organizational discourse and subjectivity: subjectification during processes of recruitment

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Human Relations

DOI: 10.1177/00187267060641792006; 59; 351Human Relations

Ola Bergström and David Knightsprocesses of recruitment

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Organizational discourse andsubjectivity: Subjectification during

processes of recruitment

Ola Bergström and David Knights

A B S TRA C T This article seeks to contribute to the debate on the relationship

between organizational discourses and subjectivity, revolving around

whether organizational discourses determine individual subjectivity

and the extent to which there is room for human agency. It does so

by providing empirical illustrations of how organizational discourses

constitute subjectivity during processes of recruitment in a large

American consultancy firm operating in Sweden. The analysis illus-

trates how interviewers, by various discursive moves, initiate,

support, control and follow up candidates’ decision to join the

company, as if it was an independent choice to join. Findings suggest

that to the extent that subjectification takes place during the recruit-

ment process it is dependent on the candidate’s use and acceptance

of organizational discourses as expressions of their own motives for working at the company. These findings have implications for the

understanding of the relationship between organizational discourses

and individual subjectivity and how subjectification processes may be

studied in other practices and organizations. It argues that sub-

jectification is an effect of the interaction between human agency

and organizational discourses rather than in the determination of

one to the other. Any attempt to analyse the impact of organizational

discourse on individual subjectivity must take into account the possi-

bility that subjects actively take part in their own self-construction

and that this construction is produced in social interaction.

3 5 1

Human Relations

DOI: 10.1177/0018726706064179

Volume 59(3): 351–377

Copyright © 2006

The Tavistock Institute ®

SAGE Publications

London, Thousand Oaks CA,

New Delhi

www.sagepublications.com








KE YW ORD S organizational discourse recruitment subjectification

subjectivity

Introduction

The relationship between organizational discourses and subjects is a

contested terrain (Hardy, 2001) largely revolving around the comparative

weight that is given to discourse in relation to the construction or consti-

tution of subjectivity. While there is great variability in the literature, some

are concerned that there may be a too ‘high powered and muscular view on

the capacity of discourse’ (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000: 1140) to constitute

subjectivity. They address the ‘tendency to ascribe too much power todiscourse over, for example, fragile subjects and discourse driven social

reality’ (p. 1145). This tendency is believed to derive from following a

Foucauldian analysis where there seems to be little room for human agency

(Newton, 1998). In contrast to what is seen as Foucault’s deterministic view

of subjectivity as constituted by discourse, these authors want to focus more

on the power of human agency and other elements such as ‘emotions, convic-

tions and beliefs’ (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000: 1132).

Here the notion of discourse provides theorists with the opportunity to

reformulate an old and perhaps worn-out debate postulating a dualismbetween agency and structure or voluntarist and deterministic perspectives

(Giddens, 1979; Knights, 1997; Reed, 2000b). For example, discourse may

be seen, on the one hand, as so dominant as to leave little space for subjects

to influence its effects on them (Anderson-Gough et al., 2000; Ten Bos &

Rhodes, 2003) or, on the other hand, it may be open to agential intervention

(Hardy et al., 2000; Hodgson, 2000; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Thus,

subjects are seen either as determined or controlled by, or they are perceived

primarily as producers of, organizational discourses (Collinson, 2003).While all these authors engage in empirical research, neither side in this

debate provide much empirical evidence of how and when organizational

discourses and subjectivity are integral to one another and mutually rein-

forcing, that is, how subjectification takes place in practice. This shortcom-

ing, we argue, is substantial. Relying upon a tradition of critical discourse

analysis that gives primacy to the relations between agency and structure

(Fairclough, 2005), this article argues that subjectification is an effect of the

interaction between human agency and organizational discourses rather than

a determinant of one or the other. Any attempt to analyse the impact of organizational discourse on individuals must be cognizant of the way that

subjects often actively participate in the production of the self-same subjec-

tivity that constrains them.

Human Relations 59(3)3 5 2








This article offers empirical evidence in support of this claim from an

in-depth case study of one of the most common forms of organizational inter-

actions: recruitment interviews. Specifically, it draws upon field data

collected during the recruitment processes of a Swedish subsidiary of a large

American consultancy firm (hereafter given the pseudonym Amcon), aiming

at producing a match between the culture of the firm and the norms and

values of the individual, thus, a practice that may be regarded as an instance

of subjectification. Responding to McKinlay and Starkey (1998), we seek to

contribute to a better understanding of the process of subjectification.

This article consists of five sections. It begins by reviewing the debates

in studies of organizations that speak of organizational discourse and subjec-

tivity. It continues with a brief examination of how subjectification may bestudied empirically in the context of recruitment and then introduces the

empirical case study from which the data were drawn. After this, in section

four we turn to the findings of the empirical analysis of the recruitment inter-

views, discussing how they consist of a series of discursive moves where inter-

viewers initiate, support, control and follow up the candidates’ own concern

to work for the organization. It concludes by discussing the implications of

the study for furthering the understanding of the relationship between

organizational discourse and subjectivity and the critical analysis of

power/knowledge relations in organizations.

Subjectivity, organizational discourse and subjectification

The concept of subjectivity is important in studies of organizational discourse

(Phillips & Hardy, 2002). Since the introduction of Foucault to organiz-

ational studies (Knights & Collinson, 1987; Burrell, 1988; Cooper & Burrell,

1988; Miller & Rose, 1988; Rose, 1989; Townley, 1993, 1994; McKinlay &Starkey, 1998) more attention has been given to subjectivity. There is a broad

literature theorizing identity (e.g. Gergen, 1991; Giddens, 1991; Gabriel,

1995; Hetherington, 1998), but it has been argued that organization studies

have an ‘underdeveloped theory of subjectivity’ (van Krieken, 1996: 198). In

particular, Newton (1998) has argued that we still appear to be looking for

a means to arrive at an understanding of subjectivity and organization, which

attends to agency and ‘materialism’ yet avoids dualism, essentialism and

reductionism. For Foucault subjectivity relates to the condition of being

subjected to, or a target of, power through power/knowledge relations(Foucault, 1980, 1982). Individuals are then transformed into subjects that

secure a sense of their own meaning, purpose, and reality through partici-

pating in the discursive practices that are a condition and consequence of

Bergström & Knights Organizational discourse and subjectivity 3 5 3








power/knowledge relations (Knights & Morgan, 1991). The notion of the

individual as simply a biological or even psychological organism, of course,

is no more than an analytical device constructed for the purposes of under-

standing how human beings are continually becoming social. For Foucault

(1975: 115) the subject ‘is not the speaking consciousness, not the author of

the formulation, but a position that might be filled in certain conditions by

various individuals’. As Weedon (1987: 31) suggested, ‘the crucial point . . .

is that in taking on a subject position, the individual assumes that she is the

author of the ideology or discourse which she is speaking.’ We see subjec-

tivity as a transitory point in the unending process of individuals being trans-

formed into subjects. It is the result of an interaction between discourse and

human agency that constitutes the individual as a subject occupying aparticular subject position within discourse. Yet organizational discourses

are not always immediate in their impact on subjectivity; they may be drawn

out over long periods and incremental in their effects on their subjects.

However, it is in the immediate context of conversations that this process

may be illustrated empirically.

While subscribing to a Foucauldian view that sees subjects as consti-

tuted through discourse, we are fully aware of how easy it is for critics

coming from opposite ends of the epistemological and ontological spectrum

such as the labour process theorists Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) and thecritical realist Reed (2000a, 2000b), on the one side, and those such as

Newton (1998) that are seeking more space for an analysis of agency but

one that does not neglect material conditions, on the other, to charge

Foucault with adopting a deterministic perspective. McNay (1992: 47)

argues that treating the subject in terms of a passive or ‘docile body’ is the

most problematic aspect of Foucault’s work. The usual defence of Foucault

is that such critique is based on a reading of his earlier work, while later

writings provide a more elaborate understanding of agency and resistance(see, for example, Dean, 1994; Barratt, 2003a). Newton (1998) does not

accept this defence, arguing that while Foucault returns to the active subject

in his later writings, the mode of his analysis tends to be ‘overly individual-

ized and decontextualized’ (1998: 437). In this article, we are attempting to

avoid this individualized and decontextualized analysis through exploring

the discursive practices that contribute to the construction of subjectivity for

our student recruits.

Foucault understands subjectivity to be constructed through

power/knowledge relations, but he fails to detail the discursive practicesthrough which it occurs. As Potter (1996) has argued, the relation of

Foucault’s notion of discourse to any particular instance of talk or writing

is not always well specified. Insofar as he speaks about how the constitution









of subjects occurs, Foucault (1975: 30) concentrates primarily on the

materiality of the body and how it serves as a target for a ‘whole technology

of power’. He does not focus his attention on the detail of the social inter-

actions and how they produce and reproduce subjects. In addition, the

absence of a detailed analysis of how subjectification occurs makes an

analysis of resistance difficult.1 Only by examining organizational discourses

in action so to speak; that is, in the immediate contexts of their production

and reproduction can we see how human agency and organizational

discourses interact. An analysis of situated organizational interactions may

help us avoid the trap of determinism-voluntarism (Conrad, 2004) and

provide a better understanding of the role of discourse and agency in consti-

tuting organizations (Fairhurst, 2004).The term discourse generally refers to practices of talking and writing,

but is also used in social theory and analysis to refer to different ways of

structuring areas of knowledge and social practice (Fairclough, 1992). There

are several approaches to discourse, which have been used to investigate a

variety of social phenomena and contexts, including organizations (Oswick

et al., 2000). As Chia (2000) has argued, organizational discourse must be

understood in its wider ontological sense as the bringing into existence of an

‘organized’ or stabilized state. According to Fairclough (2005) analysis of

organizational discourse should include detailed analysis of texts in a broadsense, both written texts and spoken interaction.2 For the purposes of our

study, it is important to make a distinction between discourse as an analyti-

cal concept and discourse as an empirical phenomenon. It is primarily this

empirical usage that is drawn upon in our study of recruitment although we

trust that our discussion of organizational discourse and subjectivity

contributes also to their analytical meaning. In this article, we define organiz-

ational discourses as those instances of talk, text and conversations that take

place within organizational ‘boundaries’. Thus, subjectification may bedefined as the process of interaction contributing to the production of a

subject. Hollway (1991), with reference to Foucault, defines subjectification

as follows:

How do you ensure change without imposing it? You convince the indi-

vidual who is the object of change that they are choosing it. This is

what I mean by subjectification.

(Hollway, 1991: 95)

In order to illustrate how processes of subjectification take place in practice,

and therefore also how organizational discourses relate to subjectivity, we

draw upon ethnographic data of the recruitment practices collected by the









first author during a year-long study of a Swedish subsidiary of a large

American consultancy firm, from now on given the pseudonym Amcon.

Recruitment and selection is one practice where the processes of subjec-

tification may be illustrated in practice. It is also an organizational practice

often referred to as an example of the discursive construction of subjectivity

(see, for example, Hollway, 1991; Grey, 1994; Newton, 1994; Townley,

1994; Anderson-Gough et al., 2000; Barratt, 2003b). However, there is some

disagreement in these studies as to how subjectification in recruitment takes

place. On the one hand, there are those who view the impact of discourse as

a form of socialization that shapes the behaviour of individuals over long

periods of time. Here the emphasis is on the process through which indi-

viduals are exposed to and internalize particular discourses, such as clientpriority (Anderson-Gough et al., 2000) or personal career (Grey, 1994;

Peltonen, 1999). This implies that for subjectification to take place it is

enough to expose subjects to discursive material, texts and talk. When

regarding subjectification as a form of socialization, organizational

discourses are privileged over human agency.

In an analysis of the texts and images presented to candidates applying

for jobs in the UK banking sector, for example, Barratt (2003b) argues that

the realistic representations of the working environment invites readers to a

particular world in which their selves can be fully realized. On the otherhand, as Townley (1993) acknowledges, the practices of recruitment and

selection, such as personality tests and selection interviews, may have a more

immediate impact. This occurs through both the examination, which consti-

tutes the individual as an object of knowledge, and the confession, which ties

the individual to self-knowledge as an important aspect of their own subjec-

tivity (Townley, 1993). While acknowledging that there may be varying

degrees of individual engagement and participation, it is not possible to

examine fully how subjectification takes place in practice because Townley’sanalysis is based only on archival material. Furthermore, as Newton (1994)

points out, such analyses are largely dependent on whether the technologies

when applied in practice actually follow the prescriptions of the literature.

Many Foucauldian studies of recruitment and selection seem to assume prac-

tices directly reflect the prescribed techniques (Collinson et al., 1990).

Moreover, even where empirical investigations are conducted, the restricted

methods of interviewing (cf. Grey, 1994) deprive research of extending

beyond respondents’ stories about recruitment and selection. In this sense,

they reproduce the discourses of personnel psychology and human resourcemanagement, rather than providing an investigation of how these technolo-

gies have particular effects in practice. Thus, in such research active partici-

pation and/or modes of resistance from the point of view of the candidate









are hard to take into account. They therefore appear deterministic concern-

ing the capacity of recruitment practices and organizational discourses to

produce subjectivity.

However, the construction of subjectivity may also depend on the kind

of practices that are implemented. Indeed, most recruitment practices imply

processes of objectification and examination to evaluate whether candidates

should be offered a post or not. At the same time, as suggested by researchers

proposing a different approach to recruitment and selection (Wanous, 1991),

candidates are seeking to find a job that suits their personal needs and inter-

ests, assuming that recruitment is a mutual matching process between

organization and the individual recruit. Such practices, it has been argued,

would provide both the individual and the organization better opportunitiesto find a match between individual values and the corporate culture, greater

productivity (Wanous, 1991) and also to allow for the integrity of the subject

by recognizing the importance of the ‘other’ as an equivalent to the self in

terms of status and respect (Townley, 1994). This aspect of recruitment fits

well with the ambitions of the company that forms our case study, as the

recruitment manager expresses it:

The most important thing is . . . we have such a strong culture in

this company that there must be a match – a cultural match – in orderto be able to work here. It is as simple as that. Otherwise you are

pushed out.

(Recruitment Manager)

Cultural match signifies a merger between organizational discourses and

individual subjectivity. Thus, the recruitment practice of Amcon seems

appropriate for a study of subjectification. The next two sections will discuss

the characteristics of the firm’s recruitment practices and outline thediscourse analytical methods that were used.

Setting

At the time of the study Amcon was going through a period of substantial

expansion. It was also one of the most popular firms among Swedish under-

graduate students. Amcon is a career-oriented company with around 300

consultants, based on the notion of ‘up-or-out’, which means that initialadvancement is fast and dramatic for the individual. There are four basic

levels: assistant, senior, manager and partner. New entrants typically start as

assistants.









The recruitment process consists of a number of activities designed to

attract and sift candidates to achieve 70 new recruits per year. The nature of

the business and organizational structure of Amcon puts particular demands

on the recruitment activities. First, the positions vacated due to personnel

turnover need to be filled. The so-called ‘up-or-out’-process creates a continu-

ous need for new entrants. Second, there is a need to hire new workers to

fill the demand from new consultancy projects with clients. Due to the labour

intensity of consultancy work, expansion of the business is dependent on the

supply of new recruits. Third, there is a need for continuity and long-term

planning in order to be able to plan for introductory training for new

employees. The popularity of the firm means that they receive on average 85

applications every month. Applications are examined, ranked and gradedaccording to a preset grid. About a third of them are invited to a first screen-

ing interview. This first selection is based strictly on the principle of qualifi-

cations and relevant experience. Since there are no personality tests or

assessment centres, the selection interview is the event where recruiters decide

about whether or not to offer the candidate a job.

The recruitment practices at Amcon are characterized by a chain of

interviews beginning with a one-hour screening, which is held by a Manager.

The candidate may progress to another round of interviews on condition that

the result of the first interview is favourable, and this process selects outabout half of the candidates. The second stage involves a chain of three inter-

views, one hour each, where the candidate talks to Amcon staff at higher

levels of the corporate hierarchy (Senior, Manager and Partner). The process

from screening interviews to a job offer takes from three to five weeks.

After each interview the recruiter takes notes of his/her observations

of the candidate on a form. The form is constructed as a grid ranking the

candidate in terms of ‘outstanding’, ‘above average’, ‘satisfactory’ or ‘does

not meet requirements’ in terms of personal skills (e.g. personality, verbalcommunication, self-confidence) and professional skills (e.g. leadership

potential, understanding of the company; and interest in career with our

firm). The form is concluded by an overall assessment of the ‘probability of

the applicant accepting an offer’ and the ‘probability of the applicant staying

for more than 2 years’. A central objective of the recruitment interviews,

however, was to assess whether a candidate would fit the ‘organizational

culture’ – or what was termed achieving a cultural match.

The recruitment manager emphasized the importance of providing

applicants with ‘honest’ and ‘correct’ information, in order for them to makean independent, well-grounded choice to work for the company. The essence

of such processes is to deflate any unrealistic expectations of potential

employees (Townley, 1994). It is premised on the view that individuals have









fewer regrets making a decision if they can anticipate its probable negative

consequences (Townley, 1994). Amcon representatives explicitly claim to do

this by establishing a friendly atmosphere and a ‘mutual dialogue’ during the

recruitment interviews.

To establish a mutual dialogue in this chain of interviews, however, is

more complicated than might be expected. This ordinarily only occurs in

conversations between close friends. It presumes that both participants have

equal opportunity to influence the topic of speech and engage in what is

described as ‘symmetrical and co-operative’ interaction where ‘speakers both

respond to what their partners have just said and introduce something new

for them to respond to’ (Linell, 1990: 169). Mutual dialogues also presume

that there is no judgement or control of the utterances of the other (Linell,1990). Most conversations held in institutional contexts diverge from this

ideal since they are most often task oriented, that is, they have more or less

predetermined objectives. In recruitment interviews, the recruiter controls the

interaction (Linell & Gustavsson, 1987) and, in so doing, clearly exercises

power. By analysing the interaction that takes place during recruitment inter-

views, our concern is to reveal how candidates are made into subjects of

organizational discourses, that is, how subjectification takes place in practice.

We are not suggesting that by being transformed into subjects, their agency

is denied them because much of our argument is concerned with how theyparticipate in the construction of their own subjectivity and sometimes this

involves refusing to be constituted in this way.

Method

The article reports on an in-depth case study of the recruitment practices in

the Stockholm subsidiary of a large American consulting firm operating inSweden. The data for this in-depth case study of Amcon were collected

through various fieldwork techniques. These included participant observa-

tions of job fairs at universities, textual analyses of recruitment brochures,

and observations of the day-to-day work of recruitment managers and

recruitment assistants, who administer applications and handle all communi-

cation with candidates. Above all, participant observations of the personal

encounters of candidates and organizational members in recruitment inter-

views were conducted. In total 21 recruitment interviews (six screening inter-

views and 15 second interviews) were tape-recorded and transcribed. Theinterviews usually began with a promise of anonymity and an assurance by

the interviewer that the research would not affect the outcome of the recruit-

ment process.









In addition, 36 in-depth and unstructured tape-recorded interviews

were held with both recruiters and candidates after the recruitment inter-

views had taken place. These were aimed at recording the experience of both

sides in the recruitment interviews prior to job offers being made. The candi-

dates were both men and women graduates between 23 and 26 years old,

without significant work experience. By the end of the research process a

large dataset had been accumulated. The analysis began by studying the

interviews conducted with candidates, after they had gone through recruit-

ment interviews. The analysis revealed that candidates were divided into two

subgroups – those who expressed negative and critical views of the company,

questioning the professionality of the interviewers, and those who were

highly sympathetic, describing the interviewers as friendly, giving them anopportunity to ask questions, while acknowledging the status differences

among the different interviewers. The second group also described the inter-

view situation and the company as in line with their own preferences: ‘I feel

at home’, ‘it feels completely right for me’; ‘it feels like a step further’. Maybe,

most importantly, they described the interview situation as informative,

enabling them to make a well-informed choice to work for the company.

Thus, the interviews with candidates showed examples of both active resist-

ance and active subjection to the company and its recruitment practices. The

last group were those who were offered a job at the company; however, itshould be noted that candidates were not given any notification of a job offer

during the interviews.

The analysis continued by identifying the recruitment interviews in

further detail, aiming at identifying the pattern of interaction between candi-

dates and interviewers. The analysis of recruitment interviews consisted of

three main stages. The first stage involved transcription of interviews, coding

and close reading of the material. The first impression was that interviewers

dominated the conversation by talking more than interviewees, as if they hadswitched roles. In order to check this observation the number of words

spoken by interviewers and interviewees respectively was calculated. It

turned out that the interviewer dominated the conversation in 16 of the 21

interviews. The relevant question was then to analyse how interviewers

created and retained this dominance during the course of the conversation.

All interviews were then again carefully coded and analysed according to the

scheme suggested by Adelswärd (1988), elucidating the structure and phases

of the conversation: how agendas were set, turn-taking, change of topic and

how interviews were ended (Fairclough, 1992). This analysis revealed threetypes of interaction – discursive moves – that seemed to characterize all the

interviews with some variation. These were then interpreted through the

conceptual framework of Linell and Gustavsson (1987) in terms of how they









contributed to controlling, supporting and/or circumventing candidate

responses as a part of the social practice in which recruitment interviews took

place. Finally, the interpretations were validated, discarded, or modified

through repeated rereading of the material in search of examples, counter-

examples, evidence and exceptions.

Findings

The analysis of recruitment interviews at Amcon provided evidence that

subjectivity was constructed in the interaction between candidates and inter-

viewers through three subsequent and systematically recurrent discursivemoves. These were, first, response-control (where interviewers set the agenda

to have a ‘mutual’ dialogue). Second, the enunciation of organizational

discourses (where interviewers describe the organization as being honest, fair

and realistic), and, third, various housekeeping moves (to control and

confirm that the candidates’ subjective expression of organizational

discourses were ‘genuine’). Each of these were found in all the interviews

analysed and all three of them supported the impression for candidates that

they could actively participate in, and influence, the decision to secure a job

offer. Thus, these discursive moves may be regarded as examples of howsubjectification was constructed – the process contributing to the production

of a subject. The following three subsections will map out the characteristics

and dynamics of these discursive moves in further detail.

Invitation to a dialogue

The way that recruitment interviews are initiated at Amcon follows a similar

pattern. The interviewer informs the candidate that this is an occasion foran ‘open and mutual dialogue’, where the participating parties should ‘get

to know each other’. In particular they emphasize the importance of provid-

ing the candidate with: ‘an honest and realistic image of the company’,

‘personal information from people from all hierarchical levels’, ‘a possibility

to ask questions’, ‘to feel completely confident about what you buy yourself

into’ and ‘a job that you really want’. Thus, this setting of the agenda could

be seen as a ‘distribution of communicative responsibility’ (Linell & Gustavs-

son, 1987: 27). When a participant takes the initiative to communicate, a

pattern of expectations, rights and obligations are generated. The initiationof the interview includes the expression of a number of expectations (that

the candidates should actively engage in seeking information, to form an

opinion and an understanding of the job). Furthermore, it includes the









establishment of rights (to ask questions and to obtain all the necessary infor-

mation to make a decision) and obligations (that the interviewers should

contribute with all the required information and be honest). Thus, the distri-

bution of responsibility implies that the candidate is made responsible for

gathering information, evaluation and assessment and decision-making,

while the interviewers are expected to be passive transmitters of the infor-

mation required by the candidate to make his or her decision.

However, the distribution of responsibility between participants in the

conversation actually takes the form of, what Linell and Gustavsson (1987:

37) call, response control – ‘an expression of initiative that limits the freedom

of the respondent to vary his/her answer’. At the outset, the interviewers

generally present their version of what the conversation is about, and therebyset the agenda without explicitly requesting any response from the candidates.

Manager: OK, Christian, I thought we should take up a few things. I

can start by describing a little about myself, then I want you to tell me

as much as you know about our company, so that I can get a picture

of what you know about us. People’s understanding about us varies

considerably. It may be dependent on who you know or don’t know,

if you have been to information events and so on. Then, when you have

said that, I can go in and tell you more about us, to complement yourimage. I want you to get as good an image as you could possibly get,

or as realistic an image as possible. It is good with a fair and realistic

image, and then we talk more about you.

As this example shows, the interviewer provides a rather detailed descrip-

tion of what will happen during the interview. He gives clear instructions

of who should speak, what should be talked about and in what order this

should take place. The interviewer addresses the candidate with his firstname, thereby indicating a personal tone for the conversation. Two aspects

are emphasized. First, the interviewer seeks to discover the candidate’s

knowledge about the company. Second, the interviewer provides infor-

mation complementary to what the candidate already knows about the

company – so they have a ‘fair’ and ‘realistic image’. The interviewer’s

interest in obtaining information about candidates is limited to their knowl-

edge of the company and is mentioned in a subordinate clause. Thus, the

interview is not first of all structured as a way to extract information about

the candidate. Instead, it is focused on providing candidates with a soundbasis for their eventual decision as to whether to accept the job if offered

to them.









Partner: This conversation is really about trying to straighten out those

question marks you, in the worst case would have and make them into

exclamation marks and try to fill all gaps that you have. So when you

walk out from here you have access to the basic material or knowledge

to be able to think over and make your decision.

In some cases the interviewers end their declaration of the distribution of

responsibility in the conversation by asking an encouraging question to the

candidate: ‘is this OK?’, ‘what do you think about this?’ or ‘is that alright?’

Such questions do not provide room for a varied response. The candidates’

responses to the initiatives of the interviewers are limited to short notices of

agreement or approval: ‘Mm’, ‘Yes’, ‘of course’.Despite a few exceptions, in most interviews there was no room for the

candidates to express any opinions, let alone requests concerning what would

be best for him or her. In this sense, candidates’ opportunity to influence the

agenda is extremely limited, if not non-existent. Thus, even if the interviews

are introduced in terms of an open and mutual dialogue, there is no space

for negotiation or openness for variation regarding the distribution of

responsibility during the interview.

In sum, the beginning of the interview is an occasion, where the inter-

viewers make use of particular discursive moves to initiate and direct theconversation towards an open dialogue, in which the interviewer and the

candidate negotiate whether the candidate should take the job or not.

However, the initiative undermines its own ambition. Even if it is possible to

interpret the candidate’s approval of the interviewer’s initiative as an accep-

tance of mutual responsibility for fulfilling the objectives and content of the

conversation, the way in which the initiative is introduced contradicts the

interviewers’ description of the conversation as an open dialogue. In the next

section we will take a closer look at the different topics introduced duringthe interview, how the agenda is held, controlled, and how it takes shape.

Providing a realistic image

The analysis of the recruitment interviews shows that the promised mutual

dialogue actually takes the shape of a monologue. The interviewers’ descrip-

tions follow a structure similar to other documents and brochures presented

to the candidates. Instead of assuming that the statements of the inter-

viewers represent a true description of the ‘real’ working conditions at thecompany, the analysis in this section assumes that the statements have a

particular meaning in the situation where they are uttered, that is, that they









construct the conditions for the applicant to arrive at a decision whether he

or she wants to work there.

The organizational discourse at Amcon is structured in terms of what

may be regarded as advantages to the candidate (e.g. development, continu-

ous change, variation, career, possibility to work in different industries,

learning and training) and disadvantages (programming, heavy workload,

travel requirements, overtime and difficulties to combine the work with

private and family life). According to Amcon representatives, the presen-

tation of disadvantages was regarded as a way to provide a realistic image.

‘They should know what they embark upon! They must like all aspects of

it!’ – one of the managers, who claims to have a clear understanding of what

the interviews are all about, said. It was argued that the reason for provid-ing the applicants with an abundance of information about the company

was the experience of having ‘newcomers leaving the company because they

lacked an understanding of what the company stands for, and such mistakes

are expensive’. Thus, from the company’s perspective it is important that

the applicant not only has a positive image of the company. They should

also be aware of the dark side of consulting. The interviewer needs to make

sure that the applicant does not have any delusions about what it means to

be a consultant.

The aspects the applicant is informed about are the travelling require-ments, overtime, that the job is difficult to combine with having children and

that the job, to a large extent, is about programming and coding. The inter-

viewers also inform candidates about the assessment programs, internal

training, business plans, the competitive situation in the industry, oppor-

tunities for advancement in the firm and what it means to work in a project

team. It is also emphasized that working as a consultant means you can work

in different industries and build up experience over time. Instead of describ-

ing the working conditions in further detail, interviewers talk about thepossibility of making a career. The consultancy career is described as exciting,

with opportunities to move and change jobs on condition that you are

‘happy’. This message is conveyed both explicitly and by the interviewers

talking about their own career as a living evidence of what is said.

To a large extent the stories told by interviewers are repetitions of the

same stories that the candidates could obtain in previous contacts with the

company or through brochures. It may also be argued that the discourses

candidates are exposed to are similar to those analysed by Grey (1994).

However, the analysis of the situated interaction in which the discourses arepresented reveal important differences. During the interviews, a more

detailed image of the working conditions is presented. As an example, one

interviewer specifies what the travel requirements mean:









Manager: This thing about travelling. To travel, no I don’t mean

travelling to Hawaii or to France, rather I mean Skövde or Vinslöv or

Göteborg and to live there.

Candidate: I have travelled quite a lot and I’m very flexible in that way.

I have moved almost every sixth months, if you say so, but this here it

is no question about that, only to go to companies, but I’m not afraid

of that.

Manager: Commuting every week?

Candidate: No, I guess that’s alright.

Manager: Or, as when you are in the Scandinavian countries or Europe,

then you are half commuting, commuting every second week. If it is

other parts of the world, then it is around every third month. Count

on that. During the first five years it is outside Stockholm for one and

a half years, so you are not disappointed in any way. It’s like that.

Candidate: I’m not afraid of that.

[Interview 2:3]

The more or less glamorous expectations that the candidate may have regard-

ing what travelling means are effectively discounted. Travelling to Skövde or

Vinslöv (small towns in Sweden) are presented as a threat. The negative

aspects of travelling were described as something you should ‘count on’.

Above all it was emphasized how they were associated with the first period

of employment.

The interview situation provides the interviewers with a possibility tomake reference to their own experiences of working at Amcon. The candi-

dates are invited to ask questions to facilitate a ‘better’ understanding of the

company. These interactions may be regarded as producing a particular

‘truth effect’. It may appear that candidates have ‘perfect’ opportunities to

secure a clear and realistic image of the company and its working conditions.

On the other hand, the way the working conditions are presented means that

the opposite might equally be the case.

First, the working conditions are described in terms of positively and

negatively loaded opposites: disadvantages (overtime, travelling, hierarchy,programming, difficulties of combining work, children, family and leisure)

in contrast to advantages (a spirit of community, youth, training, personal

development, change and the opportunity to work in different companies









and industries). As isolated phenomena, each of these is relatively simple to

take a stand in favour of or against. By directing attention to separated

decisions and a given number of alternatives, attention is diverted from the

more general choice that is made at the point of each single decision. This

means that it is difficult for the candidate to foresee the consequences of the

decision on the basis of the information that is provided by the interviewers.

Second, the description of opposites is subdivided in a time dimension.

Disadvantages are tied to the present (‘the first two years’; ‘the first time’; ‘a

certain time’ or ‘concern the newly employed’), and advantages are pushed

forward to the future (‘increases the longer you work’; ‘happens when you

are Senior’; ‘small chances during the first year’). The disadvantages then are

presented as if they are merely of a temporary and superficial nature, whereasthe positive aspects of the job are what candidates can look forward to and

enjoy later, assuming they commit themselves to the company. This way of

describing the job has the effect of making the choice to work at the company

comparatively simple. However, the descriptions do not include any guar-

antees that the advantages will be realized nor that additional disadvantages

might not appear. This means that the future consequences of a choice to join

the organization, based on the information provided, are uncertain despite

the clarity, transparency and ‘realistic’ image provided by the interviewers.

Third, the descriptions are expressions of a division of responsibilitybetween employer and employee. The positive aspects are those that the indi-

vidual employee has responsibility to take advantage of (‘it’s up to you’;

things that are ‘individual’) or dependent on factors that are beyond the

influence of the employer (‘clients needs and demands’; ‘what kind of clients

we have at the moment’). The negative aspects are, however, what the candi-

date ‘should count on’, ‘be aware of’, ‘need to accept’, ‘important that you

approve of’, ‘to be in agreement with’ or ‘be clear of’. Thus, the individual

is held responsible for any possible consequences of a decision. The responsi-bility of the employer is less clearly defined. This means that any decision

based on this information only has consequences (both negative and positive)

for the individual (the one who decides) and nobody else.

In sum, despite the interviewers’ ambition to provide candidates with

fair, honest and realistic information, the way it is presented implies a

particular truth effect, providing an impression of having access to infor-

mation that would facilitate a well-informed choice of working for the

company. The interviewer conducts the discourse as if the images of the

working conditions presented were perfectly transparent and fair, but theywere really prescriptions or imperatives regarding how the working

conditions should be understood and interpreted. In the next section we will

take a closer look at how the interviewers make sure that the candidates have









understood what the company’s version of the working conditions means so

that there are no doubts about this when the candidate has gone through all

the recruitment interviews.

Vaccination from doubt

As we have seen previously, it is most often the interviewers who introduce

new topics and ask questions of the candidate. Even if the candidate is reluc-

tant or has no intention of making a decision, the interviewers put pressure

on candidates to take a stand in relation to the information that is presented

during the recruitment interviews. This is accomplished in several ways.

First, the interviewers ask questions largely about candidates’ under-standing of the company not about the candidates themselves. They seek to

find out the candidate’s knowledge and impressions of the company: ‘what

do you know about us?’; ‘what is our business idea?’; ‘have you heard about

our hierarchy?’; ‘what do you think that you get to do during the first

years?’. The opportunity for candidates to be really challenging in response

to these questions is limited, partly due to the asymmetry in the relations

but also because of the tendency of the interviewer to counter any criticism

(see below).

Second, most of the interviewers’ questions are about the candidate’srelationship to the company: ‘how come you applied to us?’; ‘what other

jobs did you apply for?’; ‘do you know anybody who works here?’; ‘how did

you get into contact with us?’ It is the commitment and interest in the job

and the company that is the object of the conversation rather than the candi-

date as a person or a unique individual. This means that the candidate’s

description of him/herself is limited to his/her relationship to the company,

rather than anything else.

Third, the questions posed to the candidates are often a request for thecandidate’s standpoint in relation to specific information: ‘but you are

convinced that it is Change Management, that’s what you feel like now?’;

‘what’s your opinion about the company now, in terms of the advantages

and disadvantages?’; ‘what do you think is most interesting in these talks

that we have had, and what is most negative?’. During this interaction

sequence, it is evident that the candidate should answer in a way that shows

that he or she has an interest in the company: ‘yes, I’m very interested’; ‘Mm,

I have made up my mind for Change Management’; ‘It feels like a step

further’; ‘Well there were a number of things that made me go here’; ‘Manyof the things that you have brought forward as advantages, I really thought

so from the beginning. That’s why I applied’. But there are also candidates

who are less specific and may even appear vague.









During the interviews there is also a kind of discursive move that Linell

and Gustavsson (1987: 72) would call ‘third move remarks’: – a reply that

evaluates a response, given on the speaker’s own initiative, marks that the

response satisfies the initiative of the speaker and settles something import-

ant which has been brought up by the previous response. The third move

remark does not contribute anything new to the conversation. It rather

contributes by regulating the interaction.

The interviewers describe this as a way to ‘fill all gaps’. The inter-

viewers encourage the candidates to evaluate the information provided, as

for example in one interview between a partner and a candidate:

Partner: What do you think, in these conversations, in what you haveheard now? What do you think is most interesting and what sounds

most negative, so to say?

Candidate: Well, you could say that what you have put forward as

positive and negative sides . . . what you have put forward as positive,

all of you, it is this thing about a demanding, flexible job and that that

you have this possibility for development. This is a broad area, young

people, community, nice to work here. What is negative or what you

put forward as negative is working overtime and that you may have totravel a lot. All of you have said exactly the same thing, so I have been

somewhat coloured by that. Many of those things you have put

forward as positive, I already had in the beginning. That’s why I

applied here. The negative things you of course . . . You have to weigh

advantages against disadvantages and then you simply will see what

has the heaviest weight. I still think that the advantages clearly carry

a greater weight. I’m aware of that working as a consultant means to

accept that you sometimes have to work overtime and this thing abouttravelling I don’t think is . . . It doesn’t have to be negative. Of course,

if it is too much then it might be hard, but yes . . .

Partner: Well I think . . . The reason why we put forward this thing

with overtime – I really think it is important. It sometimes sounds as

if it is some kind of scaremongering or that we want to appear as if

we are working and working, but it is just because you at least should

have had the possibility to know this before.

[Interview 3:4]

The candidate answers the question by repeating the motivational repertoire

of the company. He admits that he has been influenced by the argumentation









of the interviewers, but has some difficulties in accepting working overtime.

In the third move the interviewer confirms the candidate’s views and signals

that his understanding is correct.

In the recruitment interviews, the follow up of the candidates’

responses fill several functions: (1) They signal to the candidate what is the

right kind of answer, give a hint of how the next initiative should be answered

and support the decision-making of the candidate: ‘I think that’s best, really’;

‘I believe that if you should start working for us, that’s probably what is least

in line with what you’ve been doing so far.’ (2) They evaluate and deepen

the standpoints made by the candidate in order to guarantee that it is the

‘right’ motives that drive him or her: ‘that’s rather broad’; ‘that’s a little un-

focused’; ‘But do you buy into this? Because that’s a really difficult question.’(3) The third move remarks also fill the function of denying, correcting or

softening understandings that the candidates have achieved during previous

interviews, as in the following case when the interviewer asks whether there

is anything else the candidate wonders about:

Candidate: Eh, not really, I guess I had some doubts when I came here.

But I think that I have received many good answers. What I have tried

to figure out so far has been more about, if I now get the chance to

work with you, what kind of people I will meet and what kind of people I will work together with? How large groups for example? How

does this . . . work? The organization is quite permeated by American

thinking and I have had several hierarchical pictures drawn for me,

huh, and then you would like to know how cooperation works in this

hierarchy. You may look at it and get scared to death and think – this

is how it is going to be! Do you have to make an appointment to talk

to your closest boss? Are you sure about having another five, six, ten

other people as well? But now I have been told that it doesn’t reallywork like that, rather . . .

Partner: No, we often draw these hierarchies. But it doesn’t really work

like that, so to say. It is rather so that it is a little messy and it might

as well be a way to get some structure in our existence. It is very mixed

really. It is important to look at how both formal and informal

communication channels work out here at the company. It is very cosy

to work here.

[Interview 3:4]

When the candidate asks questions about things that worry him or her,

the interviewer plays down or corrects the misunderstandings. What the









candidate regards as worrying is turned into something that may be regarded

as an advantage. For example, the hierarchy is described as a way ‘to get

some structure in our existence’, which otherwise is quite messy. In other

words, the interviewers make sure that it is the company’s version of reality

that forms the basis for the decision of the candidate: ‘No, we often draw

these hierarchies, but it does not really work in that way’; ‘You could get a

feeling that there is a one-to-one competition between individuals, but it’s

not really like that.’

The result of the interviewers’ third move remarks on the responses of

the candidates is that those who enter the organization do not have any

doubts about the advantages of the company. It is rather the other way

around, as one Partner expressed it; ‘all question marks are made into excla-mation marks’. Thus, the discursive moves of the interviewers contribute to

what Deetz (1992) calls discursive closure – the establishment of normalized,

conflict-free experiences and social relationships. The company is guaranteed

that those who are recruited do not have any ‘incorrect understandings of

how it is. We simply do not want any wrongful recruitments’, as one of the

Managers put it. The organization is, so to say, vaccinated from doubts.

Conclusion and implications

This article has sought to illustrate and explore some of the ways that subjec-

tivity is constructed in the context of a recruitment process where there was

an ambition to recruit candidates that match the culture of the firm. Drawing

upon recruitment interview data collected in a Swedish subsidiary of an

American consultancy firm, it challenges widespread assumptions about the

relationship between organizational discourse and subjectivity by revealing

some of the ways that individual subjectivity was constructed through socialinteraction. The story of Amcon, we argue, suggests that the relationship

between organizational discourses and subjectivity cannot be captured

adequately either through determinist or voluntarist theoretical approaches.

In short, subjectivity is neither wholly determined by organizational

discourses nor simply a product of human agency. Rather, the research indi-

cates that subjectification is a complex condition and consequence of the

mutually interdependent relations of agency and discourse, not a determi-

nant of either.

More specifically, the analysis of data collected at Amcon provided threeexamples of how human agency and organizational discourse interacted in

the construction of subjectivity in this specific context. First, subjectification

revealed itself through the process of candidates’ expressing their acceptance









of the working conditions presented by the interviewers, spontaneously or

through their independent careful consideration. Second, subjectification was

illustrated through the candidates’ active subjection to organizational

discourses, describing the interview situation and the company as in line with

their own preferences: ‘I feel at home’, ‘it feels completely right for me’. Third,

it indicated that those candidates who displayed resistance or were reluctant

to accept the organizational discourse failed to secure a job offer, while the

successful were made to believe that they were making active autonomous

choices. This is a major aspect of their subjectification since it appeals to more

universal meta-narratives of human autonomy that are a legacy of the

Enlightenment (Knights & Willmott, 2002). Subjectification, in sum, included

both elements of active participation and resistance from the point of view of the candidates.

Subjectification, it was further argued, was shaped and fixed through

the interaction between recruiter and candidate but this was largely inspired

by the concern to provide ‘honest’, ‘realistic’ and ‘fair’ information and to

engage in an open dialogue. Since it seems plausible to assume that

power/knowledge relations are prevalent in any recruitment process, the

uniqueness of this particular setting lies not in the effect on subjectivity so

much as in how it is accomplished. Interviewers sought to influence not only

what information candidates’ use as a basis for their decision, but also howthis should be evaluated and judged in relation to other information. This

was achieved through a number of discursive moves such as distributing

communicative responsibility, controlling candidate responses, and through

various housekeeping moves. According to researchers of institutionalized

conversations (Linell & Gustavsson, 1987), such discursive moves are readily

available in recruitment interviews and are not so much outcomes of asym-

metrical power relations as examples of how power relations are constructed.

Thus, subjectification was constructed through systematic control of candi-date expressions but with their full support given that candidates were led

to believe they were making autonomous choices. Butler (2004) has referred

to this as the paradox of seeking recognition while feeling impelled to reject

the social norms through which that recognition is conferred. As a conse-

quence the ‘I’ that bears an identity may be undone precisely by that identity

but resistance will depend on the personal or social costs of the constraints.

In the sphere of gender and sexual subjectivity, these constraints may be a

price too high for the recognition that is accorded and may indeed produce

a life that is ‘unlivable’3 (Butler, 2004: 4). Our research subjects, by contrast,rarely found the constraints too extensive but where this was so, they simply

remained outside of the norms that could ensure their being recruited to the

job for which they had applied.









The finding that, at Amcon, subjectification was constructed in the

interaction between organizational members and candidates raises questions

about the work of those who treat Foucault deterministically in their critiques

of management (e.g. Knights & Willmott, 1989; Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992).

For the assumption of some of these Foucauldians is that management and

organizational discourses constitute subjectivity directly as if subjects were

‘cultural dopes’ (Garfinkel, 1967) rather than active participants in the

construction of their own self-identity. Candidates themselves reproduced

organizational discourses as a part of their own self-understanding, continu-

ally recreating rather than being passively determined by the discourse. But

they were also indirectly influenced to take on these descriptions through the

interviewers’ control of the agenda, presentation of organizational discoursesand the way that candidates’ responses were managed.

The notion of interaction does not only raise questions about certain

Foucauldian analyses of work organizations, but equally also some of the

critics of these approaches. For example, it is argued that some Foucauldians

underestimate the power of human agency to avoid or resist the impact of

organizational discourses and, therefore, overestimate the power of discourse

to determine individual subjectivity (see, for example, Sosteric, 1996;

Newton, 1998). This critique has been very important in identifying the limi-

tations of applying a Foucauldian analysis to organizational contexts, andwe have sought through detailed empirical analysis to avoid those limitations

and show how subjectivity is a complex outcome of the co-related practices

of self-managed agency and discourses of power/knowledge. The tendency

for Foucault to come across as a determinist and for some theorists (e.g.

Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992; Fernie & Metcalf, 1998) to use him in this way

is partly because he failed to spell out the social processes of subjectification

– how we come to be constituted through power – through our own agency

in the context of discourses and their interdependent co-production of subjectivity and power/knowledge relations. Our study points to an alterna-

tive that privileges neither discourse nor agency but sees them as in a complex

intermediation. As Newton (1998) suggests, to emphasize such agency is not

to posit some essential subject, but rather to argue that understanding how

the subject is constituted in discourse requires attention to the social

processes through which people actively manoeuvre in relation to discursive

practices (p. 426). This we believe provides a stronger and more elaborated

critique of power/knowledge relations in organizations.

It should be noted, however, that while the end of exposingpower/knowledge relations in organizational contexts is ‘relevant’, it should

not be confused with its means. The critique of industrial or commercial

organizational discourses and practices with reference to their parallel with









those practices of hospital and prison discipline and surveillance analysed by

Foucault (1967, 1975) may well have critical potential, but it does so merely

by analogy. The empirical detail still needs to be documented in order to

show how subjects are vulnerable to the power effects of management and

organizational discourse and practice. One problem with Foucauldians is

that they often assume that the disciplinary technologies within organiz-

ational practices (or discourses) simply constitute subjectivity. In principle,

they claim that organizational discourses and practices are problematic

because of their disciplinary effects on subjectivity, but seldom are they clear

about how this occurs. In the absence of a disclosure of how the processes

of subjectification occur, we cannot further critical analysis of organizational

discourses and delimit when, where and how they have their effects.Insofar as critical organizational analysis concentrates so much on the

object of its critique as to neglect the means it uses, there is a risk that it

undermines its own criticality. Not all organizational discourses have the

effect of subjectifying individuals. Equally, far from all instances of subjectifi-

cation are to be seen as negative or problematic. As Foucault (1980) argues,

power/knowledge relations also have a positive and productive side. It would

be rare, for example, to question the subjection of medical doctors to

discourses of medicine in their practice to save human lives, but sometimes

medical discipline can be counterproductive in rendering the professionimpotent to respond adequately to patients (Gleeson & Knights, 2006). It

should also be noted that we are not simply encouraging more scientific

rigour and empiricism in critical research, but in order for critical research

to realize its potential, it should be more explicit about the conditions under

which its critique applies. By identifying when, where and how discourses

have their effects on individuals, for example, a more constructive critique

of managerial and organizational discourses may be upheld. This study has

sought to illustrate the claim that a particular organizational discourseconstitutes the subjectivity of candidates through providing a detailed

analysis of the particular social interactions of the recruitment processes

where subjectification took place.

Since our case study is limited to one particular kind of interaction,

that is, recruitment practices, more research is clearly in order. As a means

of realizing more fully how and when organizational discourses constitute

subjectivity, there is a need to complement this study with studies of other

kinds of interaction and in other contexts. More specifically, since recruit-

ment is an occasion where subjectification takes place, there is clearly a needto study how subjectivities are reproduced when subjects have entered the

organization. Furthermore, since subjects are continuously exposed to

organizational discourses, there also seems to be a need to examine how









subjectivity is constituted in less formal interactions of everyday life, before

candidates have entered a particular organizational context, where inter-

action is more distant and less direct. In examining the micro-practices of

communication between organizational members and subjects, such studies

may help organizational theorists further the understanding of the relation-

ship between organizational discourses and subjectivity in contemporary

organizational life. This study, we trust, is a case in point.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the helpful critical comments of the anonymous reviewers and

the associate editor, Barbara Townley.

Notes

1 We are aware that Foucault sought to avoid theorizing resistance on the basis that

he believed it only provided those at whom it was targeted with the information

that could be used to deflect or incorporate such resistance (Foucault, 1980, 1982).2 As one of the reviewers pointed out to us, since writing our first draft of this article,

Fairclough (2005) has declared himself a critical realist. We resist following his

critical realist ontology and his support for Reed’s claim that critics of critical realismcollapse ontology into epistemology. Unless we have God-like metaphysical powers,

how else would we know anything about ontology except through our epistemo-logical reasoning or sensemaking? In our article we are trying to avoid the meta-

physics of ontological debate since this would be difficult to resolve even in an articlethat was entirely theoretical. While aware of the tensions between Foucault and

critical realism, we avoid following the extreme position of some constructivists (e.g.

Grint & Woolgar, 1992) or that of critical realists (e.g. Reed, 2000b). We thereforestay with epistemology – what it is possible to know even though such knowing is

invariably transient, transitory and precarious.

3 When gays or lesbians demand the same kinship rights as heterosexuals through

marriage, for example, they reproduce social norms through which they havetraditionally been oppressed (see Butler, 2004).

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Ola Bergström (PhD) is Assistant Professor at the Department of

Business Administration at the School of Business, Economics and Law,

University of Göteborg, Sweden. He obtained his doctorate at Göteborg

University in 1998. His research interests include changes in labour

markets, institutionalization, work organization and forms of control.

Since 2002 he has been appointed as a Malmsten Foundation post doc

researcher at the School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg

University. His most recent book is Contingent employment in Europe and

the United States, with D. Storrie.

[Email: [email protected]]

David Knights is Professor of Organisational Analysis in the School of

Economic and Management Studies at Keele University. He previously

held chairs in Manchester, Nottingham and Exeter Universities. He is a

founding and continuing editor of the journal Gender, Work and Organisa-

tion and his most recent books include: Management lives: Power and

identity in work organisation (with H. Willmott) and Organization and inno-

vation: Gurus schemes and American dreams (with D. McCabe). He has

written for the Journal of Management Studies, Gender, Work and Organiz-

ation, Time and Society and Sociology .

[Email: [email protected]]

organizational discourse and subjectivity: subjectification during processes of recruitment

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