Silencing the Thematic Utterances of Workers

Abstract

In the previous chapter we established how utterances can be used by employees to create a public sphere through distinct events that presents a challenge of sorts to the competent public sphere. This chapter will look more closely at dialogic struggles in the workplace around competence. In particular the chapter will show in more precise detail how management seeks to predefine specific workplace events in advance by predefining specific meanings of competence so that such meanings are no longer open to thematic dialogic challenge by employees and workers at various workplace events. Management can do this in a variety of different ways, from more explicit modes of workplace surveillance through the likes of ICTs to more subtle modes such as rearticulating the desires of workers towards competence.