solidarity. Moving beyond resilience frameworks that risk individualising systemic crises, the paper analyzes how Syrian students, educators, and communities have created community-led schools, informal learning networks, and digital platforms as acts of resistance against the destruction of formal education systems. Drawing on transformative learning theory and critical pedagogy, the study argues that these grassroots educational initiatives represent a form of 'knowledge born from struggles insights, skills, and adaptive capacities that emerge from navigating extreme challenges'. The paper challenges deficit-oriented narratives of crisis-affected education, demonstrating instead how Syrian communities have reimagined learning through culturally embedded practices and solidarity networks. The findings suggest that education in crisis settings functions not merely as a service to be restored but as a site of political and social transformation. The study calls for greater recognition of community-driven educational models in global policy frameworks, advocating for approaches that center local agency rather than external intervention.
Cosmopolitanism regards allegiance to the human community as essential to fostering human solidarity and tolerance of cultural otherness. In contexts where the Western model of cosmopolitan universalism dominates, vernacular cosmopolitanism, often suppressed by the dominant discourse of economic rationale and market logic, continues to shape the cosmopolitan visions and ethics of people from the Southern hemisphere in hybrid ways. These visions and ethics are reinforced by the internationalisation of higher education, which is intended to mould global citizens. This research explores the cosmopolitan imaginaries that guide the internationalisation of higher education in Vietnam and Indonesia. It reveals the hybridity underpinning internationalisation efforts, which is unique to the postsocialist and postcolonial cultures in Vietnam and Indonesia. It argues that, despite internationalisation being widely embraced, it continues to create a privileged space for local elites while marginalising and excluding vulnerable groups, through the universalist economic rationale and market ethics.
This study aims to examine whether the local wisdom approach can effectively investigate whether local wisdom-based accounting education and research can be ideally implemented. To conduct this study, we employed a critical case study method, involving interviews with three informants who initiated the local wisdom approach. This study found that the accounting education and research approach developed by the informants was idealistic, focusing on the values of local wisdom. However, several internal and external factors within the academic community hindered the ideal operation of this research, leading to divisions. Therefore, this study recommends consolidating academics committed to developing the local wisdom approach. This consolidation presents opportunities for academics to develop their idealism fully.
This study examines how virtual exchange can develop intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and global citizenship through collaborative engagement with sustainability challenges. Grounded in Byram's ICC model, Liddicoat and Scarino's intercultural language teaching framework and the concept of wicked problems, the project connected Thai and German university students over six weeks to address SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG 13 (Climate Action). An exploratory qualitative-driven mixed-methods design was employed, with data collected through pre- and post-surveys, self-assessment questionnaires, written reflections, semi-structured interviews and a culminating digital poster project requiring students to co-create intercultural and sustainability-informed solutions. Results indicated perceived developmental trends across the intercultural learning processes of noticing, comparing, reflecting and interacting. Qualitative findings highlighted gains in empathy, cognitive flexibility and transformative learning as students negotiated cultural tensions and co-constructed responses to global challenges. The study demonstrates virtual exchange's potential to deepen intercultural understanding and foster meaningful global citizenship engagement, with implications for pedagogical design, institutional policy and future research in intercultural-sustainability education.
This article advances insurgent utopia as a conceptual and methodological intervention that reclaims the radical core of utopian thought from within colonial modernity. Rejecting technocratic domestication and teleological abstraction, it foregrounds subaltern epistemic agency, framing utopia as situated praxis enacted through struggle. A critical genealogy is traced-from the classical pursuit of eudaimonia and More's negation of place, through Rousseau's civic pedagogy and Marx's dialectical horizon, to Bloch's ontology of the not-yet-situating insurgent utopia as an ontological surplus animating political imagination from below. Its most concrete elaboration lies in Latin American pedagogical traditions: in Freire's in & eacute;dito vi & aacute;vel and in the praxis of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement (MST). The MST's educational and territorial praxis demonstrates this framework as a counter-hegemonic grammar that reconfigures time, pluralises futures and reclaims possibility.
Drawing on assumptions about the link between international higher education and socio-political development, this paper examines the impact of studying in established democracies on Russian young people's understandings of democracy. The analysis is based on 55 in-depth interviews with Russian students and alumni of American and British universities, conducted in 2018-2019. The article argues that international educational mobility increases Russian young people's political knowledge, albeit to varying degrees. In addition, in some cases, studying abroad helps refine concepts of democracy or facilitates the development of a meaningful understanding of democracy. However, such positive effects of overseas studies are somewhat weakened by uneven political learning manifest in some students' fragmented and impressionistic political knowledge, and scepticism towards democracy as a political system.
Dominant bilingual education theories assume languages compete for cognitive resources and cultural authority, yet faith-based institutions navigate distinctive tensions where language choices carry theological significance beyond pragmatic concerns. This study examines bilingual education practices across four Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) in Indonesia, and in Malaysia. Drawing on a multiple comparative case study design Yin with ethnographic data collection methods - 18 months of fieldwork, 64 semi-structured interviews, and institutional document analysis - we identify three patterns distinguishing pesantren bilingualism: sacred-secular integration, where Arabic and English function as complementary capitals operating across distinct but interconnected fields; network-based mobility through transnational institutional partnerships; and identity calibration, as alumni strategically deploy bilingual repertoires across contexts carrying different legitimacy criteria. Findings reveal 'polyvalent bilingualism' - linguistic ecologies where multiple languages amplify and not dilute cultural identity. This challenges Bourdieu's zero-sum model of linguistic capital competition and extends glocalization theory to faith-based educational contexts, demonstrating how institutions outside the Global North construct innovative responses to globalisation pressures while maintaining cultural distinctiveness.
Employability has been a prominent topic in higher education worldwide in recent years. Existing literature indicates that overseas higher education contributes positively to the development of diverse employability-related skills and competences. This autoethnographic research explores how international students develop employability skills through their experiences in higher education abroad. The study employs Tomlinson's graduate capital model as a theoretical framework, which encompasses human, social, cultural, identity, and psychological capitals. Guided by the Five Foci framework, this autoethnographic research analyses the first author's personal overseas higher education experiences as an international student in Australia, with the last author serving as a critical friend. The findings reveal that the authors gradually built employability-related competencies while studying abroad and later applied them in different contexts. Therefore, this study contributes a practical reference for other international students navigating similar paths, as well as laying the foundation for future research in this area. We frame 'skills' or 'competencies' as components within employability capitals.
Globalisation has intensified international student mobility, encouraging states to frame overseas scholarships as strategic investments in national development and institutional capacity-building. By examining the motivations and expectations of the Indonesian National Police (INP) in assigning officers' postgraduate study at world-class universities through the Indonesia Endowment Funds for Education (LPDP) scholarship scheme, this study marks a notable shift from INP's long-standing common practice for officer postgraduate education from utilising national universities to universities in developed countries. Guided by human capital and soft power theory in navigating expectancy theory of motivation, the study employs a qualitative design using narrative analysis and triangulated data from policy documents, elite statements, and scholarship awardees' interviews. Findings indicate that the programme is driven by intrinsic motivations related to human capital enhancement and institutional regeneration that coexist with extrinsic goals of nation-building and national competitiveness, while soft power outcomes remain unevenly realised despite strong human capital institutionalisation.
Extensive research has called for transformations to increase equity in, and decolonising of, North-South academic collaborations characterised by power asymmetries. However, less attention has been paid to everyday practices through which collaborators 'muddle through' extant funding constraints, university bureaucracies and institutionalised hierarchies when pursuing shared goals. Drawing on the lenses of unlearning colonial practices and decolonising work, and based on authors' critical self-reflection of over fifteen years of collaborations in development studies between Finnish, Tanzanian and Zambian universities, this article identifies structural, epistemic and relational forms of decolonising work. These are understood as attempts to 'do otherwise' contributing to incremental changes in collaborations that extend beyond individual projects.
This study examines how Education Above All (EAA) Foundationand the Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) present their roles in global education financing, with specific attention to the 2020-2021 reporting period. The study is based on a document-based case analysis of annual reports and related institutional materials. It compares the two organisations by looking at reported funding patterns, co-funding arrangements, partnerships, programme priorities, and selected education indicators. The analysis shows that the two organisations are positioned differently in the documents. QFFD is mainly presented as a state-linked development financing actor whose education-related role is often channelled through government and multilateral partnerships, including initiatives such as Education Cannot Wait and joint programming with EAA. EAA, in contrast, is presented through programme-based interventions such as Educate A Child, Al-Fakhoora, ROTA, and PEIC, with a stronger emphasis on implementation networks, advocacy, scholarships, and co-funding. The analysis uses annual reports as institutional accounts, not as independent evidence of long-term impact, and therefore treats the reported indicators with caution. In doing so, the study shows how Qatar-based actors can occupy different but connected roles within global education financing.
This article examines how the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) gained influence in China following Shanghai's top performance in 2009. Drawing on institutionalism and brokerage theory, it distinguishes between the organisational agency of international organisations (IOs) and the normative-epistemic authority embedded in their programmes. It argues that PISA's influence in China did not result from active promotion by the OECD, but from the uptake and activation of its evaluative framework by domestic knowledge brokers. Based on expert interviews and documentary analysis, the findings show that education professionals positioned across research, administration, and policy translated PISA's competency-based concepts into national reform agendas. Through professional networks, curriculum reform, and international platforms, these brokers embedded global assessment ideas into China's education system. Empirically, the study documents the multiple pathways through which PISA has shaped educational discourse, policy reform, and international engagement in China; theoretically, it refines the concept of IO agency by distinguishing between organisational intervention and programmatic normative authority, and by demonstrating how international ideas are translated and institutionalised through domestic intermediaries.
