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Psychological knowledge for the governance of the South

Hernan Camilo Pulido-Martinez
Ponticia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to achieve a critical understanding of the place of psychological knowledge with regard to the international regulation of the world of work. Specically, it seeks to explore the place and operations of psychology involved in the constitution of workers as subjects in countries that do not produce this knowledge but appropriate, adapt and hybridise it. Design/methodology/approach The transition from a traditional passengers transport system to a rapid bus service named Transmilenio is considered as a local focus of analysis. Working conditions and some psychological practices established in a multi-site ethnographic study conducted within the transport system are considered to illustrate ways in which psychological knowledge contributes to the production of drivers as subjects, and to perpetuate the relationships of international subordination. Findings The paper establishes the particular transformations that, in terms of working conditions, frame the application of psychological knowledge. It also shows how psychological practices applied in different types of transport companies are connected to produce traditional workers as the other which has to be transformed. Finally, the psychological practices are linked to some of the global ows which aim to produce a global management at a distance. Originality/value Even though work psychology is a source of inspiration for management techniques, there is not much research related to the local-global implications of its practices. Thus, this paper contributes to the understanding of the ways in which North-Atlantic psychology operates when it is applied to work settings located in the South. Keywords Work psychology, South America, Transport industry Paper type Research paper

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1. A wider international management There is no a clear denition of what international management (IM) is or what it should be (Boddewyn et al., 2004; Acedo and Casillas, 2005). In general terms, researchers in IM aim to understand the contemporary business phenomena which are immersed in global relationships (Pisani, 2009). The reviews of mainstream IM literature reveal the range of explanations and their theoretical and methodological perspectives (Werner, 2002). In North Atlantic societies, especially in the USA, a series of studies are classied under the IM label that comprises a variety of topics which constitute the mainstream knowledge of the eld. Even though the consensus about IM is not clear, US scholars aspire to internationalise their own parochial views of management as universal IM knowledge (Martinez and Toyne, 2000; Guedes and Faria, 2007). In this situation, it is hardly recognised that IM is an ethnocentric knowledge that is characterised by its pro-US transnational corporations bias (Case and Selvester, 2000). Critical researchers concerned about deciencies caused by the reduced scope of IM and with its apolitical nature suggest different strategies to redene the eld. It is argued that constructing a conceptual framework for IM means going beyond

critical perspectives on international business Vol. 6 No. 2/3, 2010 pp. 177-189 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1742-2043 DOI 10.1108/17422041011049987

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managers and managerial knowledge and crossing borders from North Atlantic countries to societies located in the South (Boddewyn et al., 2004). Political issues also have to be taken into account if the consequences of IM are going to be relevant to those linked to the eld. Guedes and Faria (2007), for instance, argue that the IM eld should move from the US management perspective of pro-transnational corporations which deny the interests and questions of developing countries to interdisciplinary work based on international relations, international business and international political economy. An interdisciplinary eld, according to Guedes and Faria (2007), would provide a more realistic IM that should be engaged with issues of governance, globalisation and neo-liberalisation. With this line of thinking, Case and Selvester (2000) state that politicising IM involves the evolution of capitalism and its particular manifestations around the world. It also implies understanding the problems of management at different levels, both micro and macro, to establish how transnational managerial ideologies function in facilitating the expansion of deregulated capitalism (Hassard et al., 2007). Taking into consideration that international management has to be considered from a broader perspective, this paper assumes a particular standpoint for the understanding of global management and its consequences when it is applied to specic regions, such as Latin America. It is concerned with one source of managerial techniques that has been applied around the world, namely psychological knowledge and its derived practices. Specically, it examines the place, operations and global relationships of psychology with regard to the production of subjectivity at work in the transition that is taking place within the urban passenger transport system in Bogota, Colombia. The paper is composed of three sections; in the rst section, the conceptual prescriptions and the implications they have for the understanding of psychological knowledge as a means of global management are elaborated. In the second part, these conceptual prescriptions are applied to the particular situation of the transport system in Bogota. To do so, working conditions and some psychological practices taken from a multi-sited ethnographic study are presented as a local focus of analysis. Finally, in the third section, the construction of the drivers as subjects in the transport system is considered as regards the process of global regulation. 2. Conceptual prescriptions To achieve a critical understanding of the place of psychological knowledge with reference to the international regulation of the world of work, it is important to argue that psychology embraces neo-colonial dimensions when applied to places other than North-Atlantic societies. Thus, it is crucial to explore the relationship that psychology and the world of work have established as regards the constitution of workers as subjects within local conditions, and then to refer these constructions to the processes of global regulation (Pulido-Martinez, 2007, 2008). The following conceptual prescriptions guided the mapping of psychological practices conducted in different transport organisations: . Working conditions frame the psychological practices at work but do not limit them. Working conditions for the transport service are the result of at least three ows: the Colombian legal regulations which apply to capitalist competition, the shape that these regulations take in the day-to-day life of organisations and the

global inuences affecting the organisation of work in every company. Specic congurations of working conditions are examples of the relationship between local working practices and the global regulations of the world of work. The transport service constitutes a framework in which, according to particular working conditions, a series of psychological practices and discourses for producing psychologised human beings are formulated. Lay psychology and academic work psychology interact to constitute the worker as a subject. Psychologists may talk about psychological objects at work, such as empowerment, motivation and personality, to name but a few, because psychological discipline has taken these categories from the broader language community to which psychologists belong (Danziger, 1997, p. 82). In the transition of working conditions that involve lay conceptions of work and workers, it is indispensable to pay attention to the interaction between these popular conceptions and work psychological discourses. Exploring both the interaction between academic North-Atlantic psychology in other cultural environments which have not directly contributed to the production of its North Atlantic categories and the consequent effects in terms of the constitution of the workers as subjects in a different cultural context, a central point is to understand the place and operations of psychology. If it is accepted that the consolidation of work psychology categories coincides with the modern disciplinary organisation of North-Atlantic societies (Papadopoulos, 2004), the interaction of these categories with other lay psychological categories could therefore be seen as a process of local disciplinarisation. Psychology at work is more than a series of academic proposals. Psychology at work is basically a tactical arrangement of a constellation of elements which aim to make up (Hacking, 1995) human subjects as desirable workers in given historical circumstances (Rose, 1996; Blackman and Walkerdine, 2001; Hacking, 1995; Hollway, 1991; Foucault, 2006). Psychology is a complex network of practices, vocabularies, professions, agents, discourses, theories, editorials, conferences, organisations, techniques and instruments deployed in the world of work that constitute a particular manifestation of what has been called the psy-complex (Rose, 1996; Ingleby, 1985). Psychological practices aiming to constitute the worker as a subject can be located in the sovereignty/disciplinary/governmentality power complex. Work psychology provides a series of theories, technologies and psychological norms that simultaneously locate workers within the productive process, providing knowledge about them and constituting the norms against which they can be judged in terms of progress and compliance. Proposed ways of being a worker homogenise the labour force by comparing their psychological features and cementing workers in specic positions. However, the analysis of psychological practices and discourses should not stop at these disciplinary effects. As Rose (1996) indicates, the disciplinary effects of psychology have to be considered, but the analysis has to go further in order to understand the psy-complex in the light of the contemporary effects of government, that is, the ways in which the political rationality of liberalism is exercised (Foucault, 1979, 1996; Blackman and Walkerdine, 2001).

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The power complex can be extended to the relationship of modernity/coloniality in order to understand the neo-colonial governmentality implicit in the psy-complex. The studies explaining the place of psychology in a framework that both reduces and centralises modernity as well as limiting it to North Atlantic countries forget that a fundamental element of the psy-complex is composed of the constitution of the other in psychological terms. That is, the colonial process was always present as a central gure in the constitution of psychological knowledge (Bhatia, 2002; Richards, 1997). Because of this limited view of modernity, analysis, to a certain extent, isolates psychology and liberalism as elements that have a place, origin and dissemination in North Atlantic societies; they are not the result of a global modernity allowing certain manifestations of global liberal geoculture in different locations around the world. Particular local manifestations of the psy complex in terms of appropriations, variations, intensications, reformulations and hybridisations constitute the issues that should be researched in terms of how disciplines and government are exercised (Pulido-Martinez, 2007).

3. Working conditions Different types of companies co-exist in the transport service domain in Bogota: these are traditional companies that still offer a transport service in most areas of the city, and the Bus Rapid Service companies that comprise the Transmilenio system and are gradually replacing the traditional ones. The Transmilenio companies are divided into feeder and trunk companies: the buses of the trunk companies circulate in corridors specially constructed for them, where no other vehicles can circulate. The buses of the feeder companies circulate around the neighbourhoods bringing commuters to the platforms of the corridors. All the companies in the traditional service have similar working conditions. In contrast, in the Transmilenio service, working conditions vary according to each company. In the traditional service, the driver is in charge of the entire operation; he is not only a driver, but also makes decisions regarding timetables, how to drive, how to compete, where and how to collect passengers, who is allowed to board the bus and who is not, the maintenance of the vehicle, the number and the duration of routes covered, the breaks and where to park the vehicle at the end of the day. By controlling the whole operation in the traditional service, the driver keeps a degree of freedom and autonomy. He is working for himself. Within the feeder and trunk services, however, the worker becomes just a driver. He is limited to the operation of the machine, while all other aspects of control are transferred over to the companies. Thus, feeder and trunk drivers are not working for themselves but for their respective organisations. These organisations have the control of time, money, maintenance, speed and social relationships; that is to say, the Transmilenio companies possess the know-how of the operation. These changes in the working practices in the Transmilenio system and the subsequent drivers loss of control over the operation have been accompanied by other changes in the objective working conditions. In the traditional service, the fundamental business relationship is established between the owner of the vehicle and the driver with very limited intervention, if any,

from the transport companies. Though the 67 traditional transport companies are ultimately in charge of providing the transport services, they are not the owners of the vehicles that operate on their routes. In fact, they lend out their routes to the thousands of vehicle owners. The owners of these vehicles are the people who negotiate the details of the operation directly with the drivers. Therefore, the owner of the vehicle becomes an entrepreneur, with almost complete autonomy over the drivers work contracts and methods of remuneration. By the same token, the driver becomes fully autonomous, working independently of any organisational structure, to the extent that transport companies often only keep records of the vehicles, not the drivers. Thus, there is a general instability in the traditional transport system which is mainly related to two issues. Firstly, in many instances, the work contracts are not formalised according to Colombian law. Instead of a contractual relationship mediated by the law and transport companies, work contracts are established based on informal agreements between the drivers and the bus owners. They are, therefore, generally established outside of any legal framework: familiarity and friendship underpin these relationships of subordination. Secondly, drivers are not strongly linked to any one organisation, but move easily from one company to another and from one bus owner to another. Since the driver is not paid by the transport companies, but by the owner of the vehicle, the war of the cents becomes the competition for passengers in Bogotas streets, while the basic form of management is the piecework system. Therefore, the higher the number of passengers he collects, the more prot he makes. This situation motivates drivers to work many more hours than those recommended by the Colombian Ministry of Work, and as a result, many drivers end up having just one day off a month. The war of the cents and the piecework system allow the earnings of a traditional driver to be remarkably higher than the salary of any other worker with the same educational level. In general terms, the types of work contract established between the driver and the owner of the vehicle allow for the exibility of work practices within the traditional service, which, in most cases, acts in favour of the driver. These working conditions also help to add exibility to other aspects of the drivers life. The driver does not have to wait to be paid either weekly or monthly; he takes his daily share directly from the amount of money obtained during the day. This allows drivers to not only have a sense of self-management and control over their economic life, but also over their life more generally. In the feeder company the work contracts are established between drivers and the transport companies while the owners of the vehicles become shareholders. Drivers are hired on three-year work contracts. The length of the work contracts corresponds to the length of the concession that the transport company has to operate the routes. At the end of the three-year concession, the authorities review the performance of the company and decide whether to extend their concession for another three years. Thus, drivers are always reminded that the renewal of their work contracts will depend on their companys performance. Remarkably, the salaries in the feeder service are also signicantly lower than the salaries of the traditional service. The basic salary of a driver in the trunk company is slightly higher than the basic salary in the feeder one, but much lower than the salary in the traditional service. Like the traditional service, however, the transport company operating in the trunk

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service does not establish direct work contracts with the drivers. Rather, the transport company uses the services of recently-created employment agencies to supply drivers for the new transport system. Often these agencies recycle traditional drivers who have been displaced by the new Transmilenio system. In the trunk service work is totally exibilised in order to achieve maximum prot. The transport companies argue that this manner of hiring drivers is the result of government regulations. According to these regulations, if, for any reason, the transport service stops, then the companys concession to operate can be cancelled. With the introduction of the feeder and trunk companies, no end is in sight to the uncertainty that characterises the traditional service. In fact, it can be said that uncertainty has become formalised and intensied in the Transmilenio service. That is to say, strong social security benets and life-long employment were never characteristics of the traditional service and are certainly not characteristics of the feeder and trunk companies either, since short-term contracts and exibility are central features of the world of work in feeder and trunk companies. These working conditions have been orchestrated in the middle of the liberal reforms which the country has implemented since the 1990s. The feeder and trunk working conditions are very similar to those in the traditional service, but the loss of control over work and the future decrease in the demand for drivers have made these positions much more fragile and vulnerable. As the Colombian government and the World Bank mutually nance the new transport system, its implementation has closely followed the recommendations prescribed by the bank so that Transmilenio returns the control of the transport sector back to the state by controlling the companies that offer the service. The state regulation of the sector is guaranteed as Bogotas municipal government is in charge of establishing the conditions of operation. By controlling the renewal of the companies concessions in accordance with performance standards, the municipal authorities maintain control over the service. Thus, the advent of the Transmilenio system signies the return of state control and the consolidation of drivers as a kind of employee. According to new government regulations, the transport companies of the new system have to meet legal requirements regarding the labour force. In addition, the government also determines the type of driver for the new service. With the government making the driver more appropriate, psychology has been ofcially introduced into the new transport system. The ofcial introduction of psychology aims to carry out the following operations: . to evaluate the drivers internal life in terms of emotional stability, self-control, self-efcacy and tendencies towards drug and alcohol abuse; . to evaluate specic psycho-physiological characteristics such as the capacity for concentration in repetitive tasks and colour discrimination; and . to transform the drivers interiority this is part of training programs which aim to improve the driver-passenger social relationship and to facilitate the processes of re-socialisation with other social actors by promoting tolerance, conict resolution techniques, customer service skills as well as a sense of belonging to the city.

4. The production of the traditional driver the chofer Framed within those working conditions, there are a series of popular constructions or lay psychological discourses conforming typologies (Blackman and Walkerdine, 2001) about the place of drivers in the traditional service and in the popular imagination. These descriptions circulate amongst commuters, managers, owners, and drivers. They also appear in the daily social interactions in the city, in the traditional companies, in the media, in owners and drivers associations and ofcial documents. All of them constitute a set of versions that make up the chofer, who in general terms is aggressive, inconsiderate, rough, amoral, prone to ghting, uneducated, but also a victim, irtatious and independent. The chofer is a dominant gure who controls the operation of the service and who the owner of the vehicle has to trust, with very limited intervention from the transport companies. Under these circumstances, the popular constructions locate the chofer as the main problem of the traditional service, while leaving the one-bus/one-owner structure untouched. The traditional drivers are therefore the ones who have to change as it is assumed that their driving habits and ways of being are the cause of the huge amount of transport problems that the city has to confront. The following are examples of these lay constructions which constitute the image of the chofer. Remarkably, this image lacks any hint of academic psychology jargon. 4.1. Public enemy The most popular image of the chofer presents the driver as someone with a series of negative characteristics: he is irresponsible, aggressive, alcoholic and a potential killer. As the driver is the face of the traditional service, considering him a public enemy strongly contributes to locating the problems of the traditional system at the level of the choferes behaviour. In the news, traditional drivers are frequently linked to criminal events:
In 2004, 442 bus drivers were reprimanded because they were driving under the inuence of alcohol. This is the result of unexpected alcohol tests conducted by the transit authorities. Likewise, during 2004 the transport authorities (Secretaria de Transito y Transporte) and the trafc police reprimanded 5,603 drivers because they did not have a drivers licence or bus insurance. In addition, 712 buses were found to be in operation without any regular mechanical review. The authorities also took 693 buses out of operation that did not have registration.

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4.2. Victim The other side of this public enemy reveals the driver as a victim. For example, a letter from one of the guilds states:
Former inter-municipal bus helpers, peasants displaced from their land, people with scarcely any education or none at all and professionals who did not pursue their careers because they could not nd a place in their eld, they all constitute the driver population. For them bus driving represents a very small but secure income. They belong to the middle and lower social classes; their families are affected by economic, educational, health, housing and food needs. They lack social security. Some of them have more than one family and in some cases, each family has several kids. The Colombian government condemns them to work with fares that do not cover basic expenses. This is the source of both the war of cents, and the chaotic trafc situation [. . .].

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Knowledge of the images comprising a chofer is fundamental to understand the interaction between the lay constructions of the driver produced in the traditional service and the proposals about desirable drivers constructed in academic psychological terms. In this sense, the different lay psychological constructions that make up (Hacking, 1995) the chofer prepare the territory for academic psychology to be applied; every image helps to individualise the traditional driver and simultaneously integrates him under the umbrella of the chofer. This individualisation and collectivisation is a formative and indispensable step in the process of psychological disciplinarisation. In this way, the chofer becomes the target of academic psychological intervention that aims to shape feeder and trunk drivers according to new ways of being. 5. The production of the feeder driver An illustration of the ways in which psychological practices are incorporated into the feeder company shows how psychology contends with the complex variety of sources which produce the traditional driver as a chofer, in order to replace him with a normalising formula associated with the production of the individualistic psychological subject (Henriques et al., 1998; Hollway, 1991; Rose, 1996). In this contention the feeder driver is constituted as the obverse face of the traditional driver. Thus, psychology helps to produce drivers in accordance with the increased precarious working conditions whilst strongly contributing to other, the traditional driver. The traditional driver is therefore someone who has to be reconstructed or displaced from the scenery of the city. The huge amount of psychological practices range from those intended to individualise, integrate and exclude people at work, to those which transform drivers into subjects who exercise their own self-government. An excerpt from an interview with a psychologist in charge of the induction program for feeder drivers illustrates the kind of psychological strategies used in the production of the psychological worker:
I then showed them another concept by saying that some of them had not left their comfort zone [. . .] they just said no, I am not going to be involved with pushing and pulling others [. . .] No thanks and bye-bye [. . .] and they remained static. However, everyone had the option of taking up the challenge [. . .] you were the ones who decided whether or not you were going to leave your comfort zone. I emphasised the central point, and asked them not to forget that through this game the experience had shown us that whoever challenges himself to be the central molasses enjoys himself much more, has a great time, and prots [. . .] whoever challenges himself to be involved gets much more satisfaction and enjoyment than the others. The supervisors said they were envious watching all the others having fun, laughing and pushing [. . .]. Then I told them this is the challenge for options, which means that to step out of your comfort zone you have to make an effort, you have to take risks and do new things. It is not simply staying still. It is not only a question of thinking about and keeping all this in mind. . . now that you will be working for this feeder company, how are you going to take on the challenge for options? [. . .].

This psychological technique called the challenge for options is available in the international consultancy market. It is only one example of the multitude of human relations and pret a porter psychological instruments applied to transform the chofer into a feeder driver. The psychologist applied this strategy as part of a battery that the international rm they work for offers to Colombian companies. The

strategy was then translated and adapted in order to make it signicant for the national population. The challenge for options, as well as other strategies applied, attempts to produce a kind of worker the free worker who is able and willing to choose his own destiny. In general terms, the psychological strategies applied in the feeder company aim to transform the traditional driver into a proactive worker. 6. The production of the trunk operator The absence of direct work contracts characterises the working conditions in the trunk company. In this context, the psychological techniques serve fundamentally to intensify both the psychological contracts and the work on the self in order to transform the chofer into a trunk operator. As an illustration of the psychological work applied to the constitution of the trunk operator, excerpts of an interview are provided. These excerpts show the attempts to constitute the trunk driver as an individual manager of a vehicle and of his own self. Being a manager of the bus and the self is very signicant as it reafrms the relationship with an anonymous investor and weakens the relationship with the trunk company. In the training workshops, for instance, the psychologist insisted that the ideal professional driver of the trunk company should follow the following guidelines:
You are the managers of the bus, you are the ones who are in charge of protecting the money of those who invest COP$500,000,000 (100,000) in a bus. There can be no excuses, you cannot damage the owners property and you have to manage it for the good of everybody. How can you say to the owner I have damaged your property worth COP$500,000,000. You have to be aware of who is risking more the owner or you. If you are not conscientious of roles as manager, you cannot complain about the monthly bonus.

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The trunk company seems to constitute the ideal post-modern organisation that some psychologists consider a matter of celebration (Gergen and Thatchenkery, 1996). It is a kind of virtual organisation that does not have traditional working ties with its members but searches for other ways of reformulating fundamental relationships; for the trunk company, the constitution of workers as entrepreneurs is fundamental (Rose, 1992). In psychological terms, the drivers become autonomised (Walkerdine, 2005) as managers who cannot make independent decisions about work tasks because the system is totally regulated. They can, however, manage themselves in order to take care of the investors property and become gures of politeness and efciency who constitute the public image of the trunk company. In the absence of direct work contracts, the psychological contract is intensied according to issues that are not directly related to driving, such as the establishment of trunk companys associate teams, continuous psychological training, the emphasis on a groomed image and the constant call to be the type of driver who is the other of the chofer by being a moral, tolerant public servant and sufciently educated to work for the trunk company. So far, it has not only been possible to see how the particular manifestation of the psy-complex attempted to produce different desirable workers in distinct ways, it has also been possible to see how the production of desirable drivers intrinsically constituted the traditional driver as the other who should sooner or later be replaced. The relationships and distant ows between the different sites show how the images of traditional, feeder and trunk drivers relate to each other in a network which is possible thanks to the national and international working conditions and the

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requirements established by the World Bank and the Colombian government. According to the intensication of vulnerability and precarisation of work that characterise the implementation of the Transmilenio system, psychology has become an adequate means for the production and government of exible subjects which can be identied as part of the universally-homogenised psychological work force. 7. Moving up What now follows is a discussion on how the constructions of the chofer as the other of the feeder and trunk drivers are intrinsically connected to the liberal rationality of government, even at the level of the regulation of global competence. In this respect, psychological issues became central, for instance, when the system started to be implemented. One psychologist working for a governmental agency argued that:
Transmilenio had changed the Bogotans quality of life. This fact could not be explained either to a traditional bus owner or a chofer. Even if they had the intellectual capacity [. . .] even if they loved the city [. . .] a mourning process emerged. It was like the death throes of the traditional transport service. They had to adapt to the new situation. If you do not move on, change will change you. We were taking away their means of supporting their families [. . .] for instance, there were families that lost the means to cover their living expenses; wives, sons and cousins were all dependent upon the income generated in the traditional bus service. We knew that there would be a crash and that they would react strongly. The strategy to deal with this was to provide them with the opportunity to express their feelings. They were able to give vent to negative and aggressive emotions. In fact, we dealt with those emotions using many different psychological approaches.

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Hence, the economic problems brought about by the implementation of the system are translated into psychological problems of emotions and mourning. However, even though the economic problems are recognised as a result of the modernisation process, they do not occupy centre stage. The modernisation of the transport service thus became a psychological issue and its solution was linked to controlled expressions of emotions, which were guided by psychologists. In this way, psychological strategies were used to control the negotiation, by both obscuring the economic problems and by appeasing the emotions associated with economic displacement. The Transmilenio system was negotiated and was implemented as a way of solving the problems of mobility in Bogota. This is a central preoccupation that is linked to the contemporary liberal view of making cities competitive for the globalised market, where the fast and reliable transportation of the labour force is one of the indicators of a well-governed city. Such competitiveness corresponds to the liberal style of thinking and the concern with a specic way of government (Ivison, 1993). Cities like Bogota have become such an important node that they are taking over the central role of nation states in regulating international competence (Lungo, 2005; Osborne and Rose, 1998; Sassen, 2003). In this vein, the production of Bogota as a competitive city brought about issues such as: . An increased value of practices undertaken by North Atlantic metropolises; for example, Alfredo Penalosa, the citys mayor, frequently stated in his public speeches, when referring to the Transmilenio system, that we always thought

about small projects, but at that time, we had to think about giant projects: that Bogota could potentially be as beautiful and efcient as Paris or New York. Viewing the traditional system and its social actors (drivers and owners) as obstacles for reaching the desired objective of being similar to the aforementioned cities: the traditional service causes many problems which the metropolises located in the North Atlantic societies do not have, namely the traditional service and its choferes are signs of underdevelopment which result in a loss of productive time and chaos in the city. A conception of Bogotas inhabitants as undisciplined citizens in need of being educated: the traditional transport system was a source of disorganisation and indiscipline and commuters collaborated in this lack of organisation of the service. The Transmilenio service is being implemented in order to make Bogota a competitive city, the implementation and the psychological strategies applied also follow the logic of modernising the city of the developing world, this being based on the models represented in North Atlantic metropolises.

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8. Conclusion The mapping of psychological practices and the charting of their connections and distant ows were undertaken in relation to the disciplinary-governmental complex. This setting of psychological practices was not meant to imply that there was a kind of sequence or a hierarchy. On the contrary, they were considered messy practices, in the sense proposed by Marcus (1995), which contribute to constitute drivers as subjects according to the new working conditions. The working conditions, the introduction of the legal subject of rights and duties represented in work contracts, the instituting of psychology as an ofcial prescription and the construction of the chofer as the one who has to be transformed opened the space for psychology to be applied. The constitution of the feeder and trunk drivers is being carried out within that grid. The connections amongst the psychological practices showed the ways in which psychology is linked to global processes of regulation of the labour force. By doing so, they become vehicles for the perpetuation of dependency as they play an important part in the production of ways of being and thinking that constitute the other which is the target of psychological strategies. The plasticity of psychology demonstrates that different ways of conceiving work, workers and organisations are susceptible to psychological interventions; hence psychology acquires a central place for the governance of global processes.
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Pulido-Martinez, H.C. (2008), On work psychology and the constitution of the subject: the case of the urban passenger transport system in Bogota, Colombia, unpublished thesis, Cardiff University, Cardiff. Richards, G. (1997), Race, Racism and Psychology: Towards a Reexive History, Routledge, London. Rose, N. (1992), Governing the enterprising self in Heelas, P. and Morris, P. (Eds), The Values of the Enterprise Culture the Moral Debate, Routledge, London. Rose, N. (1996), Inventing Ourselves. Psychology, Power and Regulation, Sage, London. Sassen, S. (2003), Globalisation or de-nationalisation, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 1-22. Walkerdine, V. (2005), Freedom psychology and neo-liberal subject, Soundings, Vol. 5, pp. 47-61. Werner, S. (2002), Recent developments in international management research: a review of 20 top management journals, Journal of Management, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 277-305. About the author Hernan Camilo Pulido-Martinez is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, Director of the Research Group, Critical Studies of Work and Organisations and Coordinator of the Work Psychology Area at Ponticia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia. He has a Doctor of Philosophy (Social Sciences) Cardiff University, UK; a Ms Sc. inCommunication. Ponticia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota and a Bachelors degree in Psychology. Ponticia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota. His research interests are: work psychology, subjectivity, critical psychology, geopolitics of knowledge. Hernan Camilo Pulido-Martinez can be contacted at: cpulido@javeriana.edu.co

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