Challenging the Conventional Wisdom On 'Enterprise': Control and Autonomy in a Direct Selling Organisation**

Zusammenfassung

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Entrepreneurialism within organisations has been praised for serving employees and employers alike, but it has also been criticised as exercising power over employees in an unobtrusive, yet effective way. Within the literature from both advocates and critics, two dichotomies prevail. First, 'enterprise' is considered as a monolithic concept that is either 'liberating' or governing employees; second, it tends to be viewed as strongly opposed to 'bureaucracy'. Recent studies have started to challenge these hitherto often one-sided characterisations by showing that individuals react and respond differently to entrepreneurialism and that bureaucratic elements can co-exist within entrepreneurial companies. However, by drawing on empirical evidence from an entrepreneurial company, we demonstrate that enterprise within an organisation itself is a complex and paradoxical instrument of power and governance in organisations. We suppose that enterprise cannot stand on its own but is instead based upon organisational practices that are at the same time liberating and controlling, entrepreneurial and bureaucratic. Such a view not only allows one to pay attention to the fractions that are caused when the ideal of the individual self-made man is transferred to organisations, but also to question the enterprise discourse itself.

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Auszug

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Challenging the Conventional Wisdom On 'Enterprise': Control and Autonomy in a Direct Selling Organisation**

1. Introduction

In an 'age of enterprise' (Courpasson/Reed 2004), bureaucratically organised companies are regarded as a dying breed (du Gay 2000). Since the 1980s, 'enterprise within organisations' has been propagated (Peters /Waterman 1982) as the better choice of governing organisations - or even as a cure-all (Nicholson /Anders on 2005) -, particularly with regard to the public sector (e.g. du Gay 1996a; du Gay 2004; Osborne/ Gaebler 1997). The double promise inherent in the notion of an entrepreneurial organisation is that companies will profit from proactive, responsible, and flexible employees while the latter achieve freedom and self-determination (Peters /Waterman 1982; Purser/Cabana 1998).

In contrast, others regard enterprise within organisations as a dangerous institutionalisation of 'new norms and techniques of conduct' (du Gay 1996b: 152). Thus, like other forms of 'culturism' (Willmott 1993), the promise of autonomy, selfresponsibility, or even democracy is regarded as an instrument of power and control which leads to a specific identity of individuals (Burchell 1993; Deetz 1994; Miller/ Rose 1990; Rose 1990) while at the same time obscures the influence of companies on their employees (du Gay/Salaman 1992; Storey et al. 2005).

When one takes a closer look at both advocates' and critics' perceptions of enterprise in organisations, two strong dichotomies emerge in the literature. First, entrepreneurial companies are regarded as diametrically opposed to formal rules and the notion of bureaucracy - here critics and advocates do agree (du Gay 1994; Peters/Waterman 1982). Secondly, enterprise is either considered as bringing solely advantages for employees, such as more self-determination, empowerment and selffulfilment (Ouchi 1981; Peters /Waterman 1982), or it is regarded as a development that in the end merely allows organisations to control its members in a more powerful, sophisticated and intrusive way than bureaucracies do (Burchell 1993; Deetz 1994; Miller/Rose 1990; Rose 1990).

Both dichotomies have recently been criticised for being too one-sided (Fournier/Grey 1999; Salaman/Storey 2008), leading to a more differentiated view conceptually (du Gay 2004), and empirically: First, it has been shown how an enterprise discourse is intertwined with other, non-entrepreneurial and also bureaucratic discourses inside organisations (Courpasson/Dany 2003; Korczynski 2004; Salaman/ Storey 2008). Secondly, the dichotomy between enterprise as a mere form of control or liberation has been questioned by examining how employees respond in different ways to - and even actively take advantage of - the notion of enterprise (Cohen/ Musson 2000; Halford/Leonard 2006; McDonald et al. 2008).

Yet, in these critiques, enterprise on an organisational 'level seems mainly to be a clear-cut, unambiguous way of organising and governing an organisation. It is, for example, characterised by flexible structures, autonomy and self-regulation which can serve as powerful control strategies (du Gay 1994; du Gay 1996b). In cases where individuals interpret these strategies differendy or where bureaucratic elements still remain, enterprise seems to be not 'fully working' or not fully implemented yet.

In...

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