Creating Value-Based Collaboration: Life Forms and Power in a Change Project

Abstract

This paper explores collaboration in one innovative project in a production company. The focus is on one particular relationship—that between change agents and project participants with the emphasis on the relations of power between the life forms of ordinary project participants and the change discourse applied. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s concept of “language games” and Foucault’s concept of “power”, this case demonstrates how the change discourse constructs its own image of who the participants are, and how these constructions shape the main content of the change project. Rather than becoming employee-driven and guided with reference to employee identities and life forms, project participants and project activities are constructed by concepts, methods and techniques that are opposed to the extant identities and life forms within the company.