Speaking truth through power: Conceptualizing internal whistleblowing hotlines with Foucault’s dispositive

This article is an examination of the various ambivalences, limitations and dilemmas that are associated with the internal whistleblowing hotline – which is conceptualized as a management technique that strives to contain, codify, constrain, standardize, and neutralize acts of speaking up against illegal or unethical practices. In other words the interest is on what happens when the critical practice of whistleblowing or ‘speaking truth to power’ is sought institutionalized and transformed into a practice of ‘speaking truth through power’ – that is, through the managerial instrument of the whistleblowing hotline. The article argues that the Foucauldian concept of dispositive can help explain how a seemingly expedient and pragmatic technique such as the whistleblowing hotline, is in fact riddled with complexity and contradiction, which in turn creates a series of dilemmas and limitations related to aim and function the hotline. The analysis thus shows how the internal whistleblowing hotline can take different forms depending on the dispositive permeating it. Empirically, the analysis is based on descriptions of the use and function of internal whistleblowing hotlines in a Danish context.

Governing workplace safety through apparatuses: A historical study of the French construction industry in the 20th century

Critical management studies have largely failed to offer a comprehensive understanding of the devising and implementation of workplace-safety policies and of the complex power arrangements these may imply. By primarily studying forms of control in relative isolation, these studies have instead produced various puzzles, namely, the persistence of a disciplinary treatment of workplace safety within the current neo-liberal era and the paucity of resistance to this. Drawing on the Foucauldian concept of apparatus and related analytical framework, we propose to remedy this through analysing the successive arrangements governing workplace accidents in the French construction industry during the 20th century. We evidence three successive regimes of control in which distinct apparatuses interact in various ways across different settings. Our study testifies to the composite nature of regimes of control governing workplace safety, and shows how it may impinge upon power relations, ultimately allowing more relevant struggles for a safer workplace to be envisaged. Additionally, by proposing an operationalization of the so-far-overlooked concept of apparatus, our study elaborates on the relevance of the governmentalist tradition for critical management studies.