Michael Pedersen

Adjunkt , cand.merc.(fil.), PhD
Michael Pedersen

Institut for Ledelse, Politik og Filosofi

Porcelænshaven 18B
DK-2000 Frederiksberg

Tlf.: +45 3815 2656
Mobiltelefon: +45 2271 4448
Fax:+45 3815 3635
E-mail: mip.lpf@cbs.dk

Link til denne hjemmeside: www.cbs.dk/staff/m_pedersen

It limits the possible; it destroys coherence; it consumes capabilities. Work-place stress is a crisis that pervades and undermines the social order of contemporary work. In my thesis I focus on one particular feature in this debate on occupational stress: how stress relates to the burgeoning interest in ability of employees themselves to activate and self-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. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s ontology of social machines, this thesis sketches out how stress among self-managing employees, and in particular the manner in which stress is reduced to a matter of individual coping, can be viewed as an organising process that separates, joins and codes the ontological fabric of our lives. In this regard, certain modes of existence centred on stress issues and the coping strategies of individuals are themselves produced as an individual responsibility for maximizing one’s own productivity as a self-managing employee. To be a self-managing employee within this mode of existence is to tunein to a life of productivity without breaking-down one’s 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. Thus my thesis suggest that the nuts and bolts making up the relation between self-management and stress is part of a mode of existence that sets up certain expectations about stress and the enterprise of dealing with stress as an individual, rather than a social endeavour

Primære forskningsområder

Self-management and stress
Cynicism and authenticity among self-managing employees
Relationship between management technologies (e.g. performance management, talent management and coaching) and self-management
Relationship between contemporary philosophy and management, work, organisation, etc.

Udvalgte publikationer

M. Pedersen (2010) ’A career is nothing without a personal life’: monads, nomads and the production of the authentic employee, ephemera, Under review
M. Pedersen & S.L. Muhr (2010) Recently updated selves: Facebook as an Interpassive Medium. Facebook and Philosophy, Open court books.
M. Pedersen, P.T. Andersen, A. Buch & J. Buchardt (2010): Metoder i arbejdslivet – forskningens veje til indsigt II, Tidsskrift for Arbejsliv 12 (1) 5-7
M. Pedersen, P.T. Andersen, A. Buch & J. Buchardt (2009): Metoder i arbejdslivet – forskningens veje til indsigt II, Tidsskrift for Arbejsliv 11 (4) 5-7
M. Pedersen, R. Johnsen & S.L. Muhr (2009): The frantic gesture of interpassivity – Maintaining the separation between the corporate and authentic self, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22 (2) 202-213
M. Pedersen, B. M. Sørensen & Lena Olaison (2009) ‘No we can’t’. Crisis as Chance. Ephemera, 9(1) pp. 1-7
M.Pedersen (2009): Tune in, break down and reboot: On the production of the stress-fit self-managing employee . Ph.d. Thesis. Copenhagen Business School p. 272