Place, Space and Time: Contextualizing Workplace Subjectivities

Abstract

This paper explores the relations between management discourse and employee subjectivity in the process of organizational change, drawing on a new empirical study of doctors and nurses working in the British National Health Service (NHS). It builds on recent critiques of more muscular accounts of discourse to examine the manoeuvres made by working subjects in response to managerialist discourses of the entrepreneurial self. While others have shown that alternative discourses including gender, age and profession are important here, this paper argues that we must pay attention to the spatial and temporal contexts within which such generic discourses are received and understood in order to interpret the practices of subjectivity and power in organizational life. We suggest that this approach allows new insights to policy concerns in the NHS; to our understanding of the nature of work subjectivities; and to sociological understandings of organizational power.

Power in Management and Organization Science

“…The electronics factory utilized peer pressure and visible performance indicators to discipline it workers, resulting in workers feeling inadequate about themselves as they embodied the regime within their sense of identity (also see Casey, 1995;Barker, 1993). Because the spatial arrangement of the plant resembled a 'panopticon', the managerial gaze was always present among employees, to the extent where they enacted its influence upon themselves and fellow workers (also see Halford and Leonard, 2006). Knights and Murray's (1992) investigation of an insurance firm introducing new information systems similarly demonstrates how the new climate of 'transparency' substantially changed the way workers understood themselves and their roles, revealing the insidious social power of technology when enacted within certain political settings (also see Ball and Wilson, 2000;Coombs et al 2002;Bloomfield and Danieli 1995).…”

The work, workforce, technology and organisational implications of the ‘111’ single point of access telephone number for urgent (non-emergency) care: a mixed-methods case study

“…Data from the online survey were directly exported as CSV files (which included all completed surveys (30) and the ability of non-clinical call advisers to perform their role safely (Q31) were analysed individually. The nine questions that asked staff about their views of NHS 111 were grouped into two composite variables: whether staff felt that NHS 111 was 'good for patients' (average of Q4-6 and 11) and whether staff felt that NHS 111 was effective in dealing with the demands on health providers (average of Q7-10 and 12).…”

“…29,30 It is well known that operational cultures vary across health-care services, 31 that professional cultures in health care are quite distinct 32,33 and that relations between the different urgent and emergency care services can be characterised by rivalry and a clash of cultures. 34 In what follows we develop a comparative analysis across our case studies.…”

Foucault's Overlooked Organisation: Revisiting his Critical Works

“…It is not possible to reconstruct the exegesis of Foucault's work within the discipline of management and organisation, and any bibliographic references can be but selective. However, it is obvious that Foucault's influence has played out in three major directions: power (and resistance) within the workplace (Burrell 1988;Clegg 1994;Clegg et al 2006;Clegg and Haugaard 2009;Courpasson and Dany 2009;Fleming and Spicer 2007;2014;Halford and Leonard 2005;Knights 1990;Newton 2004), discipline and control (Lounsbury and Ventresca 2003;McKinley and Taylor 1998;Savage 1998;Starkey and McKinlay 1998) and subjectivity and the self (Crane et al 2009;Knights and Morgan 1991;Nahamas 1998;Randall and Munro 2010). In all these works, organisation is taken for granted inasmuch as it is understood as a given place, usually the workplace, where relationships unfold under the banner of control and repression.…”