A Psychoanalytical Exploration of the Enterprising Self in Alternative Forms of Work

Abstract

There has been a growing scholarly interest in how enterprise discourses provide a means through which organizations are able to control the actions of their workers through positioning them as autonomous and independent. The focus of existing work, however, is predominantly on organizations’ attempts to produce enterprising individuals, rather than on how discourses of enterprise create a desire for more enterprising forms of employment. The latter is particularly important as we see an increasing number of organizations embracing new modes of working that enable workers to “be your own boss” and own a legally independent business that is set up to work towards organizational ends. Through employing psychoanalytic approaches we focus our attention on the relationship between discourses of enterprise and a psychology of desire. As such, we bring individuals as desiring subjects back into studies of organizational control. The paper contributes to three levels. First, it furthers our understanding of the entrepreneur as the sublime object of desire and its role in individuals’ experiences of enterprise culture. Second, at the individual level we provide an insight into the willing volition through which organisations might recruit entrepreneurs not just at one point in time but are able to secure their continued effort. Third, at the organizational level, we contribute to understanding how such discourses facilitate forms of organizing that are at the interface of employment and entrepreneurship.