ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization
Special Issue for PhD students on
Symptoms of Organization
Call for papers
The idea of symptomatology originates from medicine and refers to the study of the signs of illnesses. The task of the symptomatologist, or clinician, is to organize different symptoms in such a way that they designate a more or less coherent illness. This does not mean that the symptomatologist is inventing the illness, even though an illness is often named after the symptomatologist (e.g. Parkinson’s disease). Rather, the symptomatologist dissociates symptoms that where previously grouped together in order to establish a different organization of the relations between symptoms.
According to the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, some novelists are also brilliant symptomatologists. They create a language that enables us to detach ourselves from the forms that impose themselves upon experience. In doing so, such novelists manage to reorganize the way in which we think and in this way their work is involved in the task of symptomatology. Symptomatology, then, is for Deleuze much broader than the discipline of medicine; it is also concerned with literature, art and philosophy.
Symptomatology maintains a close relation to the present. Indeed, there is a clear connection between Deleuze’s notion of symptomatology and Michel Foucault’s idea of the ‘diagnosis of the present’. Foucault’s diagnostic activity refers to the historical work of simultaneously describing and transforming something about the present: our knowledge, our power relations, our selves. Just as Deleuze’s symptomatology is not exclusively confined to the actions of the doctor, so Foucault’s diagnosis of the present raises questions about epistemology, politics and subjectivity beyond the actual practice of medicine. It is in this sense that symptomatology and diagnosis of the present both owe a great deal to the Nietzschean figure of the ‘cultural physician’.
In this special issue of ephemera we are interested in exploring the idea of a symptomatology of management and organization, by which we understand symptomatology in a Deleuzian sense. We do not know exactly what this would mean (hence this call for papers), but we will nonetheless make some additional remarks on the subject.
Symptoms of organization are familiar to everyone. We know, for example, that the creation of value in contemporary companies includes active work on the subjectivity of employees. Here we can think of the importance of empowerment, the demand for the continuous development of individual competencies and the incitement of employee commitment. These developments change the landscape of many contemporary organizations. We witness, for example, a shift from the management and measurement of the input of time and energy to the management and measurement of the output of human performance. We also witness the importance of technologies enabling the employees’ self-management of stress and work-life balance, and the development of human resource policies for non-smoking, health, and harassment.
To us it seems as if the problem of work has become a problem of life and visa versa. If life and work become indiscernible components in the production of value then terms such as autonomy, self-realization, creativity, and social competences are no longer clear-cut solutions to work-life problems. They rather become a part of the problem. Thus we cannot diagnose the illness of the organization by explaining the causes of the illness through these terms, or develop and apply a treatment to the illness by deploying these terms. Would we not rather need a new formulation of the problem – one that is the product of a symptomatology of organization?
Contributions
In this special issue we invite ‘symptomatological’ explorations of management and organizations (which do not necessarily need to draw upon the notion of symptomatology itself). This could take the form of a theoretical paper on the meaning and importance of a ‘symptomatology’, ‘diagnosis of the present’ or ‘cultural physician’ for management studies. It could also take the form of empirically oriented research, concerned with the interpretation of actual developments in organizational life.
Contributions to the special issue could address, but are by no means limited to:
- Organizational illnesses and their management
- The idea of being a ‘physician of culture’ in management and organization studies
- Modes of living as a function of the creation of value
- The relation between self-management of the employee and ‘traditional’ pathological states such as hypochondria, exhaustion, border line syndrome, stress and depression
- The status of the empirical in a symptomatology of organization
- Masochism and sadism in contemporary management and organization
- The idea of ‘clinical management studies’
- The production of life and death in past and present organizations
- Posthuman Human Resource Management
- Ethics and the corporatization of the self
- The conditioning of employee performance
- New indicators of human productivity (such as appraisal interviews, personality tests and neuro-linguistic programming)
Deadline and submissions
To be considered for publication, papers must be electronically received by the 1st of September 2007. Please prepare your paper according to the ephemera guidelines shown at http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/submit.htm and send it as an email attachment to one of the guest editors. Please note that contributions are open for PhD students only (in January 2007).
All submissions will be double-blind reviewed following the normal review process and criteria of ephemera. The issue will be published in February 2008. For further information please contact one of the guest editors.
Guest Editors
Michael Pedersen, PhD candidate
Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy
Copenhagen Business School
Email: mip.lpf@xxxxxx
Phone: +45 (0) 3815 2656
Anders Raastrup Kristensen, PhD candidate
Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy
Copenhagen Business School
Email: ark.lpf@xxxxxx
Phone: +45 (0) 3815 3549
Sverre Spoelstra, PhD, research fellow
Department of Business Administration
University of Lund
Email: Sverre.Spoelstra@xxxxxxxxx
Phone: +46 (0) 46 222 4069