philosophising hrm

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Philosophising HRM: uncovering the issues of the contemporary self

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Philosophising HRMUncovering the Issues of the Contemporary Self

Acknowledgements

The present script has been written with the awareness of a profound

change, both in the professional and personal life. For having left their

doors always open, I would like to thank the all professors of the Master

program in Human Resource & Knowledge Management at Lancaster

University; especially Dr. Bogdan Costea whom ideas have represented

an extraordinary intellectual challenge. Thanks also to my colleagues and

friends Ioanna Chatziadoniu (and her coffee), Edurne Salceda, Tihana

Belzmalinovich, Rui Pedro Teixeira, Katy Atkinson, and Sarah Jennings,for having kept high the same challenge with a tender and constant moral

support.


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To my brother Gian Marco,

Because the way is long

Because the quest for knowledge never end


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PHILOSOPHISING HRMUncovering the Issues of the Contemporary Self

Abstract

In the light of a history of discontinuities, the present work takes shape as

exegesis of HRM in its cultural connotation. HRM as the outcome of a

series of more or less dramatic events characterising Western society

during modernity, placing societys practices in the horizon of the

valorisation of human life, through the language of authenticity. However,

by considering the subject in terms of its essence rather than of its

existence, and by approaching authenticity as sheer individualism, the

new managerial rhetoric celebrates the reification of the self as well as its

de-humanisation. Hence, the imperative call for a philosophical reflection

upon the human being in order to raise existential questions that in the

Atlantic culture of capitalism and consumerism seem to have been lost

behind the establishment of peculiar discourses and myths,

institutionalised by the same culture.

Introduction

The idea to philosophise Human Resource Management (HRM)

stems from a critical reflection upon HRM as traditionally seen in

management studies. In the last twenty-five years, the literature developed

around this topic seems to have had little consideration both of the intrinsic

meaning of HRM and of its essential implications on the individual either

worker or employer1. Despite the fact that the critical positions to

management practices have had a wide recognition (e.g., Legge, Ackroyd,

Thompson, Keenoy, Guest, Knights, Willmott, Collinson), they seem to

1In line with the nature of the argumentations presented here, there is no separation

between employers and employees, since it is argued that HRM affects equally both

parts. Accordingly, and especially in the second section, there will be a general cross-reference to the individual, the subject or the human being in general.


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downplay broader questions of work inherent to the subject, and its

existence in a context of life. Prevalently, criticism centres on managerial,

organisational and almost economical positions: the relations between

workers and managers, even though problematised, appear to be

entrapped within an analytical, structural and rather non-existential

conceptual framework. In line with this, an example is offered by the

Labour Process Theory based on a Marxist perception of society. Albeit

there is an interest on the repercussions that managerial conducts have

had on the subject, comments generally wind along the notions of

managerial advantage, exploitation, resistance, discrimination,

power relations, etc. in a rather systematic view of society. However, this

essay has been written from a different perspective and intention, that is,

an attempt to explore, in order to understand, the real implications of HRM

phenomenon seeking for, and realising, an authentic corporate

colonisation of the self (Casey cited in Hancock & Tyler, 2001: 574).

What is implicit in the whole work is the idea that there are some

unexplored questions, territories that remain in the shadow of an

excessive ambiguity (entertained by mainstream authors), which only aphilosophical reflection may shed light upon. It seems that there has been

a philosophical superficiality, currently requiring a return to philosophy as

the means to further explore the implications of social phenomena, such

as HRM, which are often unproblematised and taken for granted.

Therefore, in this context, the act of philosophising does not refer to

pure transcendental speculations about HRM; it does not mean to

theorise some conjectures in the name of a purely abstract metaphysicallanguage. On the contrary, it suggests the idea of going deeper in the

object of analysis through philosophy as a study of the reasons of being

and the nature human things.

Although the link between the field of HRM and philosophy is

particularly complex, the latter may be (at last, in the present work) the

source for further questionings of the managerial ideology, in the light of a

deeper and more open vision of man and the society in which s/he


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operates and expresses. Thus it is argued that, going back to the greats

of Western philosophical thought, will lead to a wider contextualisation of

the issues inherent in management practices, and to their implications on

the subject, as the title aims at suggesting.

Hence, HRM and subjectivity are the central domains of this paper;

two extremely dependent and intertwined categories, whose detached and

monolithic analysis appears to be at least problematic, little interesting and

almost sterile. It deals with a reciprocal and complex relationship whose

difficulty mainly derives from the fact that the individual the human

component of management and its object is a visible territory, concrete

yet mysterious at the same time.

From these assumptions, the present project is structured in three

different but intimately connected parts. As a starting point the focus is

mainly on the functional perspective of HRM, that is to say, how HRM is

conceived in terms of its functions. After a brief introductory section about

transformations of work, I will delineate the basic features of the new

managerialism in relation to some of the academic exponents in British

and American literature.Only in the second part is the history of HRM and the position

taken by the individual in its natural and cultural dimension further

explored according to the implied cultural themes, which presuppose the

authenticity of the self in the horizon of the good, the healthy and of

beauty. Here, through the explicit adoption of a post-structuralist way of

reasoning, questions relating HRM to the self come to be stressed in

further detail. More specifically, the historical philosophy of MichelFoucault is used as a framework of analysis and as a way to read the

implications of HRM to the subject. The choice of using Foucaults thought

is not casual; rather it is mainly due to the recognition of his originality in

developing a genealogical method in which the cultural and historical

components of Western society are taken in their complexity and never left

aside from the analysis. This seems to be a quite valuable point from

which to ask different questions about the nature of HRM. Thus the main


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purpose of this central section is to suggest a double reflection: not only

the subject (as homo culturalis) is socially constructed, but also HRM

seems to be a cultural phenomenon rather than a planned project of

management. Accordingly, there is a move away from the Marxist

positions based on historical materialism towards the recognition of the

cultural components of history. The new vision of HRM stemming from this

analysis is likely to suggest that HRM refers to ways of talking about work

and how to be at work, implying certain things regarding how to be a

human in general. This is the basic link with the third and final part, where

the focus is not on HRM per se, but on issues related with it such as

questions regarding the very fundamental philosophical analysis of

Being. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand whether there can be

an analytical apparatus used to decide what has happened to the human

in modernity.

Accordingly, in order to fully grasp the implications that HRM has had

on subjectivity, I adopt a theoretical and analytical position mostly derived

from existential philosophy and its phenomenological method. For his

emblematic interpretation of history, as well as for his consideration of theindividual in terms of existence rather than essence, it is argued that

the work of Martin Heidegger remains of especially important among the

others2. A choice, primarily stemming from the ability of the German

philosopher to articulate a deep reflection upon authenticity, the leit motif

of HRM practices. What is argued is that his thought can contribute to a

critique of HRM in three ways: showing HRMs incapacity to valorise

human existence, showing HRMs excessive affection to a vision of theindividual as having a manageable essence, and showing HRMs

misinterpretation of the notion of the authentic self. Existential philosophy

is then implicitly used to shed light on the enigmas in question: what does

2 The philosophical existential positions are generally characterised by multipledifferences within the same stream, so that a coherent determination appears quiteimpossible. However, in the works of some exponents such as Buber, Husserl, Gadamer,Jaspers, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, or Arendt, it is possible to distinguish common

traits, especially the sense of Being as existence rather than essence.


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it mean to be human? What is the condition of the human and of

humanity? What do we think about life? What does HRM say about the

way Atlantic culture forges the subject?3 In other words, there seems to be

a return to fundamental questions about the self, its nature, its life and

the meaning ascribed to it.

3It is important to inform the reader that the set of questions do not necessary need an

immediate answer; rather they are a fundamental starting point for additionalconsiderations upon HRM, the subject and its life in general.


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1.

THE RISE OF HRM: THE FREE-FLEX MENTALITY OF AN INNOVATIVE RATIONALISM

1.1. The transformation in the world of work

Before getting into the details of the cultural analysis of HRM and its

relevance for subjectivity, a consideration of the contemporary situation of

work is inevitable necessary to fully grasp the reasons encouraging the

rise of this acclaimed and often underestimated phenomenon (HRM) at

least in its existential implications.

Since the 1970s the Western capitalistic society has witnessed a

deep transformation of work and employment, framed in a more general

context of change. The crisis of the monetary system in 1973 (Bretton

Woods) has led to the break up of the compromise between Fordism and

Keynesian political economy as premises of the Welfare State. In the

same period a further destabilising element was the increasing power of

the Japanese firms, modelled around the coordinates of JIT and lean

production. All these factors, combined with the development of new

information and communication technologies (ICTs), inaugurated a period

of rapid flux and uncertainty in which life styles have also been modified

(Harvey, 1989).

By the early 1980s, an answer to the crisis was being sought in the

idea of (planned) change, widely supported by the neo-liberal politics of


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the New Right especially in the USA by Regan, and in the UK by Thatcher.

From a macro perspective, the massive deregulation and liberalisation of

markets (included that of work) resulted in a high dynamism of the

economy what Sennett (1998) called flexible capitalism primarily

testified by the exacerbation of globalisation processes, the

internationalisation of the economic and financial capitals, and the re-

definition of the powers of the nation-state (Giddens, 1990). Despite the

complexity of this transformation, it is possible to summarise this process

of change in a few general points: from the Keynesian political economy to

the Shumpeterian one (Jessop, 1992); from the economies of scale to the

economies of scope; from mass production to individualised products and,

last but not least, from manufacturing to a strong service sector due to the

significance of information and knowledge (Drucker, 1993; Bell, 1974;

Davenport and Prusak, 1998).

In order to survive in a turbulent and unpredictable business

environment, and in order to dance with the rhythm of change (note),

organisations had to avoid the rigid, hierarchical and bureaucratic

structures of the old industrial order via flexibility, the new panacea for

restructuring and a word cancelling the individual identitys symbol of the

last century, and the career as a continuous narrative (Grey, 1994). From

a micro perspective, the theoretical models of flexible specialisation on

the one hand (Piore and Sabel, 1984) and the flexible firm on the other

(Atkinson, 1985), despite their differences, have both supported the re-

organisation of labour along the coordinates of flexibility. The crucial aim

of such changes has been to achieve competitive advantage, while

retaining effective cost control.

The re-organisation of work has occurred at different levels of the

organisational structure, in different forms of work, and in different aspects

of the employment and contractual relationship. Concepts such as

downsizing, delayering, de-integration, disorganisation, core and

periphery empowerment, team working, outsourcing, culture of

excellence, strategic planning, organisational culture management,


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BPR, TQM, etc., are all buzz words testifying a shift of paradigm from

Fordism as rigidity to post-Fordism as flexibility4. The new wave of

managerialism acquires its consistence along the assumptions that

economic success comes not only from cost saving or perfectionism of

technologies, but rather from an implacable personal creativity, innovation

and knowledge production. A careful analysis of contemporary

organisational and managerial practices shows how they all may be

considered as an expression of the well-known American Dream, and

the rise of HRM in this context, does not stand outside this very dream

(Guest, 1990).

In line with the American and British production of the new

mentalities of work, in the early 1980s HRM now even seen as Strategic

Human Resource Management (SHRM) has been presented to the

pagan majority as the dominant ideology, a new philosophy of

management claiming both, that its roots lie in Personnel Management

(PM) and that it is completely detached from its tradition. Since its

emergence a consistent and multifaceted literature has flourished about

HRM, its history, development and the positions held by individuals, in away that a unitary characterisation of the phenomenon appears to be

inappropriate yet constantly searched. Karen Legge (1995; 1989), one of

the more dedicated authors to the detailed analysis of HRMs

developmental history, has shown how one of the difficulties determining

the impossibility to coherently define it may stem from the multiplicity of the

models describing the phenomenon. Thus, within the normative (Beer and

Spector, 1985; Guest, 1987), descriptive-functional (Torrington and Hall,2002), critical-evaluative (Watson, 1986) and descriptive-behavioural

models (Legge, 1995), it is possible to come across a range of different

characterisations of HRM in a way that it seems to be highly challenging to

find a logical determination of it. However, it is possible to perceive as the

4In the field of organisation and management studies is still prevalent the dispute about

the significance of a radical change, where the adjective radical refers to a revolutionina social order or system (cfr. Pollert, 1991; Hyman, 1991).


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common thread, the general agreement on identifying the individual

subject as the basic unit of analysis for management practices.

Moreover, a further element disturbing the innovative features of

HRM and its unitary characterisation is given by the constant confrontation

with PM. In facts, both seems to have compatible views of management

and the individual, so that HRM is more likely to be read as a model of

managing people at work that is more credible than personnel

management (Legge, 1995: 28 emphasis added). A detailed scrutiny of

the incongruence stemming from the comparison between HRM and PM

requires a substantial effort of articulation in order to delineate each model

describing the phenomenon. Although in the next sections, more

comments on the reasons that have led to the legitimation of HRM on PM

will be made, here the focus is more on the general functional perspective

in which HRM is considered in terms of its supposed ability to respond in a

more flexible way to the challenges of societal turbulence.

In line with this, HRM is generally perceived as the management of

people to achieve behaviour and performance that will enhance an

organisations effectiveness5

or, as argued by Guest (1987: 503), HRMcomprises a set of policies designed to maximise organisational

integration, employee commitment, flexibility and quality of work. At least

from the more functional perspective, HRM has thus constantly engaged

with the new language promoting flexibility as the source towards

economic success and individuals satisfaction. Through practices of

recruitment and selection, appraisal and reward, training and

development, HRM is chronologically the last attempt to overcome therigid rationalities and the exclusive emphasis on efficiency, towards a

concern for the welfare and development of individuals at work (Legge,

1995: 11). One of the ways to grasp the meaning of this statement is

through an understanding of the dichotomic language that has developed

from the peculiar distinction between the Hard and Soft models of

HRM. While the first has a more utilitarian/instrumentalconcern, the latter

5http://www.waikato.ac.nz/library/learning/s_hrm.shtml


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is more likely to highlight the significance of a developmental humanismin

the work dimension:

The hard model stresses HRMs focus on the crucial importance

of the close integration of human resources policies, systems and

activities with business strategies [] From this perspective the human

resource, the object of formal manpower planning, can be just that, largely

a factor of production [] In contrast, the soft developmental humanism,

while still emphasising the importance of integrating HR policies with

business objectives, sees this as involving treating employees as valued

assets, a source of competitive advantage through their commitment,

adaptability and high quality (Legge, 1995: 66).

By recalling the works of a range of authors, from Hendry and

Pettigrew to Storey, from Guest to Morris and Burgoyne, Legge is visible

willing to point out that, where in the hard models the focus is ultimately

human resource management, in the soft version greater attention is

given to human resourcemanagement. In view of that, HRM deals with aset of propositions decreeing a new rationality for the management of

people that declares a clear break away from previous conceptions of

paternalistic management, in which managers took responsibilities for their

workers (Taylor, 1911; Fayol, 1949). Nowadays, the more direct

relationship between managers and workers, and the consequent lowering

of trade union power as mediating the relationship (Edwards, 1999),

substantiate the foundation of so-called entrepreneurial (Schumpeterian)culture (du Gay and Salaman, 1992). In the last twenty years or so, in the

context of work the subject has been approached in terms of its own ability

to authenticate its position; the individual is said to be self-

entrepreneurial and free to construct its own aspirations (du Gay and

Salaman, 1992). The strengthening of notions such as empowerment,

responsibility or practical autonomy (Willmott, 1993) all aim to develop

in the subject a sense of being a self-actualising ego (Rose, ?), the self-


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employed individual disciplining himself. In view of that, soft models of

HRM have embraced almost exclusively practices through which it is

possible to flexibilise organisational members. The operation of fields

such as recruitment, selection, appraisal, reward, training and

development, is now abundantly articulated through fervent highlighting of

notions such as commitment, motivation and creativity at work,

essential ingredients to meet the needs of a highly dynamic market. What

is argued is that, within organisations, individuals flexibility is a vital

requirement but it is possible only if he or she displays high organisational

commitment, high trust and high levels of motivation (Legge, 1995; Beer,

1985; Guest, 1987). As Beer (1985) points out, the rationale behind this is

based on the assumption that committed individuals will be more satisfied,

more productive and more adaptable. The shift from compliance, imposed

by bureaucratic control, to attitudinal (and not just behavioural)

commitment (Beer, 1985) is constantly searched via communication,

motivation and leadership (Storey, 1987: 6). Generally, it is via cultural

change programmes and Organisational Culture Management (OCM) that

individuals learn how to be committed.Considered as a central feature of HRM, OCM comprises

discourses, legends, stories, myths and the production of artefacts all

representing the soft means through which leaders shapes peoples

values and goals. Especially the American literature of excellence (Peter

and Waterman, 1982; Ouchi, 1981; Deal and Kennedy, 1982) has

supported the idea for organisations to have strong cultures in order to

achieve the competitive advantage via responsiveness to customersneeds, in line with its sovereignty (du Guy and Salaman, 1992).

Accordingly, the analytical categories of conformity (corporate

understanding) and collectivism (team work, group) appears to be

particularly pervasive within the organisation, as a means to elicit in the

individual a sense of belonging it, for a better performance and self-

satisfaction.


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In few words, identity and subjectivity are being (re) discovered both as

sources of value and objects of far-reaching changes through the

flexibilisation of organisations and the expansion of markets (Holtegrewe,

2003: 2).

1.2. An urgent criticism, a vital investigation

Whilst part of the literature has prosecuted flexible managerial

practices as having a corrosive nature for the self (Sennett, 1998), another

part is more likely to analyse the reasons whyflexible practices and HRM

have emerged. In line with this tradition, authors such as Ackroyd andProcter (2001) argue that implicit in HRM models is the idea of employees

flexibility for the employer. Such an approach recalling the Marxist

dialectic between capitalists and proletarians, managers and workers,

employers and employees is particularly attentive to the conditions of

exploitation under which the employee exists. Looking at organisations,

critics of HRM heavily focus upon the exploitative nature of work, which

remains its central feature. Restoring Marxs argument, the essential aim

of employers/managers is still that to create surplus value. With the

triumphant emergence of capitalism (Meszaros, 1975: 33) the individual

has to be reified converted into a thing, into a mere piece of property for

the duration of the contract before it could be mastered by its own

owner (Ibid, 34).

Behind this assumption is a materialistic view of society and of the

formation of man, rooted in the anthropological philosophy of Marx (1818-

1883), widely known as dialectical materialism (or historical materialism).

Marxs whole theoretical apparatus develops from a materialistic view of

history, along a trajectory of thought leading from Hegel to Feuerbach.

From the former, Marx has drawn the historical approach by refusing its

metaphysical structure; from the latter, he has inherited a materialistic

attitude declining, however, its historical deficiency. The outcome has

been the articulation of a material view of history, solidly opposed to the


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historical idealism making spiritual causes prior to material ones6. To say

that history has got a material foundation means to identify economy

(structure) as the first source of historical processes shaping the

institutions and ideologies (superstructure) alias, systems of ideas

culture, politics, law, religion that respectively interact with history. Since

it is within economy that Marx finds the roots of the super-structure, for

every social fact there is an economic reason. Another core postulate in

Marxs analysis is the conviction that society is made of economic classes,

struggling continuously for the possession of the means of production, so

that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class

struggle (Marx, 1964: 35).

Without going much deeper into Marxs ideas it is vital here to

transfer the discussion in the field of contemporary management, in order

to appreciate the living theoretical separation, which still exists between

managers and workers; a separation affirming a situation of power and

economic advantage for the former. Especially Labour Process Theory

literature has shown how the analytical categories implicit in HRM as

commitment rather than compliance, the self-disciplined worker,empowerment, de-centralisation of power, etc. have only masked the

idea of mistreatment and control mainly associated with Fordism.

However, what is commonly argued is that the very notion of managing

the human resource raises questions of legitimacy of the non-exploitative

nature of labour. In practice, HRM is conceived as a case of the wolf in

sheeps clothing (Keenoy, 1990) involving new categories of control (e.g.

OCM) and exploitation (e.g. the quest for conformity and commitment)legitimating management rituals. More or less the worker is depicted as

Aristotle viewed the slave, that is, a talking tool. The instrumental use of

flexibility thus depicts HRM as an assembly of strategies having deep and

negative consequences on the individual self, whose essence comes to be

destroyed by a new managerialism conceived in terms of sheer and pre-

meditated laceration (fragmentation) of the self, flowing in a sense of

6In Hegel (1977), for example, history flows from the Spirit.


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alienation. However, despite an unequivocal degree of validity, this

scrutiny obstructs HRMs cultural features and the exploration of deeper

issues relating the constitution of the modern self. This standpoint is

usually trapped in a general structuralist perspective, identifying HRM as a

planned set of practices specifically designed to favour the needs of

capitalism and organisations against workers: HRM as furtively

undermining its own basic promises of non-exploitation and non-control.

An alternative way to approach HRM and the subject is to question

not the (functional) why, but rather the how of their history. To develop

an exegesis of the cultural formation of management, leads to a rejection

of Marxs materialism by emphasising the cultural nature of social

practices: management does not serve only economic ends, it is not the

product of a material dialectic; rather it follows a historical-cultural path. In

such a view, HRM can be interpreted as a phenomenon genealogically

determined by a multiplicity of events and discourses implied in Atlantic

cultures, such as the accent upon freedom and authenticity rooted in the

culture of modernity and substantiated by a universal need for humanity.

Thus, a crisis of traditional and modern faiths, the rise of an existentialsentiment is central factor in the rise of HRM. But it is also important to

identify a set of events whose interconnections have paved the way for the

emergence of this ideology. Among them (but not necessarily in a

chronological order), can be mentioned neo-liberal ideologies and the

attacks on the Welfare State, the advent of mass consumption, the Cold

war, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, new processes of

globalisation, the increasing development of ICTs, the rise of knowledgeeconomy, privatisation, the free market, wealth, flexibility, and the re-

negation of rigidities, the power of advertising and marketing, the

development of the psychological sciences, the processes of

christianisation and evangelisation after the discovery of America, the art

of language and the printed word, the Socratic rhetoric, etc all having

actually contributed to constitute HRM as a new way of doing things at

work.


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2.

HRM IN THE ATLANTIC CULTURE:THE CONCERN FOR HUMANITY AND THE SEARCH FOR AUTHENTICITY

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not toharm you, plans to give you hope and a future

Jeremiah, 29: 11

2.1. The Shattering of Faiths

To overcome the convictions that HRM is exclusively a planned

product of the 1980s and 1990s in relations to the strengthening of

notions such as flexibility and individual freedom implies widerconsiderations upon the Western society from a more socio-theoretical

perspective and less political-economical. Whether it is possible to

recognise a change in the world of work and in managerial practices (the

rise of HRM), the very change cannot be taken apart from the mutation of

the individual self in history, and from the conditions of social uncertainty

traversing the Western society during modernity.

Born in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, the epoch of

modernity has generally determined a high degree of societal and

economic progress, establishing a deep caesura with the previous

traditional and religious bonds. However, since its naissance, it has also

decreed a time for human beings decadence: the individual forms the

backbone of modernity, in Europe, and like modernity it is born in

perplexity (Bruckner, 2000:17).


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Since the seventeenth century (but even during the previous centuries), a

series of deep transformations have in facts been the solid base for the

spiritual crises of man: the scientific and industrial revolutions, the

passage from monarchic states to liberal democracies, the motto of libert,

egalit and fraternit, the waves of white colonialism, etc., are only few

examples that have established both a solid anthropocentrism and, at the

same time, the affirmation of a precarious and indeterminate condition for

subjectivity. Rousseaus Le sentiment de lexistence and Goethes works

during the eighteenth century, the paintings of Edward Munch in the late

nineteenth century or the Kierkegaardian philosophy on anguish (retrieved

by Heidegger during the last century)are absolutely exemplar of a sense

of loss worsening in the first half of the twentieth century, when the crisis

of reason endures a mortal blow (NB: I dont know how to eliminate all

these century repetitions). The tragic vision of a world lacerated by two

World Wars, and by the horrors of Nazis, Fascist and Comunists

ideologies, manifests a consistent cultural delusion in the regard of the

modern ideals; moreover, it founds the premises for the spreading of an

existentialatmospherepervading the Old Continent and problematising agrowing de-humanisation of human beings.

Conceived as the maximum exposition of the sense of

indeterminacy tormenting man, existentialism has placed an increasing

attention to the limiting and negative aspects of human condition. As

Kafkas Metamorphosis is likely to stress the banality of life, taking out

from man its human feature, Jasperss (1971) concept of limit-situation

(Grenzsituation) is as much incisive in underlying a problematic existence,by considering life as a shipwreck situation.

Whether France and Germany have been the cradle of the entire

existential consciousness as well as of the existential philosophy Italy

has participated to the same feeling via the affirmation of the so-called

Hermetic Thought. Among the representatives, Giuseppe Ungaretti

(1888-1970) has expressed in verse the precariousness of life through a

powerful metaphor of sorrowful understanding:


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Si sta come dautunno sugli alberi le foglie

They stand like leaves on the trees in autumn7.

Similarly, Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), making deep considerations ofexistence and the mystery of being and time, wrote:

[...] E andando nel sole che abbaglia, sentire con triste meraviglia, cometutta la vita e il suo travaglio, in questo seguitare una muraglia, che ha in

cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia.And going into the suns blaze, once more, to feel, with sad surprise howall life and its battles is in this walk alongside a wall, topples with sharps

bits of glass from broken bottle8.

It deals with a sensation of anxiety and inconsistency of man that, by the

mid-1950s, has been further amplified by the decisive development of

communication technologies leading to the formation of a ever more

global village (McLuhan, 1962), and to the advancement of information

as a means resolving the social entropy (Wiener, 1954). In The Critique of

Modernity (1995), Alan Tourain writes that the triumphant technocracy

provokes a sense of alienation in the subject finding itself without any

capacity to construct its own identity. What comes to be realised is a

psychological experience of de-materialisation and de-contextualisation:

our image becomes fragmented, whit the consequence lost of subjectivity

and meaning. As Deleuze and Guttari (1977) have argued, the prevalence

of the imaginary and images encourage a virtual self making the human

beings bodies without organs at the mercy of a despotic capitalism.

Some years before, also Heidegger (1968) wrote that the essence of the

modern epoch resides in the release of man from the religious and

medieval ties to focalise upon itself. However, the process of centralise

responsibilities causes a sentiment of anguish for the subject who sees

itself committed in the attempt to control theworld: the modern individual

7G. Ungaretti (1918) Soldati, translated from Italian by Stuart Flynn

8

E. Montale (1925), from Meriggiare Pallido e Assorto, translated from Italian by MillicentBell


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testifies the passage from a status of alienation in the mechanic era to

a feeling of existential anguish typical of the technologic society.

The contemporary historical debate certainly perceives in the 1960sthe germs of this epochal transformation leading to the altered

interpretation of world and society (Gray, 1998). The so-called crisis of

modernity comes then to be further substantiated through the affirmation

of a post-modern sentiment. The apocalyptic postmodernism of Lyotard

(1984) and Baudrillard (1996), the critical theory of the Frankfurt School,

the radical modernity of Giddens, Beck and Lash (1994), the disorganised

capitalisms theory of Lash and Urry (1987) and the more nihilisticpositions of post-structuralism (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and Guttari),

despite their several differences, all recognise the failure of the modern

project and of the Enlightenment instances that have encouraged it: faith

in progress, science, and a linear view of historical development (Voltaire,

1965).

The claim of modernity to propose itself as a universal culture has

lost its strength. Nowadays, caducity, discontinuity, chaos, contingency,

indeterminacy, and distrust in every universal and totalising language,

contrast the previous uniformity, rationality and systemic logic of modernity

(Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991). What is argued is that, at the origins of this

situation, there has been a process of social fragmentation based on the

dichotomy of the individual and the institutions through which both man

himself and his institutions are destroyed and dispersed into tiny little

fragments which are no longer connected and related (Sievers, 1994: 12).

Thus, in a world irreparably fragmented, the unified and rational subject of

modernity turns to be problematic and weakened.

Also in the dimension of work has been possible to notice a high

degree of inconstancy for individuals, already articulated by Marx during

the nineteenth century, in concomitance with the development of

capitalism and the expansion of industrialism. If the freedom of man lies in

the objectification of its own nature and in taking the distance from it if


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the essence of man is in work with the advent of machines, as Marx

would say, the subject is alienated, that is, victim of the same object. Thus,

pursuant to the era of machine started to take shape an exigency of

freedom and defence against all that transform human into a tool, an

object, that is, an absolute estrange (Simmel, 1978).

Along the discontinuities, ruptures and multiple crises of history, has

took place a consistent consideration of human beings freedom and

dignity; a return to the authenticity of the self implying a moral ideal of self-

fulfilment, that is, being true to oneself, in a specifically modern

understanding of the term (Alan Bloom cited in Taylor, 1991: 15).

2.2. A return to humanism: towards the re-constitution of the self

It is from the recognition of such an uncertain historical condition

that, generally, the issues of subjectivity have been shifted from pure

theoretical argumentation to a more pragmatic administration, becoming

often an object of real speculation and manipulation. The attempts to

manage subjectivity in the workplace for example with HRM

phenomenon have constituted not only the fundamental means leading

to a (misinformed) superior economic performance, but also the pretext to

a legitimate historical and social situation of uncertainty, so that the

minutiae of the human soul [] had emerged as a new domain for

management (Rose, 1990: 72).

It is worth to notice that in this context, the new hymn to the self,

both in life and work as the central dimension of human existence is

articulated as the remedy for its re-constitution. Needless to say, that the

core of such an assumption only makes sense into a definite cultural

context. In the Western civilization the death of man prospected by

Nietzsche (1974), has been further explicated from the 1950s through that

that Taylor (1991:10) defines the loss of meaning, the fading of moral

horizons, requiring an exigency of culturality, of a strong set of values

capable to triumph over the modern scientism, positivism and empiricism:


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it is from here, then, that the questions of subjectivity have acquired

central importance as the key to our humanity (Rose, 1990: x), obtaining

a fundamental connotation as a value to be respected rather than

subjugated (Ibid, 56).

Whether from one side this situation has emergedas an antidote

exorcisating the sense of loss of the world, from the other side it has been

affirmed as the explicit and necessary consequence of the explosion of

wealth, of the growth of production, the progressive centrality of the

consumer, and the advent of the consumption era. Homeland the United

States, that ascended to super-potency in the second post-war, not only

has been proponents of a wealth based on the private, familiar and

individual consumption, but they have also been the primal benchmark for

the all European Countries freed from the multiple totalitarisms.

Emblematically, Un Americano a Roma, a 1954 movie played by Alberto

Sordi, is the prototype of an epochal change in which the modern lifestyles

winded along the coordinates of freedom, the essential foundation of the

Western political thought.

At a societal level, the rise of the Yippy movement and the newmodalities of expressing free love, the feminine emancipation, or the

development of yoga and meditation practices, all testify the celebration

of freedom as authenticity and self-expression (Rose, 1999: 62). At an

individual level, the new ways of conceiving man has occurred in terms of

possibility of choice in the constitution and re-constitution of the self and

in its realisation: the self is to be a subjective being, it is to aspire to

autonomy, it is to strive for personal fulfilment in its earthly life, it is tointerpret its reality and destiny as a matter of individual responsibility, it is

to find meaning in existence by shaping its life through acts of choice

(Rose, ?: 151). It is still by following Rose (1990: ix) that becomes clear

that the psychologies that are important in contemporary social regulation

do not treat the subject as an isolated automation to be dominated and

controlled. On the contrary, the subject is a free citizen, endowed with

personal desires and enmeshed in a network of dynamic relations with


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others. The moral crisis tormenting our time is therefore at the heart of a

constant exploration of the self, having the features of a new rationality

although dissimilar from that of the Enlightenment and Tayloristic project.

As far the main thread of study is consciousness and subjectivity, it

is worth to notice that generally the psychological man of the twentieth

century searches desperately for a personal peace of mind under social

and psychological conditions that militate against it (Ibid, 216). It deals

with a peace of mind that, both in life and work as a central experience

in human life is searched in the humanity of man, in its history, in its

culture as a mater of humans. Man is a biological reality becoming in thecenturies a more cultural reality. The homo culturalis, referring to the

transcendental dimension of man and its animal instincts, its very nature,

reaches a status in which its natural essence is confronted with what he

has created, that is, culture. Despite its very anthropological origins, this

exploited and often-debated notion has been at the core of all human and

social sciences and also, by the mid-1950s, becoming an essential

element also in the field of organisation and management studies: A

belief that something called culture is both somehow critical to

understanding what is happening to, as well as practically intervening in,

contemporary economic and organisational life (du Gay and Pryke, 2002:

1).

After the 1930s the attempts to respond to the dehumanising

effects of Taylorism and Fordism, and the need to re-found the meaning of

work (Mayo, 1949; Maslow, 1954; McGregor, 1960; Herzberg, 1968)

definitively contributed in shifting the concern from the hard to the soft

and more humanistic components of the organisation9. Since the mid-

1950s with the new Human Relations schools, but especially in the last

twenty-five years with the HRM phenomenon, management has found

9The seven S of management refers to three hard components (Strategy, Structure,

Systems) and four soft components (Staff, Skills, Styles, System of values). For thediscussion on style (cultural values) see Thrift, 2002 while for an analysis on strategy

and structure see Chandler, 1969.


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new ways of legitimising itself in terms of culture and the self at work.

Thus, the managerial discourse, by developing meaning and

motivation(Heelas, 2002: 86), has gradually shifted from a paternalistic

position to a non-paternalistic one, providing specific practices for the

individuals as a means to realise their happiness and fulfilment (Rose,

1999). The recurring leit motif is, as stated by Sievers (1994: 33), that the

meaning of work not only has to be seen in relation to the meaning of life,

but [that] the search for the meaning of work can only be based on the

goal of attaining the ability to overcome and transcend fragmentation.

In the contemporary work organisation the question of the selfcome to be stressed in a historical period in which the whole Western

society testifies a cultural turn to life embracing, first and foremost, a deep

re-moralisation of the economic dimension, a process widely known as

soft capitalism (Abby, 2004; Heelas, 2002; Legge, 1995; Thompson and

McHugh, 2002; Thrift, 1997). This notion, overcoming the simplistic

definition of capitalism given by Marx (that system of production centred

on the private property of capital and paid employment lacking property, in

which this relationship constitutes the dorsal spine of a class system), is

likely to support the cultural dimension of economy, that is, the ensemble

of soft components of economy for the good of the individual. It is from

the recognition of an uncertain society and fragmented individual that the

cultural turn not only involves acts of homage to the importance of

capitalism (Thrift, 1997: 29), but also inaugurates the period of what

academics use to name the therapeutic culture of the self. As

summarised by Paul Heelas (2002: 81), soft capitalism is about culture,

knowledge and creativity; about identity; about values, beliefs and

assumptions [] about cultural expertise concerning the psychological

realm of life how to explore it in order to develop it.

The recognition of a kind of ethicisation of economy recall to the

memory the statements of academics such as du Gay and Pryke, Heelas,

Roberts, Thrift or Lash and Urry (1994: 64), for whom economic and

symbolic processes are more than ever interlaced and interarticulated;


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that is [] the economy is increasingly cultural inflected and [] culture is

more and more economically inflected.

It is from the merger of economy and culture that has developed anew ethic of work, understood as the capacity to ascribe value to the

accomplished work: the self-work ethic [] treats work as something to

be valued as the means to those ends espoused by expressive and

therapeutic culture (Heelas, 2002: 81). In line with this, the workplace is

valued, that is to say, as a vehicle to the end of self-sacralisation (Ibid,

89). The Protestant vision of work comes back again, despite translated in

the hic et nuncof practices: work is more conceived as a means for anend that is not transcendental the human life, but it is rather the means to

affirm the salvation through the self-comprehension and actualisation10. As

synthesised by Paul Heelas (2002: 80), takes place a new vision of the

self which constitution takes distances from the pure consumer culture.

The self becomes one considering itself to be something more,

something much deeper, more natural and authentic than the self of what

is taken to be involved with the superficialities of the merely materialistic-

cum-consumeristic; a self which has to work on itself to enrich and explore

itself, in the process dealing with its problems.

Among the authors concerned on the development of soft

capitalism, Abby Day Peters (2004) wonders whether this phenomenon

may involve a real re-sacralisation and remoralisation of the workplace.

Far from giving either explicit positive or negative responds, he opens up

the debate with a strong statement leading to further reflections on the

topic: what we may observe as a movement called soft capitalism or spirit

at work is only an example of the every innovative nature of capitalism that

creates the work environment and ethic necessary forthe time [] It is not

10The protestant revolution in the early 1500

this aligned with the raise of the modern

individualism and the end of the Christian community. Both Luther and Calvin preachedthe salvation of human beings through the hard work, even though suppressing humandignity. The worker was said to identify himself with his wage needing no solidarity fromthe others. In this sense, Protestantism has legitimised the exploitation of man under a

religious light (Cfr. M. Weber, 1930).


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new capitalism or different capitalism, but simply an example of how

capitalism works (Italic added).

However, the culturalisation of economy, according to the new spirit

of capitalism, have had quite a few repercussions in the realm of intimate

subjectivity since the prerogative of informed human resource

management now extend to the love, the heart and even the soul of

everyone and everything it touches (Roberts, 2001: 61). In a context in

which work has been given a wider non-economical significance, where

the search for meaning and values is a rather fundamental component for

the personal and professional growth, the all soft changes involve self-

willed transformations in consciousness and the opening up of personality

so that selected employees will, through self-discovery and self-

development, uncover the sources of a new dynamism in the context of

love (Ibid, 73). Lying at the core of such a conception of individuals there

is therefore the desire to pursue the authenticity of the self, where

authenticity refers to the capacity of being true to oneself, being a

genuine self. Even though it finds its roots in the eighteenth century

being the consequence of a form of individualism mainly stemming formthe Lockian tradition (Taylor, 1991; Sennett, 1977) the theme of

authenticity arose with a major strength during the nineteenth century as

support of the massive subjective turn of modern culture (Taylor, 1991:

26), re-calling Saint Augustines reflections on the self as a sanctuary of

divine presence (Dupr, 1993: 93).

It is from the progressive humanisation of work that it becomes then

possible to visualize the birth of HRM as a surrogate of PM practices (cfr.

first section). However, if there has been a change in the terminology,

there is the need to dig deeper in the motivations leading the Atlantic

culture to accept the overcoming of a traditional myth (PM) in favour of a

new situation (HRM). Despite the fact they are in practice the same, they

have a different flavour given by the humandiscriminant (the H of HRM).

As tradition treated nature as an exploitable resource favouring the needs

of men, today also its humanity constitutes an essential reserve. The body


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and corporeity of the individual no longer represent the coral element of

work as the rhetoric of scientific management was likely to encourage

rather its humanity and culturality. The binomial element culture-man goes

hand in hand: man in a never ended cultural product and humanity

plunges its roots into the culture of every time. It is not by chance that the

emphasis on the human component of work develops in concomitance

with the wave of culturalism. Briefly, this may be the reason why HRM is

often promoted as an innovative and fertile event.

The grave return to humanism, as general and diffused concern for

the human life, has been adopted as the leading motive of managerial

practices, especially by HRM in the last twentieth-five years. By adopting

the individual as the basic unit of analysis, HRM can be broadly

interpreted as one of the ways encouraging a vision of the self as

constitutively shaped and re-shaped towards authenticity. Although this

notion hardly appear in organisation and management literature, it is

however possible a regular confirmation with similar notions likely implying

the search for authenticity. An example in this sense is given by those

expressions that, mainly stemming from the scientific psychology, aim to

underlie the significance of the self as capable of self-completion and self-

fulfilment through the free choice in a highly contingent context. Thus,

self-actualisation or self-discovery rise from all those cultural themes,

which are constitutional of HRM as a new managerial discourse, where

notions such as freedom, commitment and motivation are the means

for the self-understanding of the self according to the search for

authenticity. A situation due to the fact that individuals decreasingly look

to the outer situations, people, and structures to motivate their behaviour

and impact their feeling and thinking [] they look increasingly inward for

direction, esteem, and creation of their own happiness (Tischler,

1999:276).

The idea of personal freedom, constantly reinforced by concepts

such as empowerment, responsibility and practical autonomy


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(Willmott, 1993), is substantiated through the possibility of one to be self-

motivated. It is not a coincidence that in all HRM practices, the ideal status

of liberty is sublimely and generally connected with all those motivational

theories that, while proclaiming the subject as a self-actualising ego,

reduce man and organisation, as well as their interrelatedness, into reified

derivates (Sievers, 1994: 3). Interpreted as the scientific attempt to

establish a casual relationship between motives and behaviour, in the

sense that the latter is determined by the former (Ibid, 4), motivation

derives its fortune especially from a set of psychological convictions. In

line with this, the work of Maslow (1954) has propped up a new conception

of human nature and subjectivity in terms of motivation and self-direction.

The psychological matrix of Maslows theory of needs, adopted by HRM

rhetoric, develops a number of fundamental needs hierarchically ordered.

This comes to substantiate the conviction that the highest need (self-

actualisation) can be realised after having overcome the essential and

intermediary physical, security, social and achievement needs.

Nonetheless, without getting in further details in Maslows theorisations,

here it is fair to highlight that the growing significance of psychologicalexpertise in organisations, as a means to help the cultivation of the

individual self, gives a re-configuration of the notion of management far

from the scientific understanding of it. Accordingly, the discovery and re-

discovery of the self occurs due a new school of experts grouping, apart

from psychologists, clinical, occupational, educational but also social

workers, personnel managers, probation officers, counsellors and

therapists of different schools and allegiances have based their claim tosocial authority upon their capacity to understand the psychological

aspects of the person and to act upon them (Rose, 1999: 2/3). Briefly, the

self is now able to style its life through acts of choice, and when it cannot

conduct its life according to this norm of choice, it is to seek expert

assistance (Rose ?, 158), in a world in which institutions and

organisations endow individuals with material and symbolic resources

giving them a sense of autonomy (Holtgrewe, 2003: 3).


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In line with the cultural change and the formation of a new

psychological evaluation of the individual and its desires HRM

encourage a set of practices supporting the re-constitution of the subjectby portraying peculiar teachings of how be the authentic and genuine self;

a process that, absolutely fitting with the culture of our time, is abundantly

supported by the turn to spirituality. Especially since the last 20 years,

while the whole Western society has assisted to an increasing concern

towards spiritual practices, within the workplace it has become a more

known reality for management fully framed in the highly dedicated

perspective of meliorating the management of a not ultimately naturalresource, but spiritual (mental) as well. By transcending the anchorage in

religious traditions, an example is offered by HRM, reinforcing the notion

of spirituality in order to achieve a unified whole (Burack, 1999), so that

increasingly managers can measure their spiritual intelligence. A major

witness in such a turn to spirituality is the wave of New Age Management,

often seen not only as a means to change people in order to change the

management subject (Thrift, 1997: 46), but also as a way to reinforce the

opportunity of self-expression and genuineness for the individual: a

process in which come to be involved both managers and workers in their

self-constitution.

2.3. Ethic as aesthetic of existence: the contribution of MichelFoucault

A more theoretical as well historical vision of the subject capable of

self-constitution is further substantiated by the work of the French

philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984). Emerging as one of the most

eclectic figures of the Western contemporary philosophy, Foucault has

participated to the hermeneutical analysis of the constitution of the self, for

which he tried to define an ethic. Understood as practical way of

evaluating and acting upon oneself (Foucault, 1988; Rose, ?), ethic as

ethos is conceived in terms of discipline, that is, the means by which


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individuals come to construe, decipher, act upon themselves in relation to

the true and the false, the permitted and the forbidden, the desiderable

and the undesiderable (Rose, ?: 153).

The essential notion around which develops the genealogical

investigation of the self is the care of the self, in Greek hepimeleia hautou

and in Latin cura sui. This has been the coral argument of a course in the

Collge de France where, in 1982, Foucault has explored the great

schools of Greek and Latin philosophy, stressing the significance in the

classical phase of taking care of oneself, actively participating to the

spiritual and mental growth of the self. In an interview given to Hubert

Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, the French historian stated: What strikes me

is that in Greek ethics people were concerned with their moral conduct,

their ethics, their relations to themselves and to others much more than

with religious problems [...] What they were worried about, their theme,

was to constitute a kind of ethics which was an aesthetc of existence

(Foucault, 1983: 231). Thus, it is by taking as a starting point of his

analysis the physical and spiritual Socratic paideia, that Foucault arrives to

define ethics as aesthetic of existence, where aesthetic does not referto the search for elegance; rather it defines an ethical concept of a work

upon the self, where the individual is artiste of himself. Despite finding its

origins in the Stoic and Platonic philosophy, the attitude of the care of the

self is still dominant today as surrogate of the shattering of religious and

traditional faiths.

The all-individual existential aesthetic is shaped on what Foucault

called technologies of the self, turned to the auto-constitution of a subjectmaster of himself. Particularly, it refers to a set of practices (or

technologies) through which the individual subject acts upon himself in a

self-referential process of construction, establishing the ways in which we

are enabled, by means of the languages, criteria and techniques offered to

us, to act upon our bodies, souls, thoughts, and conduct it in order to

achieve happiness, wisdom, health, and fulfilment (Rose, 1999: 221).

Thus, it is via specific technologies of the self that individuals define


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themselves becoming tied to an identity by self-knowledge (know oneself).

It deals with a process in which the subject learn how to be free, how to be

responsible of his choices, how to become the ideal human resource via

ethical self-commandment. (The reflection on oneself as a way to be self-

actualised restores the principles of the Protestant Christianity in which the

voice calling is within the individual. As expressed by Dean (1999: 17), the

ethical feature of the individual flows through technologies of the self,

implying four dimensions: ontology, concerned with whatwe seek to act

upon, the governed or ethical substance [] ascetic, concerned with how

we govern this substance, the governing or ethical work [] deontology,

concerned with whowe are when we are governed [] the governable or

ethical subject [] and teleology, concerned with whywe govern or are

governed [] the telos of governmental or ethical practices).

There is a deep connection, then, between the need to be an

authentic self and the ways through which such a condition, which is seen

as ethical, is reached. However, despite the subject is given a specific

autonomy for its edification in practices, such an autonomy seems to lose

its original and ideal strength when the subject and society comes to beread via the historical analysis of languages and discourses. How can the

search for authenticity and the re-constitution of the self be read outside

linguistic practices? How is it possible to conceive an autopoietic self,

immune to the influences of language? Is authenticity possible? And how

HRM, being culturally produced, really approaches the need of an

authentic self for its own good?

In order to understand the profound roots of the new managerialdiscourses dynamics, in the following sections the analysis plunges in a

path of prevalently post structuralist/modernist/essentialist matrix; an

analytical trip which, accounting once again on the historical philosophy of

Foucault, poses itself as essential postulate to uncover the issues of the

contemporary self. In reality, the all post discourse, and especially

postmodernism, asks how can we use a postmodern epistemology or

theory of knowledge to analyse organisations and management


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including HRM in a different way (Legge, 1995: 298). In fact, the post-

structuralist deliberations on society and subjectivity represent not only a

valuable starting point of understanding HRM as a cultural phenomenon

(hence the deeper meaning of its cultural motives mentioned above), but

also a way to develop profound questions about the self, the

understanding of authenticity and self-understanding and, last but not

least, its humanitas.

2.4. A post-structuralist approach to the self

Post-structuralism is a conceptual scheme verging on nihilism

which, developing by the mid-1960s, interprets a society in which an

extreme technology upholds the fragmentation process of subjectivity, that

is, the incapacity to construct its own identity. Despite the fact there is a

general tendency to consider subjectivity and identity as

interchangeable notions, there is an ontological difference among them. In

fact, while subjectivity represents the inner world, identity usually refers to

the image and the idea that self and others have about themselves, andthis impacts on subjectivity in crucial ways.

Within the modern tradition identity has been considered as the

stable and defined construct of man. Such an essentialist position

supporting the tradition and stemming from modern humanism

conceives identity as given by a prior structure, either rational (Descartes,

Kant) or irrational (Freud). Around this view have developed structuralisms

(Levi-Strauss, De Sussurre,) and the deterministic-holistic conceptions ofthe social reality conceiving man as the product of structures (Marx,

Durkeim). However, the inability for structuralism to recognise the multiple

contextual influences on human beings and his actions, has established

the premises on which post-structuralist positions have developed and,

with it, the view of an anti-essentiality of the subject (Foucault, Derrida,

Kristeva, Barthes). Although Freud undermined the modern faith on the

coincidence between the subject and his consciousness, it was with


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Lacans psychoanalysis that a further destabilisation of the subject has

been accomplished: unconscious is a linguistic structure socially hetero-

determined (Burkitt, 1991)11. Identity becomes the locus of multiple

differences; it is no longer connected to an essence; the fatal implosion of

the Cartesian subject (Kroker cited in Hetrick & Boje, 1992: 48), has

realised its intimae non-authenticity. Briefly, the epoch of the crisis is

symbolized by the openness of the boundaries of the classical identity,

which becomes the final outcome of linguistic and discursive practices

constituting subjectivity within precise power relationships.

The discovery of identity as socially constructed (de-centred

subject), has produced the premises to suspectthat the Ego is just a pure

illusion, a consequence of language artifices. With post-structuralism

and the recognition of the self as a historical product not only the

essence of subjectivity is irremediably traumatised, but the centrality of the

structure is rejected. Identity is no more considered as the reliable heart

funding the subjects truth, but the outcome of cultural, social and symbolic

constructing processes. Post-structuralism suggests a completely de-

subjectivised reality in which the differences, free and multiple, are nomore subjected to any organising structure or centre, but in a continuous

process of becoming. As Burkitt (1991: 83) point out, structuralism and

post-structuralism [] attempt the deconstruction of this humanist notion

of the individual, showing how this vision of humans, and the actual

capacities of agents produced by it, are simply the constructions of the

humanist discourse itself. In few words, the subject is conceived as a

socio-linguistic determined entity. This brings to the conclusion that theformation of the modern self is thus determined by a high precariousness.

The vision of a subjectivity discursively forged, supports a historical

constitution of the self, opened to possibility, contingency and to the

desirable modes of being.

11The Ego was an identity compounded and structured either by his conscious (Super-

Ego) and his unconscious (Es). With Freudian psychoanalysis the subject loses his

previous centrality.


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2.5. And to its constitution in the workplace

Along this perspective, the question of subjectivity within

organisation can be further discussed through the work of Foucault, one of

the authors advocating post-structuralism12. Along the coordinates of

social-constructivism (Berger and Luckmann, 1964), he encourages a

conception of reality as constituted through discourses, that is, how the

objects become spoken in a certain manner. Also the subject itself is

conceived as a linguistic invention, excogitated in a specific historical

moment in order to control and direct. Despite the several attacks to his

missing subject (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1995; Thompson & Smith, 1992)

and despite his non-direct participation in managerial issues, Foucaults

thought may offer a way to understand the deep link between HRM and its

implications on subjectivity (Townley, 1993 & 1996; Parker, 2000;

Collinson, 2003; Knights and Willmott, 1987; Alvesson & Willmott, 2002;

Jermier & Knights & Nord, 1994)13.

Foucault supports a relational and dynamic model of identity in

which language and discourse play a crucial role. By discussing Foucault,

Townley (1996) remarks that he shows how objects are not natural, but

are ordered or constructed by discourse which determines what is

seeable and sayable14. This perspective holds a perception of reality as

constituted through discourses, so that the subject itself is conceived as a

12

Foucauls work is here analysed from a post-structuralist standpoint, despite hisintellectual positions have also embraced many yet different schools of thoughts:structuralism, hermeneutics and the existential phenomenology (Dreyfus & Rabinow,1983; Mills, 2003).

13Within the management literature the questions on subjectivity often fall into the

prominent debate between the Marxian positions of labour process theory from one side(Ackroyd & Thompson, 1995; Thompson & Smith, 1992) and the Foucauldians from theother (Dean, 1999; Townley, 1993; Rose, 1999). However, there is some attempt to re-constitute the deterministic positions of power with a consideration of power as acreative/positive instrument (Knights and Willmott, 1987; Knights, 1990; Collinson, 1993)

14Discourse refers to the a priori, to the underlying rules; it refers how objects become

spoken in a certain manner (Cfr. Townley, 1996).


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linguistic invention, excogitated in a specific historical moment in order to

control and direct. It is through power that the individual as a subject

becomes an object of knowledge: The individual is continuously

constituted and constructed through social relationships, discourses and

practices [] it is constituted through power/knowledge (Foucault cited in

Townley, 1996: 11). Briefly, individuals are created through social

techniques of power infiltrating subjectivity and inter-subjectivity. Hence,

by acknowledging the discursiveformations of the subject, what becomes

crucial is the recognition of those practices aiming to produce the

individual subject within organisation. Once again, the notion of

technologies of the self comes to specify the process of constitution of

the self, also in the workplace. Whether the practices of confession and

examination are typical of the Christian tradition, they have been

translated in management practices in order to emphasise the self-

disciplined nature of individuals according to his bodies and discursive

capacities (Clegg, 1989: 103) in order to achieve control. A position

justified via the notion of govern-mentality of the self, a neologism given by

the synthesis of government (the conduct of conduct) and rationality: Theidea that before something can be governed or managed, it must first be

known (Townley, 1993: 520). That is because knowledge, it is the first

presupposition for executing power in as much it is possible to govern

what is known: it is not possible for power to be exercised without

knowledge, it is impossible for knowledge not to engender power

(Foucault, 1980: 52).

Despite Foucault may be considered the forerunner of thetechnological facet of the self, a discrete part of HRM literature has used

the same observations as a way of understanding how the subject is

rendered visible, knowable and manageable within the workplace.

Accordingly, the ensemble of psychometric tests, job interviews,

comments about job satisfactions (developmental appraisal) are all means

offered by HRM and used by individuals as a way to support the self-

understanding of the self by self knowledge. Among the other multiple


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solutions considerable for that that Goffman (1971) named the

presentation of the self, the curriculum vitae shows its significance apart

from clothing and the use of a particular jargon/language (Collinson,

2003). This powerful autobiographical practice, commonly called upon to

tell a story about ourselves (Miller and Morgan, 1993: 133), is seen as a

part of an overall system of institutional surveillance and rationalism (Ibid,

134). Here, the process of mentoring comes to support a system of

monitoring the individual in its spatiality, temporality and morality since it is

through mentoring that managers can use mentoring to help cultivate

desired norms and values in their organisation (Whyte, 1990: 46). The

lost of identity and the fragmentation of the subject have in fact embodied

the fundamental premise to legitimate an attempt to unify subjectivity

within the workplace through procedures of personal behaviour

normalisation, according to the established canons of the organization.

The all HRM practices are new forms of power functioning towards a

normal status and represent the soft means through which leaders shape

peoples value (Costea and Crump, 1999: 3).

In his post-structuralist stage Foucault denies the autonomy to afragmented and de-centred subject that however, in its final phase is able

of self-constitution. In fact, as stated in the previous section, the subject is

not moulded anymore by power mechanisms but able of edify itself in

practices. This seems to be a quite substantive contradiction, typical of

Foucaults theorisations. However, the combined understanding of the

aesthetic dimension of the self and its being affected by mechanisms of

power/knowledge, may be understood according to the fact that, the careof the self cannot be read outside discourses.

HRM as a set of practices aiming to reveal the mysterious and

hidden domain of the self, through a specific language acts upon the

psyche identified as the new key to gain knowledge and performance.

Understanding the working of these technologies means to understand the

particular type of discourse and the particular techniques, which

supposedly reveal our deepest selves. In fact, the key of technologies of


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the self is the belief that one can, with the help of expert, tell the truth

about oneself: the conviction that the truth can be discovered via self-

examination of consciousness (cercare la nota di Foucault).

Summarising what has been said up until this point, HRM serves to

render organisations and their participants calculable arenas, offering,

through a variety of technologies, the means by which activities and

individual become knowable and governable (Townley, 1993: 526). This

brings to the conclusion that, whether everything runs in proximity of the

language, the self-analysis, made explicit by HRM, is a cultural invention

as well as the language used in order to support the search for the

authentic self; a language producing HRM and re-produced and reinforced

by it in the cultural cycle of history. By following Taylor (1991: 14), the

sensation is, then, that we have assisted to the concomitant shutting out,

or even unawareness, of the greater issues or concerns that transcend the

self, be they religious, political or historical.

2.6. An hegemonic power: HRM as education

Whether is acknowledged the validity of the above assumptions,

not only the idea of authenticity is ethic (discipline) for HRM, but also the

whole self matter seems to be exploited in order to make the individual

first of all the notions of motivation and self-actualisation. Through the

investigation of freedom, some authors have implicitly substantiated the

idea that some phenomenon such as HRM are fully structured in the

framework of teaching freedom. In line with this argumentation, Rose(1996: 61) is attentive in underlying that, the importance of analysing the

ethic of freedom, since the twentieth-first century have come to underpin

our conceptions of how we should be ruled, how our practices of everyday

life should be organised, how we should understand ourselves and our

predicament. Therefore, freedom as a formula of power is promoted via

models of reference mainly dictated by the Western tradition. An example

may be offered by the diffusion of images ad hoc in life and work,


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representative of a sophisticated consumerist culture, escaping from

supermarket to become part of a media-commercial logic that is presented

as a universal solution to every problem (Bruckner, 2000: 83). Thus, the

individual learn the value of freedom in the very moment in which [it] has

been articulated into certain rationalities for practising in relation to

ourselves (Rose, 1999: 65), while consumption technologies, together

with other narrative forms such as soap operas, establish not only a public

habitat of images for identification, but also a plurality of pedagogies for

living a life that is both pleasurable and respectable, both personally

unique and socially normal. They offer a new ways for individuals to

narrativize their lives (Ibid, 88).

Worth to notice how, interpreted as such, HRM may be understood

in terms of education, in the Latin conception of the term, that is, ex-

ducere(to lead out). Through the use of a specific language (which is this

language and not another one), HRM assist the individual in the process

of comprehending itself and search for itself; to orient its own choices

towards an ideal, which is that described by the new managerial narrative.

If there is a chance to make in one point everything has been said

up until now, then it is worth to discern the new managerial discourse

more as a mentality than a coherent set of practices; a diffuse sentiment, a

way of thinking and being that transcend the workplace pending to the

horizon of the social comprising it all. In his Manuscripts of 1844, Marx

(1959: 30) claimed how the political economy can therefore advance the

proposition that the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much

as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is not

working, as a human being; but leaves such considerations to criminal

law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to politics and to the

workhouse beadle. What was implicit in such a consideration was a vision

of the worker that only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels

outside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and he is working

when he is not at home (Ibid, 72). However, the hegemonic strength of

HRM shoots down the barriers of the private and public sphere in a way


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that the clear distinction between them two loses its original significance.

Similarly, the cretinism of the worker (Ibid, 71) becomes part of a general

cretinism embracing the managerial positions, too. As Foucault would

argue, the distinctions between the two categories cannot be taken apart

one form the other, since not only the manager is a worker, but the worker,

in the process of taking responsibilities for its self-actualisation, becomes

a manager of himself.

The discourses and myths provided by communications, rule the

world with the aim to establish universal truths, in a way that

conversations are the backbone of business (Roos and Van Krogh cited

in Thrift, 1997: 49). The so-called Darwinism of world prospected by

Blumenberg (1990) is likely to portray HRM as another and different

discourse, a new myth controlling peoples moral and social behaviour. A

myth willing to conquer the limits of human subjectivity and its very finite

corporeity in a new manipulating subject which, by losing his human

characteristics may acquire immortality (note).


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exacerbation of commitment found the premises for the affirmation of a

paradoxical condition, source of anxiety and weakness for the subject. In a

world in which the natural and material resources are limited, how is it then

possible to fight for the same ends? If, talking in Machiavellic terms, the

end justifies the means, or better, if in order to obtain an ideal status of

self-actualisation and originality (implying authenticity) every means is

used with no consideration of the personal and the other consequences,

then HRM is certainly the prototype of this way of thinking. As Diotime and

Socrates in Platos Symposium discuss around the matter of desiring

what is not possessed, individuals in their confrontation with management

requests (and due to a instrumentalised knowledge), desire what they do

not have, only after being led to the awareness of some lack to satiate.

Needless to say, the potentialities of man are limited to its very

corporality and spirituality; man is finite. Hence, the necessary evidence to

philosophising hrm

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