Foucault and creative resistance in organisations

Creativity and Innovation Management, 2002

In broad terms the critical tradition in organization studies (Marsden & Townley, 1996) is concerned with understanding and questioning the elaboration of power relations in worksites, particularly as they induce oppressive and exploitative practices. This paper begins by outlining some of the key features of what might be regarded as a traditional critical reading of creativity in work organizations. This initial discussion is presented via an analysis of two texts from Fortune magazine's account of the performance of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Without dealing in detail with some of the problematics and limitations of these approaches, the paper then outlines the key features of a Foucauldian critical discourse approach to the analysis of creativity. The discussion proceeds to identify key features of such an account. These include the position of academic experts as agents of knowledge in the production of 'creativity', the organizational prescriptions and devices used to visualize and normalize 'creative' managers and professionals, and the ontological and epistemological tradition that is drawn on in the production of both the agents of knowledge of creativity and the devices that identify, classify and regulate 'creativity' with respect to managing and organizing workplaces. Using the term 'economy of identity', the concluding section discusses the implications of this approach, including the oppressive and exploitative dimensions of 'creativity'.

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2012

Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2013

The relationship of individuals to groups has been central, and problematic, to the construct of creativity since it emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Psychological research has often used the idea of creativity to differentiate and/or advocate constructs of the individual as creator, but has used a sociocultural criterioneminence-to assure validity. Researchers and creative practitioners are then caught in a contradiction in psychology's own terms: using extrinsic outcomes at the level of culture as the starting point to conceptualize individual activities characterized by intrinsic motivation. Even research that focuses on everyday creativity often identifies creativity only through judgment of products. Sociocultural approaches go further, defining creativity as social judgment of individuals' works. But what does the eminence of relatively few individuals indicate about social questions (changes in discourse and power relations) or about psychological questions (the people in the system)? This article explores an alternative approach, using Foucault's analysis of the author function, technologies of self and the related technology typology (production, signs, power and self). Comparing Foucault's analyses to the psychological discourse demonstrates advantages of integrating Foucault's ideas into the study of creativity. Analyzing the functions of creativity, rather than its ontology or location, provides a unifying framework for the wide array of approaches psychologists have developed. Within that framework individual experiences can be examined in relation to the distorting nature of the author function, needs for production and shifts in power relations, rather than conflated with them.

It is fair to say that the importance accruing to the publication of Foucault's lectures cannot be overstated. Three in particular, Society Must be Defended; Security, Territory, Population; and The Birth of Biopolitics, insofar as the content of these lectures did not directly result in works published during Foucault's lifetime, necessitate a rigorous reappraisal of the ongoing relevance of his thought. In particular, they offer a detailed rejoinder to many subsequent critiques regarding the limitations of biopolitics when understood solely as an order of disciplinarity. Donna Haraway's influential "Manifesto for Cyborgs" from 1985, in which she describes Foucault's biopolitics as "a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics," offers a good example of what will become a fairly standard criticism. 1 With the publication of the lectures, however, it becomes clear that, under the notions of "security" and "governmentality," Foucault had already offered an in-depth engagement with what for Haraway characterises a more "erect," post-Foucauldian informatics of domination, which she describes as being constituted and differentiated by control strategies which concentrate on rates of flow enabling an unlimited circulation, on reproductive capacities in terms of population control, and on the effective management of stress points or blockages; probabilistic and statistical, she continues, such control strategies are formulated in terms of the costs of constraints and degrees of freedom.

2008

The paper examines the contribution of the French philosopher Michel Foucault to the subject of ethics in organizations. The paper combines an analysis of Foucault's work on discipline and control, with an examination of his later work on the ethical subject and technologies of the self. By situating ethics as practices of the self, and by demonstrating the conditions under which freedom in organizations can be exercised, Foucault's ethics connects an understanding and critique of power with a personal project of self.

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The paper explores the alleged links between contemporary understandings and uses of 'governance' and Foucault's ideas. Scholars working in quite diverse disciplines have asserted, with increasing frequency, their debt to Foucault for the idea of 'governance'. However, it is doubtful that Foucault ever used the word 'governance', or that he would have accepted having his ideas grouped under that term. This paper argues that positing Foucault as an intellectual progenitor of the concept of 'governance' conflates two quite different and incompatible discourses. The political effect is to undermine the emancipatory impulse embedded within Foucault's political philosophy. In effect, this serves to reposition him within a framework that de-radicalises his intellectual legacy and renders him safe for mainstream scholarship.

This paper is an attempt to explain organization and management from the point of view of philosophy, to be more specific from the point of view of Michel Foucault's philosophy. Foucault is well known for his theory of power as power relations, madness, sexuality, and for his methods of archaeology and genealogy. This article is not about sexuality, madness and power relations per se. This is not an archaeological or genealogical study of organizational and management theories and principles. This is simply about making Foucault's idea of subjectivation and power relations relevant to organization and management. Foucault does not create theories, for he does not agree with grand narratives. He simply analyzed and explained discourses, technologies and techniques associated with the accent and descent of phenomenon using his methods of archaeology and genealogy. In this article, no new theory will be formulated but only philosophical descriptions of management and organization. But the readers are not free to interpret it as theory.

Organization, 2002

Criticisms of postmodernism are examined in the context of social theory and its sub-field, organization theory. Criticisms centre on claims that postmodern organization theorists are preoccupied with indeterminancy of meaning, linguistic relativism and the 'minutiae' of everyday life; and further, that Foucault-inspired postmodern organization theorists reject culture, history, and reason, and have little to offer in terms of ethics, action and change. We contest these criticisms as they apply to organizational analyses. The criticisms miss key elements of postmodern contributions to organization theory. We identify several fruitful seams, particularly in Foucault's later works, that contribute to a valuable ethos for postmodern organization theory. This article subjects this ethos to the same level of deconstruction to which it subjects its opponents. We argue that Foucault's insights on ethical action relate to institutional bases of discourses, and the effects of disciplinary knowledge on subjects. We link these insights to Bauman's 'postmodern ethics' and to Sennett's research on the effects of 'flexible capitalism', corporate restructuring, and ongoing institutional changes. Such connections bring a kind of analysis to organization studies that enables us to practically reassess our structures of recognition that constitute subjectivity and identity at work.

Organization, 2002

This paper offers a controversial view of organization analysis that seeks to write it into the distinctive work of the critical social philosopher -Michel Foucault. In certain areas of social science and the humanities, Foucault has had an enormous influence in recent years. Most particularly, history, feminist and gender research, literary studies, philosophy, politics, psychiatry, and sociology have not been able to ignore the radical interventions of Foucault's attempts to think the unthought. Organization theory has not been immune to Foucault's constant challenge to what is taken for granted and his sceptical views of the work of what he named 'universal intellectuals' who claim to speak on behalf of individuals, groups or populations. With the demise of regimes that in principle if not in practice followed the grand narratives of Marxism, Foucault's scepticism about historicist and totalizing systems of thought and practice fits the era. His demand is that we question and interrogate conventional thinking not because it is necessarily wrong but because it is dangerous. Contrasted with the way that much organisation theory simply uses Foucault as a convenient resource, this paper attempts to push organisational analysis toward Foucault until the pips squeak.