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Never has the need to rethink the formal corporate form been more pressing than at the current juncture. In light of the major financial crisis that is on the cusp of precipitating a radical re-socialization of employment, this book will press the notion of the commons to provide a fresh perspective on what the corporation is, how it is constituted through social struggle and the shape the corporation might take in the near future. By introducing the idea of the commons, the aim of this book is to develop a more politically social understanding of organized work that will transcend the rather staid and obsolete model of the corporation currently dominating critical thinking. This book aims to reinvigorate critical appraisals of corporatized work institutions and the exploitation (both inside and outside the formal firm) they are based upon. Author Peter Fleming brings fresh insights to the study of work and provides a robust schema for understanding employment as a conflictual site of exploited social labour in which workers shape the contours of the corporation.
List of contents
Introduction Part I: Living Labour 1. Work, Life and the Commons 2. Struggle and the Contours of the Corporation Part II: Dead Labour 3. ‘The Factory of Unhappiness’ 4. Manufactured Sociality and the Simulated Commons Part III: Counter-Labour 5. Pseudo-Life and the Reassertion of Living-Labour 6. Exodus and the End of the Corporation (As We Know It?) Conclusion
About the author
Peter Fleming is Professor of Work and Organization at Queen Mary College, University of London. Peter has previously held posts at the University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge. He is interested in developing a critical political economy of organizations (especially corporations) and examining the ethical substance of participating in them. He has written three books, Contesting the Corporation (2007), Charting Corporate Corruption (2009) and Authenticity and the Cultural Politics of Work (2009).
Summary
Never has the need to rethink the formal corporate form been more pressing than at the current juncture. In light of the major financial crisis that is on the cusp of precipitating a radical re-socialization of employment, this book will press the notion of the commons to provide a fresh perspective on what the corporation is, how it is constituted through social struggle and the shape the corporation might take in the near future. By introducing the idea of the commons, the aim of this book is to develop a more politically social understanding of organized work that will transcend the rather staid and obsolete model of the corporation currently dominating critical thinking.
This book aims to reinvigorate critical appraisals of corporatized work institutions and the exploitation (both inside and outside the formal firm) they are based upon. Author Peter Fleming brings fresh insights to the study of work and provides a robust schema for understanding employment as a conflictual site of exploited social labour in which workers shape the contours of the corporation.
