Popular in Professional

Leading Figures

Induction of Social Contagion

Yale University Nicholas A. Christakis

Business

The Allegory of the Favela: The Multifaceted Effects of Socioeconomic Mobility

University of Pennsylvania Leandro S. Pongeluppe

Architecture

Connecting Cities and Nature

University of Virginia Timothy Beatley

Human Rights Law

Human Rights and Corruption: Problems and Potential of Individualising a Systemic Problem

Max Planck Institute Anne Peters

Finance

Chinese Exchange Rate Policy: Lessons for Global Investors

University of California San Diego Michael Melvin

Law

A statistical approach to law school citation rankings

University of Virginia Joshua Fischman

Education

Embodying the Market

View more insights in Professional - Business - Organisational Behaviour

View more figures from University of Pennsylvania

View the page of Alexandra Michel

Read the Study

Next in Business

Do Investors Value Workforce Gender Diversity?

David P. Daniels | National University of Singapore

Design of Patient Visit Itineraries in Tandem Systems

Nan Liu | Boston College

Alexandra Michel discusses the self-technologies through which people construct the culturally situated biologies that compel them to unproblematically reproduce new, market-like organizations.

Image courtesy of interviewee. January 23, 2024

Log-in or Sign-up to Faculti
Currently viewing this subject insight as a guest. You have insight(s) remaining for this month. Login to view 8000+ figures on the platform.

Generating Workspace...

Export as PDF

This video video presents a study analyzing significant societal changes in organizational behavior, particularly during the market turn, often characterized by concepts like financialization and neoliberalism. The speaker highlights how organizations, since the industrial revolution, have treated workers' bodies as capital, employing various techniques for productivity. Starting from the 1980s, there has been a marked increase in the overworking of highly educated professionals, with examples like bankers working extreme hours—a situation so severe that it can lead to sleeping under desks.

The notion of the "body entrepreneur" emerges, referring to workers in competitive environments like investment banking, consulting, and academia who treat their bodies as capital for achieving competitive success. Unlike traditional employees, these individuals assume entrepreneurial risks, working hard and engaging in extreme self-management, often manipulating their biology through medications and lifestyle choices to meet the demands of their jobs.

This video video also addresses how these professionals perceive their health issues, often believing that their struggles stem from personal weaknesses rather than organizational demands. This video video mindset leads them to take radical measures to maintain productivity, viewing their physiological states as malleable in response to professional needs.

The overarching themes center around the transformation of work practices, the personal consequences of intense overwork, and how workers increasingly intervene in their biology as they navigate the demands of their jobs. Ultimately, the body entrepreneur framework portrays a new understanding of the self, emphasizing a chemistry-focused view of personal performance shaped by external pressures.

Language:

Export as PDF

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.105 --> 00:03.605
The context of this study is a radical societal change,

00:04.225 --> 00:06.245
that I observed in organizations.

00:06.665 --> 00:09.165
Um, and this change has been referred to

00:09.165 --> 00:12.045
and studied under different names, financialization,

00:12.915 --> 00:16.285
neoliberalism, reflexive, modernity,

00:16.305 --> 00:18.125
and I'll just refer to it as the market turn.

00:19.185 --> 00:23.725
Um, and, this change involves that, domains

00:23.725 --> 00:26.885
and societies, families, organizations

00:27.315 --> 00:30.645
that previously worked in one way now work differently.

00:31.075 --> 00:32.845
They're being structured by the market.

00:33.345 --> 00:37.365
And let me tell you the first cues of, how

00:37.365 --> 00:39.405
that became noticeable in organizations.

00:40.105 --> 00:43.045
Um, and that requires a bit of history.

00:43.145 --> 00:45.165
So since the first industrial revolution,

00:45.715 --> 00:48.605
organizations have used the bodies of their workers

00:48.745 --> 00:51.845
as a kind of capital, and they used all kinds of techniques

00:51.945 --> 00:53.445
to extract effort from workers.

00:54.105 --> 00:56.965
So, Henry Ford, for example,

00:57.115 --> 01:00.965
sent investigators into their workers' homes to verify

01:00.995 --> 01:04.125
that they practice habits that kept them productive at work.

01:05.465 --> 01:09.525
But as sociologists, Notto has documented,

01:09.525 --> 01:14.055
workers resisted, they sabotaged, they loaf, they escaped.

01:14.635 --> 01:15.975
Um, and then all of a sudden,

01:16.655 --> 01:19.735
starting in the 1980s when this market turn started,

01:20.235 --> 01:23.055
things changed drastically in organizations.

01:23.715 --> 01:25.735
So in the past and in other cultures,

01:25.835 --> 01:27.055
the more education you have

01:27.055 --> 01:28.775
and the richer you are, the less you work.

01:29.195 --> 01:31.855
But now what you observe is that highly educated,

01:31.855 --> 01:36.295
highly marketable workers, bankers, consultants, doctors,

01:37.015 --> 01:40.255
engineers, they work much longer than organizations can

01:40.255 --> 01:43.015
legitimately require a hundred hours a week.

01:43.475 --> 01:46.895
Uh, and, and the conditions that a sociologist has referred

01:46.895 --> 01:48.255
to as white collar sweat shop.

01:48.675 --> 01:51.455
So the kinds of organization I studied, for example,

01:51.615 --> 01:55.895
a banker at Goldman Sachs worked 155 hours in one week

01:56.165 --> 01:59.815
that left only 13 hours for sleep the entire week.

01:59.915 --> 02:01.375
Uh, and no time for anything else.

02:01.595 --> 02:05.455
And it's not unusual for bankers to sleep under their desks.

02:06.075 --> 02:09.375
So as I track these overworking professionals over time,

02:10.295 --> 02:13.415
I found not only do they work these hours seemingly

02:13.485 --> 02:14.975
voluntarily,

02:15.075 --> 02:17.855
but they also took over from organization the task

02:17.955 --> 02:20.015
of extracting effort from their body.

02:20.635 --> 02:24.215
Um, and let me give you an extract from,

02:24.295 --> 02:26.655
a New York Times article so that you can see

02:26.655 --> 02:30.255
that this is more widely occurring, not merely in my data.

02:30.995 --> 02:34.895
Uh, and there the wife of a silicon lawyer, a valley,

02:34.895 --> 02:37.335
lawyer, recalls how she cleaned up his home

02:37.385 --> 02:39.375
after he died from a drug overdose.

02:39.715 --> 02:43.175
And Peter, the lawyer, he used drugs not to get high,

02:43.235 --> 02:44.535
but to perform better at work.

02:44.795 --> 02:48.415
So here's his wife who said, Peter would joke

02:48.845 --> 02:51.655
that the perfect drug for him would be the combination

02:51.655 --> 02:54.615
of an antidepressant, a pain reliever, a stimulant.

02:54.955 --> 02:56.975
And when I cleaned out, I cleaned out his house,

02:57.255 --> 02:58.495
I found the ingredients for it,

02:59.125 --> 03:02.565
Vicodin, Tramadol, Adderall, cocaine, Xanax, crystal meth,

03:02.785 --> 03:05.125
and the kaleidoscope of pills I couldn't identify,

03:05.225 --> 03:06.485
but not for lack of trying.

03:07.305 --> 03:10.205
And so like the people I studied, investment bankers,

03:10.535 --> 03:13.525
Peter intervened in his body to produce the kind

03:13.525 --> 03:17.285
of emotion on demand that he needed to function at work.

03:17.985 --> 03:21.365
And so the people I study, they don't only need

03:21.365 --> 03:24.125
to work these long hours, sometimes 120 hours a week,

03:24.505 --> 03:27.645
but also on demand to generate the kind of emotion

03:27.705 --> 03:30.285
and cognition that makes them effective with client.

03:30.665 --> 03:31.885
So if you're working all night,

03:32.065 --> 03:33.885
but then they meet the client,

03:33.885 --> 03:35.005
and they need to be pleasant

03:35.035 --> 03:36.325
even though they're half asleep.

03:36.745 --> 03:40.645
But then the lawyer comes in to negotiate, a deal.

03:40.825 --> 03:42.525
And so now they need to be hostile

03:43.225 --> 03:45.245
to represent the client in the best way.

03:45.515 --> 03:47.525
Next moment, they need to write a selling memo

03:47.545 --> 03:48.645
and they need to be creative.

03:49.265 --> 03:52.005
Uh, and then they need to turn to another task,

03:52.005 --> 03:54.525
where they need to perform in a highly analytic manner.

03:55.265 --> 03:57.725
Uh, and so they need to switch rapidly

03:57.875 --> 04:00.205
through these cognitive emotional states.

04:00.745 --> 04:02.845
Uh, and typically we think that that is something,

04:02.845 --> 04:05.005
emotion is something that works inside out.

04:05.705 --> 04:09.285
But since the livelihood of my informants dependent on

04:09.285 --> 04:12.045
how well and how flexibly they could do it,

04:12.395 --> 04:14.725
they work their emotion from the outside in.

04:14.985 --> 04:16.405
Uh, and that's one aspect

04:16.405 --> 04:19.205
of the body entrepreneur using the body as capital,

04:19.475 --> 04:21.885
just like the old organizations did.

04:22.065 --> 04:24.125
But now they do it for themselves,

04:24.385 --> 04:26.565
and they intervene in their body,

04:26.795 --> 04:30.125
much more aggressively than organizations legitimately can.

04:30.585 --> 04:34.045
So to continue Peter's story, the wife writes,

04:34.265 --> 04:38.125
the last call he ever made was for work, Peter vomiting,

04:38.785 --> 04:40.525
unable to sit up, slipping in

04:40.525 --> 04:42.565
and out of consciousness, had managed somehow

04:43.145 --> 04:44.605
to dial into a conference call.

04:45.225 --> 04:47.685
So in addition to modulating emotions on

04:47.745 --> 04:51.405
and cognitions like Peter, the bankers tried

04:51.405 --> 04:53.925
to fix various breakdowns,

04:54.115 --> 04:56.245
that this intense overwork incurred.

04:56.385 --> 04:59.525
And I'm giving you this example to show number one,

04:59.635 --> 05:01.645
they intervened more radically than

05:01.645 --> 05:03.405
organizations possibly can.

05:03.905 --> 05:05.205
Uh, number two, it shows

05:05.205 --> 05:07.725
that this is very different from the health orientation

05:08.115 --> 05:10.765
that we saw in employees in the 1970s.

05:11.345 --> 05:15.125
You know, the aerobics where people use health to signal

05:15.195 --> 05:17.405
that you were a high performer here,

05:17.665 --> 05:20.485
people intervene in their bodies regardless of health.

05:21.265 --> 05:24.565
And so these anecdotes raised two questions

05:24.565 --> 05:25.845
that my study addressed.

05:26.225 --> 05:29.645
Number one, what causes these changes in

05:29.645 --> 05:31.525
how workers orient to work?

05:31.985 --> 05:34.005
Uh, and the brief answer that I would love

05:34.005 --> 05:36.965
to elaborate if you allow me, is a new set

05:36.965 --> 05:39.965
of competitive work practices that uses market logics.

05:40.385 --> 05:42.965
Um, and you will see, that

05:42.965 --> 05:46.525
that is also observable in other organizations and law firms

05:47.025 --> 05:50.165
and invest in other investment banks, in academia.

05:50.665 --> 05:53.405
And so the quest, the second question is,

05:53.555 --> 05:56.325
what changes in workers when they intervene in their

05:56.325 --> 05:57.365
bodies sos radically?

05:57.985 --> 06:01.605
Um, and here the key finding is that biology

06:02.805 --> 06:05.765
manifests in historically new ways that I have alluded to.

06:06.265 --> 06:10.485
So typically we think biology works inside out,

06:10.545 --> 06:12.005
and it's not under our control.

06:12.025 --> 06:15.605
The best we can do is provide good conditions, but Peter

06:15.785 --> 06:16.965
and the bankers believe

06:16.965 --> 06:19.525
that they run their biology from the outside in.

06:20.545 --> 06:22.005
And so I followed a group

06:22.005 --> 06:25.045
of investment bankers over the period of 20 years,

06:25.685 --> 06:28.765
starting from the entry into, two,

06:28.765 --> 06:31.565
into the two investment banks that wish to stay anonymous.

06:32.265 --> 06:35.685
Um, and that allowed me the opportunity to study the market,

06:35.795 --> 06:38.925
turn in the organizations that are at the heart of it,

06:38.945 --> 06:41.165
and track the changes in people as they occurred.

06:41.985 --> 06:44.045
So to now turn to your question,

06:44.195 --> 06:45.605
what is a body entrepreneur?

06:46.115 --> 06:48.045
Well, the body entrepreneur,

06:48.145 --> 06:51.925
is an employee typically in a highly competitive work

06:51.925 --> 06:55.485
context such as investment, banking, consulting, law,

06:55.885 --> 06:59.525
academia, who orients to the body in new ways, namely

06:59.525 --> 07:03.245
as a kind of, capital, capital to be exploited

07:03.345 --> 07:04.565
for competitive success.

07:05.665 --> 07:08.845
And so if you allow me to continue briefly, I would like

07:08.845 --> 07:11.405
to tell you the answers to these two questions.

07:11.425 --> 07:14.685
Number one, what are these new market practices

07:14.795 --> 07:17.165
that are more prevalent in organizations?

07:17.545 --> 07:21.205
And number two, what are these changes that occur in bodies,

07:21.695 --> 07:25.165
these changes where all of a sudden biology works from the

07:25.165 --> 07:27.045
outside in for competitive success?

07:27.385 --> 07:31.045
The one puzzling finding is, so why do these workers work

07:31.065 --> 07:34.205
so hard and why do they exploit their bodies as capital?

07:35.065 --> 07:37.565
Um, and the answer is that

07:38.095 --> 07:42.405
these organizations call their employees, employees,

07:42.645 --> 07:45.885
universities call their professors employees,

07:46.145 --> 07:48.045
but in fact, these types

07:48.165 --> 07:50.525
of workers are positioned more as entrepreneurs.

07:50.985 --> 07:52.205
And, and what do I mean with that?

07:52.275 --> 07:54.605
Well, typically organizations assume market risk.

07:54.865 --> 07:56.965
And what that mean is means is they pay

07:56.965 --> 07:58.285
individuals for that time.

07:58.785 --> 08:01.765
Uh, and firing is a means of last resort, right?

08:01.825 --> 08:04.165
So if there's something, if something changes in the

08:04.165 --> 08:07.045
organization's environment, the organization deals with it,

08:07.185 --> 08:09.125
the worker still gets paid for their time.

08:09.955 --> 08:12.135
But that isn't the case for the investment banks.

08:12.475 --> 08:14.735
The bankers weren't paid for their time and effort.

08:14.885 --> 08:16.815
They were paid when they closed deals.

08:17.315 --> 08:20.215
Uh, and deals could fail to close for a variety of reasons

08:20.215 --> 08:21.775
that are not under a banker's control.

08:21.795 --> 08:24.095
So markets could tank buyers

08:24.235 --> 08:27.175
or sellers could change their minds, regulations could fail

08:27.175 --> 08:29.895
to come through, due diligence could reveal

08:30.175 --> 08:31.455
negative surprises and so on.

08:31.635 --> 08:33.095
So all of this has nothing to do

08:33.095 --> 08:34.295
with a banker's performance,

08:34.295 --> 08:36.335
and yet they only get paid if deals close.

08:37.115 --> 08:40.175
And there's a caveat. So imagine you've just brought in a

08:40.175 --> 08:42.975
deal that generates hundreds of millions for your bank,

08:43.635 --> 08:47.175
but you're being paid competitively at the end of the year.

08:47.475 --> 08:49.255
You are ranked against your peers

08:49.635 --> 08:52.855
and the top performers, they get paid millions of dollars

08:53.235 --> 08:54.775
and the lowest 5%, for

08:54.775 --> 08:56.165
Example, at Goldman, they get fired.

08:56.165 --> 08:57.645
Doesn't matter how much you bring in.

08:58.305 --> 09:00.725
So you bring in millions of dollars,

09:00.865 --> 09:02.805
but even if, if others bring in more,

09:02.945 --> 09:04.245
you can get fired anyway.

09:05.065 --> 09:08.285
Uh, so you might think that this is peculiar to Wall Street,

09:08.345 --> 09:10.605
but lawyers and consultants get paid this way

09:10.905 --> 09:12.165
and academics, right?

09:12.265 --> 09:14.005
So in research universities,

09:14.465 --> 09:17.245
you are promoted based on publications and top journals,

09:17.465 --> 09:19.405
and these can take years to produce.

09:19.905 --> 09:21.685
So one is not paid for the time,

09:22.065 --> 09:23.925
and these journals are very competitive.

09:23.945 --> 09:27.005
So articles can get rejected for reasons that has nothing

09:27.005 --> 09:28.245
to do with your performance.

09:28.865 --> 09:32.125
So, why does that produce the kind

09:32.125 --> 09:35.365
of indiscriminate overwork that I talked about is

09:35.365 --> 09:36.685
because you don't know

09:36.685 --> 09:38.245
how you're stacking up during the year.

09:38.305 --> 09:41.325
You only know that there are 60 other people who are just

09:41.325 --> 09:44.365
as talented as you, who work just as hard as you,

09:44.545 --> 09:45.845
and you need to come out on top.

09:46.345 --> 09:50.725
So in a consulting firm that I will not name,

09:50.995 --> 09:54.045
they want to, appear to their clients

09:54.045 --> 09:56.445
that they have these Renaissance individuals who

09:56.585 --> 09:58.925
during weekends, do these fascinating things

09:58.925 --> 10:01.885
that have nothing to do with work to then be refreshed

10:01.985 --> 10:03.245
and creative for their clients.

10:03.545 --> 10:06.645
But as it turns out, they, consultants work secretively

10:07.025 --> 10:08.725
to achieve these results.

10:08.945 --> 10:11.405
Uh, and to come out on top just like the bankers do.

10:11.725 --> 10:14.205
I, chose the term entrepreneur,

10:14.205 --> 10:17.085
because it, the banks

10:17.665 --> 10:20.405
expose these bankers to market forces.

10:20.955 --> 10:22.405
Competition is a market force.

10:23.225 --> 10:28.205
So, let's say, in, at the two investment banks,

10:28.635 --> 10:32.245
when the market, in one product market, let's say an m

10:32.245 --> 10:35.925
and a declines, bankers in another area get fired

10:36.345 --> 10:38.645
for reasons that has nothing to do with their performance.

10:38.705 --> 10:40.165
It reflects market forces.

10:40.905 --> 10:42.205
So like entrepreneurs,

10:42.675 --> 10:45.525
they are being exposed to market forces.

10:45.865 --> 10:49.445
The organization does not protect them. Like entrepreneurs.

10:49.795 --> 10:53.045
They need to be sensitive to opportunities in the market,

10:53.335 --> 10:54.685
let's say, to find deals.

10:55.305 --> 10:58.445
Uh, and they need to place betts on these deals, right?

10:58.445 --> 11:00.925
They talk to clients, well, will this deal pan out or not?

11:00.925 --> 11:03.085
Should I spend my time,

11:03.085 --> 11:04.765
on deals in the healthcare industry

11:04.765 --> 11:05.885
where they could be bigger?

11:06.305 --> 11:08.245
So they need to take all of these risks

11:08.355 --> 11:10.365
that typically entrepreneurs would take.

11:10.705 --> 11:12.645
Uh, similarly academics, right?

11:12.745 --> 11:16.365
If you want to work on a publication,

11:16.365 --> 11:18.205
that gets published, let's say in a SQ,

11:18.395 --> 11:20.045
that will take years of your time.

11:20.145 --> 11:22.725
So you need to make betts along the way,

11:22.855 --> 11:24.885
about the marketability of this.

11:25.265 --> 11:28.045
Uh, so all of these are entrepreneurial considerations,

11:28.065 --> 11:29.805
and that's very different from an employee.

11:30.605 --> 11:32.725
Employees typically do what you tell them to do.

11:32.725 --> 11:35.125
They're working on role-based considerations.

11:35.585 --> 11:36.845
And as I mentioned, if something

11:36.845 --> 11:37.965
happens in the market, right?

11:37.965 --> 11:42.325
If, the market in one area, declines,

11:42.425 --> 11:45.045
it doesn't affect them, they still get paid if they perform

11:45.045 --> 11:47.285
their role, there's overwork, right?

11:47.665 --> 11:50.885
But, there's also, there are these deep interventions,

11:51.025 --> 11:52.645
that are observed in bodies.

11:53.385 --> 11:56.565
Um, and I had a few quotations that I want to read

11:56.565 --> 11:59.045
to you later on, but so,

11:59.835 --> 12:02.605
when this overwork goes on for decades,

12:02.985 --> 12:04.925
as it did in the bankers that I've observed,

12:05.065 --> 12:06.325
bodies start to break down.

12:06.745 --> 12:09.085
Uh, and initially bankers went to doctors,

12:09.385 --> 12:11.485
but doctors just told them, well, this is normal

12:11.585 --> 12:13.365
for your age and workless.

12:14.785 --> 12:16.245
And so one,

12:16.305 --> 12:18.965
and of course that wasn't satisfactory to the bankers

12:18.965 --> 12:21.725
because their livelihood depends on them working as hard

12:21.725 --> 12:22.725
as they possibly can.

12:23.145 --> 12:24.925
And the surprising thing was

12:24.995 --> 12:28.405
that I never heard the term burnout, in the bankers.

12:28.685 --> 12:30.605
Nevertheless, that term,

12:30.665 --> 12:33.285
is very prevalent in the literature and overwork.

12:33.745 --> 12:35.165
Uh, and that's revealing

12:35.165 --> 12:37.725
because burnout is a critique of organizations.

12:38.185 --> 12:40.685
It involves that they have unreasonable demands

12:40.685 --> 12:42.525
that exceed the worker's capacity.

12:43.065 --> 12:46.925
Um, and then the remedy, also Bos on the imaginary

12:46.925 --> 12:50.445
of the industrial machine, you recharge, you refuel.

12:50.865 --> 12:53.805
But bankers believed it's not the organization's

12:53.805 --> 12:55.165
problem, it's their problem.

12:55.515 --> 12:58.485
They thought, I'm weak, I just have s****y genes.

12:59.025 --> 13:01.765
Uh, and also they believed that they could not take time off

13:01.765 --> 13:04.325
because clients would simply go to competitors.

13:04.625 --> 13:06.445
And then they took it upon themselves

13:06.625 --> 13:09.285
to fix every single dysfunction that came their way.

13:09.585 --> 13:11.005
And let me give you one example.

13:11.065 --> 13:14.205
And this example, comes from an interview

13:14.235 --> 13:16.565
that I did, in 2012.

13:17.385 --> 13:18.725
So the mechanisms

13:18.725 --> 13:21.205
that you hear about now may be quite well known,

13:21.265 --> 13:22.445
but at the time it weren't.

13:22.445 --> 13:25.885
They weren't. So here's the banker to fix brain fog.

13:26.205 --> 13:28.685
I learned about blood sugar and that helped, but not enough.

13:28.685 --> 13:30.925
Could it be hormones? And tests came back normal.

13:31.385 --> 13:33.005
So it turned out to be my gut,

13:33.215 --> 13:35.285
which had been troubling for me for a while.

13:35.465 --> 13:38.205
But, you know, why was the gut inflamed?

13:38.465 --> 13:40.245
So I learned about digestive enzymes.

13:40.285 --> 13:41.645
I learned about the microbiome.

13:42.345 --> 13:46.245
Um, but my gut didn't get enough enzymes

13:46.245 --> 13:49.445
because the gall bladder wasn't producing enough bile well

13:49.475 --> 13:50.485
with the ducts closed.

13:50.985 --> 13:53.565
So add bile to the mix and so on.

13:53.945 --> 13:56.485
And so to function at the level that I need to,

13:56.965 --> 13:58.645
I ended up having to keep all

13:58.645 --> 14:00.845
of these different systems at an ideal level.

14:00.985 --> 14:03.685
The hormones, the blood sugar, the neurotransmitter,

14:03.825 --> 14:05.925
the gut biome, the enzyme, and so on.

14:06.225 --> 14:09.205
So I'm running my body like a cockpit.

14:09.705 --> 14:12.165
And that's the body entrepreneurial orientation.

14:12.265 --> 14:13.365
The body is capital.

14:13.905 --> 14:16.925
It is something that you can engineer from the outside.

14:17.385 --> 14:19.205
And so over time, they learn how

14:19.205 --> 14:22.685
to run every single organ from the outside, not

14:22.705 --> 14:25.565
to be healthy, to restore some kind of normal function,

14:25.985 --> 14:27.205
but to perform in a way

14:27.205 --> 14:29.445
that a given deal situation demanded.

14:29.865 --> 14:32.005
So here, is another banker.

14:32.235 --> 14:35.205
When I had this massive breakdown, my doctor cycled me

14:35.205 --> 14:37.205
through all kinds of heavy duty medications

14:37.985 --> 14:41.365
to keep me functioning at work, antidepressants, stimulants,

14:41.405 --> 14:43.965
anti-anxiety, painkillers, cognitive enhancers.

14:44.425 --> 14:48.045
And this taught me to design my physiology from the outside

14:48.345 --> 14:51.870
for one purpose only staying productive and successful.

14:52.465 --> 14:55.405
And here the last quotation, is from a woman.

14:55.585 --> 14:56.605
Uh, infertility.

14:56.675 --> 14:59.965
Infertility, was, quite frequent,

15:00.025 --> 15:01.485
in professional women overall.

15:02.105 --> 15:04.605
Uh, and here the woman, in, during her treatment,

15:04.605 --> 15:06.685
when they gave me hormones, I could tell all the things

15:06.685 --> 15:07.725
that one hormone does.

15:08.075 --> 15:10.605
When I took more estrogen, I was better with colleagues

15:10.605 --> 15:12.965
and had solitary work because I was in a better mood.

15:13.385 --> 15:15.245
Uh, when I took testosterone, I was better

15:15.245 --> 15:17.245
with tough clients and then negotiations

15:17.245 --> 15:20.165
because I was more confident and had more stamina at work.

15:20.785 --> 15:23.285
And now I regulate my hormones depending on

15:23.285 --> 15:24.605
what kind of performance I need.

15:25.425 --> 15:28.285
So in the process, what you hear here is

15:28.285 --> 15:30.885
that bankers develop a new orientation to the self.

15:31.435 --> 15:35.045
It's not an inner psychological space that, you know,

15:35.065 --> 15:36.845
you explore and that's fixed.

15:37.345 --> 15:38.645
Uh, but it's spread out

15:38.645 --> 15:40.925
and it's interconnected with other affordances.

15:41.265 --> 15:44.125
So as one banker said is what I thought was me,

15:44.395 --> 15:46.085
it's really just a chemistry soup.

15:46.345 --> 15:48.805
If you put different chemicals into your body,

15:49.065 --> 15:50.885
you can become a radically different person.

15:50.945 --> 15:53.205
You have a different personality you want

15:53.225 --> 15:55.085
and feel different things,

15:55.145 --> 15:56.765
and you can accomplish different things.

15:57.625 --> 16:01.365
So, that is as much as, I have time

16:01.365 --> 16:04.245
to tell you about the, body entrepreneur.

16:04.475 --> 16:08.365
It's someone who works the body from the outside in

16:08.505 --> 16:09.645
for competitive success.

Radical Changes in Work and Worker Well-being

00:00:00 - The context of this study is a radical societal change, that I observed in organizations. and this change has been referred to and studied under different names, financialization, neoliberalism, reflexive, modernity, and I'll just refer to it as the market turn. and, this change involves that, domains and societies, families, organizations that previously worked in one way now work differently.
00:00:33 - And let me tell you the first cues of, how that became noticeable in organizations. and that requires a bit of history. So since the first industrial revolution, organizations have used the bodies of their workers as a kind of capital, and they used all kinds of techniques to extract effort from workers. So, Henry Ford, for example, sent investigators into their workers' homes to verify that they practice habits that kept them productive at work.
00:01:09 - workers resisted, they sabotaged, they loaf, they escaped. and then all of a sudden, starting in the 1980s when this market turn started, things changed drastically in organizations. So in the past and in other cultures, the more education you have and the richer you are, the less you work. But now what you observe is that highly educated, highly marketable workers, bankers, consultants, doctors,
00:01:40 - legitimately require a hundred hours a week. and, and the conditions that a sociologist has referred to as white collar sweat shop. So the kinds of organization I studied, for example, a banker at Goldman Sachs worked 155 hours in one week that left only 13 hours for sleep the entire week. and no time for anything else. And it's not unusual for bankers to sleep under their desks. So as I track these overworking professionals over time,
00:02:13 - voluntarily, but they also took over from organization the task of extracting effort from their body. and let me give you an extract from, a New York Times article so that you can see that this is more widely occurring, not merely in my data. and there the wife of a silicon lawyer, a valley, lawyer, recalls how she cleaned up his home after he died from a drug overdose. And Peter, the lawyer, he used drugs not to get high,
00:02:44 - So here's his wife who said, Peter would joke that the perfect drug for him would be the combination of an antidepressant, a pain reliever, a stimulant. And when I cleaned out, I cleaned out his house, I found the ingredients for it, Vicodin, Tramadol, Adderall, cocaine, Xanax, crystal meth, and the kaleidoscope of pills I couldn't identify, but not for lack of trying. And so like the people I studied, investment bankers, Peter intervened in his body to produce the kind

Emotional Labor in High-Pressure Professions

00:03:17 - And so the people I study, they don't only need to work these long hours, sometimes 120 hours a week, but also on demand to generate the kind of emotion and cognition that makes them effective with client. So if you're working all night, but then they meet the client, and they need to be pleasant even though they're half asleep. But then the lawyer comes in to negotiate, a deal. And so now they need to be hostile to represent the client in the best way.
00:03:47 - and they need to be creative. and then they need to turn to another task, where they need to perform in a highly analytic manner. and so they need to switch rapidly through these cognitive emotional states. and typically we think that that is something, emotion is something that works inside out. But since the livelihood of my informants dependent on how well and how flexibly they could do it, they work their emotion from the outside in. and that's one aspect
00:04:19 - just like the old organizations did. But now they do it for themselves, and they intervene in their body, much more aggressively than organizations legitimately can. So to continue Peter's story, the wife writes, the last call he ever made was for work, Peter vomiting, unable to sit up, slipping in and out of consciousness, had managed somehow to dial into a conference call. So in addition to modulating emotions on
00:04:51 - to fix various breakdowns, that this intense overwork incurred. And I'm giving you this example to show number one, they intervened more radically than organizations possibly can. number two, it shows that this is very different from the health orientation that we saw in employees in the 1970s. You know, the aerobics where people use health to signal that you were a high performer here, people intervene in their bodies regardless of health.
00:05:24 - that my study addressed. Number one, what causes these changes in how workers orient to work? and the brief answer that I would love to elaborate if you allow me, is a new set of competitive work practices that uses market logics. and you will see, that that is also observable in other organizations and law firms and invest in other investment banks, in academia. And so the quest, the second question is,
00:05:56 - bodies sos radically? and here the key finding is that biology manifests in historically new ways that I have alluded to. So typically we think biology works inside out, and it's not under our control. The best we can do is provide good conditions, but Peter and the bankers believe that they run their biology from the outside in. And so I followed a group of investment bankers over the period of 20 years,

Body Entrepreneurs: Capitalizing on Competitive Work Environments

00:06:28 - into the two investment banks that wish to stay anonymous. and that allowed me the opportunity to study the market, turn in the organizations that are at the heart of it, and track the changes in people as they occurred. So to now turn to your question, what is a body entrepreneur? Well, the body entrepreneur, is an employee typically in a highly competitive work context such as investment, banking, consulting, law,
00:06:59 - as a kind of, capital, capital to be exploited for competitive success. And so if you allow me to continue briefly, I would like to tell you the answers to these two questions. Number one, what are these new market practices that are more prevalent in organizations? And number two, what are these changes that occur in bodies, these changes where all of a sudden biology works from the outside in for competitive success?
00:07:31 - so hard and why do they exploit their bodies as capital? and the answer is that these organizations call their employees, employees, universities call their professors employees, but in fact, these types of workers are positioned more as entrepreneurs. And, and what do I mean with that? Well, typically organizations assume market risk. And what that mean is means is they pay individuals for that time.
00:08:01 - So if there's something, if something changes in the organization's environment, the organization deals with it, the worker still gets paid for their time. But that isn't the case for the investment banks. The bankers weren't paid for their time and effort. They were paid when they closed deals. and deals could fail to close for a variety of reasons that are not under a banker's control. So markets could tank buyers or sellers could change their minds, regulations could fail to come through, due diligence could reveal
00:08:31 - So all of this has nothing to do with a banker's performance, and yet they only get paid if deals close. And there's a caveat. So imagine you've just brought in a deal that generates hundreds of millions for your bank, but you're being paid competitively at the end of the year. You are ranked against your peers and the top performers, they get paid millions of dollars and the lowest 5%, for Example, at Goldman, they get fired. Doesn't matter how much you bring in. So you bring in millions of dollars,
00:09:02 - you can get fired anyway. so you might think that this is peculiar to Wall Street, but lawyers and consultants get paid this way and academics, right? So in research universities, you are promoted based on publications and top journals, and these can take years to produce. So one is not paid for the time, and these journals are very competitive. So articles can get rejected for reasons that has nothing to do with your performance. So, why does that produce the kind

Competitive Pressures in Professional Workplaces

00:09:35 - because you don't know how you're stacking up during the year. You only know that there are 60 other people who are just as talented as you, who work just as hard as you, and you need to come out on top. So in a consulting firm that I will not name, they want to, appear to their clients that they have these Renaissance individuals who during weekends, do these fascinating things that have nothing to do with work to then be refreshed and creative for their clients.
00:10:07 - to achieve these results. and to come out on top just like the bankers do. I, chose the term entrepreneur, because it, the banks expose these bankers to market forces. Competition is a market force. So, let's say, in, at the two investment banks, when the market, in one product market, let's say an m and a declines, bankers in another area get fired
00:10:38 - It reflects market forces. So like entrepreneurs, they are being exposed to market forces. The organization does not protect them. Like entrepreneurs. They need to be sensitive to opportunities in the market, let's say, to find deals. and they need to place betts on these deals, right? They talk to clients, well, will this deal pan out or not? Should I spend my time, on deals in the healthcare industry where they could be bigger? So they need to take all of these risks
00:11:10 - similarly academics, right? If you want to work on a publication, that gets published, let's say in a SQ, that will take years of your time. So you need to make betts along the way, about the marketability of this. so all of these are entrepreneurial considerations, and that's very different from an employee. Employees typically do what you tell them to do. They're working on role-based considerations. And as I mentioned, if something happens in the market, right? If, the market in one area, declines,
00:11:45 - their role, there's overwork, right? But, there's also, there are these deep interventions, that are observed in bodies. and I had a few quotations that I want to read to you later on, but so, when this overwork goes on for decades, as it did in the bankers that I've observed, bodies start to break down. and initially bankers went to doctors, but doctors just told them, well, this is normal for your age and workless.
00:12:16 - and of course that wasn't satisfactory to the bankers because their livelihood depends on them working as hard as they possibly can. And the surprising thing was that I never heard the term burnout, in the bankers. Nevertheless, that term, is very prevalent in the literature and overwork. and that's revealing because burnout is a critique of organizations. It involves that they have unreasonable demands that exceed the worker's capacity. and then the remedy, also Bos on the imaginary

Body as Capital: The Banker’s Burden

00:12:50 - But bankers believed it's not the organization's problem, it's their problem. They thought, I'm weak, I just have s****y genes. and also they believed that they could not take time off because clients would simply go to competitors. And then they took it upon themselves to fix every single dysfunction that came their way. And let me give you one example. And this example, comes from an interview that I did, in 2012.
00:13:18 - that you hear about now may be quite well known, but at the time it weren't. They weren't. So here's the banker to fix brain fog. I learned about blood sugar and that helped, but not enough. Could it be hormones? And tests came back normal. So it turned out to be my gut, which had been troubling for me for a while. But, you know, why was the gut inflamed? So I learned about digestive enzymes. I learned about the microbiome. but my gut didn't get enough enzymes because the gall bladder wasn't producing enough bile well
00:13:50 - So add bile to the mix and so on. And so to function at the level that I need to, I ended up having to keep all of these different systems at an ideal level. The hormones, the blood sugar, the neurotransmitter, the gut biome, the enzyme, and so on. So I'm running my body like a cockpit. And that's the body entrepreneurial orientation. The body is capital. It is something that you can engineer from the outside. And so over time, they learn how to run every single organ from the outside, not
00:14:25 - but to perform in a way that a given deal situation demanded. So here, is another banker. When I had this massive breakdown, my doctor cycled me through all kinds of heavy duty medications to keep me functioning at work, antidepressants, stimulants, anti-anxiety, painkillers, cognitive enhancers. And this taught me to design my physiology from the outside for one purpose only staying productive and successful. And here the last quotation, is from a woman.
00:14:56 - Infertility, was, quite frequent, in professional women overall. and here the woman, in, during her treatment, when they gave me hormones, I could tell all the things that one hormone does. When I took more estrogen, I was better with colleagues and had solitary work because I was in a better mood. when I took testosterone, I was better with tough clients and then negotiations because I was more confident and had more stamina at work. And now I regulate my hormones depending on what kind of performance I need. So in the process, what you hear here is
00:15:31 - It's not an inner psychological space that, you know, you explore and that's fixed. but it's spread out and it's interconnected with other affordances. So as one banker said is what I thought was me, it's really just a chemistry soup. If you put different chemicals into your body, you can become a radically different person. You have a different personality you want and feel different things, and you can accomplish different things. So, that is as much as, I have time