Contempory Management Challenges

Question 1

Managers and Employee identity

Answer 1

Alvesson & Willmott (2022) - There is an increased managerial interest in regulating employees “insides”, their self-image, their feelings and identification… the employee as identity work.

Question 2

Neo-liberalism Define

Answer 2

Treating the self as a business, individuals must perfect themselves and bring out the full value of their human capital.

Question 3

Responsibility & Neoliberalism

Answer 3

(Dubal, 2010) & (Vallas & Rener, 2012) -
1) Neoliberalism has developed into a mode of governance that shifts social responsibility from the state to individuals, corporate and NGO actors.
2) Self-fulfilment and individual responsibility… reinventing the working self… shifting social responsibility from the organization to the individual.

Question 4

Identity - define

Answer 4

(Brown, 2022) -
Identity is who and what you are in relation to others and addresses questions such as
1) Who am I?
2) Where do I belong?
3) Who do I want to become?
4) What makes me different from other people?

Question 5

Sovereign Identity, Social-Self &…

Answer 5

(LLewellyn, 2009; Benwell & Stokoe, 2006) -
The Decentred subject: Identity is unfixed and the product of dominant discourses (identity regulation)

Question 6

What is Identity Regulation?

Answer 6

(Wahurst, 2011) (Cunliffe, 2014) -
Identity regulation
1) Identity “is deterministically imposed from outside by social forces… the self is largely culturally constructed
2) A focus on identity regulation means that managers are not actively involved in creating their own identity but subject to discursive, linguistic and structural forces over which they have no control.

Question 7

What is Identity Work?

Answer 7

(Alvesson & Willmott, 2002) -
Identity Work - refers to individuals continually engaged “in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions that are productive of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness” in relation to identiy.

Question 8

Neoliberalism & Time

Answer 8

Smithers et al (2023)
1) 4 types of time: Scheduled time (work conducted to a scheule), Timeless time, Contracted time (time is uncertain, worry abouted future work) and Personal time (no-work commitments)
2) Australian Academics paper: Highest quality work in the shortest time (Competition-excellence nexus
(Sugarman & Thrift, 2020)
1) We “make” time and are accelerating our existence (no one has any time anymore)
2) “Time is money”, puts pressure for labor to be continuously competitive
3) People with higher income are more likely to complain about being time starved.

Question 9

Personal Branding

Answer 9

(Whitmer, 2018)
1) See yourself as a product with material value to be marketed to help manage unstable labor markets.
2) Worker’s success depends upon their own passion and hard work.
3) However consistently being “on” and marketable is difficult when navigating presenting different selves in various situations.
(Gershon, 2016)
1) Flexibility, despite being a neoliberal value, can lead to employment history that is difficult to understand for employers.
2) Current personal branding techniques mean people develop an uncoherent job history.
3) Dilemnia of how to present selves as unique and fit standards of the job description/in a standardized way.