McKinlay&Starkey (1998) Foucault, Management and Organization Theory

Organdi Review

The Dreyfus and Rabinow book give a good account of the relationship between Foucault and English speech-act theorest John Searle---including a letter foucault wrote to searle admitting that his initial seperation of the 'statement' in _the archeology_ from a 'speech act' was a premature and hasty one.Source

"Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates, unites, or re-unites; it cannot help but liberate and enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought, at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is in itself an action--a perilous act." -Michel Foucault (Page 5 of Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Right after the table of contents)

James Bernauer, Michel Foucault's Force of Flight: Towards an Ethics of Thought, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1990. Arnold I Davidson, (ed.), Foucault and his Interlocutors, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Mitchell Dean, Critical and Effective Histories: Foucault's Methods and Historical Sociology, London: Routledge, 1994. Dominique Lecourt, Marxism and Epistemology: Bachelard, Canguilhem, Foucault, translated by Ben Brewster, London: NLB, 1975 Gary Gutting, Michel Foucaults Archaeology of Scientific Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Barry Smart (ed.), Michel Foucault (1) Critical Assessments, London: Routledge, Three Volumes, 1994; Michel Foucault (2) Critical Assessments, London: Routledge, Four Volumes, 1995.

Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault et ses contemporains, Paris: Fayard, 1994. (mais en francais)

Alan Rosenberg & Alan Milchman (eds.), Foucault and Heidegger: Critical Encounters, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. (forthcoming )

Foucault discusses introduces the notion of bio-power in the last section of The History of Sexuality, Vol. One: An Introduction. You also might look at James Bernauer's discussion of bio-power in his book Michel Foucault's Force of Flight: Toward and Ethics for Thought.

With respect to ethics, Foucault himself never presents a prescriptive ethical theory, which all people would be subject to. Instead, Foucault's works seem to indicate that he affirmed the notions of treating one's life like a work of art and the notion of caring for oneself. The best places to look for Foucault's views on ethics are the later interviews collected in Ethics and Subjectivity: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, vol. one. There Foucault discusses what it is that we might learn from the Greeks and Romans even though we cannot apply their answers to our problems.

polemicist (used by Faucalt in his 1984 interview with Rabinow)

normativity (used in someone's recent post to this list)

Foucault is a moral philosopher. His choices of topics are not those of random historical curiosities and his every inclusion of one detail over another has a purpose to it. He is not some blind grouper of facts for some one else to sift. He IS ambiguous in that he does not give clear theoretical structures, yet his works are thoroughly ethical in nature. He just disrupts traditional notions of what it means to do ethics, but he the entire interest of his studies depend on a moral "gotcha" hiding in the wings. He endeavors to describe our ethical relations and their different forms, and this can nt be received nor compiled in an ethically neutral way. Unless, we're going to imagine that Foucault (or any one for that matter) has elevated himself that far out of practical power/knowledge discourses to be "simply a historian!"

It is right to bring up Kant; Foucault is a philosopher and it is always valid to check for connections or reactions to Kant when dealing with a post Kantian philosopher.

Perhaps the time has come to examine transendental standards and their possibility. Perhaps, since F's philosophy, much like Neitzche's, is based purely in corporeal reality and cannot, therefore, determine the truth or falsehood of a priori standards. The fact that they are normative speaks nothing of their truth or falsehood. And since F never tells us that we shouldn't operate under norms, he has no indictment of them.

It seems, then, that there is no necessary clash between Kant and Foucault. They could be used in a complimentary duo.

*** From: Jill Molan To: foucault@lists.village.virginia.edu Save Address Subject: Foucault and Donzelot Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2001 11:12:52 +1000

Would someone be able to comment in relation to Donzelot's conceptualisaton of 'technologies', 'programs' and 'strategies' in relation to Foucault's conceptualisations of the same terms? I notice that Donzelot's article using these terms came out the same year that Foucault published his well-known article on Governmentality, and i wonder what the connections are. Many thanks, the extract is below with references. Jill

The following quote is from O'Malley, P. 1996, 'Risk and responsibility', in Foucault and political reason, eds A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose, University College Press (UCL), London, pp. 189-207. That article is citing from an article Donzelot, J. 1979, 'The poverty of political culture', Ideology and Consciousness, vol. 5, pp. 71-86. I haven't been able to get the Donzelot article from the library, am waiting for it to arrive on interlibrary loan.

In this conceptualization, technologies, of which the panopticon and insurance are examples, emerge as always local and multiple, intertwining, coherent or contradictory forms of activating and managing a population (Donzelot 1979). Technologies, although they have their own dynamics, nevertheless develop primarily in terms of their role in relation to specific political programmes. Political programmes focus upon doing something about a practicable object, for example the reduction of levels of unemployment, rates of crime or youth homelessness. They are recipes for corrective intervention [and] redirection. In turn, such programmes are formed in terms of more abstract strategies - formulae of government, theories which explain reality only to the extent that they enable the implementation of a program (Donzelot 1979: 77). Keynesianism and laissez-faire liberalism provide examples of the latter.' (OMalley 1996, p. 193)

Rose, N. 1996, 'Governing 'advanced' liberal democracies', in Foucault and political reason, eds A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose, University College Press (UCL), London, pp. 37-64.
Miller, P. & Rose, N. 1990, 'Governing economic life', Economy and Society, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 1-31.
Foucault's original article is in
Foucault, M. 1979, 'Governmentality', Ideology and Consciousness (I & C) , vol. 6, no. Autumn, pp. 5-21. but it was also reproduced in 1991 as a chapter in
Burchell, G., Gordon, C. & Miller, P. 1991, The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality, Harvester/Wheatsheaf, London.
Apparently it is through the latter that it became better known. This book has a useful introduction by Gordon:
Gordon, C. 1991, 'Governmental rationality: an introduction', in The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality, eds G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller, Harvester/Wheatsheaf, London, pp. 1-51.

Foucault wrote intermittently about governmentality, never did apparently complete a single comprehensive work on it. There is one other paper - a lecture in English 'Omnes et singulatim' ('all and one' - government of the population as well as government of the individual subject). It was originally published as:
‘Omnes et singulatim: Towards a critique of “Political Reason” ’, in The Tanner Lectures of Human Values II, ed. Sterling McMurrin, Utah, 1981. But is available in two places under two different titles:
Foucault, M. 1999, 'Pastoral power and political reason' (1979), in Religion and culture by MichelFoucault, ed. J. R. Carrette, Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp.135-152.
Foucault, M. 1988, 'Politics and reason (1979)', in Michel Foucault: politics, philosophy, culture.Interviews and other writings, ed. L. D. Kritzman, Routledge, New York, pp. 57-85.

Dean, M. & Hindess, B. (eds) 1998, Governing Australia: studies in contemporary rationalities of government, trans. Translator, Reshaping Australian Institutions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Dean, M. 1999, Governmentality: power and rule in modern society, SAGE Publications, London.

Rose has been using the idea for a while:
Rose, N. 1989, Governing the soul: the shaping of the private self, Routledge, London.
Rose, N. 1996, Inventing ourselves: psychology, power, and personhood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Rose, N. 1999, Powers of freedom: reframing political thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

'Government at a distance' Rose refers to particularly in those two cited at the top, as well as in Powers of Freedom. In Miller and Rose they refer to the term 'action at a distance' as coming from:
Latour, B. 1987 Science in action, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
Latour a bit more accessible:
Law, J. 1992, 'Notes on the theory of the Actor-Network: ordering, strategy, and heterogeneity',Systems Practice, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 379-393.
Law, J. 1994, Organizing modernity, Blackwell, Oxford UK.

References ***

Jeffrey Pfeffer's organizations as political arenas

Pfeffer, J (1978) Organizational Design. Arlington Heights, Ill: AHM Publishing

Pfeffer, J (1981) Power in Organization Structures. Marshfield Mass: Pitman Publishing

Jeffrey Pfeffer has build on March and Simon's work to create a model of organizational theory that encompasses power coalitions, inherent conflict over goals and organizational-design decision that favor the self-interest of those in power.* Pfeffer proposes that controls in organizations becomes an end rather than merely a means to relational goals such as efficient production or output. Organization's design represents the result of the power struggles by these diverse coalitions. Pfeffer argues that if we want to understand how and why organizations are designed the way they are, we need to assess the preferences and interests of those in the organizations who have influence over the design decisions. This view is currently very much in vogue.

Identity as a Verb, by Gower Garfinkel
Goffman
Goffman

Essay
Critique
Essays
Extensive Philosphy References
Plato's Republic

Urban Studies Papers

Wetherell, M. (1998) 'Positioning and interpretative repertoires: Conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue', Discourse and Society, vol.9, pp.431-56.
Potter, J. and Wetherell, M. (1995) 'Discourse analysis', in Smith, J., van Langenove, L. and Harre, R. (eds) Rethinking Methods in Psychology, London, Sage.

"an appropriate role for both those who study and manage organizations is not to celebrate organization as a value, but to question the end it serves."
Smircich, L. (1983), ‘Concepts of culture and organizational analysis’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 28 (3), September, pp. 339-58.