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.
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