PurposeThis paper seeks to explore the notion of desire in relation to subjectivity at work by drawing on the work of Jacques Lacan. It aims particularly to consider the possible ways in which desire is evoked and channeled in managerial practices that are aimed at managing the self.Design/methodology/approachThe paper provides an illustration of this by a reading of how developmental HRM practices attempt to elicit and channel subjects' desire.FindingsParticular images promulgated by these practices appeal to the subject in such a way, that it becomes caught in a relationship of fascination with them. These practices thereby attempt to create identification with a fantasmatic image of the self, and in so doing, to shape subjectivity in line with managerial objectives. It is also argued that a different modality of relating to desire can provide a way of avoiding the most detrimental effects associated with these practices, and I indicate possible ways in which this different modality or “traversal” may take shape.Originality/valueThe paper analyzes the use of desire in management practices.
This article explores the question of identification through a Lacanian lens, paying specific attention to the interruption of identification in the self-presentation of employees. Jacques Lacan's notion of the Real is taken up here as a conceptualization of the limits inherent in representation, and the unexpected effects of signification that go beyond the meaning effects engendered in the process of speaking. Identification is viewed here as an iterative condensation and simplification of recurrent significations within a local organizational context, aiming to displace and repress the indeterminacy of meaning and the failure of intentionality in discourse. Interview material from a public sector case study is used to analyse identifications with images of the 'ideal employee', which can be interpreted through interviewees' moves to demarcate themselves from images of the 'non-ideal'. The analysis then turns to examine interruptions in this self-presentation in the form of slips, contradictions and breakdowns of the narrative. The article concludes that the examined interruptions indicate considerable space for resistance and re-signification in identifications.The field of organization studies has seen a growing stream of studies that involve the concept of identity. When we look at identity in organization, it involves the question of who we are in relation to something relatively specific: the organizational context. The theoretical resources for its study have been varied, including social identity theory, symbolic interactionism and poststructuralist philosophy (Alvesson et al., 2008). Within interpretivist and critical studies of identity, we can recognize a number of broadly shared theoretical bases. Organization 17(3) 379-393
We draw on Lacan’s notion of language to study employee subjectivity in a public sector organization (Publica) in the Netherlands. Our main contribution lies in using Lacan’s theorization of language and subjectivity as a basis for a detailed textual analysis of how local organizational discourses shape and inform the subjectivities of employees. We situate our approach within the literature on subjectivity, language and power in work organizations before describing how we carried out interviews to elicit interviewees’ accounts of performance management. The mechanisms of metonymy and punctuation, two central features of a Lacanian conceptualization of language, are analysed by means of a relational analysis of key performance signifiers that we identify in the interview texts. We show how the signification of performance in Publica is pinned down by a central empty signifier which can be understood as a ‘quilting point’ and serves as a site for employee desire and identification. Finally, we show how desire and identification are channelled in specific ways to activate employee self-regulation in achieving the devolvement of responsibility and labour intensification.
Business schools have become implicated in the widespread demonisation of the financial classes. By educating those held most responsible for the crisis – financial traders and speculators – they are said to have produced ruthlessly talented graduates who have ambition in abundance but little sense for social responsibility or ethics. This ethical lack thrives upon the trading floor within a compelling critique of the complicity of the pedagogy of the business school with the financial crisis of the global economy. An ethical turn within the curriculum is now widely encouraged as a counteractive force. Within this paper, however, we argue that taking this ethical turn is not enough. For business ethicists to learn from the financial crisis, the crisis' legacy needs to be taken account of, and financialisation needs to be taken seriously. Pedagogical reform cannot bracket itself off from the crisis as if it were coincidental with or separate from it. Post‐crisis pedagogy must rather take the fact that it is requested now, in light of the crisis, as its very point of departure. The financial crisis must not be understood as something to be resisted in the name of Business Ethics. Instead, the financial crisis must be understood as the very foundation for contemporary Business Ethics in particular and for contemporary business and management education more generally.
How can we understand contradictory identifications within work to which one is passionately attached? This article explores how seemingly competing accounts of the self at work can not only appear side by side within the self-presentation of creative workers, but also how dominant patterns within the daily socio-economic realities of creative work are reproduced through faux-contestations of them. Following Glynos and Howarth, I will argue that such transgressive notions often recall earlier historical arrangements that have been displaced by current dominant social grammars, or were vital components of the institution of current social hegemony. In a study of musicians, I analyse how alongside dominant logics of employability and virtuosity, traditional notions of artists' craft and autonomy drive counter-identifications that allow dominant social logics to fill the gaps in the indeterminacy and ambiguity of everyday lived experience. By applying an understanding of discursive logics to creative work, this article seeks to contribute to literatures spanning work in the cultural industries, identification, affect and transgression at work, and commons and immaterial labour.
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