Thanem, Torkild (2001) Disrupting boundaries : rethinking organisation and embodiment. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis attempts to disrupt the boundaries of how we think about organisation and
embodiment. From an investigation into five organisational regimes of Western public
health, it argues that the body is a problem for organisation. The body does not come
ready organised, but is a nonorganisational, messy and carnal matter of flesh and
blood, pains and pleasures, habits and desires. Although modem discourses and
institutions seek to organise how we live with our bodies in everyday life, they never
do so fully and completely. Bodies are powerful, creative and unpredictable and
disrupt the boundaries of organisation.
Asking how organisation theory deals with the problem of the body, the thesis seeks
to take the discipline further by developing an approach to how it should deal with the
body, and by identifying what implications this might have for our thinking about
organisation. Utilising the conceptualist philosophy of Canguilhem, Foucault and
Deleuze, this is done by analysing the concept of "organisation" and the concept of
the "body" across organisation theory and related fields.
Five ways of dealing with the body are identified: (i) not dealing with it at all, which
is mostly the case with mainstream research on formal organisations and more radical
research on organisational processes; (ii) reducing the body to an organismic
metaphor, which is what much classical and some contemporary mainstream research
does; (iii) studying how embodiment enables the successful management of formal
organisations; (iv) studying how bodies are organised within and without formal
organisations; and (v) studying nonorganisational embodiment, i.e. how bodies
disrupt and exist independently of organisation. Whereas the third and fourth themes
have been investigated in some organisation theory, little attempt has been made to
think about nonorganisational embodiment. Using material in Deleuze, Foucault,
feminism and current organisation theory, this thesis appreciates the ways in which
bodies disrupt the boundaries of organisation and the ways in which bodies live under
the conditions imposed by these boundaries. From this perspective, organisation is
less powerful, less stable and more fragile than we often think, and bodies are more
powerful, more dynamic and more creative.
This conceptualist interest in organisation, nonorganisation and the body gives rise to
a theory and philosophy of organisation that might provide the underpinnings of a
radical approach to everyday problems of organisation and embodiment, such as
aesthetic labour and impression management; virtual organisations; culture,
subcultures and resistance at work and in public space; health and safety; and gender,
race and sexuality.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Associations, institutions, etc. -- Management, Business enterprises , Industrial management -- Employee participation , Management -- Employee participation
Official Date:	September 2001
Dates:	Date Event September 2001 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Warwick Business School
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Burrell, Gibson ; Corbett, Martin
Extent:	378 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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