Description
Book SynopsisThe ''personal'' was once something to be put to one side in the work place: a ''professional manner'' entailed the suppression of private life and feelings. Now many large corporations can be found exhorting their employees to simply be themselves. This book critically investigates the increasing popularity of personal authenticity in corporate ideology and practice. Rather than have workers adhere to depersonalising bureaucratic rules or homogenous cultural norms, many large corporations now invite employees to simply be themselves. Alternative lifestyles, consumption, ethics, identity, sexuality, fun, and even dissent are now celebrated since employees are presumed to be more motivated if they can just be themselves. Does this freedom to express one''s authenticity in the workplace finally herald the end of corporate control? To answer this question, the author places this concern with authenticity within a political framework and demonstrates how it might represent an even more ins
Table of ContentsPreface ; Introduction: Authenticity at Work ; 1. Towards a 'New' Cultural Politics of Work? ; 2. Social Labour and the Haemorrhaging Organization ; 3. Mimesis and the Antinomies of Corporate 'Fun' ; 4. Cobain as Management Consultant? 'Designer Resistance' and the Corporate Subversive ; 5. Authenticating the Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility as Parasite ; 6. Critique, Co-optation and the Limits of the Corporation ; 7. Authenticity, Solidarity and Freedom ; Conclusion: Authenticity and the Joy of Non-Work
