CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

Technologies of the Self in Contemporary (Business) Management

Organiser: Karen Lisa G. Salamon

Pearson, Claire E. (Bristol University, United Kingdom) EQ SELF-AUDITING: THE NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE 'SELF' AT WORK
The National Audit Office (NAO) is a nation-wide governmental body responsible for auditing expenditure throughout the UK. As a heavily bureaucratic organisation, the NAO are currently attempting to become more flexible and agile in their managerial practices in order to reinforce their competitive standing within the field of public sector auditing. Based on recent doctoral research, this paper investigates what kinds of impacts (both personal and organisational) current corporate strategies such as management training have on the 'EQ' (or 'emotional intelligence') of organisations like the NAO. In particular, this paper investigates the attempts by the NAO to use theatre as a means of (re)negotiating new styles of managerial practice through the training interactions facilitated in role-play. Looking to 'add value' to every aspect of managerial performance, I reveal how the NAO are using role-play as a way of exploring the relationship between the 'self-development' of staff and the enhancement of creativity, innovation and teamwork, with the (anticipated) increase in productivity and profit. At these training sites of interactive and embodied practice, I ask to what extent can experiential trainings be used to expand the range of skills and competencies of the manager and how, in turn, these might come to be mobilised and conditioned within the particularities of corporate, organisational structures?

Soerensen, Asger (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) THE IDEOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF ETHICS IN SELF-CENTERED ORGANISATIONS
The idea of personal management and continuous self-development through learning is desirable as an ethical end in it-self. Furthermore, it is a matter of strict moral discipline, enforced by the necessity of survival and career within a modern organisation. A certain kind of ethics is needed to make this aspiration valuable, so as to make the organisation appear humane both from within and to outsiders. However, the kind of ethics needed to fulfil this task is exactly the kind of ethics which gives credibility to the classical idea of the free market.

Salamon, Karen Lisa G. (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) PROPHETS OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION: NEO-SPIRITUAL MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS IN ENTERPRISE CULTURE
Based on an ethnographic study of European and North American management consultants in the late 1990s, the paper investigates an influential neo-spiritual, New Age and Human Potential inspired discourse about the Self at work. It specifically focuses on ideals of self-development and problematises a particular discursivation of sociality. The neo-spiritual ideology of evolving consciousness and self-transformation is discussed in context of neo-liberal enterprise culture.

Valtonen, Anu and Moisander, Johanna (Helsinki School of Economics, Finland) BUSY POFESSIONALS ­ TIME AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN NARRATIVES OF INFORMATION SOCIETY
This study takes a Foucauldian approach to investigating the ways in which 'being busy' is normalized in the contemporary discourses of professional identity. It examines the role of time in the production of an adequate business professional. Our study aims to identify a discourse of time that produces certain kind of professional identity, and constrains alternative identities. We examine how this discourse is reproduced and resisted in narratives produced by Finnish business students. The preliminary analysis suggests that the discourse of time dictates: 'be busy and efficient'. The given discourse produces an ideal type that is not characterized by professional or social skills, but by temporal skills. He/she is a busy person that uses every instant of time efficiently by constantly controlling and optimizing his/her time-use with the help of the very latest technology. There seems to be very few options to resist this discourse.