Governing through creativity: Discursive formation and neoliberal subjectivity in Korean firms

Abstract

After the 1997 financial crisis, South Korea abruptly transformed into a neoliberal state. This sudden neoliberal turn necessitated an invention of new subjectivities, making it one of the nation’s most urgent projects. Various efforts were made by the state and market, and among them the notion of ‘creativity management’ stood out. First employed by Samsung Group, creativity management in a wide variety of forms was soon emulated by numerous organizations in South Korea, private or public. This article, drawing upon Foucault’s notion of governmentality, examines how self-governing, neoliberal subjectivities were constructed by the practices and discourses of creativity management. For this, we performed a multilevel analysis of governmentality at the macro (societal), meso (organizational), and micro (individual) levels by using data collected from various media sources and in-depth interviews conducted at two large Korean firms. The analysis reveals that the macro-meso-micro frame is a useful way of understanding the processes by which creativity discourse at a societal level is materialized in organizational programs and how both the discourse and programs influence subjectivities. The finding of this study also suggests an almost universal applicability of the governmentality notion in explaining the advent of neoliberal subjects even in a previously authoritarian state like South Korea. The article concludes by elaborating on these and other contributions in the discussion section.