LEADER 06040nam 2200781 450 001 9910821908503321 005 20200120094842.0 010 $a1-5261-3039-4 024 7 $a10.7765/9781526130396 035 $a(CKB)3810000000290603 035 $a(OCoLC)1085659488 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse72822 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL5405954 035 $a(OCoLC)1007371113 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC5405954 035 $a(UkMaJRU)992980136123501631 035 $a(DE-B1597)659523 035 $a(DE-B1597)9781526130396 035 $a(EXLCZ)993810000000290603 100 $a20200120h20172012 fy| 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||#---||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aTelling tales $ework, narrative and identity in a market age /$fAngela Lait 210 1$aManchester, UK :$cManchester University Press,$d2017. 210 4$dİ2012 215 $a1 online resource (xii, 242 pages) $cdigital file(s) 311 $a0-7190-8522-5 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages [220]-233) and index. 327 $a1 Business -- I. Taking charge: management and self-management in a flexible culture -- II. Manuals of becoming: self-help for the failing -- 2. Identity Sink or swim: the dilemma of the failing middle-class professional -- 3. Trauma Ian McEwan's Saturday: a tale of the vulnerable professional -- 4. Escape Heaven, heroes and horticulture: the search for solace and meaning -- .5 Recovery Narratives of becoming: slow working towards a better life-story -- 6. Autobiography -- Writing the self -- Conclusion The meaning and value of self-mastery -- Appendices -- Bibliography --Index 330 $aTelling tales explores the narrative construction of identity within organisations and how this is resisted and challenged by writing coming from other lifestyles.Since the early 1990s, US-inspired changes in workplace culture have radically altered the experience of UK workers. This book argues that the corporate communication supporting these changes, which seeks to align employee behaviour and attitudes with emerging organisational market values, is having a powerful and harmful effect on those whose identity rests in opposing qualitatively-based occupational standards. By focusing on accountability measures, introduced to the public sector post-1997 by New Labour as a means to raise productivity and lower cost, and with forensic attention to a supporting transformational identity discourse, author Angela Lait shows how workers struggle to achieve the satisfaction and fulfilment at work that was once the mainstay of their professional middle class identity.Reading these identity problems into and across business self-help manuals, fiction (Ian McEwan's Saturday), the writing of celebrity chefs (Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver et al) and autobiography, the argument traces a sickness/recovery dialectic in which sufferers find resistance and solace through engagement with particular types of creative labour. These are, most notably, cookery, gardening and writing, which each employ alternative language and narrative forms that order experience according to more regulated rhythms and rituals, and more productive and stable relationships than are possible in paid employment. Telling tales is a highly-readable, engaging, broad-ranging and interdisciplinary story that will have strong appeal to academics, particularly in literature, sociology, organisational and cultural studies. It will also resonate with anyone trying to reconcile the conflicting work and personal needs of a hectic twenty-four/seven modern world. 330 8 $a"This book's broad-ranging and compelling narrative uses literary analysis to examine how identities are influenced within organisations by corporate communication and how they are resisted and challenged by writing coming from other lifestyles.It claims workplace 'empowerment' is a rhetorical misrepresentation causing stress particularly to public sector employees whose personal identity and fulfillment relies on a quality of service defined by their professional occupations, which conflicts with calls for increasing quantity of output required by companies organised for 'fast, flexible and responsive' production. It proves this claim by reading identity through the language of labour expressed in other types of cultural communication - the novel, the writing of celebrity chefs and travel autobiographies - to show how psychological stress is alleviated when personal and occupational values are re-aligned, when work is conducted closer to the rhythms and regulated time of natural processes and when power for 'speaking-the-self' is restored to the individual." --Back cover. 606 $aLabor market$xSocial aspects$zGreat Britain 606 $aLabor market$zGreat Britain 606 $aLiterature$2mup 606 $aLiterature & Literary Studies$2bicssc 606 $aSOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Services$2bisach 606 $aBiography, Literature & Literary studies$2thema 610 $abusiness survivor manuals. 610 $acookery. 610 $acorporate capitalism. 610 $acultural message. 610 $aeconomy workers. 610 $ahorticulture. 610 $ahuman identity. 610 $ahuman subjectivity. 610 $amiddle-class professionals. 610 $amodern business. 610 $anarrative principles. 610 $apublic sector professionals. 610 $aresponsiveness. 610 $atime-pressure. 610 $awork satisfaction. 615 0$aLabor market$xSocial aspects 615 0$aLabor market 615 7$aLiterature 615 7$aLiterature & Literary Studies 615 7$aSOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Services 615 7$aBiography, Literature & Literary studies 676 $a306.36 700 $aLait$b Angela$01646119 801 2$bUkMaJRU 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910821908503321 996 $aTelling tales$93992961 997 $aUNINA