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This paper focuses on the topic of alcohol and wellbeing in contemporary work organisations. It explores the relationship between stakeholders’ viewpoints regarding alcohol in the workplace and how they have shaped organisational practices regarding wellbeing. The work of Michel Foucault is used to explore these issues. The notions of power, knowledge and discipline are identified as key Foucauldian themes that offer an alternative understanding of how discourses on alcohol are shaped in the United Kingdom workplace. The paper combines certain stages of Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology and Foucault’s Poststructuralist approach in addressing the topic. Foucault’s method of analysis, particularly archaeology and genealogy, is used to explore how and why certain discourses surrounding alcohol in the workplace become dominant over time. Qualitative cases with semi-structured interviews in knowledge-intensive firms were adopted to capture contrasting, varied experiences and perceptions of these organisational actors and shed light on alcohol and wellbeing and its relationships with the power dimension.

This paper discusses the notions of "entrepreneurialism" and enterprising culture. In particular, it examines the significance of such discourses on the contemporary workplace and consequent impact on the individual worker's identity and behaviour. Previous studies on Knowledge-Intensive Firms suggest that organisations are not entirely synonymous with post bureaucratic organisations, but mainly overlap it. It is revealed that majority of firms rely on "cultural or professional forms of control". These forms of control are regarded to have dependence on an ideology of entrepreneurialism and enterprising culture. Thus, the issues of power relations and discourses in Knowledge-Intensive firms are primarily investigated in this study to expose and understand how the drive by organisations for the "enterprising" individual produces a worker who is self-regulating and self-disciplined. The paper includes an assessment of discourses from various organisational actors to shed light on the roles played by "an enterprise" as a principle of control or government in creating autonomous and productive subjects in the workplace and wider society.