The world of work is often assumed to be a rationalistic, logical and smoothly run entity into which people ‘fit’. In contrast, people’s experience of organisational life is often a mixture of searching for meaning, identification, and negotiating how to be themselves within the constraints of organisational expectations or idealizations.
Drawing on academic debates introduced in weeks 1-3, and relevant empirical examples, critically reflect on the above statement, exploring the juxtaposition between classical and critical perspectives on organisation.
The organisational regulation of identity, we argue, is a precarious and often contested process involving active identity work, as is evident in efforts to introduce new discursive practices of ‘team-work’, ‘partnership’, etc. Organisational members are not reducible to passive consumers of managerially designed and designated identities. Nor do we assume or claim that the organisation is necessarily the most influential institution in identity-defining and managing processes.
Nonetheless, we concur with a number of other commentators who argue that identity regulation is a significant, neglected and increasingly important modality of organisational control, especially perhaps in larger corporations.
It is assumed that control is achieved by designing and applying appropriate structures, procedures, measures and targets; and, relatedly, that resistance to these mechanisms is symptomatic of ‘poor design’ or ‘poor management’ that can be rectified by restructuring and/or training or staff replacement. Those working in interpretive and critical traditions of organizational analysis, in contrast, have paid attention to the negotiated and problematical status of allegedly shared meanings, values, beliefs, ideas and symbols as targets of, as well as productive elements within, normative organizational control