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Purpose This paper aims to employ the concept of subjectivity taken from Lacanian psychoanalysis and Slavoj Žižek's idea of the law, enabled via its “inherent transgression”, to critique the premises of neolibertarian theory about the market's superior ways of organizing society. Design/methodology/approach An alternative conceptual framework is being developed and applied to the analysis of the transition from a planned to a market economy in former socialist countries using the example of informal payments in the health system in Russia. The proposed schema builds on the idea of the subject eternally divided between the imaginary conceptions of the self/the other, and the socio‐symbolic order, which is offered to theorize on the role of phantasy in this transformation. Findings The applied (psycho)‐analytic schema reveals why the totalizing discourse of the market is no less tyrannical and no less totalitarian in its intent than the socialist ideology it opposes. The central argument is how dominant ideologies are made of, and stand for, an unattainable phantasy, as it was demonstrated in both socialism and the market. Originality/value By re‐engaging psychoanalysis to understand social and political projects and by unearthing the imaginary underpinnings of the symbolic order, the study argues for considering the phantasmatic dimensions of political and organizational transformations in management studies.
Marianna Fotaki (Fri,) studied this question.