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This paper offers new theoretical and empirical understanding of interruptions to strategy implementation by drawing attention to their ghostly nature. The paper proposes a theoretical framework for thinking about the ghostly by combining Freud's concept of the uncanny with theorizing in cultural geography on collapses of linear time as well as with Avery Gordon's sociological work on ghostly matters. Empirically, the paper examines the ghostly nature of strategy interruptions through a detailed analysis of conversations between middle managers at a strategy seminar in a Danish local government. I portray the uncanny moments where the familiar account of organizational purposes is not so self-evident anymore, but all of a sudden appears rather disturbing. I show how middle managers envision other, darker futures and express the feeling that something else, something different from before, must be done, although they cannot say exactly what. Going beyond previous accounts of strategy interruption, for example as deliberate resistance by middle managers, the paper contributes with new insight into the moments where the neat ordering of organizational realities performed by corporate strategies breaks down and middle managers come into contact with the broader social and political stakes of their work.

This paper addresses the subtle, affective power of organisational discourses and practices concerning employability that target children as future workers. It develops a concept of governmental atmospheres inspired by governmentality studies and theories of affective, atmospheric power dynamics. Governmental atmospheres are defined as an affective charging of a normative setting that incites individuals to attune themselves to this setting. Based on that, the paper examines a case study of a collaboration between a small NGO and a global technology corporation inviting 10–12-year-old girls to a camp intended to raise career aspirations within technology. In three analyses, the paper unpacks how the camp mobilised and circulated affects – through spatial arrangements, sensuous stimulations and engaging practices – thereby creating atmospheres of excitement, (technological) optimism and limitless possibilities. The findings demonstrate how this atmosphere connects play, fun, dreams, societal progress, individual success, gender equality, product innovation and business models in an apparently frictionless space. This contributes to existing governmentality studies by conceptualising the pervasive powers of governmental atmospheres that induce subjects to feel and act on organisational interests in employability and the future worker in a seemingly innocent, inspirational way.

AbstractThis paper explores how looming planetary crises become present in the lived experiences of future female workers, and how such experiences condition performances of viable subjectivity. Drawing on interview data from a longitudinal study of young women's education and career aspirations, the paper zooms in on moments where concerns about planetary crises were felt in informants' everyday lives. We augment Judith Butler's writings on loss with Karen Barad's concept of "intra‐action" to theorize these moments as experiences of loss in which constitutive dependencies and entanglements—otherwise repressed and invisible—touch young women's lives. Against this theoretical backdrop, we trace how such experiences interrupt performances of neoliberal work subjectivity and thereby create a potential for alternative agencies grounded in an ethics of entanglement. The paper thus contributes new insights into young women's complex performances of viable work subjectivity, showing how more sustainable and collective ways of performing the self emerge. As such, we offer researchers and professionals working with and around young women a nuanced understanding of how young women contest and exceed notions of neoliberal individualism.

Reporting from a three-year longitudinal study following 16 young women through their upper secondary schooling, this article explores the lived experiences of future-making. By unpacking the striking finding in our material that for these young women, future-making consists in an ongoing labour to keep the future open, we complement studies showing how ideals of success in education affect young women's everyday life. Our analysis reveals that although this mode of future-making induces anxieties and cruel labours, young women also navigate and negotiate their uncertain conditions. We show how they manage to (partly) escape extreme performance demands and how they connect to collective futures, thus challenging the individuality of neoliberal subjectivity. We contribute to a sociology of the future by demonstrating an approach to studying the future that zooms in on the practices and affective experiences, through which futures exert agency and organise the everyday lived present.

Die Zukunft offen halten -- Die Unmöglichkeit, die Gesellschaft zu steuern -- Von der Bürokratie zur Verwaltung der Potentialisierung -- Wohlfahrtseinrichtungen als Ort unendlicher Potentialisierung -- Die Suche nach Potentialen jenseits von Fachdisziplinen und Funktionscodes -- Vom Vertrag zur Partnerschaft -- Der spielerische Mitarbeiter -- Der Bürger als Ressource -- Der Staat der Potentialisierung

This textbook is the first to examine how new trends such as "radical innovation", "co-creation" and "potentialization" challenge fundamental values in the public sector. The authors bridge traditional public management approaches that tend to exclude social and societal problems, with broader social theories apt to capture new dilemmas and challenges. The book shows how the effects of new forms of managerialism penetrate the state, local governments, welfare institutions as well as professional work and citizens' rights. It facilitates a discussion about how basic values are put at stake with new reforms and managerial tools. The book is ideal for postgraduate students in the area of public policy and public management with an interest in managing and leading public administration units and welfare institutions