Bogdan Costea

Dionysus at work? The ethos of play and the ethos of management

This paper discusses the way in which play is used in contemporary managerial ideologies, relating it to the cultural imperative of ‘wellness’. Three central questions underpin this commentary. Firstly, has management entered into a kind of ‘Dionysian’ mode, a spirit of playful transgression and destruction of boundaries marking a new bond between economic grammars of production and consumption, and cultural grammars of the modern self? Secondly, can ‘happiness’ (as a ‘goal’ of the modern ethos) be related to playfulness and well‐being at work? Thirdly, is there a relationship between play at work and processes of infantilisation in Atlantic cultures? Our conclusions indicate that it is possible to speculate upon a phase in the western civilising process in which a new ‘managerial Dionysus’ is emerging in certain western organisations.

Managerialism and “Infinite Human Resourcefulness”: a Commentary on the “Therapeutic Habitus”, “Derecognition of Finitude” and the Modern Sense of Self

This paper examines new managerial discourses and practices in which the dialectic of labour is reconstructed as a series of acts of self‐understanding, self‐examination and “self‐work”, and through which the “self qua self” is constituted as the central object of management technologies. We interrogate concepts such as “excellence”, “total quality”, “performance”, “knowledge”, “play at work” and “wellness” in order to decipher the ways in which managerialism deploys what we term therapeutic habitus, and projects a new horizon of “human resourcefulness” as a store of unlimited potentialities. We invoke management’s wider historical–cultural context to situate managerialism within the framework of modernity as a cultural epoch whose main characteristic is what we term “derecognition of finitude”. It is the modern synthesis — with the “self” at the centre of its system of values — that provides the ground for current elaborations of subjectivity by managerialism. The paper examines how current vocabularies and practices in organizations use “work” to rearticulate discursively the human subject as an endless source of performativity by configuring work as the site of complex and continuous self‐expression. Management thus acquires a new discursive outline: instead of appearing as an authoritarian instance forcing upon workers a series of limitations, it now presents itself as a therapeutic formula mediating self‐expression by empowering individuals to work upon themselves to release their fully realized identity.

Conceptual history and the interpretation of managerial ideologies

Abstract This article introduces key elements of ‘conceptual history’ from the work of Reinhart Koselleck (1985, 2002).We argue that his combination of an existential conception of historicity with the notion of ‘concept’ as a mediator of existence and culture opens up unexplored avenues for interpreting management ideologies.We illustrate conceptual history with the example of ‘play’ in recent managerial literature. On the one hand, if we situate the analysis in the 20th century, ‘play’ seems to have changed its conceptual place in relation to ‘work’ from a ‘destructive’, to a ‘recreational’, and – recently – to a ‘creative’ force in work organizations. On the other hand, if we change the horizon of periodization to the last five centuries (as approximating modernity), the managerial concept of ‘play’ continues and intensifies certain central themes of modern culture: self-assertion, world alienation, and ethical inarticulacy. Conceptual history, we argue, can be used as a productive analytical strategy for historical material whose dynamic is otherwise hard to grasp and ‘stabilize’ in a coherent account.

The spectre of Dionysus: play, work, and managerialism

Purpose – This conceptual paper analyses cultural changes in the use of the concept of “play” in managerial ideologies and practices since the 1980s.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses Kosellecks approach to conceptual history in order to map how play is used in new ways by contemporary organisations. Organisational cultures characterised by “playfulness” and “fun” are used as technologies of self‐governance. It explores a variety of sources which show how this metamorphosis of play into a management tool has occurred.Findings – The appropriation of play by management indicates a significant propensity in the contemporary culture of work. A more complex cultural process is unfolding in the ways in which play and work are recombined and intertwined: work organisations are increasingly places where people work more on themselves than they do on work. Work has become a central therapeutic stage set for engineering and managing souls, well‐being and even “happiness”. In an increasing number of cases...

In Pursuit of the Ambidextrous Graduate: Potentiality between Exploration and Exploitation

This chapter investigates Marchs concepts of ‘exploration’ and ‘exploitation’ in relation to the graduate labour market (Levinthal & March, 1993; March, 1991). We focus on its use of the imagery of potentiality as key criterion of employability and investigate its dimensions through Marchs conceptual framework. We argue that the balancing act of exploring and exploiting ones potential becomes one of the main coordinates through which contemporary organisations attempt to configure the profile of the future employee. An ambidextrous ideal employee is configured who is trapped between the continuous demands of routinised production, execution and implementation, and those of equally sustained experimentation, self-expression and creativity. We conclude by arguing that this ideal can be interpreted as another example of an unsustainable utopian image of work in the context of contemporary management. The theme of potentiality illustrates the dangers of this utopia in a specific way. On the one hand, it plays the role of an inescapable framework guiding the individuals sense of self, whilst on the other hand, it predicates the self based upon an image of limitless potential.

The Ethos of Business in H.G. Wellsâ Novel The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914).

This conceptual paper investigates H.G. Wells� 1914 novel as an �essay� illustrating aspects in the formation of the ethos of business and management in early 20th century capitalism. Approaching the novel as a piece of cultural history, we analyze its characters and themes, as well as its form (tragic) and style (ironic), to investigate fundamental ethical aspects of business as a personal occupation, as a form of organization, and as an element of modern social order. We show how personal lives and the institutionalization of business concerns are entangled and inseparable in everyday human action. The novel�s value lies in its ability to bring the �ethical� to the fore in its �untidy�, confusing complexity. H.G. Wells explores, in rich tragic form, the relationships between the pursuit of profit, family life, and social integration. This problematic is not simply of historical interest. Rather, it has become intensified and more acute over the last century. However, most texts in the subfield of �business ethics� tend to �hide� the complicated entanglement of ethics, history and culture behind a simplistic search for transcendental, ahistorical frameworks. : The novel (one amongst countless examples) stimulates reflection upon the purposes of �businesses� (as institutions) and of �business people�. It is a new source for historical understanding of key aspects of business ethics by relating domestic life, entrepreneurial behavior, and social responsibility at the beginning of the 20th century. This approach can thus be useful both for research and pedagogy.

The projection of time in management education

This speculative essay offers an interpretation of the ways in which a particular world-historical narrative underlies the content of mainstream management and business curricula. Through a dialogue with the Carnegie Report of 2011, we argue that management education contains a strong programme regarding the ‘time ahead’ despite the commonplace accusation of being ahistorical, detached from the broader social and political themes and crises of our times. Contrary to the Reports findings, we suggest that this particular historical narrative emerging both from the classical technical disciplines, and from newer themes, advances a temporalization of history based upon the key concept of perfectibility. The theme of perfectibility functions as the basis for understanding the past, the present and the future as the endless circularity and improved repetition of a global managerial and business framework through which historical time is appropriated as ‘the time of business’ itself.

Ernst Jünger, total mobilisation and the work of war

This review article explores three interconnected texts written in the 1920s and 1930s by the German intellectual Ernst Jünger: Copse 125, Total Mobilisation and The Worker. Dominion and Form. They contain his original analyses of the relationship between war, destruction, organisation and technology. Jünger argued that entering the realm of total organisation, that is, organisation which claims its ground to be scientific, calculated, planned, rationally-administered and technological, destruction is subtly appropriated into, and thought of, as a process of production. Jünger understood war as an increasingly ‘necessary’ and permanent requirement of the politics of peace and freedom. He anticipated the transformation of destruction into a major field of experimentation with, and through, complex state and private organisational networks (civilian, military and corporate), and into a prime arena of scientific, technological and managerial development. He analysed the emergence of new political discourses and systems whose common ground was to invoke permanent insecurity, risks and dangers and claim the need to manage the peaceful existence of liberal societies.

A historical-cultural approach to the study of business ethics using the modern novel: An illustration

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the fundamental relationship between ethics and business in their tragic historical unfolding as formulated in one of H.G.Wells’s lesser novels, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914). Wells directly and explicitly addresses themes concerning modern business corporations, business people, management, social responsibility and domestic life at the turn of the twentieth century.We emphasize the centrality and importance of the form and style of the modern novel as a specific expression of ethics, that is, as a product of the continuous and tragic engagement of people with the finite horizon of life against which questions of moral sources emerge.Wells’s novel offers a new platform for reflection upon the cultural rationale of business institutions and management in modern society in two main directions. First, we show how he creates the context for a much necessary historical analysis required to properly re-problematize the ethical sustainability of the ideal of the ‘corporation’ as the centre of the economy in modernity. Secondly, we work out how he allows us to ask the crucial and perennial question of whether the pursuit of profit can ever be reconciled with the urgent ethical imperative of modernity: finding the cultural resources necessary to sustain human freedom and emancipation against the limits of a political economy of acquisitive capitalism. Such problems are not simply of historical interest; they are central, but are largely neglected in texts of ‘business ethics’ since they are uncomfortable for, and incompatible with, such texts’ simplistic, mechanical, ahistorical and rather defensive frameworks.

Teaching Introductory OB as Propaedeutic

The main theme of this study is that from both intellectual and pedagogical viewpoints course design at introductory undergraduate level is a more profound occasion to think about the domain of organizational behavior (OB) than customarily assumed. Here we discuss the process of redesigning a course for first year undergraduates in the Department of Behavior in Organizations at Lancaster University.