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The popular success literature and “a brave new Darwinian workplace”
Abstract
This article illustrates how the popular success literature operates as a colonizing force that furthers corporations’ capacity to affect the conditions for the expression of personal identity. The discourse's power stems from its intersection with the broader social codes of consumer culture and through its appropriation of “entrepreneurial” views of subjectivity. It promises individuals, who are accustomed to consuming commodity‐signs as a means of engineering their identities, success through the literature's consumption. It admonishes them to adopt an identity based in “aestheticized masculinity” and strategic subordination. Finally, it urges individuals to sublate themselves to the formal corporate sign systems used to articulate corporate identities and/or cultures.
... An alternative interpretation of the extract is that it attempts to construct the legal professional self through cultural practices of consumptions and the interplay with social and soft skills required by modern-day legal practice. Although this constitutes just another strategy to attract potential desirable employees, it also accords with most of the literature on the organisation of the profession, stressing that businesses pay particular attention to those personal attributes exhibited by the ideal employee (Holmer Nadesan 1999. See also McDowell 1995and Collier 2005). ...
In 1965 the UK enacted the Race Relations Act while the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) opened for signature and ratification. In the US, the changes that brought down the walls of segregation, conveying some equality to black people essentially began with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These ground-breaking instruments marked a commitment—domestically and internationally by the state parties to the ICERD—to address racial injustice and inequality through legal means. Yet, the intervening years reveal the challenges of pursuing racial justice and equality through the medium of law. In recent years, allegations of institutional racism have been levelled against numerous public institutions in the UK, while the rise of populism globally has challenged the ability of law to effect change. This edited collection draws attention to the need to reflect on the persistence of racial inequalities and injustices despite law’s intervention and arguably because of its ‘unconscious’ role in their promotion. It does so from a multiplicity of perspectives ranging from the doctrinal, socio-legal, critical and theoretical, thereby generating different kinds of knowledge about race and law. By exploring contemporary issues in racial justice and equality, contributors examine the role of law—whether domestic or international, hard or soft—in advancing racial equality and justice and consider whether it can effect substantive change.
... In some ways, clubs operate in ways of conventional advertising. Nadesan (1999) suggests that: …advertising appropriates and recontextualizes social sign values in order to add value to commodities. Advertising codes "police" readers decodings (Baudrillard 1994, p. 191) through the arrangement of signifiers and by hailing consumers as particular kinds of subjects. ...
This chapter explores how transgressions take place within the sex club. First, using a group sex encounter, it highlights the ways in which different forms of heteroeroticism can be understood as contesting the everyday routines of the club and broader notions of heteronormativity. Embedded within this section of the chapter is the notion of gaze and how this is a reversible process of looking and being looked at. The second part of this chapter focuses on sex between women. Whilst initially framing this as taking place within a heteropatriarchal gaze driven by forms of neo-liberal sexual entrepreneurialism, the chapter reflects on this approach by suggesting that it is within the limits of neo-liberalism where transgressive sexual practices might emerge. Finally, the chapter tentatively explores transgender experiences. In particular, it argues that transgression is not always a positive experience but can also result in sexual violence. The chapter concludes by arguing that where sexual practice exceeds economies of desire, it can be the source of intense sexual pleasure. At the same time, such transgressions can be physically and emotionally dangerous.
... In some ways, clubs operate in ways of conventional advertising. Nadesan (1999) suggests that: …advertising appropriates and recontextualizes social sign values in order to add value to commodities. Advertising codes "police" readers decodings (Baudrillard 1994, p. 191) through the arrangement of signifiers and by hailing consumers as particular kinds of subjects. ...
This chapter explores how dark rooms within sex clubs shape and configure men and masculinities. Using interviews with men who have used and visited dark rooms, this chapter explores the erotic subjectivity of men. The starting point for this chapter is that the norms and values of the club that are embedded in the erotic hierarchies that circulate in the rest of the club help to define what happens in the dark room. The chapter by examining respectable masculinities then explores the same-sex practices between men and consent. The chapter then argues that by leaving behind a sexual performance based on masculinity, men in the dark room demonstrate an alternative way of configuring masculinity and sexuality. It is suggested as the chapter progresses that new forms of erotic configurations are assembled in the dark room that point to the possibilities of a post-masculinity. The chapter concludes by highlighting that sex clubs do have the possibility to produce a radical subjectivity that may signal an epistemological break with existing approaches to men and masculinity.
... In some ways, clubs operate in ways of conventional advertising. Nadesan (1999) suggests that: …advertising appropriates and recontextualizes social sign values in order to add value to commodities. Advertising codes "police" readers decodings (Baudrillard 1994, p. 191) through the arrangement of signifiers and by hailing consumers as particular kinds of subjects. ...
This introductory chapter welcomes readers to the sex club. This chapter explains what the book is about and what readers should expect. The book then highlights the ethnographical research method that is used predominantly throughout the book. In so doing, it critically reflects on the limits of using ethnography to describe sexual encounters. The chapter then provides a synopsis of the chapters that are furnished with ethnographic encounters. Overall, this chapter provides an introductory insight into the sex clubs in the UK. The chapter concludes by describing the experience of the end of the night at a sex club and highlighting what we are yet to know about sex clubs.
... In some ways, clubs operate in ways of conventional advertising. Nadesan (1999) suggests that: …advertising appropriates and recontextualizes social sign values in order to add value to commodities. Advertising codes "police" readers decodings (Baudrillard 1994, p. 191) through the arrangement of signifiers and by hailing consumers as particular kinds of subjects. ...
This chapter begins by framing sex clubs as a place of secrecy and discretion. It then begins to define what a sex club is, a potted history of sex clubs and their position within the law and planning permissions. The chapter then provides a short discussion of methodology, before moving on to provide information on who visits sex clubs, what their sexual preferences are and how we might think about sex clubs geographically. A number of key findings emerge from this chapter that include sex clubs are not simply places for swingers but are part of a more diverse range of erotic practices; it highlights how the majority of women visiting the club are likely to identify as bisexual or bi-curious; clubs are geographically located and clustered; it provides an understanding of the racial dynamics of those who attend clubs and begins to map out sexual practices with geographical locations. In summary, this chapter provides important background information behind sex clubs.
... In some ways, clubs operate in ways of conventional advertising. Nadesan (1999) suggests that: …advertising appropriates and recontextualizes social sign values in order to add value to commodities. Advertising codes "police" readers decodings (Baudrillard 1994, p. 191) through the arrangement of signifiers and by hailing consumers as particular kinds of subjects. ...
The chapter focuses on the racialization of black men within sex clubs. It begins by recognizing the ways that clubs promote thematized events. Such events create a way of promoting fantasies that may lead to the satiating of desires. The chapter moves from discussing the commodification and fetishization of the body to considering how it is practiced within clubs. It discusses the notion of the ‘Black Bull’ and how black bodies become naturalized as through an appeal to animality. It is argued that this animality is historically located in the notions of black slavery. The chapter then explores how white women utilize this racialized desirability as a form of erotic consumption. The chapter argues that the role of women in black men’s slavery provides the contours for how they consume and commodify black bodies within the club. The chapter then moves on to discuss cuckolding and hotwifing and the implications this has for white masculinity. The chapter concludes by highlighting the role of racialized sex nights in clubs as a source of pleasure and agency for the men involved.
... At the same time, scholarship on popular psychology has remained subject to notable limitations. Academic debates have focused on the intersection of psychotherapeutic knowledge and popular culture in specific societies, most notably the USA (Illouz 2008;McGee 2012) and some Western European nations (Nadesan 1999;Furedi 2004;Rogge 2011;Salmenniemi and Vorona 2014). Studies conducted beyond the Global Northwest are rare, and they likewise emphasise the development of popular psychology within particular national cultures (Plotkin 2003;Nehring 2009;Yamada 2010;Wright 2010). ...
This article explores popular psychology as a transnational moral grammar. Academic debates have been sharply critical of popular psychology, and they have emphasised its association with neoliberal capitalism’s narratives of social relationships. However, scholarship on popular psychology has focused on the Global Northwest. The transnational diffusion of popular psychology remains poorly understood, as do its implications for experiences of self-identity in the Global South. This article conceptualises popular psychology as a moral grammar of transnational scale, whose diffusion is closely associated with the globalisation of neoliberal developmental models. Its argument is grounded in an analysis of the transnational market for self-help books. Drawing on publishing statistics, it documents the transnational circulation and consumption of self-help books. Through ethnographic research in Trinidad it then explores how some female readers in drawing on self-help books to account for their experiences of everyday life against the backdrop of neoliberal structural adjustment, personal insecurity and already existing local socio-cultural traditions of self-help instantiate a moral grammar of transnational popular psychology in potentially syncretic forms.
... Indiv idua ls enacting the mascu line, enterprising carccr are expected to project a fit and youthful image, valorize appearance and personality over substance, and commodify themselves and their relationships (Lair et aI., 2005;Holmer Nadesan, 1999;Holmec Nadesan & Trethewey, 2000;Trethewey, 2000). Optimally, these men have wives and children because that fa mily structure is associated with higher income and salary progressIon (Schneer & Reitman, 2002). ...
Gendered stories of career: Unfolding discourses of time, space, and identity At a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research in January 2005, Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard University, sparked national attention when he addressed the issue of the underrepresentation of women in tenured faculty positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions (Summers, 2005). Summers proposed that women are not subject to overt sex discrimination in hiring and promotion practices. Differences in intelligence, gendered socialization, and, ultimately, personal preferences, Summers said, lead many women to opt out of pursuing high-paying, high-powered jobs. He concluded that “what's behind all of this … is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity.” He maintained that most women simply do not desire high-power, successful careers in science and engineering, and, to a lesser extent, are not ...
... The procedure that we adopted was to search for and analyse articles about information security in online computer trade journals. Examination of such journals which are read by professionals and in which professionals are often cited allows an insight into the way in which these dilemmas are being conceptualised, analysed and dealt with (Nadesan, 1999;Watson & Bargiela-Chiappini, 1998) within the broader ISM community. ...
his paper examines how information security managers discursively construct identities for themselves and for others as they talk about how they manage information security dilemmas in their organisations. We also investigate how power operates through these identity constructions and representations. The aim of our research is to provide a deeper understanding of the interrelationship between identity production and power in managerial discourse and information security practice within organisations.
... The entrepreneurial worker is "an enterprising individual in search of meaning, responsibility, and a sense of personal achievement in life, and hence in work" (Miller & Rose, 1995, p. 454). This identity is in-voked in the self-help and success literatures, particularly in texts aimed at working women (Nadesan, 1999;Nadesan & Trethewey, 2000). Myriad ads encourage women to become their "best self" by using products such as food processors, lip gloss, daily planners, and training seminars. ...
... Not all subjects are equally able to enact enterprise, despite the apparent ubiquity of the discourse. While consumption may be a strategy employed to craft preferred identities, the entrepreneurial project of the self remains gendered and classed (Bourdieu, 1988;Jagger, 2000;Nadesan, 1999;Nadesan & Trethewey, 2000). Organizational contexts add yet another layer of complexity to women's attempts to craft an enterprising self and body. ...
... Jackson, 1999Jackson, , 2001). Yet, the call also fits within a broad array of "new wave management" (du Gay, 1996, p. 57) strategies that attempt to inculcate a set of values and practices centered on personal programs of excellence, enterprise, and self-help (du Gay, 1996;Nadesan, 1999aNadesan, , 1999bRimke, 2000). Thus, Covey"s nostalgia is of a radical sort, particularly when the character ethic counteracts bureaucracy and its ills. ...
Each year, managers and employees spend billions of dollars retaining management consultants, buying business books, and attending seminars to regain certainty. Some of this quest occurs in the lectures of star management consultants, such as Stephen R. Covey. For his audience, a Covey lecture is a liminoid event, that is, a middle phase in a secular rite of passage from “ineffective” to “effective.” Viewed through the lens of liminoidity, the lecture (a) disrupts the ontology of business subjects, (b) gains force by blending sacred wisdom and technical instruction, (c) makes permanent a transitional stage, and (d) situates the lecturer as guru and audience members as neophytes through their interaction with one another. Despite the quest for certainty, Covey's lectures simultaneously ease and deepen uncertainty and anxiety.
... Knowledge workers are rst and foremost intellectually agile with technology, creative and exible, and secondarily, socially competent in managing interpersonal relations (see Martin, 1995). Finally, they are intrinsically and effortlessly self-motivated because they blur work and play and self-actualize through tireless efforts to exceed the normative skill requirements of the workplace (Nadesan, 1999;Nichols, 1994). Miller and Rose (1990) have labelled this worker generically as the new 'entrepreneurial subject', a subject who, in popular jargon, 'adds value' in the contemporary workplace. ...
This essay re-situates current neurological research on infant brain development in terms of a matrix of cultural practices and pre-occupations. It contends that infant 'brain science' functions - in conjunction with the marketing promises of developmental toy manufacturers - as a form of 'ritual magic' (Nelson-Rowe, 1994) that ensures the transformation of 'normal' infants into idealized entrepreneurial subjects. Simultaneously, the discourse and practices of brain science extend and legitimize the extension of (Foucauldian) governmentality over lower income populations, which are perceived as threatening social and state security.
... The entrepreneurial worker is "an enterprising individual in search of meaning, responsibility, and a sense of personal achievement in life, and hence in work" (Miller & Rose, 1995, p. 454). This identity is in-voked in the self-help and success literatures, particularly in texts aimed at working women (Nadesan, 1999;Nadesan & Trethewey, 2000). Myriad ads encourage women to become their "best self" by using products such as food processors, lip gloss, daily planners, and training seminars. ...
This article begins with the following question: Why, even with the proliferation of poststructuralist theoretical understandings of identity, do people routinely talk in terms of “real” and “fake” selves? Through an analysis of critical empirical studies of identity-construction processes at work, this article makes the case that the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy is created and maintained through organizational talk and practices and, in turn, serves as a constitutive discourse that produces four subject positions with both symbolic and material consequences: strategized self-subordination, perpetually deferred identities, “auto-dressage,” and the production of “good little copers.” The article challenges scholars to reflexively consider the ways they may perpetuate the dichotomy in their own academic practices. Furthermore, the authors present the metaphor of the “crystallized self” as an alternative to the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy and suggest that communication scholars are well-poised to develop alternative vocabularies, theories, and understandings of identity within the popular imagination.
This chapter begins to unpack what is understood as cultures of desire. The chapter begins by suggesting that sex clubs are places that project different forms of public intimacy. Public intimacy provides the contours through which cultures of desire emerge. The chapter then begins to explain how sexual encounters are often initiated and traces those initial interactions through to the playrooms where a range of sexual cultures can be found. In doing so, it explores conventional heterosexual scripts about intimacy and how these are sometimes broken and inadequate. The chapter then begins to explain a number of the dynamics of sex clubs through the interplay of two concepts: erotic hierarchies and affective atmospheres. It suggests that cultures of desire emerge within the space where these sexual fields and affectivity converge. Using examples of racism and sexual violence, the chapter questions the hedonism that is often associated with clubs, whilst also highlighting the possibilities of pleasure that circulate through clubs.
As technology and new business models make it easier for digital consumers to exploit what they produce, practical differences between producers-consumers and consumers-entrepreneurs become less identifiable. An analysis of existing literature shows that authors often regard this increasingly common intertwining of consumption and entrepreneurship as a unidirectional process from the former to the latter. The impact of entrepreneurship-related elements on consumption is frequently not considered. This paper uses a combination of systematic and narrative procedures to review existing interpretive consumer research literature selectively. It aims to highlight the relative importance given to entrepreneurship as an influencing factor. The Theory of Cultural Entrepreneurship (TOCE) and an energetic account of desire are used to classify selected journal articles according to a thermodynamics-inspired fourfold typology: (1) COLD-Entrepreneurship|COLD-Consumption, (2) COLD-Entrepreneurship|HOT-Consumption, (3) HOT-Entrepreneurship|COLD-Consumption, and (4) HOT-Entrepreneurship|HOT-Consumption. The review concludes by suggesting avenues for further research.
“Should your company save your soul?” asks Fortune magazine in 1991. This article explores the growth of literature proposing corporate spirituality as a means of motivating employees. Critical analysis of this literature suggests that it articulates and advocates two entrepreneurial views of subjecthood (i.e., personal identity) that obscure contemporary corporate power by centering the individual as an autonomous agent, fully responsible for shaping his or her destiny. They either strip individuals of all social positioning or elevate a masculine ideal to which women cannot aspire. Although these discourses reinforce social hierarchies of power and privilege, they also provide grounds for critiquing and transforming the contemporary workplace.
For women in contemporary corporate life, negotiating and performing a “professional” identity is a process requiring much time, energy, and self‐surveillance. Yet, many women feel compelled to undertake this project despite the challenges it poses. These women often turn to popular success literature for strategies to help them craft and enact successful identities. In this essay, we analyze the popular success literature and compare its prescriptions for success with the voices of actual, successful career women. We explore the paradoxes and contradictions within and across these discourses in our efforts to deconstruct masculine constructions/performances of professionalism.
Emotional labor is the display of expected emotions by service agents during service encounters. It is performed through surface acting, deep acting, or the expression of genuine emotion. Emotional labor may facilitate task effectiveness and self-expression, but it also may prime customer expectations that cannot be met and may trigger emotive dissonance and self-alienation. However, following social identity theory, we argue that some effects of emotional labor are moderated by one's social and personal identities and that emotional labor stimulates pressures for the person to identify with the service role. Research implications for the micro, meso, and macro levels of organizations are discussed.
The paper presents a critical exploration of the treatment of subjectivity and power in sociology through an examination of recent developments in labour process theory. This is introduced through a discussion of dualism and the study of power. It is then argued that the exposure of the neglect of subjectivity in the response to Labour and Monopoly Capital has not been matched by effort to remedy this deficiency. Originating in Marx, the intellectual history of this neglect is explored through a review of key contributions to the post-Braverman literature. Our argument draws upon the work of Foucault to suggest a more adequate appreciation of processes of subjugation in which subjectivity is fetishised in identity. This thesis is articulated and illustrated through a critique of the influential empirical studies of Burawoy and Cockburn.
This paper compares the epistemologies of psychosomatics and biomedicine and examines their interrelation. In so far as the psychosomatic subject constitutes both the locus and the ultimate responsible agency of preventive intervention, the event of disease has become a moment of verification of the moral aptitude of individuals to form part of the society within which they live. While the ‘right to health’ is preserved through the biomedical sanction of entry into the sick-role, it is tempered by a ‘duty to stay well’. Correspondingly, the categories of health and illness have become vehicles for the self-production and exercise of subjectivities endowed with the faculties of choice and will.
The study of organizational cultures has been dominated by an interpretative approach which has emphasized the production of culture at the expense of the creativity shown by the consumers of culture, organizational members. 'Corporate culture' is distinguished from 'workplace' or 'organizational' cultures, and a number of other problems emerging within the literature are identified. These are presented as organizational culture versus cultural organization; cultural pluralities; rationality and the irrational; common knowledge and its constitution; power and ideology; and individualism and subjectivity. It is then argued, after a detailed discussion of concepts drawn primarily from a close reading of the work of Jacques Derrida, that a postmodern approach to organizational culture would recast the problems in terms of a revised conceptualization of subjectivity, and would formulate culture as paradox, otherness, seduction. and discourse. This would entail studying the 'bricolage' of organizational members within the 'microphysics' of what de Certeau calls the 'tactics of everyday practice'.
Post-Structuralism has been criticized for reducing individuals to subject positions. This essay responds to this criticism by illustrating how individuals positioned as subjects reflect upon and challenge their socially ascribed identities. More specifically, it examines how a group of women 'service workers' employed by a public university respond to patriarchical, bureaucratic and capitalist articulations of their identity. The essay argues that the women's experiences of the contradictions and antagonisms that rupture these discourses generate a sense of 'lack' that has the effect of opening up alternative possibilities for action and self-understanding. However, these alternatives are not autonomously generated but are always/already specific to the individual's existential situation.
The article subjects the assumptions and prescriptions of the ‘Corporate Culture’literature to critical scrutiny. the body of the article is devoted to teasing out the distinctive basis of its appeal compared with earlier management theory. It is seen to build upon earlier efforts (e.g.‘theory Y’) to constitute a self-disciplining form of employee subjectivity by asserting that ‘practical autonomy’is conditional upon the development of a strong corporate culture. the paper illuminates the dark side of this project by drawing attention to the subjugating and totalitarian implications of its excellence/ quality prescriptions. to this end, parallels are drawn with the philosophy of control favoured by the Party in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Specifically, the paper critiques the ‘doublethink’contention that autonomy can be realized in monocultural conditions that systematically constrain opportunities to wrestle with competing values standpoints and their associated life projects.
In a recent review of the literature on politics and influence behavior in personnel/human resource management, Ferris and Judge (1991) noted that no studies had directly investigated the relationship between influence behavior and overall career success. In the present study the effect of political influence behavior on career success was investigated. Drawing from past research on influence behavior and relevant theory from social psychology, the effect of political influence behavior on career success was hypothesized to depend on the type of influence tactic employed. Support was found for the effect of political influence behavior in predicting career success, and for the differential effectiveness of influence behaviors. Implications of the results for the study of careers and career management processes are discussed .
Total Quality Management (TQM) looks like being one of the management fashions of the 1990s. In this respect the academic and prescriptive literature on TQM is reviewed. The factors which have encouraged organisations to introduce TQM are discussed and some of the implications for the management of labour outlined. It is suggested that TQM is consistent with a move towards human resource management.
"In private life, we try to induce or suppress love, envy, and anger through deep acting or "emotion work," just as we manage our outer expressions of feeling through surface acting. In trying to bridge a gap between what we feel and what we "ought" to feel, we take guidance from "feeling rules" about what is owing to others in a given situation. Based on our private mutual understandings of feeling rules, we make a "gift exchange" of acts of emotion management. We bow to each other not simply from the waist, but from the heart. But what occurs when emotion work, feeling rules, and the gift of exchange are introduced into the public world of work? In search of the answer, Arlie Russell Hochschild closely examines two groups of public-contact workers: flight attendants and bill collectors. The flight attendant's job is to deliver a service and create further demand for it, to enhance the status of the customer and be "nicer than natural." The bill collector's job is to collect on the service, and if necessary, to deflate the status of the customer by being "nastier than natural." Between these extremes, roughly one-third of American men and one-half of American women hold jobs that call for substantial emotional labor. In many of these jobs, they are trained to accept feeling rules and techniques of emotion management that serve the company's commercial purpose. Just as we have seldom recognized or understood emotional labor, we have not appreciated its cost to those who do it for a living. Like a physical laborer who becomes estranged from what he or she makes, an emotional laborer, such as a flight attendant, can become estranged not only from her own expressions of feeling (her smile is not "her" smile), but also from what she actually feels (her managed friendliness). This estrangement, though a valuable defense against stress, is also an important occupational hazard, because it is through our feelings that we are connected with those around us. On the basis of this book, Hochschild was featured in Key Sociological Thinkers, edited by Rob Stones. This book was also the winner of the Charles Cooley Award in 1983, awarded by the American Sociological Association and received an honorable mention for the C. Wright Mills Award. © 1983, 2003, 2012 by The Regents of the University of California.
Focusing on post-industrial economies, the study examines social inequality and changing experiences of time, space, culture, travel, the environment and globalization. Through a comparative analysis of the UK and US, Germany and Japan, the authors show how restructuration after organized capitalism has its basis in increasingly reflexive social actors and organizations. The consequence is not only the much-vaunted "postmodern condition' but a growth in reflexivity. In exploring this new reflexive world, the authors argue that today's economies are increasingly economies of signs - information, symbols, images, desire - and of space, where both signs and social subjects - refugees, financiers, tourists, flaneurs - are mobile over ever greater distances. They show how an understanding of such flows contributes to the analysis of changes in social relations, from the organization of work to the "culture industries', from the formation of an underclass to new forms of citizenship. -Publisher
This paper proposes some new ways of analysing the exercise of political power in advanced liberal democratic societies. These are developed from Michel Foucault's conception of ‘governmentality’ and addresses political power in terms of ‘political rationalities’ and ‘technologies of government’. It draws attention to the diversity of regulatory mechanisms which seek to give effect to government, and to the particular importance of indirect mechanisms that link the conduct of individuals and organizations to political objectives through ‘action at a distance’. The paper argues for the importance of an analysis of language in understanding the constitution of the objects of politics, not simply in terms of meaning or rhetoric, but as ‘intellectual technologies’ that render aspects of existence amenable to inscription and calculation. It suggests that governmentality has a characteristically ‘programmatic’ form, and that it is inextricably bound to the invention and evaluation of technologies that seek to give it effect. It draws attention to the complex processes of negotiation and persuasion involved in the assemblage of loose and mobile networks that can bring persons, organizations and objectives into alignment. The argument is exemplified through considering various aspects of the regulation of economic life: attempts at national economic planning in post-war France and England; the role ascribed to changing accounting practices in the UK in the 1960s; techniques of managing the internal world of the workplace that have come to lay special emphasis upon the psychological features of the producing subjects. The paper contends that ‘governmentality’ has come to depend in crucial respects upon the intellectual technologies, practical activities and social authority associated with expertise. It argues that the self-regulating capacities of subjects, shaped and normalized through expertise, are key resources for governing in a liberal-democratic way.
In the face of widespread organizational change which some claim heralds the demise of bureaucracy, and in the context of the cultural and intellectual uncertainties of postmodernism, how do people in organizations respond? In this paper, we explore the role of `How To' books for managers in the elaboration of these responses. How To books may be read as part of a long-standing tradition of self-help which represents a form of the secularized Protestant ethic. However, in contemporary conditions it is also congruent with emerging forms of reflexivity and projects of the self. The How To books we discuss promise to yield control of the world around them to managers who learn to know and control their `inner-worlds'. They also offer techniques of self-presentation and self-appraisal which, we argue, are particularly congruent with the likely control problems within post-bureaucratic organizations.
In recent years, social theory has become increasingly concerned with consumption and the changing nature of consumer society. By contrast, students of organizations have given only limited attention to the implications of consumption and consumerism for the analysis of their subject matter. In the light of this, the paper considers the contribution that the sociology of organizations can and should make to discussions of consumption and associated debates concerning contemporary consumer society. Our argument is that since in contemporary societies, consumption is achieved through the mediation of organizations it follows that an adequate study of consumption can only be developed in conjunction with the sociology of organizations. However, it is also the case that the analysis Of organizations must change if it is to take the issue of consumption seriously. By placing consumption more centrally in our analysis, the study of organizations is, in our view, forced to address current theoretical and empirical questions about the nature of modern (or is it post-modem?) society, a task that is sometimes ignored by organizational analysts but is implicit in the tradition of study deriving from Weber. The paper seeks to show how these changes open up fruitful new areas for the study of organizations and consumption and, in particular, questions concerning the nature of power and identity in modern societies.
In this essay I explore the role of time in proximal and distal approaches to organizational analysis. I argue that an instrumental and linear view of time may undermine efforts to describe organizations as partial and contingent processes. Therefore, I supplement instrumental time with a discontinuous and non-teleological account, using A. Giddens' and N. Luhmann's systems frameworks to illustrate my argument. Both theorists explain how systems extend present conditions through communication technologies that shrink time and space and, concomitantly, that facilitate reflexive control over future conditions. However, I argue that the systems framework may overstate organizational control by instrumentalizing time in the extension and reproduction of formal organizational structures. I then use the idea of temporal dislocation to signify how 'otherness' subverts systemic presence and thus offers a way of studying those ('untimely') aspects of organizational life that are typically marginalized in organizational analysis.
The role of emotion in the workplace has been the subject of a series of provocative studies (Hochschild, 1983; Van Maanen & Kunda, 1989). This essay locates research on organizational emotion in the larger traditions of emotion research and argues that the communicative aspects of emotion have been understudied. Existing research on the subject is divided into three themes: the emotional labor and attendant psychological costs that characterize some occupations, the use of emotional expression as a tool for the achievement of management objectives, and the role of culture in shaping the emotional lives of members. Three broad areas requiring study by communication researchers are explored. First, the substantial literature on organizational regulation of emotional display is reviewed and criticized for implicitly casting communication in the role of “emotional packaging.” Second, possibilities for studying the process of emotional interpretation are presented, with particular emphasis on the constitutive and heuristic rules used by organizational members. Third, tactical uses and organizational functions of organizational emotion are explored, with the role of emotional communication in defining work relationships most emphasized. Finally, a call for more message-based research is issued.
The American Diabetes Association currently recommends that all youth with type 1 diabetes over the age of 7 years follow a plan of intensive management. The purpose of this study was to describe stressors and self-care challenges reported by adolescents with type 1 diabetes who were undergoing initiation of intensive management. Subjects described initiation of intensive management as complicating the dilemmas they faced. The importance of individualized and nonjudgmental care from parents and health care providers was stressed. This study supports development of health care relationships and environments that are teen focused not merely disease-centered and embrace exploring options with the teen that will enhance positive outcomes.
Les AA. examinent de quelle maniere les consommateurs sont mobilises. Ils analysent ce qu'induit le plaisir de la consommation ainsi que la signification psychologique de ce type de comportement economique. Ils s'efforcent de dresser un portrait du consommateur rationnel et plus particulierement du buveur rationnel d'alcool. Dans ce but, ils portent leur attention sur les campagnes publicitaires elaborees dans les annees 1960 par certaines marques d'alcool. Ils tentent de mesurer le cout psychologique lie au choix entre des produits equivalents. Ils montrent que la notion de consommation rationnelle recouvre une realite multiple et complexe et que l'analyse de cette notion a encourage, a partir des annees 1960, le developpement d'un domaine de recherche a part entiere au sein de la psychologie sociale
1. The Consuming Society 2. Consumption Patterns 3. Making of the Consumer 4. Consumption in Modern Society 5. The Social Construction of Consumption Patterns in Modern Society 6. (Post)Modernity and Consumption 7. Postmodern Consumption 8. Global Consumption 9. Consuming People 10. The New Theater of Consumption
The new realities of today's postcorporate world and the new rules for achieving success were examined through a study of the career progress of a sample of 115 individuals who graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a Master's of Business Administration. The members of the study sample completed yearly questionnaires between January 1975 and 1992. The survey responses were analyzed and compared to the findings of six similar studies that were conducted over the same time period but with more diverse groups of individuals. It was discovered that globalization of markets and competition are rendering the old career paths and rules for career success ineffective. It was concluded that to be successful in today's postcorporate world, individuals must adhere to the following rules: do not rely on convention; continue to monitor globalization and its consequences; move toward the small and entrepreneurial and away from the big and bureaucratic; help big business from both outside and inside; lead in addition to just managing; wheel and deal if possible; increase personal competitive drive; and realize that lifelong learning is increasingly necessary for success. (The book contains 152 endnotes and 28 exhibits.) (MN)
Since the “second wave” of the women's movement, psychological self‐help books have been an important resource for many women regarding issues of relationships and identity. This audience study examines how the use of self‐help books is enacted in everyday life, and how this use illuminates aspects of women's lives in contemporary America. Although the genre has been criticized for its recipe format, readers use self‐help books in complex, and often empowering ways. Readers often read for the purpose of extricating themselves from patriarchal authority and establishing personal autonomy. Yet, they simultaneously construct an experience with the texts which helps them establish a sense of what is culturally shared among a community of readers. This “abstract” community of others provides a sense of what constitutes shared cultural knowledge, something which readers are unable to glean from their everyday interpersonal interaction.
This essay has been by necessity a gloss of a complex look at the relations of power, control, and personal identity construction in a workplace. Features of the nature of the work process combine with social strategies to construct a reproductive self-referential system. Corporate organizations are central institutions in contemporary life; they make developmental decisions for individuals and for society as a whole. While they are in this sense political to the core, we have not done enough to understand how this politics works or to explore its relation to people in a democratic society. Using a phenomenologically-based communication analysis enables a sensitive analysis of the multiple forms of power and domination as they exist in corporate sites. Although I have given only an outline of one case study here, this example suggests that phenomenologically-based projects can show harmful and unwarranted control, and can be a first step to fostering corporate practices that lead to decisions which are less wasteful of resources and more fully accomplish the goals of democratic society.
This revised edition of a now classic text includes a new introduction by Henry Jenkins, explaining 'Why Fiske Still Matters' for today's students, followed by a discussion between former Fiske students Kevin Glynn, Jonathan Gray, and Pamela Wilson on the theme of 'Reading Fiske and Understanding the Popular'. Both underline the continuing relevance of this foundational text in the study of popular culture. What is popular culture? How does it differ from mass culture? And what do popular "texts" reveal about class, race, and gender dynamics in a society? John Fiske answers these and a host of other questions in Understanding Popular Culture. When it was first written, Understanding Popular Culture took a groundbreaking approach to studying such cultural artifacts as jeans, shopping malls, tabloid newspapers, and TV game shows, which remains relevant today. Fiske differentiates between mass culture - the cultural "products" put out by an industrialized, capitalist society - and popular culture - the ways in which people use, abuse, and subvert these products to create their own meanings and messages. Rather than focusing on mass culture's attempts to dominate and homogenize, he prefers to look at (and revel in) popular culture's evasions and manipulations of these attempts. Designed as a companion to Reading the Popular, Understanding Popular Culture presents a radically different theory of what it means for culture to be popular: that it is, literally, of the people. It is not imposed on them, it is created by them, and its pleasures and meanings reflect popular tastes and concerns - and a rejection of those fostered by mass culture. With wit, clarity, and insight, Professor Fiske debunks the myth of the mindless mass audience, and demonstrates that, in myriad ways, popular culture thrives because that audience is more aware than anyone guesses.
Originally published: New York : Random House, c1993 Incluye bibliografía e índice
This chapter looks at the current interest in images in corporations. For a considerable time, there has been a focus on the images of products, brands and - later - corporations in the practice of and writings on marketing.Especially in the service marketing, corporate images are seen as important. The present chapter concentrates on the role and significance of corporate images from an organizational perspective, emphasizing the management of images as a crucial skill and field of activity in a particular kind of socio-cultural context and in specific organizational conditions.
A Bosnian mental health professional told the following story: Her village had been under siege for months, and she had worked around the clock in her community using all her personal and professional resources. She was offered a few days break in Zagreb and went to the city; she welcomed the chance to be out from under fire and to rest. A bookstore was the first place she wanted to go, to browse, to expand her vision, to read about other places and peoples. In the shop, the shelves were lined with American best-selling self-help books with titles like "Getting rid of the shoulds in your life in 24 hours," "How to stop being angry and guilty in 12 steps," etc. She looked at these and felt so unreal that she fled back to her village, preferring the reality of her people and her problems.
Self-help Books: Pseudoscience in the Guise of Science?
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Gambrill, E. 1992 "Self-help Books: Pseudoscience in the Guise of Science?" Skeptical Inquirer, 16:389-399.
Staying Function in the Future: 13 Self-help Trends
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Maisel, E. 1997 "Staying Function in the Future: 13 Self-help Trends." Writer's Digest, 77(1): 28-29.
Thousand Oaks: Sage. Cloud, Dana 1998 Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics
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Chong, C. 1996 Masculinities in Organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Cloud, Dana 1998 Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics. Thousand Oaks:Sage.
How the Workplace May Look Without Affirmative Action
- Kaufman
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Dinosaur Brains: Dealing With All Those Impossible People at Work Stanley 1992 Crazy Bosses: Spotting Them, Serving Them, Surviving Them
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An Act Made Perfect in Habit: The Self in the Postmodern Age
- James J Dowd
Dowd, James J. 1996 "An Act Made Perfect in Habit: The Self in the Postmodern Age." Curren Perspectives in Social Theory, 16: 237-263.
The Society of the Spectacle. Translated from the French by D. Nicholson Smith
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Debord, Guy 1995 The Society of the Spectacle. Translated from the French by D. Nicholson Smith. New York: Zone Books.
The Cult of Total Quality
- J Walters
Walters, J. 1992 "The Cult of Total Quality." Governing, 5(8):38-42.
Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization
- S Deetz
Deetz, S. 1991 Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization. Albany: State University of New York Press.