Pierre Bourdieu, Organization, and Management

Ahu Tatli, Mustafa Ozbilgin, Mine Karatas-Ozkan, Ahu Tatli, Mustafa Ozbilgin, Mine Karatas-Ozkan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138339972
• eBook ISBN: 9781317815808
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist, philosopher, and anthropologist, has been widely studied and analyzed in academic circles, particularly in sociology, where his ideas about power relations in social life helped to define the contemporary field. While many other sociological theories and figures have been extensively discussed and analyzed within the contexts of organization studies and management, Bourdieu's ideas have, until recently, been largely ignored. Offering an authoritative evaluation of Bourdieu's work, this book provides readers with conceptual frameworks, empirical examples, and methodological considerations for advancing theory and research in management and organization studies.

This book presents an in-depth review of the relevance of Bourdieu's social theory for organization and management studies, outlining the key aspects of Bourdieu's approach and situating his work in its historical and intellectual context of the time. An outline of the treatment of Bourdieuan theory by management and organization scholars and a critique of the selective reception of his work are offered. The first edited collection to explore the benefits of Bourdieuan sociology for a management audience, this book is relevant for theory, research, and practice, and will appeal to an international scholarly audience of academics and research students.

Part I
New Frontiers in Research and Theory

1
Careers as Sites of Power

A Relational Understanding of CareersBased on Bourdieu’s Cornerstones

Thomas M. Schneidhofer, Markus Latzke, and Wolfgang Mayrhofer

Introduction

Careers take place at the “intersection of societal history and individual biography” (Grandjean, 1981: 1057) linking micro and macro frames of references (Schein, 1978). They might be defined as patterns of movements through a space (social, occupational, or organizational) within time (Gunz & Mayrhofer, 2011), such that the “movement is contextualized, anchored in a specific social space” (Collin, 2006). However, contemporary careers research emphasizes the micro level of referencing, culminating in a “strong bias toward treating career as an individual phenomenon to be analysed psychologically rather than as a social phenomenon involving economics, political science, anthropology and sociology” (Schein, 2007: 573). The metaphors of bound-aryless careers (Arthur, 1994; Tams & Arthur, 2010) or protean careers (Hall, 1996, 2003) may serve as paradigmatic cases of this: in spite of the plethora of influencing factors that individuals do not, or only to a certain extent, control (e.g. access to educational systems and achieving success within them, entry to or advancement within organizations or fields, appropriate compensation for efforts, etc.), these concepts underemphasize both the relevance of contextual issues to the study of careers (Mayrhofer et al., 2007) and the interplay of the two (Mayrhofer & Schneidhofer, 2009). Underpinning both concepts is an ideology based on unfettered individualism and free choice, and a theory at once undersocialized and depoliticized (Arnold & Cohen, 2008: 15–16). However, they only stand pars pro toto for careers research in general: what is missing to a greater extent is acknowledging the power dynamics that arise in the course of one’s trajectory (for exceptions, see El-Sawad, 2005; Fournier, 1998; Savage, 1998), without throwing out the baby (the remaining possibility of individual effort and will) with the bath water (introducing a determinism of structures instead). Consequently, the lack of theoretical models accounting for both structure and agency to the same extent for explaining the genesis of careers is subject to recurring calls (e.g. Inkson et al., 2012). Bourdieu’s sensitizing devices are well suited for answering these.

Applying a development of Bourdieu’s economy of practices (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) to the subject of careers, we present an alternative to this literature and answer this call. Linking the idea of career fields (Iellatchitch et al., 2003) with a multi-level reading of Bourdieu’s oeuvre (Özbilgin & Tatli, 2005), we reconstruct careers as sites of power. More specifically, we see careers as results of relational practices, or serious games, for and with career-related capital within a career field, for which career habitus serves as an embodied sense of, and boundary for, playing the game (Schneidhofer, 2013). Habitus—and thus the acquisition strategies and playing tactics of capital on the one hand, and conversion rates on the other—is the result of power dynamics, making the career game a serious one both for and over power. Outlining this idea, the remainder of this conceptual chapter contributes to the book in three ways: (1) With the focus on careers, we add an important subject having its roots in management and organization studies (Moore et al., 2007). Although careers research increasingly loses touch with its roots—for example, the very term ‘career’ disappeared from the Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management (Boxall et al., 2007) in favour of the term ‘talent management’ (Inkson et al., 2012: 328)—it nevertheless represents an important facet therein with its own tensions, one of which being the dialectic metatheme of individual agency versus social determinism. (2) With a relational perspective inspired by Bourdieu, we transcend this tension with a both-and solution (Bradbury & Bergmann Lichtenstein, 2000) and delineate careers on three levels (Özbilgin & Tatli, 2005): (a) on the macro level, emphasizing the context of careers (fields); (b) on the micro level, emphasizing the content of careers (capital); and (c) on the meso level, emphasizing the linking-pin for both (habitus). (3) Because these three levels are relationally intertwined, we reconstruct careers eventually as sites of power, as serious games (Ortner, 2006) for and over power, with recursive consequences for the agents’ bodies and the social structures within which they operate.

To this end, we will start with outlining our understanding of power. Subsequently, we will translate this understanding to the subject of careers, beginning with the context of careers (fields), followed by the content (capital) and completed with the connection between both (habitus). Finally we will delineate why careers are sites of power and what the consequences of this perspective might be.

On the Issue of Power

To Bourdieu, issues of power and domination are pervasive, even if agents do not necessarily recognize that on a conscious level (Golsorkhi et al., 2009). Although he did not have a classical sociology of power and domination in mind (in contrast to e.g. Max Weber), his theoretical cornerstones (field, capital, habitus) are interfused with both concepts (König & Berli, 2012): There are dominant and dominated agents within each field; there are agents with a lot of (and a viable structure of) capital, and agents with a less favourable capital portfolio; there are agents with a sense of the game, incorporated with a viable habitus, and agents lacking thereof. These three constructs, which may be conceived of as different levels of analysis (Özbilgin & Tatli, 2005), are relationally intertwined (Emirbayer, 1997): they make sense only together and for each other. And their relation is one of power: agents with the best established position-takings will possess the most favourable distribution of capital and the most viable sense for the game, able to make the rules of the game in order to keep making the rules. On top of this, agents develop an unconscious social belief in this hierarchy.

Consequently, Bourdieu’s understanding of power is different from viewpoints perceiving it as a property (be that as a property of individuals as with e.g. Pfeffer, 2010; as a property of interactions as with e.g. French & Raven, 1959; or as a property of structures as with e.g. Hellriegel & Slocum, 1978). Similarly, it differs from considerations of power and domination in terms of its visibility to outsiders (e.g. Lukes, 2005). In this point he is close to Foucault (see e.g. 1983: 116; 1982: 777), who considered power to be non-subjective yet intentional. Bourdieu conceptualized power as a process embedded in relations. The outcome (and, strictly speaking, the antecedent) is called practice, referring to what agents actually do. These practices depend heavily on two things: First, on the context within which agents operate—this represents the macro level of analysis, which shows a fundamental divide between agents who ‘have’ power, and those who ‘have not’. Second, they depend on the possibilities agents have, owing to both their genetical heritage and educational development. This is the other side of the same coin, referring to the micro level of analysis. Agents with a lot of, and a favourable composition of, capital may make the rules and thus ensure that they keep making the rules. Both aspects of practice are beyond structural determination on the one hand, or free will on the other. Due to the fact that power is embodied in the body and the brain of agents, their practices are logical to the point at which being logical would cease being practical (Bourdieu, 1990: 79), and set strategically without strategic intentions (Bourdieu, 1990: 11–12). Agents do not have to be aware of it, but they always act with respect to power in the course of their practices.

The result of vocationally oriented practices might be called a career. As a serious game for and with career-related capital within a career field, it is facilitated or aggravated by career habitus. The game is a political one—for and over power. And it is played in a social arena, called field, to which we will turn our focus first.

The State of the Field(s)

The prominence of the field idea is linked to the debate in social sciences of how social institutions emerge, gain stability, and change. Despite substantial differences regarding most, if not all, important elements in this discussion, there is also some common ground: the interest is in local social order which emerges, is sustained, and changes through the social relation between agents in a defined social space; the construction and reproduction of social institutions depend on various power sources—that is, pre-existing rules about interaction and resource distribution; and the institutions both constrain and enable social agents—for those benefiting from the existing rules, the enabling aspect is key, and for those at a disadvantage, the constraining aspect dominates (Fligstein, 2008). Field theories (Martin, 2003) in general seek to explain individual action patterns by recourse to agents’ position-takings vis-à-vis one another. Fields refer to the macro level of analysis (Özbilgin & Tatli, 2005). Note, though, that the micro-meso-macro differentiation is relative to the overall frame of thinking and there are different estimates about where to locate fields as “constructed meso level social orders” (Fligstein & McAdam, 2011: 9; italics by the authors) where individual action takes place.

There are three different understandings of Bourdieu’s field concept in the literature. The first originated in organization studies, particularly in institutional theory (Lounsbury, 2002; Lounsbury & Kaghan, 2001; Lounsbury & Ventresca, 2003). In contrast to using Bourdieu’s theory as a relational sociology of the individual (Lahire, 2003), its emphasis remains at the macro level of analysis. Therefore (competing) institutional logics and questions of work structuration come into focus. Nevertheless, corresponding research on the genesis and development of fields is important for the understanding outlined in the remainder of this chapter.

For the second understanding, coming from sociology, Huppatz and her colleagues (2009; Huppatz & Goodwin, 2013; Ross-Smith & Huppatz, 2010) conceptualize occupational fields. They draw on feminists’ rereadings of Bourdieu’s theories (Lovell, 2000; McCall, 1992; Skeggs, 2004). Although they do not refer to careers literature explicitly, their development of (gendered) capital has significant consequences for a relational understanding of careers as well. In their view, fields combine agents of a specific occupation (e.g. nurses, managers, or hairdressers). This certainly offers interesting insights in processes of occupational choice, discrimination, or segregation.

Standing for the third understanding of Bourdieu’s field concept, Tatli (2010) describes diversity managers’ agency influenced by three semi-autonomous fields: first, the institutional field of diversity management, within which the question regarding ‘good diversity management’ is at stake (see also Tatli, 2011); second, the business field, dealing with questions regarding the business case; and third, the cultural field, highlighting marginalization. Attempting to explain the careers of diversity managers, Schneidhofer et al. (forthcoming) pick up this idea, arguing that a career field of diversity managers emerges at the intersection of these three fields. The intersection provides the setting where the careers of managers in charge of diversity management are at stake.

This understanding is related to the career-focused view of fields by Iellatchitch et al. (2003), on which we draw subsequently. They conceptualize four career fields emerging from the interplay of tight or loose coupling of agents within a field (an idea borrowed from Orton & Weick, 1990) with stable or instable configurations (inspired by Perrow, 1984, and finally borrowed from Kelley, 1967, and Herkner, 1980). As a result, four career fields emerge (company world, free-floating professionalism, self-employment, and chronic flexibility). Agents seek to advance within such fields. By cross-cutting organizations, occupations, or professions, career fields thus represent the context for making a career. However, both the starting positions and the development possibilities are not the same for all players.

More precisely, each and every field is characterized by a fundamental hierarchy which is based on capital distributions (an idea which we will delineate in the section “Concepts of Capital”). On the one hand, the orthodoxy operates topologically at the centre of the field. The closer agents approximate this analytical category, the more they are able to make the rules of the game. They then have the potential to determine who may enter the field, what is necessary to advance within the field, and how exclusion may be performed. To be sure, fields are only semi-autonomous by nature, meaning that the field’s orthodoxy depends on relational obligations to other fields with which they operate. It might be the case that agents representing orthodoxy in one field may represent heresy in another (as in the case of intellectuals, whom Bourdieu depicts as the “dominated fraction of the dominating class”; Bourdieu, 2000a).

On the other hand heresy is closer to the margin of the field. Agents approximating heresy may play as well, but only according to (or in rebellion against) the rules the orthodoxy has imposed. Both forces, which have only analytic character (and are thus not to be thought of as corporal agents, or sources of collective conspiracy), develop and embody a belief in this hierarchy by the commitment to engage in this game, called doxa. This belief is pre-reflexive and mostly unconscious to agents. However, it is the basis (and the consequence) of the strategies and tactics that agents may develop.

Both ends of the spectrum—orthodoxy as well as heresy—derive their strategies and tactics not only from the objective structure of the field. There is also a subjective correspondence to the position-taking in the field, which enables/restricts strategies, tactics, and investments. In order to play the game, agents need capital, and that is what is at stake in the course of a career. In other words, the content of the career game is found on the micro level of analysis (‘as above so below’). Unfortunately, the very term ‘career capital’ is variously used in the contemporary literature.

Concepts of Capital

Capital is most prominently displayed in the mainstream concept of ‘the three ways of knowing’ (DeFillippi and Arthur, 1994). In times of ‘bound-aryless careers’ (Arthur, 1994) these career competencies should help to respond to changing contextual demands and are claimed to have mutual advantages for both the individual and organizations (Arthur et al., 1995). Knowing why relates to career motivation, personal meaning, identification, and self-conce...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Foreword*
• Contributors
• Introduction Management and Organisation Studies Meet Pierre Bourdieu
• Part I New Frontiers in Research and Theory
• Part II Empirical Insights
• Index