Rasmus Johnsen

Lacan and the lack of humanity in HRM

This article offers to the field of organization studies and the critique of Human Resource Management (HRM) important theoretical insight implied by the ‘practical anti-humanism’ in Jacques Lacan’s theory of subjectivity. Drawing on Lacan’s notions of ontological lack and fantasy, it suggests that this anti-humanism may provide a challenge of the critical aspirations found in the studies of HRM that have maintained an insurmountable gap between the humanity of the human subject and the inhumanity of the managerial prescription. Turning the traditional critique on its head, the article explores the consequences of confronting the inhuman core of humanity itself instead of maintaining the humanity of the human by exposing the inhumanity of HRM. Following Lacan it questions the idealization of ‘the human’ and asks what it would mean to critical management studies to focus instead on the fallibilities and shortcomings of subjectivity.

The frantic gesture of interpassivity: Maintaining the separation between the corporate and authentic self

Purpose – With the help of Slavoj Žižeks concept of interpassivity, this paper seeks to illustrate the frantic activities performed by employees to maintain a separation between the idea of an authentic self and the idea of a corporate self. Furthermore, this paper aims to illustrate these activities empirically.Design/methodology/approach – The empirical example is based on a case study of three of the largest international consultancy firms. About 50 consultants were interviewed in this study, but this paper primarily focuses on the experiences of one of these consultants, and goes into depth with his experiences to illustrate the frantic mechanisms of interpassivity.Findings – The paper shows how the maintenance of an “authentic self” outside of the corporate culture demands a distinct and frantic activity; that this activity can best be understood as interpassive in the sense that it involves taking over the passive acknowledgement for which someone else is responsible; and how the separation of an a...

Bringing the Body Back into the Study of Time in Consumer Research

Abstract Purpose This conceptual chapter explores the role of embodiment in phenomenological experience of lived time, and the implications it may hold for studying consumption. Methodology/approach Conceptual chapter. Findings We argue that though consumer research scholars have become increasingly cognizant of the embodied foundation of temporal experience, the relation between embodied experience of time and consumption activity still remains under-theorized and researched. Through a phenomenological perspective we are able to understand the consumer as temporally directed toward the world where value is realized emergently through embodiment of affordances. Originality/value of chapter We build an existing work in consumer research to open up a possibility for a phenomenological experience of consumption that is, to a great extent, precognitive, temporal, and based on the ability to experience lived time.

Love will tear us apart – transformational leadership and love in a call centre

Call centres are organised around the control and surveillance of employee performance, which naturally suggests the relevance of transactional leadership. In our case study, however, we find that leaders in a call centre pursue transformational leadership to the point where employees relate to their leaders, each others and their jobs in terms of love. To be able to encourage emotions of love in call centre workers can be seen as very successful transformational leadership, while challenging our basic assumptions about love as an authentic, higher order feeling. We use Platos classic work on love to provoke and develop our common sense understanding of love and conclude that to see love as artificiality provides new possibilities in a transformational leadership practice.

Boredom and Organization Studies

Even if people may always have been bored, ‘boredom’ as a phenomenon is not a universal feature of human existence. Rather it is deeply connected to organization as a reaction to the gradual emergence in Western culture of the management and administration of time. As an acquired capacity of those able to tell and endure time in an organized manner, boredom is a perceived loss of meaning inferred by the lived experience of a discrepancy between the involvement with transient means in everyday life and their value in a larger vision of existence. But boredom also signifies a concurrent protest against such a loss, which potentially leads new possibilities with it. In this essay, I explore the connection between boredom and organization, focusing on these two interrelated aspects of the phenomenon: how boredom can be understood as an experience of a loss of meaning, but also how this loss itself can be viewed as an imperative towards meaning that remains the source of new forms of organizing.

Serving time: Organization and the affective dimension of time:

In this article, we explore the affective dimension of human temporality. Drawing on the work of Michael Theunissen in his Negative Theologie der Zeit (Negative Theology of Time), we suggest that understanding time as affect may help shed light on how people in organizational settings are influenced by and react toward time, once it comes to appear as an obstacle, rather than a resource to the unfolding of life. To capture such situations, we introduce the notion of ‘chronopathic experience’ and proceed to explore such experiences empirically among men incarcerated in Helsinki Prison. Here, we identify chronotelic behavior as a modality of activities directed toward dealing with the affective pressure exerted by time, as it comes to appear given, external, and meaningless. We argue that the affective dimension of human temporality can be drawn upon in other organizational contexts to clarify the notion of time pressure and to better understand temporality-related institutional pathologies like stress, boredom, and depression.