The 1^st Critical Organization Studies Workshop in South-Asia was jointly organized by IIM Calcutta and Alliance School of Business (Alliance University, Bangalore) on 7-8 May 2021, through a virtual mode. Other than the coordinators of the workshop (Dr. Nimruji Jammulamadaka [IIM Calcutta] & Dr. Arindam Das [Alliance School of Business]), the resource persons included Dr. Gavin Jack (Professor, Monash Business School, Monash University), Dr. Alex Faria (Associate Professor Brazilian School of Public & Business Administration at Getulio Vargas Foundation [EBAPE-FGV]) and Dr. Shoaib Ul-Haq (Associate Professor, Karachi School of Business and Leadership, Pakistan and Postdoctoral Research Fellow Management School at University of Liege, Belgium).

The purpose of the workshop was to critically engage with the methods and prospects of organizational practices and management in the South Asian region so that there may be options to transform, revive and re-exist in our futures—futures that have been punctuated and at times silenced by colonization. The workshop intended to promote a forum for the critical decolonizing debate in the organizational and management studies and understand the same beyond traditional Eurocentric discourses.

The workshop witnessed participants from across the country and from the U.K., Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka debating the impact of colonization, globalization, and neo-liberalism on South Asian organizations and the methods and intensions to overcome the same. The interdisciplinary workshop invoked management and socio-cultural theories to generate alternate epistemes and discourses that subvert and appropriate the western models of organization. Separate workshop slots for students and early career researchers were organized to promote critical thinking in management discourses.