The Dispositive: Foucault’s Concept for Organisational Analysis?

Foucault’s notion ‘the dispositive’ has been introduced in organisation studies as a highly promising concept. However, its analytical and empirical potentials remain to be fully explored. This article develops a framework which conceives of organizations as pervaded by multiple dispositives that interact, reinforce or contradict one another. Extending dispositional analysis with self-technologies, the framework integrates Foucault’s ‘axis of power’ with the ‘axis of ethics’ which have often been kept separate. This integration allows considering how subjects rearticulate or ‘bend’ dispositives in their practices of self-constitution. The framework’s potentials are explored in a study of health care professionals’ responses to a management reform that standardized and depersonalized care-giving.