Between Entrepreneurship and Surveillance: An Interpretive Political Economy Perspective on the Globalizing Organization

Abstract

In the 1980s, the cumulative impact of a host of technical-economic and macro-social trends began to fundamentally alter value creation dynamics at the workplace and organizational reality. Rapid social change has relevant implications at all levels of social reality. Via a comprehensive review, this article highlights the mechanics of interplay between meaning structures and organizational structures. Tackling the phenomenon of the globalizing organization, it provides both a diachronic and a synchronic account of their interaction. Section 1 introduces the subject. Section 2 asks how organizational structure is represented in terms of management paradigms. Section 3 examines the changing structural characteristics of the workplace and the organization, introducing a frame of reference accounting for both entrepreneurship and surveillance. Section 4 concludes and outlines a possible agenda for further research, building on the interpretive political economy approach.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, globalization, organization

JEL Classification: M12, M13, M14, N20, Z10