(Kunda, 1992). Although we do not share the faith and enthusiasm for managing culture that has been exhibited by consultants and practitioners during the past 20 years, we concur with their understanding of its increasing significance in cir- cumstances where established bureaucratic controls have been found insufficiently responsive and adaptable to intensifying competitive pressures (Willmott, 1992). In general, however, analysts of organization have not explored this terrain. It is notable, for example, that in Whetton and Godfrey's Identity in Organizations, the issue of managing employee identity and identification is examined directly in a single chapter by James Barker, who references few studies aside from those under- taken by Cheney and Tompkins and their co-workers (e.g. Barker and Tompkins, 1994; Cheney, 1991; Tompkins and Cheney, 1985). When exploring processes of organizational identification, it is relevant to temper an attentiveness to the oppressive effects of 'concerted' forms of control with consideration of expressions of employee resistance and subversion of such control (Ezzamel and Willmott, 1998). We reject any suggestion that management is omnipotent in its definition of employee identity. The organizational regulation of identity, we argue, is a precarious and often contested process involving active identity work, as is evident in efforts to introduce new discursive practices of 'team- work', 'partnership', etc. Organizational members are not reducible to passive con- sumers of managerially designed and designated identities. Nor do we assume or claim that the organization is necessarily the most influential institution in identity-defining and managing processes. Nonetheless, we concur with a number of other commentators (e.g. Barker, 1993; Casey, 1995; Deetz, 1992; Knights and Willmott, 1989; Kunda, 1992) who argue that identity regulation is a significant, neglected and increasingly important modality of organizational control, espe- cially perhaps in larger corporations and those that are more readily located in the New E-conomy in addition to the longer established province of the profes- sional service sector. A continuing preoccupation with 'formal' and 'objective' aspects of con- trol reflects the dominance of a positivist epistemology and a widespread self- understanding of management as a neutral technology or branch of engineering - a view that is routinely articulated and legitimized in functionalist forms of orga- nizational analysis (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). This self-understanding largely dis- regards or marginalizes the issue of how control mechanisms are enacted by organizational members (Barnard, 1936; Weick, 1969). It is assumed that control is achieved by designing and applying appropriate structures, procedures, mea- sures and targets; and, relatedly, that resistance to these mechanisms is sympto- matic of 'poor design' or 'poor management' that can be rectified by restructuring and/ or training or staff replacement. Those working in interpretive and critical traditions of organizational analysis, in contrast, have paid attention to the nego- tiated and problematical status of allegedly shared meanings, values, beliefs, ideas and symbols as targets of, as well as productive elements within, normative orga-and symbols as targets of, as well as productive elements within, normative orga- nizational control (e.g. Barley and Kunda, 1992; Kunda, 1992; hrlumby, 1988; Ray, 1986; Rosen, 1985). Such studies have shown how managers may promote, more or less self-consciously, a particular form of organizational experience for 'con- sumption, by employees' (e.g. Alvesson, 1993, 1996; Kunda, 1992; Smircich and Morgan, 1982; VVillmott, 1993). But these studies have not focused directly upon the discursive and reexive processes of identity constitution and regulation within work organizations. Our concern is to appreciate how mechanisms and practices @- Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002 622 M. ALVESSON AND H. WILLMOTT of control rewards, leadership, division of labour, hierarchies, management accounting, etc do not work 'outside' the individual's quest(s) for self-denition(s), coherence(s) and meaning(s). Instead, they interact, and indeed are fused, with what we term the Lidentity work\" of organizational members. Identity work, we contend, is a signicant medium and outcome of organizational control. Of particular relevance for our analysis is an emergent literature that is atten- tive to how control is exercised through the 'manufacture' of subjectivity (Barker, 1999; Deetz, 1992, 1994; Hollway, 1984; Jacques, 1996; Knights and \\\"Villmott, 1989; Rosen, 1985; VVeedon, 1987). We are, however, eager to avoid seduction by 'stronger' versions or interpretations of this literature, in which dominant discourses or practices are seen to place totalizing, unmediated constraints upon human subjects (Newton, 1998). One intended contribution of this article is to advance an understanding of identity construction as a process in which the role of discourse in targeting and moulding the human subject is balanced with other elements of life history forged by a capacity reexively to accomplish life projects out of various sources of influence and inspiration. A second, related contribution is our specication of the different means of pursuing control in work organiza- tions through the regulation of identity. We regard identity regulation as a perva- sive and increasingly intentional modality of organizational control, but we do not suggest that this is unprecedented or that it is necessarily effective in increasing employee commitment, involvement or loyalty. Indeed, its effect may be to amplify cynicism, spark dissent 0r catalyse resistance (Ezzamel et al., 2000). In the absence of counterdiscourses that interpret the mechanisms of regulation as intrusive, 'bullshit' or hype, however, we can anticipate not only instrumental compliance but also increased, serial identication with corporate values, albeit that such 'buy- but also increased, serial identification with corporate values, albeit that such bu in' is conditional upon their compatibility with other sources of identity formati and affirmation. In the next section, we position our attentiveness to identity regulation with the context of contemporary 'post-bureaucratic' efforts to introduce greater flex bility and self-organization within workplaces. Illustrative empirical material drawn from studies conducted by the authors, as well as from the rich accour available in the literature. IDENTITY REGULATION IN CONTEXT Discourses of quality management, service management, innovation and know edge work have, in recent years, promoted an interest in passion, soul, a charisma. These discourses can also be read as expressions of an increased ma agerial interest in regulating employees 'insides' - their self-image, their feelin and identifications. An appreciation of these developments prompts the coini of a corresponding metaphor: the employee as identity worker who is enjoined to inc porate the new managerial discourses into narratives of self-identity. A commo place example of this process concerns the repeated invitation - through process of induction, training and corporate education (e.g. in-house magazines, poste etc) - to embrace the notion of 'We' (e.g. of the organization or of the team preference to 'The Company', 'It' or 'They'. Although courting hyperbole, t sense of a shift in the modus vivendi of advanced capitalist economies is convey by the understanding that: Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002 IDENTITY REGULATION AS ORGANIZATIONAL CONTROL 623 The relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all the ferment, instability and fleeting qualities of a postmodern aesthetic that cele- brates difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion, and the commodification of cul- tural forms. (Ezzamel et al., 2000, p. 156, emphasis added) This 'ferment' is expressed inter alia in the destabilization of identity, as something comparatively given and secure, and an increasing focus upon identity as a target nd medium of management's regulatory efforts. As cultural mechanisms areThis 'ferment' is expressed inter alia in the destabilization of identity, as something comparatively given and secure, and an increasing focus upon identity as a target and medium of management's regulatory efforts. As cultural mechanisms are introduced or refined in an effort to gain or sustain employee commitment, involvement and loyalty in conditions of diminishing job security and employment durability, the management of identity work becomes more salient and critical to the employ- ment relationship. In these circumstances, organizational identification - manifest in employee loyalty, for example - cannot be presumed or taken for granted but has to be actively engendered or manufactured. Currently, there are struggles in the workplace around a number of identity- intensive issues, including the feminization of managerial roles, the shifting meaning of professionalism and the internationalization of business activity. The increased numbers of women occupying managerial and professional positions tra- ditionally populated by men (and infused by masculine meanings) has disrupted the earlier taken for granted identification of management, men and masculinity. There are also pressures to make sense of, and re-order, the relationship between gender and managerial work, partly through a 'de-masculinization' of manage- ment (Alvesson and Billing, 1997; Fondas, 1997; Gherardi, 1995). Knowledge- intensive work, especially in the professional service sector, spawns conflicting loyalties between professional affiliation and organizational responsibility that compound difficulties in retaining bureaucratic means of control (Alvesson, 2000) International joint ventures and other kinds of complex interorganizational arrangements (e.g. partnerships) render issues of social identity associated with national, organizational and professional affiliations more salient (Child and Rodriguez, 1996; Grimshaw et al., 2001). More generally, the complexities and ambiguities of modern organizations make the struggle for securing a sense of self a continuing and more problematical as well as self-conscious activity (Casey, 1995; Jackall, 1988; Knights and Murray, 1994; Watson, 1994). As Casey (1995, pp. 123-4) reports in her study of Hephaestus Corporation (a pseudonym), a world leader in the development and manufacture of advanced technological machines and systems, employees increasingly refer to themselves, not as physicist, engineer, computer scientist, but primarily as a Hephaestus employee with a job designation indi- cating team location . . . Without a union or a professional association, and only the official Hephaestus social or sports club, employees find that there is nowhere to go (at work) except to the team's simulated sociality and relative psychic comfort. Identity becomes a locus and target of organizational control as the economic and cultural elements of work become de-differentiated (Willmott, 1992). The picture is essarily as bleak as Casey aints it however