Abstract
In the pages that follow I have tried to make some initial steps towards an assessment of the relevance of the work of Michel Foucault for contemporary organisation studies: Following Edward Said, I have framed this question in terms of 'travelling theory'. Sociologists of knowledge have long recognised that theories rarely remain in the discipline in which they originate. Said has noted that 'like people and schools of criticism, ideas and theories travel---from person to person, from situation to situation, from one period to another'? And peculiar things happen to theories as they travel. 'Theory not only travels to unexpected destinations; it may also be put to unexpected uses'. Here I am interested in understanding how Foucault's works have travelled into organisation studies, and the uses to which they have been put in that context.
There is also another sense in which I evoke the idea of Travelling Work in my title. In addition to looking at how Foucault's work has travelled into organisation studies, I have used this as an opportunity to critically interrogate the field through a discussion of certain central problematics in the study of work organisation. Thus, I travel rather widely, a visit a number of disparate sites. I do not address the field in its entirety, and I will not discuss all of the work that has used Foucault to understand organisation? Nevertheless, I hope that my sampling will provide enough clues for my reader to make their own assessments of the material that I am unfortunately forced to omit here.
This was an ambitious project, and as it proceeded I encountered a number of difficulties.
One was the question of boundaries. How far should I enter into the subtleties of interpretation of Foucault's work? Foucault's work has produced a veritable 'industry' of commentators, and to address all of the commentaries and modifications would be impossible. I also faced a parallel (if somewhat smaller) problem with the commentary about Foucault in organisation studies. Should I attempt to analyse everything written about Foucault and organisation? Posed with these problems, my work here is admittedly partial. But I have tried to be as thorough as possible in my analysis of two archives: Foucault's work, and studies of organisation that take inspiration from Foucault. I have taken Foucault's instruction that 'one ought to read everything': although I apologise for inevitable omissions and for limited analysis of certain works.
A second problem relates to the position that I take in relation to Foucault. Unfortunately, commentators on Foucault tend to become polarised into groups of 'for' and 'against' Foucault. I do not insist that what follows is a 'balanced' or 'fair' account of Foucault and his value for organisation studies. I have consciously taken an appreciative position, as I believe that Foucault does have something to offer to those who take the study of the organisation of work seriously. That is not to say that Foucault has all the answers, or that Foucault is in some sense 'right' or not due for criticism. It is to say that Foucault developed a distinctive and influential approach which might provide us with some concrete techniques and a novel epistemological position that may be valuable when studying organisations.
That said, another problem emerges, once again related to how I position myself. I was not sure whether I should write a highly abstract theoretical work that would satisfy existing 'Foucault gurus' by addressing all the complexity of Foucault's work, or if I should write a more accessible and less theoretically complex piece. I have tended towards the latter option, although readers who are more familiar Foucault will find many suggestions for further reading in the footnotes. I tended towards a more straightforward outline of Foucault's work for two reasons. First, plenty of commentary already exists for more experienced readers. Second, I found that amongst the organisation theorists who have used Foucault, there is still a disappointing lack of understanding of even Foucault's basic concepts. Thus, my reader should be warned that my chapters on Foucault are intended as an introduction to Foucault's work. Although this will not satisfy the hard-core Foucauldian, I hope that this approach will be most valuable for a broader audience.
Finally, there are issues relating to my focus here on 'production'. For many recent social commentators, production is an industrial concern which was primarily a concern of a modernity that has now passed. Foucault seemed to invite such a reading of the relevance of work, in his polemics against the `economism' of certain forms of Marxian inquiry, In a lecture in 1973, Foucault is reported to have said that, 'It is false to say "with that famous post-Hegelian", that the concrete existence of man is labor'. Indeed, this point is well taken, and I welcome the contribution and intellectual vitality of an emerging Cultural Studies and other efforts to theorise the end of modernity. However, despite the importance of critical analysis of these other domains, I believe that production should remain a central concern for critical theory. Although it is important to theorise the multiple shifts in the cultural sphere, I Believe, as Catherine Casey succinctly put it, that 'Production endures'.