Discourse-Practice Interplay: Uncovering Colonial Fingerprints in Business-NGO Partnerships

Businesses increasingly engage in global development work. However, recent studies highlight the lingering risk of companies adopting Eurocentric approaches in their projects, even when collaborating with local stakeholders. While this risk has been identified, it remains unclear how such Eurocentric approaches manifest and prevail in often well-intended projects. Through an in-depth case study of a European company’s partnership aimed at improving water access for an “underserved” community in South Asia, we illustrate how Eurocentric patterns manifested and persisted through a complex interplay of discourse and material practices across different project stages. The corporate actors became deeply entrenched in this approach, with diverse shields in the partnership design preventing exposure to alternative perspectives and hindering critical reflection. By grounding our findings in postcolonial and decolonial perspectives as connected sociologies, we introduce the concept of colonial fingerprints . We use it as an analytical tool to uncover Eurocentric approaches and how they may materialize through a tight interplay of discourse, practice, organizational shields, and adverse development effects. Making such interplay visible marks a first step toward rethinking development approaches, while also acknowledging that the structural entrenchment of Eurocentric patterns can make them difficult to disrupt. We discuss the ethical implications of our work, emphasizing the need to view corporate development efforts in a historical context and to rethink partnership engagement in the context of global development.