The U.S. government's response to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has raised questions of whether its role is in fact limited to symbolic politics courtesy of its highly fragmented authority. This paper deconstructs the most prominent federal government outreach to the American people at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis-the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings, to show how government actions have been communicated to the public. Within the K€ ubler-Ross' five-stage theory of grief, several narratives are surveyed as they are being circulated, tested and/or abandoned. It is argued that engaging in the enactment of narratives is one logical avenue for a crisis mitigation reimagined in postmodern terms. This serves as yet another reminder of how policy deliberation could be replaced with symbolic acts via discursive manipulation to the detriment of democratic public administration.
PurposeThis paper examines how contemporary workplace surveillance can simultaneously incentivize and commodify workforce behavior. Specifically, workplace surveillance is reconceptualized as rent-seeking, which offers a framework for analyzing novel employer-employee relationships stemming from alternate views of risk and reward.Design/methodology/approachThe case of workplace microchipping is studied qualitatively as a backdrop for theorizing emergent labor relations in the context of surveillance capitalism and biopolitics.FindingsReconsidering surveillance within the context of personal risk and entrepreneurial lure offers much to 21st century discourse on labor and supervision. It is imperative that the public sector engages in appropriate regulatory protocols to manage emergent behavior in organizations.Originality/valueThis study departs from the popular conceptualization of human microchipping as an intersection of legal and ethical considerations of surveillance. Instead, the authors examine a different aspect of the microchipping phenomenon, taking into account employee creative reactions to employer surveillance in the context of risk and return.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0009
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