While many studies have enlighten several rhetorical and linguistic structures of managerial discourses in organizations, few have analysed from a Lacanian standpoint the impact of these linguistic structures upon the subjectivity of the people concerned. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that many modern management techniques, resulting from the hybrid combination of communication and instrumental rationality paradigms, generate specific recurrent structures of languaging in organizations. These hybrid structures generate what I call here homo managerialis and are similar to the concept of derision as it has been expounded by Denis Vasse in a psychoanalytical context. Derision, in Vasse's psychoanalytical perspective, is a violent way to address to someone which starts with openness and ends up by closeness. It severs one's link with desire, confidence in life, makes work a pain, generates false sociability. This similarity between the structure of modern management techniques and derision is demonstrated through the analysis of three archetypal situations. Finally, based upon Vasse's specific post-Lacanian psychoanalytic anthropology which lends itself to the analysis of derision and from M. Henry's phenomenology of life, this paper will suggest a new understanding of human being and reason which is the basis for a new understanding of organizing which prevents derision.
Our highly sensitive ethnographic study with anti-money-laundering analysts delves into the understudied link between embodiment and ethics in organizations. We begin by reclaiming the importance of bodies and embodiment in the business ethics literature, which largely assumes preeminence of the mind over the body. We then draw on French phenomenologist Michel Henry's theory of the subjective body to advance our understanding of ethics as endogenous embodied practice rooted in life. Through the experiential realities of our ethnographic work, we show how the two interrelated dimensions in which embodiment occurs (subjective body and organic body) operate at two interrelated levels (subjective and intersubjective experience) to advance theory on the implications of corporeal ethics in organizations. More specifically, by reclaiming and specifying the ontologically embodied and shared dimensions of ethical subjectivity in life, we show the emergence and development of an esprit de corps, which allows embodying collective ethical practice while resisting to continuous external pressures.
Despite a proliferation of critical studies on management education, there is a paucity of knowledge of the ways in which problematic beliefs, values, and practices are reproduced in and through management education. By drawing on and extending Bourdieu's seminal work, this paper offers a new perspective on reproduction on the global scale. Our framework spans three inter‐related levels of analysis: the dominant beliefs, values, and practices (nomos and doxa) of management in global society; the structuration of the field of management education on a global scale; and the prevailing pedagogical practices in management education programmes. Our analysis adds to critical studies of management education by elucidating the overwhelming institutional forces of reproduction and thus explaining how difficult it is to effect change in the prevailing ideas, values, and practices. Unlike most critical analyses, we also explain how change might take place and what it would require. Thus, our analysis advances studies of reproduction in this era of globalization more generally. It also provides an example of how Bourdieusian ideas can be applied and expanded upon in novel ways in research on education in general and management education in particular.
There is a lack of integrative conceptual models that would help to better understand the underlying reasons for the alleged problems of MBA education. To address this challenge, we draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to examine MBA education as an activity with its own "economy of exchange" and "rules of the game." We argue that application of Bourdieu's theoretical ideas elucidates three key issues in debate around MBA education: the outcomes of MBA programs, the inculcation of potentially problematic values and practices through the programs, and the potential of self-regulation, such as accreditation and ranking for impeding development of MBA education. First, Bourdieu's notions of capital-intellectual, social, and symbolic-shed light on the "economy of exchange" in MBA education. Critics of MBA programs have pointed out that the value of MBA degrees lies not only in "learning." Bourdieu's framework allows further analysis of this issue by distinguishing between intellectual (learning), social (social networks), and symbolic capital (credentials and prestige). Second, the concept of "habitus" suggests how values and practices are inculcated through MBA education. This process is often one students acquire voluntarily, and students often regard problematic or ethically questionable ideas as natural. Third, Bourdieu's reflections on the "doxa" and its reproduction and legitimation illuminate the role of accreditation and ranking in MBA education. This perspective helps to understand how self-regulation may impede change in MBA education.
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