Discourse of the real kind: A post-foundational approach to organizational discourse analysis

In response to the postmodern invasion of organization studies, some critics have issued increasingly loud cries that we should ‘get real’ about organizational discourse analysis. But what precisely do these proponents take to be the ‘real’? In this article we trace out some of the attempts of ‘getting real’, arguing that these approaches have some important limitations. We then explore the relevance of a post-foundational approach to discourse, which, we argue, have far reaching implications for the study of organizational discourse. We argue that such approach offers us a way of theoretically linking the ‘real’ with (1) the way discourses are structured around fundamental gaps, (2) how discourses are brought together through nodal points and (3) how discourses generate affective and emotional attachment. We then offer some suggestions of how these points can be used to study organizational processes. We conclude by reflecting on some of the limitations of this approach to studying discourse

Comfort radicalism and NEETs: a conservative praxis

Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are construed by policy makers as a pressing problem about which something should be done. Such young people's lack of employment is thought to pose difficulties for wider society in relation to social cohesion and inclusion and it is feared that they will become a 'lost generation'. This paper(1) draws upon English research, seeking to historicise the debate whilst acknowledging that these issues have a much wider purchase. The notion of NEETs rests alongside longstanding concerns of the English state and middle classes, addressing unruly male working class youth as well as the moral turpitude of working class girls. Waged labour and domesticity are seen as a means to integrate such groups into society thereby generating social cohesion. The paper places the debate within it socio-economic context and draws on theorisations of cognitive capitalism, Italian workerism, as well as emerging theories of antiwork to analyse these. It concludes by arguing that ‘radical’ approaches to NEETs that point towards inequities embedded in the social structure and call for social democratic solutions veer towards a form of comfort radicalism. Such approaches leave in place the dominance of capitalist relations as well as productivist orientations that celebrate waged labour

Training to self-care: fitness tracking, biopedagogy and the healthy consumer

In this article, we provide an account of Fitbit, a wearable sensor device, using two complementary analytical approaches: auto-ethnography and media analysis. Drawing on the concept of biopedagogy, which describes the processes of learning and training bodies how to live, we focus on how users learn to self-care with wearable technologies through a series of micropractices that involve processes of mediation and the sharing of their own data via social networking. Our discussion is oriented towards four areas of analysis: data subjectivity and sociality; making meaning; time and productivity and brand identity. We articulate how these micropractices of knowing one’s body regulate the contemporary ‘fit’ and healthy subject, and mediate expertise about health, behaviour and data subjectivity

Horses for courses: exploring the limits of leadership development through equine-assisted learning

YesThis essay draws on insights taken from Lacanian psychoanalysis to rethink and resituate notions of the self and subjectivity within the theory and practice of experiential leadership development. Adopting an auto-ethnographic approach, it describes the author’s own experience as a participant in a programme of equine assisted learning or ‘horse whispering’ and considers the consequences of human-animal interactions as a tool for self-development and improvement. Through an analysis of this human/animal interaction, the essay presents and applies three Lacanian concepts of subjectivity, desire and fantasy and considers their form and function in determining the often fractured relationship between self and other that characterises leader-follower relations

Extending critical performativity

In this article we extend the debate about critical performativity. We begin by outlining the basic tenets of critical performativity and how this has been applied in the study of management and organization. We then address recent critiques of critical performance. We note these arguments suffer from an undue focus on intra-academic debates; engage in author-itarian theoretical policing; feign relevance through symbolic radicalism; and repackage common sense. We take these critiques as an opportunity to offer an extended model of critical performativity that involves focusing on issues of public importance; engaging with non-academic groups using dialectical reasoning; scaling up insights through movement building; and propagating deliberation

Depression at Work, Authenticity in Question: Experiencing, Concealing and Revealing

Australia and the UK have both introduced policies to protect employees who experience mental illness, including depression. However, a better understanding of the issues workers face (e.g. sense of moral failure) is needed for the provision of appropriate and beneficial support. We analysed 73 interviews from the UK and Australia where narratives of depression and work intersected. Participants encountered difficulties in being (and performing as if) ‘authentic’ at work, with depression contributing to confusions about the self. The diffuse post-1960s imperative to ‘be yourself’ is experienced in conflicting ways: While some participants sought support from managers and colleagues (e.g. sick leave, back to work plans), many others put on a façade in an attempt to perform the ‘well’ and ‘authentic’ employee. We outline the contradictory forces at play for participants when authenticity and visibility are expected, yet moral imperatives to be good (healthy) employees are normative

Creating “automatic subjects”: corporate wellness and self-tracking

The use of self-tracking (ST) devices has increased dramatically in recent years with enthusiasm from the public as well as public health, healthcare providers and workplaces seeking to instigate behaviour change in populations. Analysis of the ontological principles informing the design and implementation of the Apple Watch and corporate wellness (CW) programmes using ST technologies will suggest that their primary focus is on the capture and control of attention rather than material health outcomes. Health, wellness and happiness have been conflated with productivity which is now deemed to be dependent on the harnessing of libidinal energy as well as physical energy. In this context ST technologies and related CW interventions, have been informed by “emotional design”, neuroscientific and behavioural principles which target the “pre subjective” consciousness of individuals through manipulating their habits and neurological functioning. The paper draws on the work of Bernard Stiegler to suggest framing ST as “industrial temporal objects”, which capture and “short circuit” attention. It will be proposed that a central aim is to “accumulate the consciousnesses” of subjects consistent with the methods of a contemporary “attention economy”. This new logic of accumulation informs the behaviour change strategies of designers of ST devices, and CW initiatives, taking the form of “psychotechnologies” which attempt to reconstruct active subjects as automatic and reactive “nodes” as part of managed networks

Connoting a neoliberal and entrepreneurial discourse of science through infographics and integrated design: the case of ‘functional’ healthy drinks

Riding on the rising concern of public health and the growing neoliberal self-care agenda, the food market has witnessed a surge in ‘healthy’ food despite the criticism of this food does not help consumers eat more healthily. A growing interest in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) is how food marketers colonise not only the food discourse but also the broader ideas and values such as health, politics, and environment. Contributing to this growing body of research, we look at one of the fastest-growing food trends, ‘functional drinks’, which claim to target physiological and psychological processes in the body, so that consumers can manage their health and performance. Company websites rely on forms of infographics to communicate how the products work. Adopting the notion of ‘integrated design’ from multimodal CDS, we show how these infographics, drawing on their affordances, are particularly useful in symbolising classifications and causalities which could not be accounted for in running texts. The paper argues that this is a way health and science converge with a neoliberal discourse of self-management and enterprise culture. Given the increased use of forms of integrated design in communication, more critical discursive work is needed in this area

Organizing resistance movements: contribution of the political discourse theory

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of articulating Political Discourse Theory (PDT) together with Organizational Studies (OS), while using the opportunity to introduce PDT to those OS scholars who have not yet come across it. The bulk of this paper introduces the main concepts of PDT, discussing how they have been applied to concrete, empirical studies of resistance movements. In recent years, PDT has been increasingly appropriated by OS scholars to problematize and analyze resistances and other forms of social antagonisms within organizational settings, taking the relational and contingent aspects of struggles into consideration. While the paper supports the idea of a joint articulation of PDT and OS, it raises a number of critical questions of how PDT concepts have been empirically used to explain the organization of resistance movements. The paper sets out a research agenda for how both PDT and OS can together contribute to our understanding of new, emerging organizational forms of resistance movements.</jats:p

Structural matters in HTSC; the origin and form of stripe organization and checker boarding

The paper deals with the controversial charge and spin self-organization phenomena in the HTSC cuprates, of which neutron, X-ray, STM and ARPES experiments give complementary, sometimes apparently contradictory glimpses. The examination has been set in the context of the boson-fermion, negative-U understanding of HTSC advocated over many years by the author. Stripe models are developed which are 2q in nature and diagonal in form. For such a geometry to be compatible with the data rests upon both the spin and charge arrays being face-centred. Various special doping concentrations are closely looked at, in particular p = 0.1836 or 9/49, which is associated with the maximization of the superconducting condensation energy and the termination of the pseudogap regime. The stripe models are dictated by real space organization of the holes, whereas the dispersionless checkerboarding is interpreted in terms of correlation driven collapse of normal Fermi surface behaviour and response functions. The incommensurate spin diffraction below the resonance energy is seen as in no way expressing spin-wave physics or Fermi surface nesting, but is driven by charge and strain (Jahn-Teller) considerations, and it stands virtually without dispersion. The apparent dispersion comes from the downward dispersion of the resonance peak, and the growth of a further incoherent commensurate peak ensuing from the falling level of charge stripe organization under excitation.Comment: 49 pages with 8 figure