Abstract
Purpose
This paper sets out to provide global business managers and researchers with perspectives, concepts, and some tools to deal with emergent late modern conditions.
Design/methodology/approach
Analytical discourse is employed to outline the post‐enlightenment rise of modernity and rational economics. The paper critiques the nature of business institutions and practices under modernity, and points to the new conditions of waning and late modernity. Indications and guidelines are provided about the nature of new, emergent forms of global business under conditions of waning and eclipsing modernity.
Findings
The paper finds that the membrane separating global business organizations and their consumers is dissolving, and the new “post‐consumers” exhibit increasing levels of competence in terms of business practices. The paper reveals several aspects of global business under conditions of waning, late, and eclipsing modernity: transformation of business from and arcane, professional practice to an embedded everyday cultural practice; erosion of central control and business becoming diffused; imperative for collaborative forms where business managers work alongside post‐consumers; and breakdown of hierarchic order and rise of complexity and fluidity in business practices.
Originality/value
The main contribution is a cogent set of concepts that enable managers and researchers to understand, examine in detail, and deal with global business practices and organizational forms under conditions of waning modernity and emerging postmodern contexts.