| 1. |
- Berglund, Karin, et al.
(författare)
-
Consumption of entrepreneurs, consumption of entrepreneurship : Bloggers, influencers and socialites in a post-feminist economy
- 2018
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the wake of the neoliberal turn, discourses on the ‘the women entrepreneur’ who starts up and manages her own company, has been stretched to include ‘the entrepreneurial women’, who affirms already achieved gender equality and thus find feminist activism less necessary to pursue (McRobbie, 2004; Gill, 2007). Entrepreneurship emphasis onindividualism, choice, and empowerment offers women postfeminist subject positions (Lewis, 2014). Wo/men’s independence has turned into an entrepreneurial class achievement (Gill, 2014), which is attained through consumption and a critical gaze on the self (Tasker & Negra, 2007). It has been reported that women’s magazines have dropped feminist content and nowadays offer women space for both self-revaluation and self-actualization (McRobbie, 2004, 2009, 2011, HolmerNadesan& Trethewey, 2000; Bröckling, 2010) Boundaries become blurred, including the male/female division, whilst the autonomous male subject of liberal polity (‘the economic man’) is turned into an invisible template (Hekman2004). In this paper, we study this emerging terrain by turning to popular bloggers’ sites asking what kind of subject positions that are promoted. Our empirical data consist of blog posts, podcasts, social media interactions and interviews with a number of professional Swedish bloggers/influencers/entrepreneurs, both male and female. What is common for all these entrepreneurs is that they have built up thriving and multi-faceted businesses around their personas – centering on a constant sharing of their personal lives in combination with positioning themselves as socialites and experts on matters such as fashion, interior decoration, media trends, travel – and entrepreneurship. The base – usually a blog site or a weekly podcast – has been expanded by all sorts of other activities; e.g., book publishing, TV shows, stage performances, beauty products, clothing lines and magazines.Feminism is an integrated part of all this, but in a ‘girlpower-ish’ sense where women can be independent and successful by their own making. In one sense, their subject positioning signifies a departure from the ethos of usefulness and discipline of classic neoliberalism (cfBerglund et al, 2017); they are to be admired because of their consumption, they are to be consumed themselves as signifiers of effectiveness, success, style and family happiness. But they are also avid promoters of classic entrepreneurial virtues; their lifestyles are within reach if you work hard, consume the right products and services, care for your career and your family at the same time. It is subject positions void of structural aspects of society (such as class), void of political conflict and void of problematisationof consumption in relation to sustainability issues.Our empirical examples are clearly related to recent claims that the neoliberal turn have unearthed the entrepreneurial “active, freely choosing, self-reinventing subject of postfeminism”(Gill and Scharff, 2011, p. 7). This subject may however take different shapes whereby it is more suitable to talk about how entrepreneurship discourses underpin a reconfiguration of femininity, thus offering women a variety of ‘outfits’. What these subjects share, except expecting undisputed economic freedom, is the wish (or need) to continuously self-actualise and transform, take responsibility, exercise (often conflicting) choices, in a world without radical or upsetting politics (Lewis et al, 2017). The entrepreneurial subject of neoliberalism and the self-fashioning postfeminist subject breed each other.
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
- Berglund, Karin, et al.
(författare)
-
Responsibilising the next generation : Fostering the enterprising self through de-mobilising gender
- 2017
-
Ingår i: Organization. - : Sage Publications. - 1350-5084 .- 1461-7323. ; 34:6, s. 892-915
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, our interest is in what subjectivities are fostered among schoolchildren through the recent introduction of entrepreneurship initiatives in primary and secondary school. The educational terrain is but one example where entrepreneurship has been discursively transformed during recent decades from the notion of starting businesses into a general approach to life itself in the advancement of neoliberal societies. The inherently elitist and excluding position of the entrepreneurial subject is now offered to all and sundry. While entrepreneurship pedagogy is explicitly intended to be gender neutral and inclusive of all such identities traditionally suppressed in the entrepreneurship discourse, we ask what kind of enterprising selves are mobilised and de-mobilised here. Second, in what way are these seemingly ‘gender-neutral’ enterprising selves gendered? Our analysis of three recent and dominating entrepreneurial initiatives in the Swedish school system emphasises the need for activation, performativity and responsibility. The analysis also shows that gender is indeed silenced in these initiatives but is at the same time productive through being subtly present in the promotion of a ‘neo-masculine’, active, technology-oriented and responsible subject. Entrepreneurship is presented as being equally available for all and something everyone should aspire to, yet the initiatives still sustain the suppression and marginalisation of women and femininities. The initiatives specifically promote a responsible and adaptive masculine subject position while notions of rebellious entrepreneurship and non-entrepreneurial domestic positions are mobilised out of the picture.
|
|
| 4. |
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
| 6. |
- Cicmil, Svetlana, et al.
(författare)
-
The project (management) discourse and its consequences : On vulnerability and un-sustainability in project-based work
- 2016
-
Ingår i: New technology, work and employment. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0268-1072 .- 1468-005X. ; 31:1, s. 58-76
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, we examine how the discourses related to project-based work and management are drawn upon in the organising of contemporary work, and the implications they have for project workers. We are interested in how project workers and projectified organisations become vulnerable to decline, decay and exhaustion and why they continue to participate in, and so sustain, projectification processes. The critical perspective taken here, in combination with our empirical material from the ICT sector, surfaces an irreversible decline of the coping capacity of project workers and draws attention to the addictive perception of resilience imposed on and internalised by them as a condition of success and longevity. Under those circumstances, resilience is made sense of and internalised as coping with vulnerability by letting some elements of life being destroyed; thus re-emerging as existentially vulnerable rather than avoiding or resisting the structures and processes that perpetuate vulnerability.
|
|
| 7. |
- Crevani, Lucia, et al.
(författare)
-
Leadership cultures and discursive hybridisation : On the cultural production of leadership in higher education reforms
- 2015
-
Ingår i: International Journal of Public Leadership. - : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 2056-4929. ; 11:3/4, s. 147-165
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of leadership culture and analyse how leadership cultures are produced in higher education reforms, in a hybridised discursive context of traditional academic values and emerging managerialism and leaderism.Design/methodology/approach: Building on a perspective on leadership as a cultural phenomenon emerging in processes in which societal, sectorial and professional discursive resources are invoked, this study adds to earlier studies on how notions of leadership are involved in the transformation of higher education organisations. To this end, the method combines a traditional qualitative study of change initiatives over a long period of time with participative observation. Focusing on two vignettes, the analysis centres on how several discursive resources are drawn upon in daily interaction.Findings: The emergence of hybrid leadership cultures in which several discursive resources are drawn upon in daily interaction is illustrated. This paper emphasises how hybrid cultures develop through confirmation, re-formulation and rejection of discursive influences.Research limitations/implications: An extended empirical material would enable further understanding of what cultural constructions of leadership that become confirmed, re-formulated or rejected. International comparisons would also enrich the analysis.Practical implications: This paper may influence leadership, leadership development and change initiatives in higher education organization.Social implications: Higher education organizations are crucial for societal development and this paper contributes to better understanding how they are changing.Originality/value: The perspective proposed builds on recent developments in leadership studies and expands the means for focusing on social processes rather than individuals.
|
|
| 8. |
|
|
| 9. |
- Ekman, Marianne, et al.
(författare)
-
Gendered recognition practices and the perpetuation of vulnerability : A study in Swedish universities
- 2018
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In current critical research on work life in the higher education sector, analyses often revolve around neoliberal managerialism as contrasted to traditional professional academic values (cf. Henkel, 1997; Deem, 2004; Ekman et al, 2017). Academics are both faced with expectations to uphold the integrity of academic values in their research and teaching, whilst at the same time performing and ’careering’ in accordance with managerialist reforms (Clarke & Knights, 2015).Knights & Clarke (2014) analyse insecurity as a central aspect of identity in academics, conceptualizing academic life as a ‘bittersweet symphony’ populated by imposters (self- doubt and low self-esteem despite adequate performance), aspirants (under-recognised in relation to their inner sense of excellence) and existentialists (questioning the meaning of work and maintaining a sense of anxiety over their contributions to wider society). Another example is provided by Bristow et al (2017) who identify how early career-academics within CMS play on three narratives – diplomatic, combative and idealistic – by which they both resist and reproduce the ethos of business school neoliberalism in which they are embedded. Academics’ identity construction thus in different ways tend to position them as vulnerable selves (Cicmil et al, 2016), that is, as existentially exposed to the risks associated with projectified careers, macho-style management and a high degree of self-responsibility (Loveday, 2018).In addition, a number of earlier studies has also pointed out the highly gendered nature of how academic work is organized, how recruitment and promotion processes unfold etc. (cf. (cf. Hush, 2001; Mählck, 2003; van den Brink & Benschop, 2012).In this study we will focus on recognition practices (how recognition repeatedly tend to happen or not happen in local/cultural contexts, and thus also become the expectation on what may happen in future interactions) and their consequences for identity construction1and sense of vulnerability thus seem central to advance the above insights. Recognition practices thus involve not only what and whom is recognized or not for something, but also in what settings certain practices are legitimate or not, and how they are publicly displayed in social interaction.We suggest thatrecognition practices are an important yet under-researched aspect of academicidentity construction processesrecognition practices are gendered, i.e. we perform gender in our ways of- conferring and receiving recognition,- constructing what recognition may mean in different local/cultural contexts, - constructing when it is to be conferred/received or not,- constructing how it is appropriately played out how in social interaction.recognition practices tend to sustain vulnerability among academics, but in different ways for men and women.
|
|
| 10. |
- Ekman, Marianne, et al.
(författare)
-
Universities need leadership, academics need management : discursive tensions and voids in the deregulation of Swedish higher education legislation
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Higher Education. - : Springer. - 0018-1560 .- 1573-174X. ; 75:2, s. 299-321
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Inthisarticle,wediscusshow‘managerialist’and‘leaderist’discourses(O’Reillyand Reed Public Administration 88:960–978, 2010; Organization Studies 32:1079–1101, 2011) are drawn upon in the context of the deregulation of Swedish higher education. As of 2011, there has been new legislation that frames Swedish universities as ‘autonomous’ and transfers most of the regulative responsibilities from the government level to university vice-chancellors. The aim of this article is to inquire into how tensions within and between managerialist and leaderist discourse are handled in the promotion of New Public Management reforms and the conse- quences thereof in terms of how leadership in the higher education sector is constructed. We analyse how these discourses are employed in the core documents leading up to the 2010 Riksdag decision to enact most of the proposed deregulations, and the subsequent evaluation undertaken by the social democratic government that took over in 2014. Based in this analysis, we suggest that the texts indeed draw upon notions of leadership and leaders as necessary for Swedish universities to survive and thrive in the future, but that the envisaged practise of this ‘strong leadership’ can either be characterised as a discursive void or described in terms of de- personalised, instrumental managerial surveillance and control.
|
|
