Portrait of authority: a critical interrogation of the ideology of job and career coaching

• Published in: Pedagogy, culture & society Vol. 27; no. 2; pp. 199 - 213
• Main Authors: Dahlstedt, Magnus, Vesterberg, Viktor
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 03.04.2019; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Behavior Standards; Business; Career Counseling; Career Guidance; Careers; Coaching; Coaching (Performance); Commercialization; Compliance (Psychology); critical discourse analysis; Discourse analysis; Discourse Modes; employability; Employer Employee Relationship; Employers; Employment Potential; Expertise; Figurative Language; Foreign Countries; Global Approach; Ideology; Job and career coaching; Job Applicants; Job Performance; Job Search Methods; Labor Market; Organizational Culture; Power Structure; Self Concept; strategy of legitimation; Success; Web Sites; Sweden
• DOI: 10.1080/14681366.2018.1450284
• ISSN: 1468-1366; 1747-5104

This article focuses on job and career coaching provided by a multinational company, as a means of learning how to become employable. On the basis of a critical discourse analysis informed by Fairclough, we interrogate tips and advice in blog posts written by job and career coaches on the company's website. The aim of the article is to examine the power relationships between the coaches, the coachees and the employers in these tips and advice. The analytical focus is directed at descriptions of three subject positions - the coach, the coachee, and the employer. We explore the ways in which their relationships to each other are legitimised. The tips and advice shape a particular understanding of the contemporary conditions and challenges on the labour market producing an ideology of job and career coaching, where existing power relationships in working life are legitimised by portraying coaches as neutral authorities and coachees as commodities.