Governing Work through Self-Management
ephemera: theory & politics in organization
Volume 11, number 2
http://www.ephemeraweb.org
Edited by Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth, Marius Gudmand-Høyer, Pia Bramming and Michael Pedersen


While self-management has emerged as a robust way of getting things done in present-day work life and organizations, it also presents itself as a conception of considerable multivalency and ambiguity. Self-management has been called upon both, to intensify capitalist work practices and to overturning their exploitation, thus expressing at the very same time our fears of subordination and our hopes for emancipation.

The aim of this special issue is to scrutinize this ambiguity and the multivalence pertaining to self-management. A starting point of this endeavour is to consider that a common feature of understanding self-management as an essential piece is that it should either intensify or help overturn capitalist explication. Self-management, in both instances, appears to be both a problem and a solution relating to a variety of managerial, organizational, and existential concerns.

In the issue, the complexities of managing work and organizations through self-management are analyzed as they show up in relation to fast food restaurants- workers, teachers and pupils in schools, artists, organic farmers, and health promotion experts.


www.ephemeraweb.org

CONTENTS
editorial
Thomas Lopdrup-Hjorth, Marius Gudmand-Høyer, Pia Bramming and Michael Pedersen	Governing work through self-management
articles
Christian Maravelias	The managementization of everyday life – Workplace health promotion and the management of self-managing employees
Alexander Paulsson	Resisting self-management? On the possibility of dissolving oneself in fast food restaurants
Helle Bjerg and Dorthe Staunæs	Self-management through shame – uniting governmentality studies and the “affective turn”
Diane Skinner	Fearless speech: practising Parrhesia in a self-managing community
notes
Sverre Raffnsøe	The Five Obstructions: experiencing the human side of enterprise
Jørgen Leth, Sverre Raffnsøe and Peder Holm-Pedersen	Tripping up the perfect
Mary Jo Hatch	Organizing obstructions to manage organizations creatively: reflecting The Five Obstructions
roundtable
Pia Bramming, Marius Gudmand-Høyer, Dan Kärreman, Charlotta Levay, Michael Pedersen, Sverre Raffnsøe, Jens Rennstam, André Spicer and Sverre Spoelstra	Management of self-management
reviews
Joakim Kromann and Thomas Klem Andersen	Parrēsia: the problem of truth
Alan Bradshaw	Amidst the wreckage