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Place, Space and Time: The fragmentation of workplace subjectivities

Place, Space and Time: The fragmentation of workplace subjectivities
Place, Space and Time: The fragmentation of workplace subjectivities
This paper explores the relations between management discourse and employee subjectivity in the process of organizational change, drawing on a new empirical study of doctors and nurses working in the British National Health Service (NHS). It builds on recent critiques of more muscular accounts of discourse to examine the manoeuvres made by working subjects in response to managerialist discourses of the entrepreneurial self. While others have shown that alternative discourses including gender, age and profession are important here, this paper argues that we must pay attention to the spatial and temporal contexts within which such generic discourses are received and understood in order to interpret the practices of subjectivity and power in organizational life. We suggest that this approach allows new insights to policy concerns in the NHS; to our understanding of the nature of work subjectivities; and to sociological understandings of organizational power.
place, space, time, subjectivity, discourse, narrative
0170-8406
657-676
Halford, Susan
0d0fe4d6-3c4b-4887-84bb-738cf3249d46
Leonard, Pauline
a2839090-eccc-4d84-ab63-c6a484c6d7c1
Halford, Susan
0d0fe4d6-3c4b-4887-84bb-738cf3249d46
Leonard, Pauline
a2839090-eccc-4d84-ab63-c6a484c6d7c1

Halford, Susan and Leonard, Pauline (2006) Place, Space and Time: The fragmentation of workplace subjectivities. Organizational Studies, 27 (5), 657-676. (doi:10.1177/0170840605059453).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper explores the relations between management discourse and employee subjectivity in the process of organizational change, drawing on a new empirical study of doctors and nurses working in the British National Health Service (NHS). It builds on recent critiques of more muscular accounts of discourse to examine the manoeuvres made by working subjects in response to managerialist discourses of the entrepreneurial self. While others have shown that alternative discourses including gender, age and profession are important here, this paper argues that we must pay attention to the spatial and temporal contexts within which such generic discourses are received and understood in order to interpret the practices of subjectivity and power in organizational life. We suggest that this approach allows new insights to policy concerns in the NHS; to our understanding of the nature of work subjectivities; and to sociological understandings of organizational power.

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More information

Published date: 2006
Keywords: place, space, time, subjectivity, discourse, narrative
Organisations: Sociology & Social Policy

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 34538
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/34538
ISSN: 0170-8406
PURE UUID: 463001f9-6df3-40c2-aafe-682f886313e4
ORCID for Pauline Leonard: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8112-0631

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 15 May 2006
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 02:48

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Contributors

Author: Susan Halford
Author: Pauline Leonard ORCID iD

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