Why Work? A Culturally Informed Critique of Past and Present Shop Floor Interpretations of Work

Mihaela Kelemen, Dirk Bunzel and Paul Willis
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Mihaela Kelemen: Keele School of Management, Staffordshire, UK
Dirk Bunzel: University of Oulu, Finland
Paul Willis: Keele School of Management, Staffordshire, UK

Annals of the University of Petrosani, Economics, 2009, vol. 9, issue 4, 27-36

Abstract: This paper provides a cultural critique of the meanings of work as they transcend different modes of production. Twenty years on from the collapse of state socialism, Western experts are still called upon to prescribe ‘the best way’ for how productive work should be conducted/managed across the non-Western world (Jankowicz, 1993; 1994; Kostera, 1995, Kelemen, 1999). This ‘one best way’ usually assumes that the basic unit of analysis is the rational, utility-maximising individual; a species, bred inside Westernized secondary and tertiary educational institutions, business schools, or (vocational) training courses, all of these producing their special form of ‘learning to labour’ (Willis, 1977). Thus equipped, this species – what we might call, for the time being, the ‘model-worker’ - is bound to inhabit a rather inhabitable place, an arena of in increasingly global capitalism: the market.

Keywords: work; cultural critique; workplace cultures; working cultures; neoliberal context of work; socialist context of work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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