IBS Lunchtime Research Seminar - Plotting the Global: Corporate Chronicles and Expatriate Narratives

You are cordially invited to attend an International Business and Strategy Departmental Research Meeting, during which there will be a presentation by Hugo Gaggiotti, University of Bristol. A reminder that attendance for IBS (full time, research oriented) staff and full-time students is compulsory, and where possible, must be in person. Individuals unable to attend in person, due to legitimate reasons will be provided a Teams link on request. Non-IBS staff are welcome to attend. If you have not received the email invite please email Angie Clark

Please join us in Room 108, Henley Business School.

Please make sure you let me know in advance if you intend to attend in person so that the correct amount of catering is booked.

Date: Wednesday 11th February 2026, HBS Room 108

Time: 13.00 - 14.30

Abstract:

This presentation is a compilation of research outputs examining expatriation as a narrative and political process through which global organisations construct, authorise, and silence particular versions of the past. Drawing on narrative theory, post-colonial scholarship, and organisational ethnography, the study explores the tension between official corporate chronicles and the expatriates’ stories. Empirically, the presentation is based on a longitudinal ethnography of a multinational corporation. The findings show how corporate chronicles transform documents into monuments, producing linear and strategic accounts of globalisation that marginalise rupture, conflict, and embodied experience. Expatriates’ narratives are often reconfigured to align with these authorised plots, granting legitimacy to personal stories only when they resonate with official records. The paper argues that expatriation narratives play a key role in justifying corporate globalisation while shaping organisational memory, raising questions about voice, silencing, and the responsibility to tell alternative stories of the global firm.