infonet-economy

The aim of this paper is to trace the processes of translation through which coaching transports, transforms and transgresses therapeutic discourses into the managerial realm. Our empirical analysis, firstly, shows the architectures of coaching as a site of translation between two professional fields, management and therapy. Second, our analysis reveals that coaching as discursive practice is formed through the contextualized interplay between several more or less dominant discourses into relational patterns or translative moves with distinctive effects such as assimilation, unfolding or countering. In the discussion, we suggest that the described translative process is itself situated in and fueled by a larger socio-cultural transformations towards the agenda of what has been termed soft and emotional capitalism (Thrift, 1996; Illouz, 2007). This paper thus documents that coaching like no other psy-practice in management, aligns through various translative moves the intimacy of the therapeutic with the aims of improving managers (self-) management functions