DET ENTREPRENÖRIELLA JAGETS IDEOLOGI: En antropologisk studie av hur arbete och personlighet samverkar på ett startup

Abstract

Over the last decades companies and workplaces have adopted a new type of organisational structure that aims to involve employee subjectivity as a result of the introduction of Human Resources to workplace organisations. This shift suggests radical revisions for theories concerning workplace agency, subjectivity, ideology and organisational psychology. Some critical scholars have raised concerns, meaning this shift could be seen as a valorisation process of worker subjectivity, a “colonisation” of employee consciousness and further disguising the power relations between employer and employee under the pretence of workplace democracy. While champions of this trend argue that it is a further expansion of democratic ideals, meaning less worker alienation and overall healthier workers. This paper aims to discuss how this kind of structural implementation is made into a workplace ideology in the context of a tech startup company. Arguing that commodification of personality and the creation of an “entrepreneurial self” are central factors for the reproduction of worker subjectivity ideology. The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of philosopher Slavoj Zizeks interpretation of lacanian psychoanalysis, anthropological and sociological theories of agency and neo-marxist concept of ideology. The ethnographic study is made with qualitative semi-structured interviews with eighteen informants from different departments of the startup company. The study is written in Swedish.