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Governmentality and the Chinese Workers in China’s Contemporary Thought Management System

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The Palgrave Handbook of Management History

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to understand how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) creates an abundantly cheap and docile worker to meet the labor market needs required for economic development in present-day China. Drawing on the genealogical analysis of the Chinese historical events from the previous chapter, this chapter engages with Michel Foucault’s (1982) work of governmentality (government of mentalities) to argue that workers’ docility is maintained by the CCP’s ability to retain, update, and incorporate Confucian values into its thought management system to regulate the ways of thinking and acting among workers in a social hierarchy as in the time of Imperial and Mao’s China.

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  1. Business School, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia

    Elly Leung

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  1. Elly Leung
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  1. Emporia State University, Emporia, USA

    Jeffrey Muldoon

  2. Faculté des Sciences Sociales, Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada

    Anthony Gould

  3. College of Business, RMIT University, School of Management, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Adela McMurray

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Leung, E. (2020). Governmentality and the Chinese Workers in China’s Contemporary Thought Management System. In: Muldoon, J., Gould, A., McMurray, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Management History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62348-1_97-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62348-1_97-1

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