(Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social Movements In and Beyond Capital, the State and Development

Recently, we have witnessed the emergence of what appears to be a new set of claims in contemporary social movements based around the idea of autonomy. In this paper we interrogate this demand for autonomy. In order to do this, we first engage with existing literatures, identifying three main conceptions of autonomy: 1) autonomous practices vis-à-vis capital, or, what Negri calls, the ‘self-valorization’ of labour; 2) self-determination and independence from the state; and 3) alternatives to hegemonic discourses of development. We will then problematize and point out the central potentials, weaknesses and antagonisms at the heart of the concept of autonomy. We argue that social movements’ demands for autonomy point to, what Laclau and Mouffe call, the impossibility of society, the idea that society can never be complete. That is, there will always be resistances, such as those expressed by autonomous social movements. However, this also lets us understand the conception of autonomy to be incomplete. Autonomy itself is hence an impossibility. To point to these limits of the discourses of autonomy, we discuss how demands for autonomy are tied up with contemporary re-organizations of: 1) the capitalist workplace, characterized by discourses of autonomy, creativity and self-management; 2) the state, which increasingly outsources public services to independent, autonomous providers, which often have a more radical, social movement history; and 3) regimes of development, which today often emphasize local practices, participation and self-determination. Behind these critical reflections on the conception and practice of autonomy is the idea that autonomy should always be seen as something relational. That is, autonomy can never be fixed; there is no definite ground for demands for autonomy to stand on. Instead, social movements’ demands for autonomy are embedded in specific social, economic, political and cultural contexts, giving rise to possibilities as well as impossibilities of autonomous practices

Rethinking Emancipation in Organization Studies. In the light of Jacques Rancière's Philosophy

The demand for emancipation was once something we only associated with oppressed social groups such as Women, Workers or the colonized who were seeking to escape from various forms of domination which they had long been subjected to. Today, some of the most privileged groups in our society such as middle managers and professions talk about their thirst for emancipation. They seek this precious and awe inspiring goal through participating in management courses (Gosling, 2000), reading various forms of management literature which promises to turn them into revolutionaries (Jacques, 1996), and engaging with various journeys to free themselves from the shackles of thought control and simply 'be themselves' at work (Fleming, 2009). Corporations routinely sell themselves as a route to emancipation for their consumers and employees. One only needs to think about the recent advertisement for Virgin which replaced the famous images of the revolutionary Ché Guevara with Richard Branson. The message seems to be clear - it is not just radical political movements that can provide emancipation, corporations can too! The fact that emancipation has lost its anchor in radical political movements and shocks and scandalizes some. For others, it is a kind of an indication of how endlessly flexible and omnivorous capitalism is insofar as it is able to adopt nearly anything - include forms of virulent anti-capitalism - to further itself. While these two explanations are certainly appealing, we think that the widespread adoption of this culture of emancipation actually underlines the increasing uncertainty and fragmentation that has taken place around the term. For us this is due to a shift in focus of understanding of emancipation. Previously, emancipation was understood as a form of wide-scale transformational change in society achieved through intellectuals enlightening people who find themselves dominated. This notion informed studies of emancipation for many years. The result was that research on emancipation tended to focus on either documenting large scale challenges to capitalism and management or agitating for emancipation through a progressive enlightenment of the audience. This approach to emancipation began to fall out of favour as it was accused of being too grandiose - subjects were positioned as victims of managerial knowledge which they could only escape from through the progressive enlightenment under the tutelage of critical intellectuals. Such disenchantment led researchers to turn their focus towards more minor forms of micro-emancipation whereby people momentarily escape from domination in their everyday life through minor activities (eg. Alvesson and Willmott, 1992). This focus produced a deep body of literature that documented the various ways individuals seek out micro-emancipation in the workplace (eg. Zanoni and Jensens, 2007). However, recently we have witnessed some important questions being asked around this research agenda. In particular, some are concerned that it has begun to fundamentally constrain how we think about forms of emancipation, creating a myopic focus on small-scale struggles and fundamentally ignoring many of the broader social struggles that challenge management. In this paper we seek to overcome these problems associated with macro as well as micro-emancipation by positing a new conception of emancipation offered in the recent thought of Jacques Rancière. For Rancière, emancipation should not be seen as an ideal to be reached, but as a postulate to be acualised in day-to-day practice. He points out that equality can be actualized by interrupting the order of sensibility (rather than through quotidian everyday acts), through creating a sense of dissensus (rather than collaboration and attempts to create consensus), and attempts to singularize the universal (rather than through fragmentary struggles). By focusing on these three processes, Rancière enables us to see a range of emancipatory struggles that we were blinded to by both accounts of marco-emancipation (which went looking for grand revolts) as well as micro-emancipation (which focused on everyday transgression). In particular it enables us to register the kinds of emancipation movements that have frequently been left out of accounts of emancipation in organization studies. These include the self-education movements, proliterian intellectual movements, as well as forms art. Rancière's account of emancipation allows us to extend how we think about processes of emancipation in and around organizations in three ways. First, it allows us to register activities in our theoretical gaze that we had previously ignored or discounted. Macro-emancipation focuses our attention on collective movements which are organised and micro-emancipation focuses our attention on often individual every-day activities which are not organised. In contrast, Rancière draws our attention to various emancipatory movements that are often collective, but are not formally organised. This broadens the range of forms of emancipation we can study. Second, Rancière allows us to rethink how exactly emancipation works. Instead of focusing on creation of new states of freedom (as studies of macro emancipation do) or attempts to seize fleeting forms of freedom (as studies of micro emanciption do), Rancière's work allows us to see how emancipation involves the transformation of the sensible. This re-orients our studies to how emancipation movements seek to change what and how we actually see the world. Finally, Rancière allows us to move beyond the assumption that contemporary resistance is fragmented and disorganised by registering how individual forms of resistance are experienced as an embodiment or singularization of universal struggles. Doing this allows us to recognise the link between the specific demands of many resistance movements and more universal claims such as dignity, recognition, and justice. By making these three contributions, we hope to move beyond either an elitist account found in studies of macro-emancipation and the banal account found in studies of micro-emancaiption. In order to make this argument, we proceed as follows. We begin by reviewing the two dominant conceptions of emancipation. First we look at three different modes of emancipation that have been successively pursued - political emancipation, economic emancipation and ideological emancipation. We then look at the ways in which organization studies has suggested these struggles take place - through 'macro-emancipation' or 'micro-emancipation'. In this review we highlight the shortcomings of these two existing conceptions of emancipation. We then introduce a third conception of emancipation inspired by the work of Jacques Rancière. After we have outlined this, we then draw out the implications of this for the study of emancipation in organization studies. We conclude by sketching out what new areas of emancipation this allows us to understand and perhaps engage with.Rancière ; emancipation ; critical theory ; critical management studies ; micro emancipation

Toward an Untrepreneurial Economy? The Entrepreneurship Industry and the Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur

Why is the quality of innovation-driven entrepreneurship seemingly declining? We argue the growing Entrepreneurship Industry and the way it has transformed entrepreneurship as an activity are important, under-appreciated explanations. By leveraging the Ideology of Entrepreneurialism to mass-produce and mass-market products, the Entrepreneurship Industry has made possible what we term Veblenian Entrepreneurship. This is entrepreneurship pursued primarily as a form of conspicuous consumption, and it is fundamentally different from the innovation-driven entrepreneurship that it emulates and superficially resembles. Aside from lowering average entrepreneurial quality, Veblenian Entrepreneurship has a range of (short-run) positive and (medium- and long-run) negative effects for both individuals and society at large. We argue that the rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur might contribute to creating an increasingly Untrepreneurial Economy. An Untrepreneurial Economy appears innovation-driven and dynamic but is actually rife with inefficiencies and unable to generate economically meaningful growth through innovation

Rethinking emancipation in organization studies. In the light of Jacques Rancière's philosophy

Emancipation in organization studies and Jacques Rancière's philosophyJacques Rancière, emancipation, organization studies

Computer Program of Line Balancing under the Multiple Workers in Each Station (LBMW)

An assembly line with no paralleling of work elements and work stations is called a serial line. The cycle time of the serial line must be at least equal to the maximum work element time. To lower the cycle time beyond the limit and increase the production rate, one may permit the paralleling of work elements or work stations. So in this paper we propose the parallel assignment method for achieving a higher production rate. In this method, work elements are assigned to work stations under the multiple upper time limits which are the products of the various numbers of workers and the limiting cycle time. Further we develop the computer program of the proposed method and provide an illustrative problem and computational results

(Un)Conditional surrender? Why do professionals willingly comply with managerialism

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to explore the question – why do professionals surrender their autonomy? This paper looks at the case of academics, in particular business school academics. It traces how this group of professionals have progressively surrendered their autonomy and complied with the demands of managerialism. Design/methodology/approach: – This largely theoretical paper looks to develop an understanding of (over)compliance with the bureaucratization of research using the four faces of power – coercive, agenda setting, ideological and discursive. Findings: – The discussion of this paper argues that the surrendering of autonomy has been reinforced through coercive forms of power like rewards and punishment and bureaucratization; manipulation and mainstreaming through pushing a particular version of research to the top of the agenda; domination through shaping norms and values; and subjectification through creating new identities. Originality/value: – The paper explores how academics deal with tensions and paradoxes such as compliance and resistance, as well as love of work and loathing of it. To deal with these paradoxes, academics often treat their work as a game and see themselves as players. While this process enables academics to reconcile themselves with their loss of autonomy, it has troubling collective outcomes: the production of increasing uninteresting and irrelevant research

Morphologic study of the ascending aorta and aortic arch in hypoplastic left hearts: Surgical implications

ObjectivesThe ascending aorta and aortic arch in patients with hypoplasia of the left heart are hypoplastic as a result of diminished blood flow. In this study, the presence and degree of obstruction owing to areas of narrowing or infolding within the diminutive aorta are quantified, and their surgical significance is discussed.MethodsNinety-six specimens with hypoplasia of the left heart were studied and measurements were taken at specified sites to evaluate areas of narrowing. Quantitative assessments of infoldings and their contribution to obstruction of flow are made.ResultsNarrowing of the distal ascending aorta was found in 60 (62.5%) specimens, with a decrease in circumference of the distal ascending aorta (0.72 ± 1.06 mm) present when compared with its midpoint (P < .05). Tissue infolding at the orifice of the brachiocephalic artery and its junction with the distal ascending aorta was observed in 56 (58.3%) hearts, with major infolding in 29 (30.2%) and minor infolding in 27 (28.5%). Tissue infolding at this site correlated with a smaller ascending aorta (P < .001) but not with narrowing in the distal ascending aorta (P = .53). Ductal coarctations were detected in 77 (81.1%) specimens. Their presence correlated with a smaller diameter of the ascending aorta (P < .05), and their severity correlated with the presence of aortic and mitral valvular atresia (P < .05).ConclusionsImportant areas of obstruction in the ascending aorta in patients with hypoplasia of the left heart were found, and their pathogenesis is discussed. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating the ascending aorta into the aortic reconstruction at the time of initial palliation for patients with hypoplasia of the left heart

The Commensuration of Sustainability Reporting and the Crowding out of Morality

Drawing on extensive case study evidence, this study unpacks sustainability reporting’s evolution from a moral values-based practice towards a financialized value-based one. We argue that this transition can be seen as a commensuration project and we examine the dynamics of this process. We find that increased levels of commensuration have moved sustainability reporting away from a focus on moral responsibility (i.e. ‘doing the right thing’) to a focus on strategic value creation for the firm. We theorize this crowding out of morality as a process of amoralization supported by the rigid cognitive framing of social and environmental issues (objectification) and the monetized coordination of relevant social interactions (marketization). We outline implications of our analysis for the scholarly debate on sustainability reporting and commensuration

Neo-Institutional Theory and Organization Studies: A Mid-Life Crisis?

We trace the development of neo-institutional theory in Organization Studies from a marginal topic to the dominant theory. We show how it has evolved from infancy, through adolescence and early adulthood to being a fully mature theory, which we think is now facing a mid-life crisis. Some of the features of this mid-life crisis include over-reach, myopia, tautology, pseudo-progress and re-inventing the wheel. To address these problems, we argue that institutional theorists should limit the range of the concept, sharpen their lens, avoid tautologies and problematize the concept. By doing this, we think institutional theorists could develop a narrower and more focused conception of institutions

How are management fashions institutionalized? The role of institutional work

We explore how transitory management fashions become institutionalized. Based on the concepts of institutional entrepreneurship and institutional work, we postulate that fashionable management practices acquire permanence when they are anchored within fieldwide institutions. The building of such institutions requires various types of institutional work, including political work, technical work and cultural work. Based on a review of the empirical literature on various management fashions, we identify the actors engaging in these different types of works, and their skills. Our results suggest that the institutionalization effect is stronger if more types of institutional work are deployed and if the skill sets of the involved actors vary. We also argue that institutional construction in the case of management fashions is likely to take the form of decentralized `partaking' rather than being led by a single dominant institutional entrepreneur. We conclude with implications for the study of management fashions and the role of agency in institutionalization