Neoliberal Organization Research Articles

Unanticipated outcomes of an occupational rehabilitation group on low-SES ultra-Orthodox women’s self-concept

ABSTRACT This longitudinal ethnographic study examines the development of the occupational self-concept of low socioeconomic status ultra-Orthodox women participating in a government-sponsored program to promote integration into the workforce. We followed participants for 18 months to learn about their experience and its effects, using group observations, in-depth interviews, and document analysis. The findings revealed central elements of the intercultural encounter of ultra-Orthodox women with a neoliberal organization. A year after the program’s conclusion, the participants unexpectedly underwent occupational regression, intensifying their commitment to their roles in the home arena rather than achieving the declared goal of occupational integration. The process led the women to embrace a self-concept resonating with the neoliberal characteristics presented in the program but applying it in the home and not the occupational space. This article suggests that neoliberal discourse, with its Western, secular, and class origins, left participants with a self-concept incompatible with the collective self characterizing their culture. We emphasize the importance of incorporating culturally sensitive practices for occupational rehabilitation which consider the potential conflict between the hegemonic discourse (represented by the organizations) and the program participants (minority groups from diverse cultural backgrounds).

Mentoring research projects in the Croatian higher education document framework

PurposeApproaching mentoring from the theoretical tradition of continental pedagogy and contrasting it to the neoliberal organization of the academy, this paper aims to analyze how the Croatian higher education document framework constructs mentoring graduate and postgraduate students' research projects.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis of 50 national- and university-level documents, which were coded using an adapted strategy described by Saldaña (2014), was guided by the following research questions. 1. Which elements of the mentor’s activity in guiding the research projects of graduate and postgraduate students are addressed by the relevant Croatian higher education documents? 2. Which elements of the graduate and postgraduate students’ activity in conducting research projects are addressed? 3. Which structural dimensions of mentoring these research projects are addressed?FindingsThe results point to the construction of mentoring as a pedagogical relationship based on guidance, support and dialog and also signal the processes of quantification of education and responsibilization of individuals.Practical implicationsThe results can be used in the critical revision of the documents as well as in supporting mentors in their professional roles.Originality/valueThis is the first analysis of the Croatian higher education document framework focused on mentoring students’ research projects.

Leadership in Neoliberal Organizations: Theory and Empirical Illustrations

Leadership in Neoliberal Organizations: Theory and Empirical Illustrations

Knowledge politics and labor precariousness in Spanish universities: implications for social anthropology

Neoliberal reforms arising from Spain’s entrance into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have had major consequences for academic practice and unleashed heated debate in the university community and society. This article explores the main transformations and basis of the political-economic model of public universities in Spain. It focuses on two dimensions of the institutional framework that have had a significant impact on teaching and research practice in universities: the strategic focus of research policy and labor regulations and employment conditions. To address both dimensions, the analysis centers on the implications each has for the reproduction of a specific discipline, social anthropology, in the context of the University of Seville. The article describes some of the main factors conditioning and limiting these two dimensions, in particular how business logic and neocolonialism are driving new research policy and how a combination of neoliberal organization of labor, meritocracy and clientelist networks are impact hiring practices and intensifying labor precarization.

Os grupos armados e a organização do trabalho no mercado imobiliário

Abstract The article results from a broader investigation into the real estate market in slums. Here, I focus on characterizing the actions of armed groups and their mode of organization in this market. In the first section, I argue that the armed groups are not the only ones active in real estate promotion in the slums; on the contrary, there is a diversity of agents, and I ground the growth and profitability of this activity in the very dynamics of accumulation inherent in the capitalist society. In the second and third sections, I characterize the organizational structures of drug trafficking and the militia in the real estate market. In the conclusion section, I defend the hypothesis that these organizational structures, in fact, mirror the neoliberal organization of work and are justified by it.

Climate change contrarian think tanks in Europe: A network analysis.

Drawing from network theory and previous findings from US-based analyses, we measure the structure and interconnectedness of climate contrarian think tanks in Europe. This exploratory analysis can illustrate European organizations' capacity to promote or disrupt political discourse. To this end, we use social network analysis to conduct actor-focused research. We identify the individuals bridging European think tanks, as well as their ties with the US climate change contrarian network. Our analysis reveals a discernible network structure for European climate change contrarian think tanks, with a profile connected to neoliberal organizations, including a few, but highly relevant links, with the US countermovement. We also find that the European think tanks' institutional structure is very much shaped by a strong predominance of men, which aligns with previous research on masculinity and climate contrarianism.

Learning to Manage as Learning to Fail: The Lessons of Managers’ Running

Management education and development self-evidently aim to enable managers to be successful and while the possibilities of failure are acknowledged, the emphasis is on ensuring that managers learn from failures to ultimately achieve success. However, in the contemporary world of grand challenges and big uncertainties, managers might be better equipped for their careers by learning to fail, that is, by learning to live with failure rather than attempting to immediately learn lessons from failure. Management involves not merely knowing or doing but also, importantly, ways of being. Therefore, identity theorising is used to examine how managers learn to fail. While the focus is on physically active managers, the implications have broader relevance. A significant percentage of managers worldwide regardless of age, culture, or gender, are physically active through running. Running can serve to bolster managerial identities involving as it does, competition and achievement. Running can alternatively, provide an additional or substitute identity to those managers wishing to reduce their attachment to work. Running can, though, serve to colonise and exploit managers’ leisure lives through extending the pervasive performativity discourses of neo-liberal organisations. However, results of the qualitative empirical research reported here reveal that running provides managers with agency to learn to fail. Failure in running was found to be as much as characteristic of running as failure is in managerial work. Nonetheless, running enabled running-managers to define themselves more autonomously and to cultivate a healthier relationship with failure and this conclusion has relevance to all managers.

Rethinking Italy’s Margins Through Walking: Mobility, Activism and Positionality in Wu Ming 2’s Il sentiero luminoso (2016) and Giuliano Santoro’s Su due piedi (2012)

The article argues that Wu Ming 2’s Il sentiero luminoso (2016) and Giuliano Santoro’s Su due piedi. Camminando per un mese attraverso la Calabria (2012) describe walking as an activity which allows one to recognize the social modifications of space, and to rethink the geographies of suburban areas in Italy. This analysis resounds with Robert P. Marzec’s invitation to study how literature has represented the privatization and the capitalist and neoliberal organization of space, revealing forms of internal colonization which epitomize a pillar of colonial ideology. Il sentiero luminoso and Su due piedi reconfigure walking as an epistemological, ecocritical and postcolonial practice which allows one to cross paths with people who are marginalized in Italy, especially migrants. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s and David Pinder’s reflections about space and representation, the article suggests that Il sentiero luminoso and Su due piedi show how the direct experience of a place through walking is germane to understanding the effects of economic exploitation present in human-land relations.

Fifty years of Business Improvement Districts: A reappraisal of the dominant perspectives and debates

Originally created in 1970 by a small group of business people in Toronto’s Bloor West Village, Business Improvement Districts (hereafter BIDs) have become commonplace urban revitalisation strategies in cities across the world. Many critical urban scholars have conceptualised BIDs as neoliberal organisations and have resultantly critiqued their role in contemporary urban governance. With BIDs now existing for over 50 years, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overdue reappraisal of the BID research and orient future scholarship. After describing key debates from early BID research, this paper analyses two distinct themes in more recent scholarship: (1) BID policy mobility, and (2) BIDs and social regulation. As the BID model has been transferred to new locations across both the Global North and South, its rapid mobility demonstrates the permeability, resilience and limits of neoliberal urban policies. Moreover, BIDs’ social control tactics highlight how these organisations are shaped by a neoliberal logic that seeks to manage and control urban spaces in ways that attract desirable consumers and exclude the visible poor. This paper outlines the origins of both bodies of work and traces common patterns and variances over time. It concludes by highlighting gaps in the existing literature and offers suggestions for future work.

Self-Care Rhetoric in Neoliberal Organisations: Social Worker Experiences

Self-care has become an increasingly important practice for social workers to ensure practitioner wellbeing and effective, ethical practice outcomes. However, undertaking self-care activities is often considered the responsibility of individual social workers with limited consideration of how the workplace may influence their understanding and practice of self-care. Based in Southeast Queensland, Australia this paper uses interpretative phenomenological analysis to understand workplaces influences on eleven social worker’s practice and experience of self-care. This study produced rich data about how social workers perceive workplaces’ use of self-care rhetoric to achieve increased productivity and minimise organisational risk. Social workers instead suggested self-care practices and practitioner well-being was more easily maintained in organisations that fostered supportive teams and healthy workplace cultures. This research illustrates how the concept of self-care has become manipulated to meet the neoliberal demands of organisations rather than a mechanism for supporting social workers. Findings of this study suggest more research, practice, policing, and funding should focus on organisational practices and policies which support social workers well-being, rather than focusing on individualised practices of self-care.

Creating diversity markets through economization: The politics and economics of difference in neoliberal organizations

In this article, I argue that the economization of social differences in the workplace is a political practice. I examine how, after the dismantling of corporate bureaucracies and affirmative action policies, diversity professionals create economic justifications for practices they regard as creating racial equity. Insofar as they do this to conveniently create markets for their expertise, diversity professionals work with, through, and around neoliberal logics, principles, and norms of the for‐profit firm. In asking why their strategies “work” in the era of the socially dispersed corporate form, I reflect on what it means for an American society to place more social value on the pursuit of profit than on racial justice.

Critical Reflection: An Imperative Skill for Social Work Practice in Neoliberal Organisations?

Social work practice and education have been significantly impacted by neoliberal governmentality, which can greatly undermine the espoused social justice mission of social work. This study explores the research questions: How might critical reflection support social work practice in neoliberal organisations? And how might critical analysis using insights from critical theorists fortify the findings of critically reflective research? This study uses critical reflection on a critical incident (from Author 2’s practice) as a methodology to respond to the first research question. It further analyses the findings of the critically reflective inquiry by drawing on relevant concepts from critical theorists to respond to the second question and expand the possibilities for practitioners to develop emancipatory practices in neoliberal organisations. The findings suggest critical reflection on the critical incident examined was effective in improving social work practice, and that additional critical analysis of the wider issues raised by the research findings may enhance social work as a value-driven, client-centred and social change-oriented profession. The article highlights the benefits and outcomes of working in a critically reflective way, and makes an original contribution to the growing literature that suggests critical reflection is a vital skill for social work practice in neoliberal organisations.

Independent School Rhetoric and its Role in the Neoliberal Construction of Whiteness

Recognizing the monolithic role that neoliberalism has occupied in the United States (US) in the second half of the twentieth century (Harvey 2005) and building on the notions of racial formation and racial projects posited by Omi and Winant (2014), Jeong-eun Rhee (2013) conceptualizes what she calls the “neoliberal racial project” (or the “NRP”). While Rhee (2013) applies the idea of the NRP to understandings of Asian-American identity in the US, this article first seeks to broaden the application of the NRP to include Whiteness. After establishing how the NRP functions to reinforce notions of Whiteness, I argue that independent schools—a subset of private schools in the US—function as fundamentally neoliberal organizations and, as such, perpetuate the ongoing recreation of Whiteness. This is achieved, in particular, through an explicitly market-based approach to educational choice in both language and action. An analysis of a recent report conducted by the National Association of Independent Schools serves as evidence for this claim. The article concludes with some initial suggestions of strategies schools might adopt to combat their tendency to reify Whiteness in those spaces.

Durkheim in the Neoliberal Organization: Taking Resistance and Solidarity Seriously

Durkheim’s contributions to organization studies have so far been decidedly marginal, and largely concentrated on culture. In this paper, we draw upon his theory of anomie and solidarity to show how a Durkheimian view of contemporary organizations and work has special relevance today for debates about how workers, particularly middle managers, can reshuffle a capacity to resist neoliberal efforts to profoundly disrupt their working conditions, in particular their autonomy to define what is a job well done. We show how Durkheim’s insights can account for the unexpected rekindling of forms of social solidarity in highly competitive and individualistic organizational settings, through dissident efforts that convey a renewal of a certain work ethos severed by neoliberal managerial policies and practices. Recent studies on resistance confirm Durkheim’s view that forms of collective activity, resembling supposedly ‘old’ mechanisms of former days, continue to exist and develop in contemporary societies and organizations, in response to pressure to put people in situations of inter-individual competition that disrupts social relationships.

F. Von Hayek: Invention of the Enemy and Modern Neoliberalism

The paper considers the evolution of the category “political” in the development of economic theory of the XVIII – XX centuries. It demonstrates the departure of economic science from ideological assessments characteristic for the antagonistic relations of early capitalism. In the 1940s – 1950s F. von Hayek reintroduces the concept of “enemy” into economic researches, which is met with strong rejection by the Western establishment, which is under the influence of Keynesianism. F. von Hayek is one of the founders of neoliberalism, within the framework of which an antagonistic confrontation between the “blind forces of the market” and the “dictatorship of a group of people” is being constructed. Thus, a dilemma is imposed, which does not provide an opportunity to understand the mechanisms of market design. Von Hayek is making great efforts to create a transatlantic network of neoliberal organizations based on the Mont Pelerin Society. Long work leads to the fact that in the 1970s. neoliberalism is becoming the ideology - hegemon. At present, the political category retains its significance in economic science. Ideological constructs such as human capital, private money, diffused knowledge, despite their utopianism, continue to transform reality

Selling diversity to white men: How disentangling economics from morality is a racial and gendered performance

Diversity professionals include business scholars, management consultants, diversity officers, and human resource professionals, who claim that the business case is about economics, not about morality or social justice. Drawing on 2 years of ethnographic research, this paper finds that diversity professionals sell diversity to white men—literally to obtain new clients and, metaphorically, to gain supporters for their practices—by performing economic rationality. In examining the intersection of economics and morality through the business case, this article argues that economic rationality itself is a racial and gendered performance. Moreover, insofar as diversity is a managerial discourse that employs ideas and models of the economy to design organizational techniques that improve business, it claims that through the business case, diversity professionals perform the economy itself. Thus, this research unsettles pervasive scholarly and popular assumptions that capitalism is intrinsically amoral. Finally, it characterizes organizational practices wherein diversity professionals perform economics as amoral and unracial as white economics. White economics, in other words, reproduces the everyday operation of neoliberal organizations as purportedly amoral, and hence, unracial and ungendered.

Ethics in an individualized field of practice – Social pedagogy in the context of the neoliberal organization

Writing from a Danish social pedagogical perspective, the author raises concerns about the difficulty of developing and integrating ethical reflection within the organization in the context of neoliberalism. While ethical reflection in social pedagogy tends to focus on the relationship between practitioner and client, or the relationship between the profession and the general public, this article wishes to focus on how ethical reflection develops in the workplace on an everyday basis. The reason for this focus is that the culture and language of the workplace can have major consequences for how practitioners interpret their roles and how they interpret the official ethical code. Although this article addresses the problem from a Danish context, the author argues that the struggle to develop ethical reflection within the organization is a general concern in most professions in contemporary society. What makes this problem controversial within the Danish social pedagogical context is that the profession has a long tradition of working qualitatively with relationship-based-practices. In the neoliberal organization, mercantile logic undermines the ethical logic of relationship-based practices. This is due to the former’s emphasis on effectivity and the latter’s emphasis on responsibility. This article is a critique of what the author sees as the neoliberal organization’s inability to tackle this conflict of values. Furthermore, this article problematizes the ‘abstract individuality’ that neoliberal organizations produce, highlighting the fact that such individuality is inconsistent with responsibility. Finally, the author argues that, by reinterpreting the concept of reflective practice, the organization may develop a more concrete individuality that is more consistent with responsibility.

Smoke and Mirrors: Rising Israeli ‘Fascism’ or Forgetting the Labour Zionist Past

The Israeli right—an alliance of neoliberal parties and settler organizations—has become the undisputed and seemingly undisplaceable political leadership of the state over recent decades. This transformation has been associated, both in Israel and internationally, with successive Likud-led governments in general, and their allies within the settler movement. A recurrent theme within analyses of this rise is the claim, made by journalists, academics and activists alike, that fascism is rearing its head in Israel, both in government and on the streets. This article argues that an analysis of Israel’s Labour Zionist history and confronting the claims made by its contemporary supporters, in the face of the Zionist right’s dominance, in fact highlights long-term political continuities and undermines claims of rising fascism. By building on critical literature on the politics of memory, this paper further discusses how a romanticized vision of the past, is central to current attempts by Labour Zionism to re-organize itself while whitewashing its own history. Finally, this article shows that a focus on history, and an analysis of the construction of collective memory, uncovers the ways in which the contemporary Zionist right has emerged from the foundations built by Labour Zionism itself.

Mindful Masculinity: Positive Psychology, McMindfulness and Gender

In recent years, positive psychology and mindfulness practices have increasingly been integrated in neo-liberal organisations to promote individuals’ well-being. Critics have argued that these practices actually function as management techniques, encouraging individuals’ self-governance and acceptance of the status quo despite adverse contexts. This article extends this argument by unpacking ways in which such ‘well-being’ programmes are also gendered, having been formulated around neo-liberal hegemonic masculine values of rationality, individualism and competition, and further masculinised through integration into gendered organisations. The argument is presented that this process produces a neo-liberal version of hegemonic masculinity that the author calls ‘mindful masculinity’. This theoretical argument is illustrated through examples of specific ways in which ‘well-being’ practices have been reworked in strongly masculine settings to promote neo-liberal hegemonic masculine goals under a symbolic veneer of spirituality and mental health.

Water shocks: Neoliberal hydrofiction and the crisis of “cheap water”

ABSTRACTThis essay examines world-literary representations of neoliberal hydroculture, exploring the crisis of “cheap water.” I investigate how water functions in hydrofiction as a thematic element, but also as representation and symbolic regime, product and producer of the socio-ecological relations stabilizing the neoliberal organization of water. I begin with an analysis of Latin American and Chinese hydrofictions which anticipate intensified enclosure of water commons at the moment of the neoliberal turn before moving to the analysis of twenty-first-century novels that register China’s turn to “extreme water.” These hydrofictions display similar tendencies towards “hydro-irrealism” that underscore the limits of the hydrological regime. I conclude with two examples of millennial “hydro cli-fi” that portray “water shock” in autumnal cores. The impulse of these Euro-American cli-fis is diagnostic, but also regulatory, projecting fears of a new hydrological revolution as the basis for Chinese ascendancy.