Erik Mygind Du Plessis
Biographic Data
| ID | 389997 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erik Mygind Du Plessis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erik Mygind |
| FAMILY NAME | Du Plessis |
| SIGNATURE | DU PLESSIS E M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Copenhagen Business School |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1050-6561 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
A processual perspective on alternative organization: Reorienting critical research through a study of two political parties
This article reorients Critical Management Studies (CMS) literature on alternative organization by proposing a processual perspective that relies on Foucault’s concept of ‘critique’ and Mathiesen’s notion of ‘the unfinished’. Rejecting the predefined and normative conception of alternativity that guides much CMS literature, we suggest viewing alternatives as constituted through ever-changing processes of making and breaking dominant orders. This …
Mindful co-optations? Exploring the responses of mindfulness teachers to the risk of co-optation
This paper explores the responses of mindfulness teachers to the risk of co-optation as identified by recent critical research on mindfulness meditation in organizations. As such, this risk is not revelatory to the mindfulness teachers, but rather understood as a basic condition of their work. Through ethnographic observations and interviews with mindfulness teachers, the paper consequently identifies three responses to the dominant conception of…
Prepping as implicit activism: Risk, Danger, and Post-Capitalist Imaginaries in Prepper Literature
This paper explores the increasingly widespread practice of prepping, and examines how it differs from conventional forms of activism, which generally involve explicit and purposeful efforts to instigate collective social change.Drawing on Luhmann's sociological theory of risk and the narrative concept of foreshadowing, the paper explores how preppers understand the future and their own responsibility in shaping it, as well as the ways in which t…
The communicative constitution of atomization: Online prepper communities and the crisis of collective action
As environmental and societal crises increase in numbers, severity, and urgency, online forums for so-called “doomsday preppers” have seen a concomitant surge in membership. Beginning from the perspective of communicative constitution of organization, we explore the sociotechnical communities that emerge on such forums. Methodologically, we use netnographic observations to show that online prepper communities are organizational, in the sense of b…
Mindfulness—it’s not what you think: Toward critical reconciliation with progressive self-development practices
The aim of the following paper is to nuance the way in which mindfulness meditation, understood as a set of practices aimed at moment-tomoment awareness, is generally perceived in critical management studies as well as the broader critical social sciences. According to the general consensus, self-development practices thus produce various individual pathologies and reinforce the societal status quo. Using mindfulness meditation as an example, and…
Speaking truth through power: Conceptualizing internal whistleblowing hotlines with Foucault’s dispositive
This article is an examination of the various ambivalences, limitations and dilemmas that are associated with the internal whistleblowing hotline – which is conceptualized as a management technique that strives to contain, codify, constrain, standardize, and neutralize acts of speaking up against illegal or unethical practices. In other words the interest is on what happens when the critical practice of whistleblowing or ‘speaking truth to power’…
Justifying the bored self: On projective, domestic, and civic boredom in Danish retail banking
In the wake of the financial crisis, Danish retail bankers have experienced a marked increase in mundane administrative tasks, which do not conform to what they expect their work lives to be. Seeking to understand how the bankers cope with this, the paper conducts a qualitative inquiry into the identity work of Danish retail bankers, focusing on the ways in which they reconcile experiences of boredom with their work-identity. Drawing on pragmatic…
‘Be a model, not a critic’: Self-help culture, implicit censorship and the silent organization
This article seeks to explain ‘silent organizations’ (i.e. organizations with an absence of critical voices) through an analytical perspective derived from Judith Butler’s work on censorship, and in this way suggest an alternative to explanations in the existing literature on employee silence, which are often tied to the actions and motivations of the individual employee. It is thus argued that self-help books are reflective of wider cultural dyn…
Wegotthis: Queer parrhesia in the register of parodic paranoia
Queer parrhesia is an activist mode of speaking truth to power that destabilizes dominant societal positions and their opposition. We develop this concept and illustrate one of its registers, parodic paranoia, through a close reading of the whistleblower and transactivist Chelsea Manning’s bid to run for U.S. Senate in the 2018 Democratic primaries. Hacktivism and transactivism, we show, constitute rhetorical manoeuvres by which Manning performs …
Alternativity as freedom: Exploring tactics of emergence in alternative forms of organizing
This article proposes that being alternative is not a question of adhering to certain principles or applying certain practices, but rather a question of freedom. It does so by exploring three empirical cases of alternative organizing, namely the sustainable fin-tech start-up SusPens, teachers of mindfulness meditation, and the UK minor party Independents for Frome. The article first identifies a common trajectory, according to which alternative o…
Mobning som (mod)magt – En foucauldiansk analyse af humoristiske krænkende handlinger i hospitalsarbejde
Denne artikel undersøger en systematisk og allestedsnærværende humoristiskog drillende omgangsform blandt læger og sygeplejersker på Rigshospitalet,der defineres som mobning. Med afsæt i Michel Foucaults konceptualiseringeraf magt, modmagt og agonisme belyses, hvordan de humoristiskekrænkende drillerier emergerer i mødet mellem et lægefagligt ideal om ufejlbarlighedog en formel stram styring af arbejdet med det formål, at de ansattekan ventilere …
How to perpetuate problems of the self: Applying Foucault’s concept of problematization to popular self-help books on work and career
This article investigates how popular self-help books on work and career construct problems and solutions related to the subject and its working life. The investigation draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘problematization’ along with concepts of governmentality and ethical self-government. The first part of the analysis shows how problems in self-help are generally articulated as different types of inadequacies, which must accordingly be amend…
An Interview with Arlie Russell Hochschild: Critique and the Sociology of Emotions: Fear, Neoliberalism and the Acid Rainproof Fish
Arlie Russell Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include: The Managed Heart (1983), The Second Shift (1989), The Time Bind (1997) and The Commercialization of Intimate Life (2003). In her work, Hochschild explores the many ways we manage our emotions in personal life and perform emotional labor in the workplace. Her most recent work explores the growing political divide in America, an…
Hjælp til selvcensur
Et selvhjaelpskulturelt perspektiv p den tavse organisation Self-help and self-censorship: A self-help cultural perspective on organizational silence This paper seeks to explain silence in the workplace through an analytical perspective derived from Judith Butlers work on censorship, and in this way suggest an alternative to explanations in the existing literature on employee silence, which are often tied to the actions and motivations of the ind…
Det utilstrækkelige subjekt – En foucauldiansk analyse af selvhjælpslitterær selvstyring
Denne artikel undersøger, hvordan bestemte personlighedstræk søges problematiseret og kultiveret i moderne selvhjælpslitteratur. Undersøgelsen, som har et særligt fokus på autonomi, trækker teoretisk på Michel Foucaults begreb problematisering samt Foucaults tanker om governmentality og selvstyring. Artiklen kombinerer disse analytiske perspektiver i et forsøg på at vise, hvordan det autonome subjekt forsøges kultiveret på trods af det paradoks d…
Alternativity as freedom: Exploring tactics of emergence in alternative forms of organizing
This article proposes that being alternative is not a question of adhering to certain principles or applying certain practices, but rather a question of freedom. It does so by exploring three empirical cases of alternative organizing, namely the sustainable fin-tech start-up SusPens, teachers of mindfulness meditation, and the UK minor party Independents for Frome. The article first identifies a common trajectory, according to which alternative o…
How to perpetuate problems of the self: Applying Foucault’s concept of problematization to popular self-help books on work and career
This article investigates how popular self-help books on work and career construct problems and solutions related to the subject and its working life. The investigation draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘problematization’ along with concepts of governmentality and ethical self-government. The first part of the analysis shows how problems in self-help are generally articulated as different types of inadequacies, which must accordingly be amend…
A processual perspective on alternative organization: Reorienting critical research through a study of two political parties
This article reorients Critical Management Studies (CMS) literature on alternative organization by proposing a processual perspective that relies on Foucault’s concept of ‘critique’ and Mathiesen’s notion of ‘the unfinished’. Rejecting the predefined and normative conception of alternativity that guides much CMS literature, we suggest viewing alternatives as constituted through ever-changing processes of making and breaking dominant orders. This …
An Interview with Arlie Russell Hochschild: Critique and the Sociology of Emotions: Fear, Neoliberalism and the Acid Rainproof Fish
Arlie Russell Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include: The Managed Heart (1983), The Second Shift (1989), The Time Bind (1997) and The Commercialization of Intimate Life (2003). In her work, Hochschild explores the many ways we manage our emotions in personal life and perform emotional labor in the workplace. Her most recent work explores the growing political divide in America, an…
Prepping as implicit activism: Risk, Danger, and Post-Capitalist Imaginaries in Prepper Literature
This paper explores the increasingly widespread practice of prepping, and examines how it differs from conventional forms of activism, which generally involve explicit and purposeful efforts to instigate collective social change.Drawing on Luhmann's sociological theory of risk and the narrative concept of foreshadowing, the paper explores how preppers understand the future and their own responsibility in shaping it, as well as the ways in which t…
Det utilstrækkelige subjekt – En foucauldiansk analyse af selvhjælpslitterær selvstyring
Denne artikel undersøger, hvordan bestemte personlighedstræk søges problematiseret og kultiveret i moderne selvhjælpslitteratur. Undersøgelsen, som har et særligt fokus på autonomi, trækker teoretisk på Michel Foucaults begreb problematisering samt Foucaults tanker om governmentality og selvstyring. Artiklen kombinerer disse analytiske perspektiver i et forsøg på at vise, hvordan det autonome subjekt forsøges kultiveret på trods af det paradoks d…
Hjælp til selvcensur
Et selvhjaelpskulturelt perspektiv p den tavse organisation Self-help and self-censorship: A self-help cultural perspective on organizational silence This paper seeks to explain silence in the workplace through an analytical perspective derived from Judith Butlers work on censorship, and in this way suggest an alternative to explanations in the existing literature on employee silence, which are often tied to the actions and motivations of the ind…
An Interview with Arlie Russell Hochschild: Critique and the Sociology of Emotions: Fear, Neoliberalism and the Acid Rainproof Fish
Arlie Russell Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include: The Managed Heart (1983), The Second Shift (1989), The Time Bind (1997) and The Commercialization of Intimate Life (2003). In her work, Hochschild explores the many ways we manage our emotions in personal life and perform emotional labor in the workplace. Her most recent work explores the growing political divide in America, an…
Mobning som (mod)magt – En foucauldiansk analyse af humoristiske krænkende handlinger i hospitalsarbejde
Denne artikel undersøger en systematisk og allestedsnærværende humoristiskog drillende omgangsform blandt læger og sygeplejersker på Rigshospitalet,der defineres som mobning. Med afsæt i Michel Foucaults konceptualiseringeraf magt, modmagt og agonisme belyses, hvordan de humoristiskekrænkende drillerier emergerer i mødet mellem et lægefagligt ideal om ufejlbarlighedog en formel stram styring af arbejdet med det formål, at de ansattekan ventilere …
How to perpetuate problems of the self: Applying Foucault’s concept of problematization to popular self-help books on work and career
This article investigates how popular self-help books on work and career construct problems and solutions related to the subject and its working life. The investigation draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘problematization’ along with concepts of governmentality and ethical self-government. The first part of the analysis shows how problems in self-help are generally articulated as different types of inadequacies, which must accordingly be amend…
Mindfulness—it’s not what you think: Toward critical reconciliation with progressive self-development practices
The aim of the following paper is to nuance the way in which mindfulness meditation, understood as a set of practices aimed at moment-tomoment awareness, is generally perceived in critical management studies as well as the broader critical social sciences. According to the general consensus, self-development practices thus produce various individual pathologies and reinforce the societal status quo. Using mindfulness meditation as an example, and…
Speaking truth through power: Conceptualizing internal whistleblowing hotlines with Foucault’s dispositive
This article is an examination of the various ambivalences, limitations and dilemmas that are associated with the internal whistleblowing hotline – which is conceptualized as a management technique that strives to contain, codify, constrain, standardize, and neutralize acts of speaking up against illegal or unethical practices. In other words the interest is on what happens when the critical practice of whistleblowing or ‘speaking truth to power’…
Justifying the bored self: On projective, domestic, and civic boredom in Danish retail banking
In the wake of the financial crisis, Danish retail bankers have experienced a marked increase in mundane administrative tasks, which do not conform to what they expect their work lives to be. Seeking to understand how the bankers cope with this, the paper conducts a qualitative inquiry into the identity work of Danish retail bankers, focusing on the ways in which they reconcile experiences of boredom with their work-identity. Drawing on pragmatic…
‘Be a model, not a critic’: Self-help culture, implicit censorship and the silent organization
This article seeks to explain ‘silent organizations’ (i.e. organizations with an absence of critical voices) through an analytical perspective derived from Judith Butler’s work on censorship, and in this way suggest an alternative to explanations in the existing literature on employee silence, which are often tied to the actions and motivations of the individual employee. It is thus argued that self-help books are reflective of wider cultural dyn…
Wegotthis: Queer parrhesia in the register of parodic paranoia
Queer parrhesia is an activist mode of speaking truth to power that destabilizes dominant societal positions and their opposition. We develop this concept and illustrate one of its registers, parodic paranoia, through a close reading of the whistleblower and transactivist Chelsea Manning’s bid to run for U.S. Senate in the 2018 Democratic primaries. Hacktivism and transactivism, we show, constitute rhetorical manoeuvres by which Manning performs …
Alternativity as freedom: Exploring tactics of emergence in alternative forms of organizing
This article proposes that being alternative is not a question of adhering to certain principles or applying certain practices, but rather a question of freedom. It does so by exploring three empirical cases of alternative organizing, namely the sustainable fin-tech start-up SusPens, teachers of mindfulness meditation, and the UK minor party Independents for Frome. The article first identifies a common trajectory, according to which alternative o…
The communicative constitution of atomization: Online prepper communities and the crisis of collective action
As environmental and societal crises increase in numbers, severity, and urgency, online forums for so-called “doomsday preppers” have seen a concomitant surge in membership. Beginning from the perspective of communicative constitution of organization, we explore the sociotechnical communities that emerge on such forums. Methodologically, we use netnographic observations to show that online prepper communities are organizational, in the sense of b…
Mindful co-optations? Exploring the responses of mindfulness teachers to the risk of co-optation
This paper explores the responses of mindfulness teachers to the risk of co-optation as identified by recent critical research on mindfulness meditation in organizations. As such, this risk is not revelatory to the mindfulness teachers, but rather understood as a basic condition of their work. Through ethnographic observations and interviews with mindfulness teachers, the paper consequently identifies three responses to the dominant conception of…
Prepping as implicit activism: Risk, Danger, and Post-Capitalist Imaginaries in Prepper Literature
This paper explores the increasingly widespread practice of prepping, and examines how it differs from conventional forms of activism, which generally involve explicit and purposeful efforts to instigate collective social change.Drawing on Luhmann's sociological theory of risk and the narrative concept of foreshadowing, the paper explores how preppers understand the future and their own responsibility in shaping it, as well as the ways in which t…
A processual perspective on alternative organization: Reorienting critical research through a study of two political parties
This article reorients Critical Management Studies (CMS) literature on alternative organization by proposing a processual perspective that relies on Foucault’s concept of ‘critique’ and Mathiesen’s notion of ‘the unfinished’. Rejecting the predefined and normative conception of alternativity that guides much CMS literature, we suggest viewing alternatives as constituted through ever-changing processes of making and breaking dominant orders. This …
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works)