HRM Knowledge and Practices in South Asia: It Is Time to Move Beyond US Centricity

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to highlight the colonial/neo-colonial roots of most human resource management (HRM) knowledge in South Asia and urge scholars and practitioners in South Asia to develop and promote locally relevant indigenous knowledge and practices. We review the literature on decolonising management knowledge, particularly HRM, highlighting the continued tendency of HRM scholars to, knowingly or unknowingly, sustain colonial practices and promote neo-colonial knowledge and practices. While acknowledging that there may be some potential benefits of borrowing European/US HRM practices in South Asian contexts, we stress the limits of universality of such knowledge and argue for the need to develop alternate context-sensitive indigenous knowledge and practices. We encourage the creation of hybrid knowledge spaces for healthy interactions among diverse, even conflicting, perspectives with the hope of promoting pluriversality in the domain of HRM and management in general.