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Power and Discretion: Membership Work in the Time of Technology

Keele University

The aim of this paper is to rework contemporary notions of power by acknowledging discretion and membership as the `other' side of an increasingly familiar story of organizational domination through calculation and surveillance. The paper first identifies neglected aspects of power, particularly associated with a discretionary ability to defer affirmations of membership. Such power effects might seem ephemeral and temporary, but when considered alongside translation effects generated by the technologies of managing, particularly accounting numbers, it becomes clearer that discretion can be both redistributed and accumulated in organizations. The ensuing power effects become extended across space and time. It is argued therefore that any full reworking of power needs to consider how `centres of discretion' are created simultaneously alongside `centres of calculation'.

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