Forum

Cultural Discourses
and Discursive Resources
for Meaning/ful Work

Management
Communication Quarterly
Volume 22 Number 1
August 2008 162-171
2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/0893318908318262
http://mcq.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Constructing and Disrupting

Identities in Contemporary Capitalism
Timothy Kuhn
University of Colorado at Boulder

Annis G. Golden
University at Albany

Jane Jorgenson
University of South Florida

Patrice M. Buzzanell
Brenda L. Berkelaar
Lorraine G. Kisselburgh
Purdue University

Sharon Kleinman
Quinnipiac University

Disraelly Cruz
University of Missouri

n their landmark The New Spirit of Capitalism, Boltanski and Chiapello

(2005) show how, over time, capitalism has generated differing ideologies, or spirits, to justify the systems existence. To defend capitalism
against criticisms of its harms for individuals, its present version frames
work as a key source of personal meaningfulness and identity creation.
Tracing the contours of this capitalist spirit, Boltanski and Chiapello show
that finding meaning in work increasingly requires that people blur distinctions between private and professional lives, become free agents who identify with their career over any given organization, and display continual
flexibility, self-control, and creativity. Discourses that apply most clearly to
economic concerns are embedded in determinations of meaning and significance well beyond corporate settings, as concerns for accountability, sustainability, and efficiency are now common across social domains. Although
there is no shortage of proclamations of such dramatic changes, Boltanski

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and Chiapello usefully highlight the need to understand the social and institutional forces that shape peoples orientation to work and, in so doing,
draw attention to how personal identities and work commitments are
formed well beyond participation in specific organizations. Following this
reasoning, our aim in this article is not to define meaning or to delineate the
organizational practices that make work meaningful (e.g., Brief & Nord,
1990; Driver, 2007; Loher, Noe, Moeller, & Fitzgerald, 1985). Rather, we
examine how the capitalist spirits conception of meaningfulness is discursively constructed (as well as disrupted) and how these constructions shape
personal identities.1

Discursive Resources
As a first step in this direction, we consider the discursive resource: a concept, phrase, expression, trope, or other linguistic device that (a) is drawn
from practices or texts, (b) is designed to affect other practices and texts, (c)
explains past or present action, and (d) provides a horizon for future practice
(Fairclough, 1992; Kuhn & Nelson, 2002; Watson, 1994). Discursive
resources, then, are tools that guide interpretations of experience and
shape the construction of preferred conceptions of persons and groups; in so
doing, they participate in identity regulation and identity work (Alvesson &
Willmott, 2002; Fournier, 1999). Because our aim is to show how meanings
about work are constructed from a wide array of discourses, we consider how
three contextsorganizations, occupational subcultures, and commercial
organizing systemssupply identity-shaping discursive resources.
One key context supplying discursive resources is the formal organization. The majority of research on works meaningfulness focuses on these
settings, where satisfaction and frustration are most palpable. Although
attention commonly focuses on objective job characteristics as producing
(or inhibiting) meaning, a focus on discursive resources shows how meanings and identities are not merely the outcomes of task activity. Kornberger
and Brown (2007), for instance, discussed how a consultancy promoted an
individualistic conception of ethics through training and socialization,
which provided a sense of pride that united disparate organizational
practices and shaped employees self-narratives. Moreover, Kuhn (2006)
showed how discursive resources can be organizationally and geographically distinct and, as such, can provide differing possibilities for meaning
making around a core identity concern: employees commitment of time to
work. And although commercial firms are a common site for such investigations, nonprofit organizations likewise develop discursive resources that

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shape meaning. In many nonprofit organizations, where monetary compensation is minimal or nonexistent, people draw on discursive resources framing work as a spiritual calling (Scott, 2007), an individual sacrifice for the
betterment of others (Musick & Wilson, 2008; Smith, Arendt, Lahman,
Settle, & Duff, 2006), or an opportunity to become advocates for important
causes (Cull & Hardy, 1974; Musick & Wilson, 2008; Wilson, 2000). The
discursive resources supplied by formal organizations, then, become available for appropriation by members; the members then use the set of available discursive resources to constitute personal identities by both making
sense of their work and infusing it with value.
Beyond the immediate organizational context, occupational subcultures
also provide arenas for creating and negotiating work meanings. The construction of professional and occupational selves occurs in the earliest
stages of socialization to careers as workers in training acquire specific languages and understandings, along with skills and expertise; occupational
identities continue to form as workers participate in communities and networks of practice (Brown & Duguid, 2001; Lave & Wenger, 1991) with colleagues who share membership in professional associations (Down &
Reveley, 2004). Occupational identities are situationally adaptable, and
specific repertoires tend to be employed strategically. For example, Fines
(1996) study of restaurant workers revealed that professional cooks analogize their work as art, business, profession, or manual labor,
depending on the demands of the task at hand. Their discursive resources
not only provide distinctive repertoires of images for sense making but also
shape strategic (dis)identifications. Likewise, Jorgenson (2002) found that
women engineers sought to distance themselves from minority-based professional organizations such as the Society for Women Engineers by referring to such organizations as extremist and treehuggers. These engineers
drew on a discursive resource portraying engineering as a gender-neutral
field to assert their identities as qualified professionals.
A final source of discursive resources, commercial organizing systems
such as Daytimers, FranklinCovey, and Llamagraphics Life Balance
present workers with technological and discursive resources for defining the
nature of work and its relationship to the rest of life (Golden & Geisler, 2006,
2007; Medved, Golden, & Jorgenson, 2005). FranklinCovey, for example,
employs powerful metaphors to teach and reinforce the systems values.
System users are exhorted to plan activities that sharpen the saw, or care
for the physical, social-emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of the self
(FranklinCovey, 2002). The self is thus, metaphorically, a tool: an object
defined by its utility for carrying out work. Yet it is not just any tool, but one

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whose usefulness (unlike, say, a hammer) depends on maintaining its cutting

edge and which may become degraded by use if not cared for. The power of
this metaphor and others associated with the system as discursive resources
derives from their capacity to convey a complex set of meanings in a simple
and memorable image and from their ability to align with (and reproduce)
broader cultural values (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Such organizing systems
discursive resources blend utilitarian and expressive individualism (Bellah,
Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985) in their portrayal of work as one
part of a life that forms, overall, a coherent whole. That whole, in turn,
expresses ones innermost selfa self that can be reflexively shaped by the
exercise of a disciplined and commodified agency.

Discourses
As mentioned above, discursive resources are linguistic devices drawn
from practices and texts. When we seek to understand meaningfulness (and
identity construction) through discursive resources, attention must turn to
the cultural forces shaping and conditioning these linguistic choices.
Following Foucaults thinking, these forces can be considered Discourses
(with an uppercase D): standardized ways of referring to/constituting a
certain type of phenomenon that are formed in particular socioeconomic
and historical locations and embody both cultural assumptions and aspects
of everyday reality (Alvesson & Krreman, 2000, p. 1134). Discourses
order social relations, inform subjectivities, and make possible particular
discursive resources.
A danger facing analysts who seek to examine the meaningfulness of
work under the contemporary capitalist spirit is that a simple and deterministic line of reasoning connects Discourses and discursive resources.
Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) present a relatively monolithic spirit that
justifies work as meaningful when that work contributes to self-worth and
self-actualization (Bernstein, 1997; Frye, Kisselburgh, & Butts, 2007)
provided it is a real job that contributes to ones career progression
(Buzzanell & Lucas, 2006; Clair, 1996). Yet there is ample evidence that
this Discourse is neither as unitary or sutured as critics such as Boltanski and
Chiapello would have us believe. Accordingly, in this section, we present two
Discourses characterizing contemporary capitalism that simultaneously
inform and disrupt the meaning(s) of work. Two Discourses in particular
impermanence and differenceproblematize the temporality, physicality,
materiality, and unity of works meaningfulness.

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Impermanence Discourses
Impermanence relates to spatio-temporal issues concerning work and
career, including insecurities of work continuity, temporary or contingent
work, contract work, and the material conditions of doing work that
changes based on technologies, stigma, or status (e.g., Ashforth & Kreiner,
1999; Ballard & Gossett, 2007; Buzzanell & Lucas, 2006). The outsourcing of work to global locations, the creation of transnational workers,
automation, and the virtual nature of work within and beyond distributed
workplaces suggest impermanence (e.g., Jones & Wallace, 2007; McMillin,
2007; Pal & Buzzanell, 2008; Woodard, 2007). Promises that information
and communication technologies will support flexible lifestyles, produce
less paternalistic and more fluid work arrangements, and relieve time
stress (Haddon, 2004; Olsen, 2007) are unrealized for those who take their
work everywhere and must be always available (Kleinman, 2007).
Although impermanence affords opportunitiesincluding the possibility
of work and careers more aligned with individual desires that provide
promises of less paternalistic and more fluid work arrangementsthe
Discourse of works impermanence problematizes the promises of capitalisms
rewards. The new capitalist spirit acknowledges impermanence, seeing career
as the possession and responsibility of the individual, but it obscures the points
that (a) impermanence rarely provides financial security in contemporary
work, (b) those able to take advantage of impermanence often benefit at the
expense of those who are not so flexible (Sennett, 1998, 2006), and (c) the
anxiety accompanying impermanence can be a direct benefit to employers
who pit laborers against one another in wage and benefit struggles.

Difference Discourses
Identity formation is simultaneously about actors being shaped by
Discursive categorizations while also constructing a (more or less) distinctive sense of self (Jenkins, 1996). Consequently, it should come as no surprise that a set of Discourses generates difference in subjectivities through
varying positions for gender, class, culture, religion, age, health, and status.
For instance, Discourses of religion shape the value of both mens and
womens work outside the home, along with conceptions of good work
(Bernstein, 1997). Discourses of difference can subvert pressures of impermanence and capitalistic productivity, as represented in the simple life
and slow movements that produce antimainstream counternarratives.
Moreover, Discourses informing generational differences, from depressionera adults to postindustrial to the new millennials, shift sense making about
topics such as worklife balance.

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One of the most frequently examined Discourses of difference concerns

gender. Gendered Discourses about appropriate work and career are often
powerful influences on meaning and life trajectories as well. In the United
States, young girls receive powerful messages that associate meaningful work
for women with social contribution, creativity, and design. Significantly,
these messages do not typically concern the mechanistic thinking and independent action that underlie meaningfulness in disciplines such as science,
technology, and engineering (Kisselburgh, Buzzanell, & Berkelaar, 2007;
Kleinman, 1998). Gendering occupations and careers not only excludes
potential contributors to occupations but also maintains gendered wage
inequities. Men are likewise subject to gendered Discourses; they receive
conflicting messages about masculinity, parenting, and the need to retain
responsibility as the primary economic providers for their family (Ashcraft &
Mumby, 2004; Duckworth & Buzzanell, 2007; Mumby, 1998). Taken
together, gendered Discourses suggest that, for situated subjects, tensions and
contradictions characterize the search for meaning around work.
Of course, relatively few are able to fulfill the requirements of the contemporary spirit of capitalism, limited by socioeconomic flexibility, ablebodiedness, or health. Given the wide array of Discursively constructed
subject positions involved in global and multicultural organizations, creating alliances with others when the meanings and practice of work diverge
is becoming more challenging. Therefore, difference names both a tension
and contradiction in what are normally portrayed as monolithic discourses
about meaningful work. Difference Discourses, as well as the Discourses
of impermanence discussed above, thus problematize the incarnation of
meaningful work, enhance as well as inhibit the practice of work, and disrupt
simple determinations of who belongs, has opportunities, and succeeds.

Conclusion
Our consideration of the Discourses and discursive resources shaping
the meaning(s) of work shows how Discourses, and the discursive resources
they shape, produce a complex conception of works meaningfulness. In
this sense, our article does not merely fill out the spirit sketched by the
likes of Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) but also displays how the discursive construction of meaningfulness is wrapped up in identity projects that
extend both into and beyond formal organizations boundaries.
An interesting implication of this examination is that the agency apparently characterizing discursive resources pertaining to meaningful work

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ironically helps to mask its disciplinary power. Discursive resources supplied by formal organizations, occupations, and organizing systems enable
identity construction and self-management but also obscure systemic constraints on agency and their grounding in gendered, classed, and raced
Discourses about the freedom workers enjoy in their orientation to work.
The tension between discursive resources that place the locus of control and
responsibility for the quality of the work experience with the individual
worker, on one hand, and structural constraints on workers abilities to exercise control, on the other hand, points to the importance of individual
reflexivity in negotiating the meaning of work. This tension highlights the
seminal role of research surfacing such assumptions and the importance of
pedagogy as a means to promote understanding of the conditions of meaningful work.
As organizational communication researchers continue to sort through
intersections between language-in-use and cultural models about work,
studies of the meaningfulness (or meaninglessness) of work would be
enriched by analyses explicating connections between Discourses and discursive resources. Although an uncritical preoccupation with meaning
can simply reinforce the prevailing capitalist spirit, d/Discourse-based
research of the sort considered here is well suited to reshape how we make
sense of works meaning.

Note
1. Meaning, as Taylor (1989) shows, is often used ambiguously in the literature on identity.
It sometimes carries a semantic connotation, as in the meaning of a word, where the conception
is of the sense and reference of the term. More frequently in modern times, however, meaning
concerns the point or purpose of ones life, the often-teleological value of ones biography.
Our concern in this essay is primarily with the latter definition, though we (along with Taylor)
acknowledge that meanings-as-purpose depend on the non-neutral meaning-generating capacity
of language.

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Timothy Kuhn (PhD, Arizona State University, 2000) is associate professor of communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research centers on the ways that identities and
knowledge are discursively constructed in organizing practice, particularly under contemporary
knowledge-based capitalism.
Annis G. Golden (PhD, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1998) is an assistant professor in the
Communication Department at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her
research focuses on womens and mens communicative management of their relationships to the
organizations that employ them, including the ways in which these relationships are mediated by
new information and communication technologies.
Jane Jorgenson (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1986) is an associate professor in the
Department of Communication at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on recent
workplace changes, including trends in work flexibility and the implications for family life.
Patrice M. Buzzanell (PhD, Purdue University, 1987) is professor and the W. Charles and Ann
Redding Fellow in the Department of Communication at Purdue University and is a former editor of Management Communication Quarterly. Her current research projects include a coedited
book with Donal Carbaugh, Distinctive Qualities in Communication Research, and continued
work on the gendered constructions of career, leadership, and work-life.
Brenda L. Berkelaar (MA, Seton Hall University) is a doctoral student and Andrews Fellow in
the Department of Communication at Purdue University. Her current research projects include an
international study on how children talk about engineering, a study on perceptions of computing
majors, and studies on the influence of information technology on organizations.
Lorraine G. Kisselburgh (MS, Purdue University) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Communication at Purdue University. Her research interests lie at the intersections of organizations, technology, and difference, and she is currently conducting research on gendered constructions of science, technology, and engineering work and careers.
Sharon Kleinman (PhD, Cornell University, 1998) is professor of communications at Quinnipiac
University. Her research focuses on the history and social implications of communication technologies and on issues concerning online and place-based communities.
Disraelly Cruz (MA, Florida State University) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of
Communication at the University of Missouri. Her current research interests lie in understanding
issues of work-life enrichment, role identity, and role management in nonprofit and voluntary
organizations.