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Survival at work: flexibility and adaptability in American corporate culture

Using such business self-help bestsellers as Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese?, Harvey Mackay’s Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive and Kevin Kelly’s New Rules for the New Economy, this article analyses a recent trend in the American business world’s use of Darwinian discourse: the increasing centrality of two specific traits – flexibility and adaptability – to corporate ‘survival’ in the 1980s, 1990s and today. The article argues that this focus on adaptability and flexibility has two especially troubling implications: individuals may be compelled to adapt ceaselessly, and the problematic idea that one can survive or succeed through sheer individual will may become naturalized.