Abstract
This article explores the normative assumptions about the self that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in critiques of organisational control. Two problematic aspects of control are examined – the capacity of some organisations to produce unquestioning commitment, and the elicitation of ‹false’ selves. Drawing on the work of Rom Harré, and some examples of organisational-self processes gone awry, I investigate the dynamics involved and how they violate the normative expectations that we hold regarding the self, particularly its moral autonomy and authenticity. The article concludes by arguing that, despite post-structuralist challenges, some notion of a ‹core’ or ‹real’ self still holds salience for employees negotiating their identities within regimes of control. The assumptions and expectations surrounding this aspect of self are also a pivotal element in the western intellectual tradition that promotes and enables critique.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ackers P., D. Preston: 1997, Born Again? The Ethics and Efficacy of the Conversion Experience in Contemporary Management Development. Journal of Management Studies 34(5), 677–701
Ackroyd S., P. Thompson: 1999, Organizational Misbehaviour. Sage, London
Anthony D.: 2001, Tactical Ambiguity and Brainwashing Formulations: Science or Psuedo-Science. in B. Zablocki, T. Robbins, (eds.), Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp. 215–317
Ashforth B. E., M. A. Tomiuk: 2000, Emotional Labour and Inauthenticity: Views from Service Agents. in S. Fineman, (ed.) Emotions in Organizations. 2nd Edition. Sage, London, pp. 184–203
Bendle, M. F.: 2002, The Crisis of ‹‹Identity’’ in High Modernity. British Journal of Sociology 53 (1), 1–18
Bolton, S. C.: 2005, ‹Making Up” Managers: ‹The Case of NHS Nurses’. Work, Employment and Society 19(1), 5–23
Bromley D.: 2001. A Tale of Two Theories: Brainwashing and Conversion as Competing Political Narratives. In B. Zablocki, T. Robbins, (eds.), Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp. 318–348
Burkitt, I.: 1991, Social Selves. Iheories of the Social Formation of Personality. Sage Publication, London
Casey, C.: 1995, Work, Self and Society. Routledge, London & New York
Collinson D.: 1994, Strategies of Resistance. Power, Knowledge and Subjectivity in the Workplace. In J. M. Jermier, D. Knights, W. R. Nord, (eds.), Resistance and Power in Organizations. Sage, London & New York, pp. 25–68
Collinson, D. L.: 1992, Managing the Shopfloor. Subjectivity, Masculinity and Workplace Culture. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin
Collinson, D. L.: 2003, Identities and Insecurities: Selves at Work. Organization 10 (3), 527–547
Coser L. A.: 1974, Greedy Institutions. Patterns of Undivided Commitment. The Free Press, New York
Costas, J. and P. Fleming: 2007, ‹From ‹‹Who I Am’’ to ‹‹Who I Am Not’’ – Revising the Concept of Self-Alienation in Organizations’, Working Paper, Judge Business School, Cambridge University
Elliot A.: 2001, Concepts of the Self. Polity Press, Cambridge
Ezzamel, M., H. Willmott and F. Worthington: 2001, ‹Power, Control and Resistance in ‹‹the Factory That Time Forgot’’’, Journal of Management Studies 38(8), 1053–1079
Ezzy D.: 2001, A Simulacrum of Workplace Community: Individualism and Engineered Culture. Sociology 35 (3), 631
Gabriel Y.: 1999, Beyond Happy Families: A Critical Reevaluation of the Control-Resistance-Identity Triangle. Human Relations 52(2), 179–203
Gellner D.: 1992, Popular Culture and the Construction of Postmodern Identities. In S. Lash, J. Friedman, (eds.), Modernity and Identity. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 141–177
Gergen, K.: 1971, The Concept of the Self. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York
Gergen, K.: 1991, The Saturated Self. Basic Books, New York
Gergen, K. J.: 1996, ‹Technology and the Self: From the Essential to the Sublime’, in D. Grodin and T. R. Lindlof (eds.), Constructing the Self in a Mediated World (Sage, Thousand Oaks, California), pp. 127–140
Girodo M.: 1991, Symptomatic Reactions to Undercover Work. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases 179, 626–630
Goffman E.: 1959, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Penguin Books, Middlesex
Goffman E.: 1961, Encounters. Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Allen lane. Penguin Press, London
Harré R.: 1998, The Singular Self. An Introduction to the Psychology of Personhood. Sage, London
Harris L. C., E. Ogbonna: 1998, Employee Responses to Culture Change Efforts. Human Resource Management Journal 8(2), 78–92
Harter S.: 1999, Symbolic Interactionism Revisited: Potential Liabilities for the Self Constructed in the Crucible of Interpersonal Relationships. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 45(4), 677–703
Hibler N. S.: 1995, The Care and Feeding of Undercover Agents. In M. I. Kurke, E. M. Scrivner, (eds.), Police Psychology into the 21st Century. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale New Jersey, pp. 299–317
Hochschild, A.: 1983/2003, The Managed Heart. Commercialization of Human Feeling (University of California Press, Berkeley)
Holmer-Nadesan M.: 1996, Organizational Identity and Space of Action. Organization Studies 17(1), 49–81
James W.: 1892, Psychology. Briefer Course. McMillan and Co., London
Kennedy, L.: 2005, ‹Going Undercover Made Me an Addict’, Sydney Morning Herald August 20–21, 5
Knights D., D. McCabe: 2003, Governing through Teamwork: Reconstituting Subjectivity in a Call Centre.Journal of Management Studies 40 (7), 1587–1616
Kunda G.: 1992, Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation. Temple University Press, Philadelphia
Lifton R. J.: 1993, The Protean Self. Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London
Marx G. T.: 1988, Undercover. Police Surveillance in America. University of California Press, Berkeley
McAdams D. P.: 1997, The Case for Unity in the (Post)Modern Self. In R. D. Ashmore, L. Jussim (eds.), Self and Identity. Fundamental Issues. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 46–78
Mead G. H.: 1934, Mind, Self and Society. From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist. Chicago Univarsity Press, Chicago
O’Reilly C. A., J. A. Chatman: 1996, Culture as Social Control: Corporations, Cults, and Commitment. Research in Organizational Behaviour 18, 157–200
Ogbonna E., B. Wilkinson: 2003, The False Promise of Organizational Culture Change: A Case Study of Middle Managers in Grocery Retailing. Journal of Management Studies 40 (5), 1151–1178
Peters T. J., R. H. Waterman: 1982, In Search of Excellence. Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. Harper & Row, New York
Ray C. A.: 1986, Corporate Culture: The Last Frontier of Control?. Journal of Management Studies 23(3), 287–297
Ritzer G., D. J. Goodman: 2004, Sociological Theory. McGraw Hill, Boston
Robbins T.: 2001, Balance and Fairness in the Study of Alternative Religions. In B. Zablocki, T. Robbins, (eds.), Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp. 71–98
Robertson M., J. Swan: 2003, Control – What Control? Culture and Ambiguity within a Knowledge Intensive Firm. Journal of Management Studies 40(4), 831–858
Rose N.: 1996, Inventing Ourselves. Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Rosenthal P.: 2004, Management Control as an Employee Resource: The Case of Front-Line Service Workers. Journal of Management Studies 41(4), 601–622
Rössler B.: 2002, Problems with Autonomy. Hypatia 17(4), 143–162
Sampson, E. E.: 1989. ‹The Deconstruction of Self’, in J.␣Shotter and K. J. Gergen (eds.) Texts of Identity (Sage, London), pp. 1–19
Schwartz H. S.: 1987, On the Psychodynamics of Organizational Totalitarianism. Journal of Management 13 (1), 41–54
Scott S.: 1999, Fragmented Selves in Late Modernity: Making Sociological Sense of Multiple Personalities. Sociological Review 47 (3), 432–460
Sennett R.: 1998, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. Norton, New York
Singer M. T., J. Lalich: 1995, Cults in Our Midst. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco
Smith M. B.: 1994, Selfhood at Risk. Postmodern Perils and the Perils of Postmodern. American Psychologist 49 (5), 405–411
Stoljar, N.: 2001. ‹Autonomy, Philosophy Of’, in N. J. Smelser and P. B. Baltes (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences (Elsevier), pp. 1009–1015
Taylor C.: 1989, Sources of the Self. The Making of Modern Identity. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
Taylor C.: 1991, The Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Thomas, R. and A. Davies: 2005, ‹Theorizing the Micro-Politics of Resistance: New Public Management and Managerial Identities in the UK Public Services’, Organization Studies 26(5), 683–706
Thompson P., S. Ackroyd: 1995, All Quiet on the Workplace Front? A Critique of Recent Trends in Industrial Sociology. Sociology 29 (4), 615–633
Tourish D., A. Pinnington: 2002, Transformational Leadership, Corporate Cultism and the Spirituality Paradigm: An Unholy Trinity in the Workplace?. Human Relations 55 (2), 147–172
Tourish D., N. Vatcha: 2005, Charismatic Leadership and Corporate Cultism at Enron: The Elimination of Dissent, the Promotion of Conformity and Organizational Collapse. Leadership 1 (4), 455–480
Tracey S. J., A. Trethewey: 2005, Fracturing the Real-Self – Fake-Self Dichotomy: Moving Toward “Crystallized” Organizational Discourses and Identities. Communication Theory 15 (2), 168–195
Turnbull S.: 2001, Corporate Ideology – Meanings and Contradictions for Middle Managers. British Journal of Management 12, 231–242
Turnbull S.: 2002, The Planned and Unintended Emotions Generated by a Corporate Change Program. Advances in Developing Human Resources 4 (1), 22–38
Venn C.: 1984. The Subject of Psychology. In J. Henriques, W. Hollway, C. Urwin, C. Venn, V. Walkerdine, (eds.), Changing the Subject. Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity. Routledge, London & New York, pp. 119–152
West L. J., P. R. Martin: 1994. Psuedo-Identity and the Treatment of Personality Change in Victims of Captivity and Cults. In S. J. Lynn, J. W. Rhue, (eds.), Dissociation: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives. Guilford Press, New York
Willmott H.: 1993, Strength is Ignorance, Slavery is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern Organizations. Journal of Management Studies 30, 515–552
Willmott H.: 2003, Renewing Strength: Corporate Culture Revisited. Management 6 (3), 73–87
Zablocki B.: 2001, Scientific Theory of Brainwashing. In B. Zablocki, T. Robbins, (eds.), Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field. University of Toronto Press, Toronto
Zablocki B., T. Robbins: 2001, Introduction: Finding a Middle Ground in a Polarized Scholarly Arena. In B. Zablocki, T. Robbins, (eds.), Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp. 3–31
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Garrety, K.H. Organisational Control and the Self: Critiques and Normative Expectations. J Bus Ethics 82, 93–106 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9564-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9564-4