Discourse, dogma, and domination : knowledge work as art and politics
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2008
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The thesis critically analyses the gaps among management literatures as discourses of
ambition and evaluates them against the realities that constitute praxis. The work
provides a different insight into organisational and management theory that encourages
critical thinking about the normalising effects of discourse, and points to the possibilities
that can emerge from engaging with alternative perspectives, such as those emanating
from practitioners. The analytic framework that is used to identify and explicate this
hiatus is drawn from Foucault’s genealogy, which is used as a method for
conceptualising and explaining relationships between and among discourses. Genealogy
is also used to show that there is not merely one way of perceiving an object of discourse
and thus creating meaning, but many.
The topic of the thesis is knowledge work. The assumption that there is a clear and
abiding descriptor of knowledge work supports an erroneous perception that there is
consensus in interpretation and that its meanings are fixed and uncontested. Rather,
the concept of knowledge work is ambiguous and highly contested. It is
inconsistently conceptualised in the literature and scholars frequently omit any
definition or clarification of what knowledge work is, perhaps assuming that their
readers will have an inherent and automatic understanding of it. The thesis navigates
the many discourses of knowledge work. It shows that in practical terms, inferences
of neutrality and normality are instead prescriptions, through which different
interpretations pit those who prescribe against those who do.
Knowledge work has emerged as a significant domain of practice and discourse that
resonates within the fields of organisational and management theory, and within the
circuits of business, consulting, education, and policy formation. Knowledge has
become the business of business, such that the discourse of knowledge work has
become significant within the discursive knowledge fields of organisation studies,
management studies, economics, technology, intellectual property, globalisation, and
finance.
The importance of knowledge work is such, that in contemporary discourses it is seen
as facilitating a new golden age of a knowledge society. The dissertation tackles this
hypothesis through two historical illustrations. The first shows that the modern
concept of knowledge work emerged as a response to particular historical conditions
to refract social, economic and political circumstances. The second illuminates an
antecedent of the contemporary ‘knowledge society’ to show that it is neither new nor
unique.
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