PhD defence with Michael Pedersen

In order to obtain the PhD degree Michael Pedersen, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy (Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies), has submitted his thesis entitled:

Tune in, Breakdown and Reboot – on the production of the self-managing employee

The thesis focus on one particular feature in the on-going debate on occupational stress: how stress relates to the burgeoning interest in employees’ ability to activate and manage their subjectivity in ways that result in productive cooperation. In short how stress relates to self-management. However, the thesis argues that stress is more than an unfortunate pathology of particular features of self-management it also impacts what kind of employees we are expected to be when self-managing. The thesis suggest that being self-managing and stress-fit involve the ability of employees to tune in to a life of productivity without breaking-down their body and soul. In fact the potential break-down of stress should act as an internal limit for personal productivity. As a way of rebooting to an ever more efficient self-management. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s ontology of social machines the thesis analyze the nuts and bolts of this tune in, breakdown and reboot movement and suggest that we are dealing with a social machinery which produce assumptions about self-management and stress that centers on the individual rather than the collective as the preferred site of stress-intervention.

Supervisor:

Professor Sverre Raffnsøe

Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS

Assessment Committee:

Associate Professor Bent Meier Sørensen (chairman)

Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS

Professor Peter Fleming

Queen Mary, University of London

Professor Steven D. Brown

University of Leicester

Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies will host small a reception after the defence.