On the Manager's Body as an Aesthetics of Control
Nancy Harding. Tamara : Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. Las Cruces: 2002. Vol. 2, Iss. 1; pg. 63, 14 pgs

Abstract (Article Summary)
This paper stems from a larger project which aims at developing an understanding of the ways in which managers are subordinated to the organizations in which they work. Managers make up a large percentage of the students I teach, and I meet them often as part of my research: it seems to me that their jobs are unappealing, their amenity to being exploited is huge, but they are in the best position in which to organise some form of revolt against the conditions of their work. That they remain utterly subordinated to working lives that have little to recommend them is a source of curiosity for me. To suggest that it is their salaries or other perks of their jobs which guarantees their quiescence is, I think, crass and presumptuous. In this paper I explore one of the reasons for their continued subordination, which I find in the aesthetics of the managerial body. The aestheticisation of their bodies has been shown to be forms of control over workers (Hancock & Tyler, 2000; Warhurst & Nickson, in press): here I will develop those arguments to show how managers are similarly controlled. I am, in this paper, drawing upon an earlier suggestion made by Hancock and Tyler (op. cit.) that combining Foucault and Marx could provide a powerful mode of understanding, but I am drawing in large part upon theorists who have developed the works of Foucault or Marx, principally Judith Butler and Fredric Jameson, to develop my arguments.