LFU:online

Extended and advanced knowledge of interdisciplinary theories, concepts, and research approaches, as well as methods, results, and scientific developments concerning the complex and multi-dimensional tension-fields of autonomy and control, self-determination and heteronomy, and power and resistance in work organizations. Ability to critically analyze, evaluate, and personally design and develop scientific texts, empirical studies, organizational practices, and interventions involving power and control in organizations from a psychological perspective.

The distribution, allocation, and exercise of power and control is one of the most fundamental structural features of the social architecture of hierarchical organizations. The importance of power structures and control mechanisms as well as possibilities for influence and autonomy potentials for the description, explanation and prediction of the experience and behavior of individuals and groups in work contexts can hardly be overestimated. In addition to the omnipresence and complexity of the underlying psychological processes, the analysis of power and control in organizations is made more difficult by the fact that their psychological and social effects are increasingly not immediately and obviously recognizable, but unfold in subtle, subliminal or indirect ways. The present course approaches this complex issue from an interdisciplinary perspective and in a multimodal way. Exemplary contents include historical perspectives on structural developments concerning autonomy, participation, power, and control in the world of work; manifestations, modes of action, and consequences of institutional and personal, episodic and systemic, overt and subtle forms of the exercise of power in organizations; management control systems as combined regimes of technocratic-administrative and socio-normative influence; political-economic managerial ideologies; indirect control through subjectification and neoliberal governmentality in post-disciplinary work systems; and forms of employee protest and resistance against the exercise of power and control. An emphasis is put on new forms of work, such as algorithmic control in the gig economy. These contents are structured in five consecutive modules: (1) Autonomy; (2) Control; (3) Power; (4) Governmentality; and (5) Resistance. After the literature-based appropriation of these main topics, relevant project studies are developed.

Assimilating the above content is based on reviewing, presenting, and integrating interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, conceptual articles, and empirical studies using quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The course combines various methods of teaching and learning: Introductory talks, instructions, comments, contextualization, and feedback by the course lecturer; thematically specified reading assignments and literature work based on selected interdisciplinary scientific articles in English language; independent conception, oral presentation, and written documentation of integrated literature summaries and research reviews on the specified thematic complexes in small groups; feedback and discussions on the presented contents; development, presentation, and written elaboration of independent project studies with substantial creative intellectual components in small groups, based on the preceding literature reviews and the extension, application or integration of the overall conveyed course contents.  

Grades in this course are based on continuous assessment. Relevant grading components include fulfilling regular attendance requirement; active participation in class discussions and exercises; the contents and quality of oral presentations and associated submitted materials; as well as of the written reports, elaborations, and documentation of independent study projects. The specific components and their weighting will be announced in the first day of class.  

Eine strukturierte Literaturliste mit themenspezifischen Lese- und Präsentationsaufträgen wird zu Beginn der Veranstaltung bekanntgegeben. Folgende Literaturhinweise haben exemplarischen Charakter:

Clegg, S. (2009). Foundations of organization power. Journal of Power, 2(1), 35-64.

De Vaujany, F. X., Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, A., Munro, I., Nama, Y., & Holt, R. (2021). Control and surveillance in work practice: Cultivating paradox in ‘new’ modes of organizing. Organization Studies, 42(5), 675-695.

Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2014). Power in management and organization science. Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 237-298.

Gill, M. J. (2019). The significance of suffering in organizations: Understanding variation in workers’ responses to multiple modes of control. Academy of Management Review, 44(2), 377-404.

Hafermalz, E. (2021). Out of the panopticon and into exile: Visibility and control in distributed new culture organizations. Organization Studies, 42(5), 697-717.

Purcell, C., & Brook, P. (2022). At least I’m my own boss! Explaining consent, coercion and resistance in platform work. Work, Employment and Society, 36(3), 391-406

Schüßler, E., Attwood-Charles, W., Kirchner, S., & Schor, J. B. (2021). Between mutuality, autonomy and domination: Rethinking digital platforms as contested relational structures. Socio-Economic Review, 19(4) 1217-1243.

Shymko, Y., & Frémeaux, S. (2022). Escaping the fantasy land of freedom in organizations: The contribution of Hannah Arendt. Journal of Business Ethics, 176, 213–226.

Sitkin, S. B., Long, C. P., & Cardinal, L. B. (2020). Assessing the control literature: Looking back and looking forward. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 7, 339-368.

Tourish, D., & Willmott, H. (2023). Despotic leadership and ideological manipulation at Theranos: Towards a theory of hegemonic totalism in the workplace. Organization Studies, online first