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The question of power, long indispensable to organizational analysis, remains the elusive but essential key to understanding the employment relation within the contemporary capitalist context. Taking up this question, this chapter critically examines two of the more prevalent approaches toward work organizations – neo-institutionalist theory and labor process analysis – and engages a third, less widely utilized approach: Foucault's theory of governmentality. By weighing the strengths and weaknesses of familiar analytical traditions and providing insight into an emergent theoretical approach, we offer some observations and suggestions that might enrich the study of work, power, and organizations in the coming years.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an alternative understanding of knowledge transfers in developing contexts by drawing on recent deconstructions of the development sciences in anthropology and postcolonial studies to analyze transfers of management knowledge in Malaysia. Contrary to most mainstream research that conceives of transfers as a literal or objective process of skills deployment and acquisition, it refers attention to the modernist assumptions, concepts and practices of knowledge/power that are attached to knowledge transfers.

The study is based on primary and secondary data from two electronics multinational and statutory agencies in Malaysia. Primary data were collected via interviews with training officials and managers; observations were based on training and training‐related events like orientation. Secondary data include multinational and statutory agency literature, quality control circle reports and a corporate orientation video. Data analysis included discourse analysis and deconstruction.

Findings highlight the importance of situating knowledge transfers within the discursive and socially organized terrain (local and global) – economic, institutional, disciplinary – that transfers are embedded in, and the significance of knowledge transfers and the attendant focus on training as sites for cultivating and producing the modern market subjects needed to have and to sustain neoliberal forms of development and globalization. The paper re‐situates interests in knowledge transfers in terms of a need by state officials and foreign multinationals to actively produce and reconstitute local subjects into modern market citizens that are able and capable of contributing – as required – to the development and organizational needs of said institutions.

By extrapolating insights from recent deconstructions of the development sciences and postcolonial studies, the paper provides an alternative way of researching the process, and understanding the significance of transfers: one that showcases the close imbrications between knowledge, power, subjectification, and interconnections between local institutions/constituents (e.g. statutory agencies, government ministries, training personnel) and global capital (e.g. multinationals).

The present paper attempts to integrate three streams of alternative approaches to provide a contingency‐based framework to understand the management control systems (MCS) that are operating in call centers. Specifically, the paper's aim is to analyse the work practices of call center employees from three different lenses: the radical approach using Braverman's labor process theory; the Foucauldian approach, which explains the governance of the self; and the naturalistic approach, which explains the governance of the built environment.

The data for the case study were collected by conducting interviews. The data were gathered to identify if the work experience of the call center operators reflects the Tayloristic principles of scientific management, whether their responses reflect evidence of internalizing norms and adjusting their selves to fit to the norm, and lastly whether their work conditions are shaped in the manner described above to facilitate control of their work lives.

Prior academic studies have relied on either one of the approaches and the author's contention is that neither of the theories in isolation can explain the complexities that characterize the contemporary call center operator's labor process.

The study of control and its resistance can add to the understanding of the modern workplace. Since the call center environment is unique, the results of this study may have limited generalizability.

Future researchers can extend the approach used in this research to areas other than call centers that may have similar overlapping paradigms. Such an endeavor will enrich the understanding of complex phenomena, where multiple theories may be espoused to explain a particular research question.

A significant contribution of this study is to recognize that there is concentration of limited control and power in the hands of those who are controlled. Such an understanding may revive the “emancipatory tradition” of labour process theory and though it may not lead to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, it may lead to the awareness that strategies aimed at improving the lives of workers within the capitalist political economy are desirable.

Milkerie¹ worker cooperative was created after a yearlong labor fight against a factory closure announcement. By creating the coop, Milkerie’s workers set out to prove that if workers were given more decision-making power in the economy, it would be possible to create a more inclusive economy that values worker labor and provides them wage-based livelihoods. This chapter describes the historical conditions that the cooperative emerge, shaped its business model and governance structure. If cooperatives are believed to propose an alternative to capitalist enterprises, the case of Milkerie shows how the market pressure turns activism, that is, various types of unpaid voluntary labor, into simple jobs, that is, activities codified by task description and time frame, limiting the possibility to re-imagine the economy collectively.

The purpose of this paper is to study the historical emergence of psychological management in Finnish working life from the viewpoint of recruitment process by examining the changing qualities of the ideal manager in Finland in the post‐Second World War era.

The study is conducted through an analysis of 1,305 manager position job advertisements in the major Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat between 1949 and 2009.

The average number of references to personal skills and traits in manager position job advertisements grew from 0.7 to 3.8 between 1949 and 2009, and by the end of the 1990s exceeded the average number of references to technical and cognitive skills. During the same period, intrinsic job benefits largely replaced extrinsic benefits in job advertisements. The results suggest that the anthropocentric management of personalities and subjectivities was gradually introduced to Finnish organizations over a period of several decades. The complex historical process, deeply interlinked with organizational and societal developments, resulted in a highly multi‐dimensional ideal manager of 2009.

The study offers original knowledge regarding the emergence of psychological management, and sharpens the picture of changing management ideals in a national context.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore and revitalise key contributions of Peter Drucker for the understanding of how changing conditions in the economy radically alter the ways business value is created. Second, the authors wish to demonstrate how the changes in key economic resources pose altogether different challenges and opportunities for management research and practice.

Taking Peter F. Drucker as a point of departure, the paper presents a conceptual reflection of the conditions and new challenges for the creation of business. Drucker's insights are discussed and accelerated with a philosophical and sociologically inspired position on management.

The paper demonstrates that the creation of business value in the knowledge economy is highly immaterial and socially embedded. This demands a broadening of perspective to (ontologically) encompass both the technical and the social. Production and the value of consumption cannot be measured independently of the affects produced in the consuming, social subject.

The paper helps to conceptualise the productivity of knowledge work in the new economy in order to direct managerial practice towards the basics of value driving production.

Both the production of business value as well as the working conditions of this production must be readdressed in respect of both the creative and the repressive forces of how social subjects are formed.

The paper illustrates that the economy is faced with new challenges following the changing relationship between the creation of business value from the optimisation and exploitation of knowledge as the new key economic resource.

The purpose of this paper is to advance understandings of the subjectivities that influence auxiliary‐level female employees' work and learning experiences in general legal practice. Moreover, the aim is to maximise the opportunities for these workers.

A broader critical ethnographic study investigated socio‐cultural perspectives of women, work, and learning. This paper represents part of the study exploring the empirical relationships of female workers and the subjectivities that impact on their work and learning. This approach was based on critical epistemologies and examines sources of workplace barriers. Data were triangulated through interview transcripts, observations, and reflective diaries. The collection of data involved gathering information from nine female workers and an analysis of the data were activated at the research settings and organised into categories through comparison and inductive coding.

Findings suggest that negotiating subjectivities at work is complex and inhibiting for auxiliary workers. Yet, despite low levels of support, auxiliary workers are determined and they find ways to survive through participatory practices and agentic actions. These findings are imperative to enhance auxiliary women's workplace learning experiences.

The research challenges management to acknowledge and expand understandings of subjectivities and to take advantage of these understandings as a springboard to augment auxiliary women's work and learning experiences. Value is in transforming social practice within legal workplaces to better consider the potential of all workers. Also, strategically this may well enhance the productivity and viability of these kinds of practices.

This paper aims to present findings from a qualitative case study which investigated how workers engage in workplace learning for safe work in a precarious workplace. The findings from this research suggest that learning to work safely is firmly embedded within the social cultural fabric of workplaces, and is intentionally driven to maintain coherence in ideologies, values and practices for effective praxis.

This study was conducted in a petrochemical plant in Singapore. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with 20 site operators who held positions as engineers, plant workers and maintenance technicians. These site operators were directly involved in working with dangerous chemicals and high-risk equipment and processes; their conversations elicited an in-depth understanding of individuals’ experiences, providing an account of how participants learnt safe work practices in a precarious work setting. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. Data were coded and analysed using an inductive analytical approach to identify key themes about workers’ learning in the workplace.

The findings suggest that learning to work safely is a socially constructed and facilitated process – leading to intentionalising what is learnt. The participants’ experiences suggest that safe work practices materialise through collective action, shared knowledge and responsibility to generally seek sameness for recursive practice. The significance of inter-subjectivity and intentionality are discussed with respect to how they intersect within the social cultural context of precarious work sites, where learning and praxis are seamlessly commingled to achieve effective praxis in workplace safety. A combination of contributions at organisation, individual and group levels supports the social cultural environment. The study concludes that a combination of mutually bound learning space, relational agency and dialogic interactions provides communicative spaces and mediates learning that nurtures inter-subjectivity and intentionality to work safely.

As the study is situated in a particular case context, replication of this research with different occupational groups in other precarious workplaces is needed for further insights on social construction of learning spaces for safety practice.

This paper concludes that deliberate and cautious efforts are necessary to create contextual conditions for learning and to promote greater inter-subjectivity and intentionality for effective praxis. Group interactions and partnerships at work are advocated to generate mindful learning and a common frame of reference that the work community recognises, values and shares. These social processes provide necessary communicative spaces for clarification and validation of what is learnt and what is being interpreted by individuals. The quality and legitimacy of guidance are also emphasised to validate the expertise of those providing guidance, effective mentorship and intervention for the distribution of knowledge. Furthermore, strong and committed leadership is necessary to sustain the social cultural architectures that will support learning and praxis for safety.

This study offers insight about pedagogical contributions to learning about safe work practices in distinct circumstances of work.

This paper seeks to examine the identities and subjectivities of independent knowledge workers who contract their services to organizations. Two questions are addressed: who are these enterprising knowledge workers, in terms of how they understand and position themselves relative to organizational structures, practices and social relations in their work as “inside outsiders”? How do they recognize their own constitution, and what spaces for agency are possible?

The discussion draws upon a qualitative study of 18 self‐employed consultants in organizational change, analysing their articulations as ongoing constitutions within prescribed discourses and cultural technologies. Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were analysed inductively to determine themes and silences among the narratives.

The argument shows how these subjectivities emerge from in‐between spaces, both inside and outside organizations. As they negotiate these spaces, they exercise agency by resisting control while building connections. These articulations are described as “network identities”.

The paper concludes with implications for organizations employing or contracting with such individuals. Suggestions for managers involve enabling more project structures, negotiating boundaries and purposes more clearly, providing more flexible conditions and facilitating more integration of these knowledge workers with other employees before, during and following innovative project activity.

The paper brings Foucauldian analysis of neoliberal governmentality in the discussion on the new forms of labour control within digital labour platforms. The aim of the paper is to reveal the effect of control mechanisms employed by platforms on “entrepreneurial self” within the context of work relations.

Drawing on in-depth interviews, conducted with workers under different service categories, the author undertook an extended case study of Armut.com, a digital labour platform operating in Turkey.

The study finds that competitive mechanisms employed by the platform have a considerable effect on worker self-commercialisation and self-rationalisation. This is dependent on different control mechanisms employed by the platform, based on different platform working models.

The research brings the worker subjectivities to the discussion of control within the scope of digital labour platforms. By undertaking a rare empirical study on this issue, it contributes to the theory of entrepreneurial self within the scope of work relations.