Emil A. Røyrvik

Directors of Creation An Anthropology of Capitalist Conjunctures in the Contemporary

Doctoral thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor

Trondheim, November 2008

Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management Department of Social Anthropology NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology Doctoral thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management Department of Social Anthropology

Emil A. Røyrvik

ISBN 978-82-471-1301-1 (printed version) ISBN 978-82-471-1302-8 (electronic version) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2008: 299 Printed by NTNU-trykk ‘As the world, deep down lay at God’s eternal breast, He arranged for the first hour With sublime joy of creation (Schöpfungslust), And he spoke the word: let there be light! Then a cry of pain sounded, As reality with all its power broke into being.’

Goethe, Divan, Buch Suleika.1

‘Als die Welt im tiefsten Grunde Lag an Gottes ewger Brust Ordnet er die erste Stunde Mit erhabner Schöpfungslust Und er sprach das Wort: Es werde! Da erklang ein schmerzlich Ach! Als das All mit Machtgebärde In die Wirklichkeiten brach’

1 Quoted in Reinert and Reinert (2006: 59-60).

Contents

Acknowledgements...... ii Prologue ...... xiii Introduction: Investment Projects, Corporations and Capitalism...... 1 Cultural analysis of corporate and capitalist organization ...... 4 Production capital and finance capital ...... 9 The “global” corporation and its corollaries ...... 14 Managing projects as “global assemblages” ...... 18 Contextualizing the study within Hydro ...... 22 Organization of the thesis...... 29

PART I: SITUATING “THE PROJECTS” IN THEORY AND METHOD

1. Managing, Modernization and Economic Rationality...... 37 Instrumental rationality and the mediums of modernity ...... 40 “The other canon” – knowledge and production back at the core...... 47 Economic anthropology revisited...... 50 The neoliberal triumph and the neo-classical legitimation ...... 54 2. An Anthropology of Global Corporate Managing...... 61 Anthropology of “global industry”...... 69 Managing as “knowledge work”...... 71 Organizational knowledge and the “knowledge economy” ...... 75 Knowledge and changing configurations of value ...... 78 Why an anthropology of managing? ...... 83 Research design and analytical strategy: Anthropological discovering...... 84 3. Troops, Tropes and Troubles: Rendering Managing a Privileged Ethnographic Object...... 97 From “enfants terribles” to management elites ...... 100 Who’s elite anyway? ...... 104 The ambivalence of the management object ...... 109 Para-ethnographic interactions ...... 114 Reconfiguring ethnography...... 120 Abductive discovering...... 132 Tropes of trouble ...... 134 Resolve or beyond redemption? ...... 136 Anthropology and/or ethnography ...... 137 A last resort ...... 141 4. Mesmerizing Methodology: Narrative Knowledge and Anthropology Engaged...... 143 Narrative knowledge ...... 148 Straight to the bone: the quality of presence ...... 152 A trivial pursuit?...... 158 Polyphony and polysemy: rich descriptions...... 160 Faction: the value of tropes ...... 165 Finding new truths...... 169 Two and three cultures ...... 172 PART II: TECHNOLOGY, ONTOLOGY AND CULTURE/NATURE

5. Managing in the Middle Kingdom...... 175 Technology, art and truth ...... 181 Counterfeiting, strategic secrecy and emergent learning ...... 187 The GM relay ...... 189 The Mercedes and the carriage...... 194 Circulating safety – dodging danger ...... 198 The carriage cum Mercedes ...... 202 Social organization and forms of authority ...... 207 Organizing authority ...... 213 Translating and transducing ...... 220 From socio-technical to ontological truth...... 221 Elements of a differential ontology...... 223 6. Presencing Projects: The “Social Reality of Construction”...... 231 The tragedy of big projects...... 233 Entanglement and the seamless whole ...... 238 Keepers of gold and processes of “structuring” ...... 246 Goldkeepers and the CVP...... 247 Project organizing “structures”...... 253 Concentrating conceptual flows ...... 260 The ambience of enabling ...... 263 The Flight of the Flamingos ...... 264 Trajectories of training...... 272 “Everything is connected” ...... 280 The art of entangling: from coordination to coherence...... 283

PART III: HIGH FINANCE AND THE “WONDERFUL MOMENT” OF MILLENNIAL MODERNITY

7. The Turn to Enchantment: Investing in Projects and the Shift to Finance ...... 295 Decision Gate Four...... 298 Inventing finance control...... 309 “Blåruss”-blues...... 314 The surge of “shareholder value”...... 319 “Faglige ledelse”, collaboration and democratization ...... 323 Projects as cultural idiom...... 328 Finance figures and media representations ...... 330 8. Wagging the Dog: The Financialization of Everything ...... 347 The “stock options carnival” ...... 351 “Options” in a moral economy...... 358 Dismantling Norwegian democratic capitalism? ...... 366 Dynamics of change and continuity...... 372 Financial risk management in projects...... 375 Into the global financial casino ...... 384 Financialication and international economic relations ...... 385 Qatalum money creation ...... 391 The “ancien régime” reinvented...... 401 Monetary imperialism...... 403 Redistribution neoliberal style...... 407

PART IV: IN THE COMPANY OF SIGNS

9. “Incarnation Inc.”: Idioms of Id-entity Invention and Rhetorics of Representation...... 411 Value integration the “Hydro Way”...... 415 Paving the Hydro Way ...... 421 Mediums and messages ...... 427 “Professionality” and spirituality ...... 434 Celebration ...... 437 10. Material Metaphors of Managing: Buildings and Bodies ...... 441 The Corporate Body ...... 444 Men in black...... 446 Sex and suits ...... 450 Houses of glass, gloves and glory ...... 458 Epistemologies of transparency and secrecy...... 460 Plants of participation...... 464 The female factor(y)...... 468 Symbolic sex war on the shop floor ...... 471 An anatomy of cultural reproduction ...... 475

CONCLUDING REMARKS

11. In Good Company? Man the “Modern Maker” in the New Millennium...... 479 Reprise and review ...... 483 Creational capitalism ...... 485 Hydro and the right kind of globalization ...... 488 “Mongrelizing” management...... 492 Qualifying capitalism ...... 494 Incarnations of a different nature?...... 498 The ”poetics of projects”...... 503 The authenticity advantage...... 509 Managing, reasons and rationalizations ...... 511 Mixed regimes of rationality...... 515 The medium-range view: Levels in capitalism(s) ...... 518 Towards a radical naturalism: Reinventing anthropology ...... 523 Appendices ...... 527 Appendix I: The Two Canons Contrasted...... 527 Appendix II: “Systemic cycles of accumulation” and techno-economic paradigms ...... 533 Appendix III: Extended Summary ...... 535 List of Figures...... 553 List of Tables ...... 555 Bibliography ...... 557

Acknowledgements The process of writing this dissertation has been fuelled by the inspiration of many people I know both in person and through various texts. First, the Hydro organization and its members must be greeted for the way they have constituted a receptive, challenging and constructive counterpart and research environment, both through various Sintef research projects, and through my PhD work. To my best knowledge Hydro represent the first “global” company making possible “an ethnography of international managing”. This is arguably indicative of why Hydro as one of few corporations worldwide could celebrate their centennial in 2005 – as Norway’s and one of the world’s most successful industrial companies ever. As the thesis will explore, a long-term continuous reproduction of an industrial company cannot by any means be taken for granted, not the least in the present predicament of the “financialized” economic relations that has engulfed the whole of humanity at a global scale. The many people to thank in Hydro are to numerous to mention, but you know who you are. In and around my first research “community of practice”, organized by Sintef “Kunne”, where I learned the arts of “practice-near”, collaborative research with counterparts in both the private and public sector, there are several people to thank for their contribution to an energetic research culture. In addition to Prof. Eric Monteiro who also has provided valuable feedback on parts of the thesis text, the following have engaged with me in valuable discussions enabling the thesis work: Morten Hatling, Roger Klev, Arne Carlsen, Grete Håkonsen, Theo Barth, Truls Paulsen, Merete Molberg, Erling Hoff Leirvik, Kristianne Ervik, Bjørn Haugstad, Reidar Gjersvik. Ingrid Aalberg made much of the whole community tick. From the same community, Egil Wulff and Anton Trætteberg have, with their wise of age experiences and insights, provided invaluable guidance into the fascinating world of engineers, managers, organizations and corporations. Their wholistic,

ix knowledgeable yet notoriously curious and open-minded approach to research stands out for me as exemplary. A most special salutation is given to fellow “partner in crime”, Arne L. Bygdås – the “marathon man” – with whom I have collaborated constructively in numerous research projects, and likewise to our colleague and friend, Kjersti Bjørkeng. My latest research “community of practice” at the Department of Social Anthropology at NTNU also has my sincere gratitude. It was a scholarship made available from the department that enabled my PhD study. I am especially grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Carla Dahl Jørgensen, chairing a now burgeoning “community of organizational anthropology”, who has provided invaluable feedback throughout the research process. The anthropology community, and in particular my fellow PhD candidates; Kirsti Sarheim Anthun, Sigrid Damman, Håkon Fyhn, Marte Giskeødegård, Hans Hadders, Jens Røyrvik, and Martin Thomassen have contributed to an enabling atmosphere, including valuable academic discussions, in an otherwise lonesome process of writing. In the completion phase, the “tea ceremony” administered by Hans almost every late evening was indeed both physically and spiritually elevating. A special word of gratitude wants itself to be made to Stein E. Johansen. A trailblazer who pushes the limits of thought, his combination of scholarly and imaginative inquiry seems exceptional in academe in the hour of the wolf. Never short of time to explore and share new ideas, he has in addition to providing valuable feedback on the thesis also managed an academically vital and critically, open-minded collegial doctoral student’s forum. The scholarly work of Tord Larsen at the department has also been particularly inspirational to me. Kristin Hestflått, Kjell Stenstadvold and not the least Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud have also provided invaluable feedback on parts of the text, help to which I am indebted. During my research work I have been fortunate to spend time as a visiting academic at two different institutions. First I visited for three months the Department of Management at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. I am grateful for the discussions and ideas generated in exchanges with Prof. Georg von Krogh and his x research group there. Sintef and the Norwegian Research Council must also be thanked for providing the scholarship for my visit. Secondly, traveling with my family, I spent six months at the internationally oriented ICAN research centre at the School of Management at the University of Technology Sydney, in Australia. A sincere thanks to Prof. Stewart Clegg and all the interesting people there that provided valuable feedback to my research and made our stay unforgettable. A thanks to Sintef, DNV and NTNU for providing the necessary traveling grants is also made. The “Globalization” programme at NTNU must also be thanked for providing some of the travel grants making parts of my “jet-plane intensive” PhD fieldwork possible. A word of thanks is also given to the “extended family network” in Harry Borthens v. 2D, Trondheim, Norway. At this location eight kids, two dogs and a cat live with their respective parents in differentiated nuclear units, but nevertheless united. Here spontaneous grill parties of 15-20 people just emerge without any form of planning. Babysitters, bread, friends for all ages, beer, and support in most conceivable ways are readily available. Musings into remote viewing, gluten-free diets, free-diving gear, documentary film making, Russian and Chinese war history, life and death is ongoing. This is a dynamically robust, “differentially integrated” social organization that appeals to some of the fundamental assumptions in the present thesis. Nonetheless the most special thoughts are for my family. To Live for all her support, and not the least to the ruby’s of my life: Ruben, Ylva, and Charlotte. Notwithstanding the complexities of both the nature/nurture debate and the inner workings of the cosmos, a thought goes also to my parents who must bear at least some responsibility for my existence and thus for the products of my work. Finally and probably needless to say, although entangled minds have enabled this thesis, the responsibility for its content is mine alone.

xi xii Prologue

I left for my first ethnographic fieldwork as a master student in anthropology to an urban gypsy district in Bulgaria. The contrast to the self-evidently assured situation while growing up in Norway and to the “chattering” middle-class environment during my previous years of study was in many aspects of life radical. I spent most of the time with my gypsy “extended family”, visiting other friends and families and people they knew of every type. I was also introduced to local politicians and to the arguably worst slum in the whole of Bulgaria, denied out of existence by members of the city’s own middle-upper class; the one square kilometer bricked wall “tsiganska mahala” with the symbolic name “Nadezhda” (“Hope”). It was located in Sliven, just behind the central train station in the same city were I lived, and I went there several times and always felt utterly sickened by the situation. Naked or in threadbare clothes, dirty children running around in the muddy small alleys, cold and hungry, elderly sitting on top of garbage in their small brick wall enclosures called homes, often without roof and anything resembling furniture, maybe holding a sick child in need of medications or an operation in their hands; insects and deceases, swollen stomachs, and filarial induced elephantiasis; and myself being followed by crowds of people, both cheered as a possible help and shown around, while also spitted upon by others because of what they perceived of (to some extent quite adequately) as slum tourism. And the winters are freezing cold. At the far end, in the midst of this mainly Muslim gypsy ghetto, a small orthodox Christian “church”, made of dirty stone bricks, were you almost needed to crawl to enter inside because of the small “door”, a few worn out wooden benches and a desperately looking “holy man”. And then, afterwards talking to the, very possibly corrupt, administrators of the place. Subsequently, talking with people in the city, politicians as well, who didn’t even “know” about the ghetto’s existence. But then again, a fraction of the time in Bulgaria I spent traveling and talking to officials and organizations that were trying in various ways to remedy the tragic poverty

xiii of the gypsies. For example I met with various emissaries representing the European Union, traveling with private chauffeurs in black cars with bistre windows, holding aristocratic names and titles almost longer than their classical and fancy business card could carry, and symbolically signifying a fund checkbook that could support the entire “Nadezhda” mahala. I met with international organizations like the Soros funded “Open Society Institute”, national research institutions, foreign investor companies, and recently established gypsy foundations. After one such meeting in Sofia I traveled back to Sliven in a fancy car together with one foreign business investor. He wanted to drive me all the way into my gypsy mahala, but politely, contemplating problems with role incongruence, I asked to be let off at a “safe” distance downtown. Watching a version of capitalist market economy emerge in real time, corrupt, warts and all, was at the time both fascinatingly concrete and frustratingly intangible at the larger scales. Sensing the way big money slipping off illegally into all the wrong pockets, watching poverty not improving the bit, and without a thorough understanding of the larger processes producing this situation, was unsatisfactory to say the least. Being there, I learned a lot about the day-to-day trials and tribulations, but also the finely tuned strategies and complexities involved in carving out pockets of possibilities. However, I felt I never grasped the large-scale economic and ideological causes of the intense poverty displayed in the gypsy communities. The inequalities were gargantuan, but the structural reasons, other than the open racism virtually everywhere, was difficult to comprehend. After completing my studies I was employed as a researcher at Sintef, the largest independent contract-based research foundation of Scandinavia. Focusing on the emerging “knowledge society” and “knowledge economy”, for several years I have worked in various projects collaborating with organizations both the private and public sector; themes like organizational development and learning, knowledge management and strategic processes have been explored. A world of business and industry, a world of consultancy managers, a world of modern bureaucracies and formal organizations, a world of capitalist corporations, and of professional experts and elites. I entered xiv unfamiliar organizational environments, engaged in experiences of technical experts and leaders in the modern economy, displaying a variety of interesting themes, contrasts and dilemmas. But because most projects were confined to Norway it was not really until my first research project in China that the really “real” contrasts in terms of economic inequality was significantly felt again. By this time I had also formally embarked upon my PhD work in social anthropology. Now I was suddenly also a research “student” investigating in some sense relations of asymmetry again, but now from the other side, as it were. “Living” the international corporate manager or “expat” professional life, walking past the beggars on the crowded streets on my way to fancy high-end hotels, passing the broomstick sweepers standing in the middle of the dusty highways from the back seat of new American cars, driven by a private chauffeur on the way to an industrial plant. Rather than taking small trips to the affluent side of the divide, so to speak, now I made small detours out on the line of poverty and despair. What could be more interesting for me, although nurturing few ideas about where I finally would end while embarking upon this research adventure, than to explore the patterns and ambiguities of contemporary conjuctures of globalized capitalism; discovered through the central prism of managing advanced international industrial investment projects in a so-called “global” corporation. It enabled a close-up investigation of core practices of present day economic value and wealth creation. While arguing that the wealth creating processes instantiated by Hydro practices are exemplary in terms of their potential in escaping from poverty on larger societal scales, the investigations in this landscape have by analytical implication, as it were, and by historical and statistical documentation, also enabled insights into the opposite processes of exclusion, economic inequality and asymmetrical reproductions. And not the least it enabled an understanding of the legitimating forms of ration