Tune in, Breakdown, and Reboot on the Production of the Stress-Fit Self-Managing Employee

Stress should act as an internal limit for personal productivity, as a way of rebooting to an ever more efficient self-management. All in all, we can therefore talk of a production-process revolving around the presumption of an always fitter, happier, more productive employee. The questions raised in the investigation of this particular form of production of subjectivity are: what notions of subjectivity as a productive resource are we presented with when not only self-management but also the management of the stress this self-management might entail becomes an underlying foundation for a flexible and efficient organization? What can an employee think, do and hope for under such circumstances? What are the dynamics that drive such a notion of subjectivity? And with what necessity does this notion set itself forth? All in all, the claim made in the thesis is that for this fitter, happier, and more productive employee, dealing with oneself and stress are primarily matters of individual responsibility and personal development. But by turning stress into 7 matters of individual responsibility, happiness and productivity, one thereby misses some of the underlying ontological processes working within selfmanagement theories and practices. These processes are pre-personal or preindividual in the sense that they outline ways we can be produced as individual subjects. These not only produce stress as a possibility for any particular individual to assume, they also convert stress-issues amongst employees into matters of being unable to adequately contribute towards the organization, leading in turn towards an understanding of these issues as something best handled if employees can improve their own coping abilities. If they can better their own self. We can hence talk of a commitment machine that produces a zone of indiscernability between the subjec tivity of the employee and the efficiency of the organization connecting up with a coping machine that frames