Retrofitting Drucker: Knowledge work under cognitive capitalism

This article uses Peter Drucker's work vector-like, to carry the thesis of cognitive capitalism into the management field. Drucker's prophetic insights into the knowledge society are juxtaposed with recent, Italian autonomist Marxist-inspired analyses of capitalism's cognitive phase. If the capacity to create knowledge – or what autonomists call the ‘general intellect’ – is becoming the key productive force, arguably there is a need for a full-blown social form of knowledge management. Our reading of Drucker thus retrieves the one worthwhile thing from the rubble of normative knowledge management. It is the idea of society-level knowledge management premised on a universal and unconditional guaranteed basic income (GBI; or social wage). Basic income represents not just a social investment in knowledge, which Drucker himself called for, but also compensation for biolabour's augmented social productivity. With Drucker as the steppingstone, we conclude, the autonomist tradition merits greater attention from critical management and organisational scholars interested in factoring class and gender back into the knowledge management equation.     

“Phil's Calling Grandma… ”: The Role of External Support in Human–Companion Animal Identity Pairings

This exploratory paper deals with human–animal role identity pairings such as parent–child or sibling–sibling and the necessity of support from other actors both for the formation of these idiosyncratic identities, as well as for their situational placement in social environments not limited to the nonhuman animal. Taken from a qualitative study examining identity formation counter to the nonhuman animal, I use in‐depth interviews of both people with and without human children to demonstrate how human‐to‐human relationships are formed by categorizing the companion animal as a “child” of sorts within the family structure. These relationships prove integral to the continued development and enactment of identities such as the animal “parent” or the animal “sibling” via three different groups: their own parents, partners, and, in one case, adult siblings. This creates positive affect and commitment to the identity across other social situations. Implications of these findings for identity theory and family research are discussed.     

The duty to care and the need to split

This paper arises out of psychoanalytically oriented consultancy to teams of staff in the helping professions where there is a statutory 'duty to care'. It takes as its premise the seemingly paradoxical hypothesis that workers may need to split off part of their emotional experience in order to preserve their own mental health and provide reliable services to their clients. I argue that while a professional 'duty to care' requires us to be emotionally 'in touch', the demands of our clients together with the demands of the institutional response to the 'duty to care' cause us to split off parts of our awareness. I also argue that provided the splitting does not become extreme we are doing no more or less than the rest of society. In other words, there is a degree of 'normal splitting' which numbs our awareness of danger and destructiveness and seeks to protect us from too much anxiety and pain. Yet if professional workers are charged with the responsibility of assessing risk and acting accordingly for the protection of all concerned they need ways of being 'in touch' (re-integrating the splits) for some or enough of the time. Finally, I will describe ways of being 'in touch', illustrating the difficulty and the pain of re-integrating the splits and some of the insights that can arise out of this work with examples from my consultancy work.     

Practice supervisors’ perceptions of social work students and their placements – an exploratory study in the Norwegian context

Practice placement has been a basic component in Social Work Programmes for many decades in Norway as elsewhere, and supervision of students has been a valued role for social workers. Here, we have carried out a pilot study of nine supervisors from various practice settings, dealing with their experience with and views about supervision of students. The aim was to get more knowledge of student supervision today and the meaning of student supervision in different practice settings. We found that the content of supervision depended on the agency context. Supervision embodies core agency values. There was a lack of common ground between supervisors and the school of social work, and between supervisors and the students.     

Work,parenting and gender: the care–work negotiations of three couple relationships in the UK

Changes globally mean that there are now record numbers of mothers in paid employment and a reported prevalence of involved fathering. This poses challenges to mothers and fathers as they negotiate care–work practices within their relationships. Focusing on interviews with three heterosexual couples (taken from a wider UK qualitative project on working parents), the paper considers care–work negotiations of three couples, against a backdrop of debates about intensive mothering and involved fathering. It aims to consider different configurations of work and care within three different couple relationships. We found that power within the relationships was negotiated along differential axis of gender and working status (full- or part-time paid work). We present qualitatively rich insights into these negotiations. Framed by a critical discursive psychological approach, we call on other researchers to think critically about dominant discourses and practices of working, caring and parenting, pointedly how couples situated around the world operationalise these discourses in talking about themselves as worker and carers.     

Tracing the roots of mindfulness: Transcendence in Buddhism and Christianity

The field of social work has embraced mindfulness skills in the training of social workers and as an intervention used in practice. However, there is little discussion regarding the theoretical or religious roots of mindfulness. In addition, social workers often employ mindfulness by practicing within a behaviorist frame. Missing from this behaviorist frame are the historic religious definitions, aims, and values of mindfulness, which lead to a fuller understanding of mindfulness in social work practice. This article traces the religious roots of mindfulness to clarify its goals in both Buddhism and Christianity, with an emphasis on the Mahayana branch of Buddhism and the contemplative and mystical traditions within Christianity. In both religions, mindfulness leads one to an experience of transcendence, assisting the follower to realize that the self belongs in relationship with a divine oneness in Buddha nature, that is believed to be intrinsic to all sentient beings (in Buddhism), or a divine God through the person of Jesus Christ (in Christianity) where the self is retained. Social workers uphold the values of mindfulness and the profession itself when being sensitive to root mindfulness practice within its historical and religious contexts, particularly within Buddhist and Christian faith systems.     

Social Psychology,Consumer Culture and Neoliberal Political Economy

Consumer culture and neoliberal political economy are often viewed by social psychologists as topics reserved for anthropologists, economists, political scientists and sociologists. This paper takes an alternative view arguing that social psychology needs to better understand these two intertwined institutions as they can both challenge and provide a number of important insights into social psychological theories of self‐identity and their related concepts. These include personality traits, self‐esteem, social comparisons, self‐enhancement, impression management, self‐regulation and social identity. To illustrate, we examine how elements of consumer culture and neoliberal political economy intersect with social psychological concepts of self‐identity through three main topics: ‘the commodification of self‐identity’, ‘social categories, culture and power relations’ and the ‘governing of self‐regulating consumers’. In conclusion, we recommend a decommodified approach to research with the aim of producing social psychological knowledge that avoids becoming enmeshed with consumer culture and neoliberalism.     

生活世界视域中的公民身份认同探究

生活世界开启了人类活动的空间，同样它以自身的整体性纠正着人类前行道路的偏差，它使得人们在社会之中建构的各种权利获得了合法性和合理性支撑，同样，它促使人们认识到，对共同体的忠诚是公民履行自己的义务和责任，人类必须对生活世界或者栖息之地有归属感和认同感，对自己生活的共同体应该负有责任感，正是这种责任促使人们产生一种生态公民身份，以便人们更好地处理人对自然关系，达到人与自然和谐相处。     

How do I get my way? A meta-analytic review of research on influence tactics

Despite considerable research investigating the role of influence tactics on work-related outcomes in organizations, consensus on the effectiveness of influence tactics has been elusive. Specifically, there is a lack of integration concerning the relationships between proactive influence tactics and their outcomes. We investigate the effectiveness of 11 influence tactics from a comprehensive perspective using meta-analytic techniques. In particular, the current study focuses on relationships between each of the 11 influence tactics (i.e., rational persuasion, exchange, inspirational appeal, legitimating, apprising, pressure, collaboration, ingratiation, consultation, personal appeals, and coalition) and task- and relations-oriented outcomes. In addition, we investigate the moderating effects of the direction of influence tactics, measurement of influence tactics, singular influence tactic (versus use of a combination of influence tactics), independence of data sources, and study setting involved in the study. Regardless of task- and relations-oriented outcomes, based on 49 independent samples (N = 8987), our results show positive relationships between outcomes and rational persuasion, inspirational appeal, apprising, collaboration, ingratiation, consultation, and a negative relationship between pressure and outcomes. Rational persuasion is the only tactic which held stable positive relationships with both categories of outcomes regardless of moderating factors. Implications and directions for future research in the area of influence tactics are discussed.