Thoughts/discussion on points made in this article

Discourses of quality management, service management, innovation and knowl- edge work have, in recent years, promoted an interest in passion, soul, and charisma. These discourses can also be read as expressions of an increased man- agerial interest in regulating employees 'insides' - their self-image, their feelings and identifications. An appreciation of these developments prompts the coining of a corresponding metaphor: the employee as identity worker who is enjoined to incor- porate the new managerial discourses into narratives of self-identity. A common- place example of this process concerns the repeated invitation - through processes of induction, training and corporate education (e.g. in-house magazines, posters, etc) - to embrace the notion of 'We' (e.g. of the organization or of the team) in preference to 'The Company', 'It' or 'They'. Although courting hyperbole, the sense of a shift in the modus vivendi of advanced capitalist economies is conveyed 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 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.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 not necessarily as bleak as Casey paints it, however. Employees are also being encouraged to be more creative and innovative, and are therefore being invited to Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002 624 M. ALVESSON AND H. WILLMOTT question and transgress the 'iron cage' of established 'Fordist' or 'bureaucratic' control mechanisms. It is romantic or nostalgic to assume that the existence of firm anchors for identity construction is an unequivocal benefit or, relatedly, that their loss is self-evidently disadvantageous, Great fluidity can present portuni-their loss is selfevidently disadvantageous. Great uidity can present opportuni- ties for what has been termed Lmicro emancipation' (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996) when employees have greater scope for arranging their own schedules and working practices, albeit with the parameters (e. g. quantity and quality targets) set by others. These changes invariably involve the removal of some oppressive restrictions even when or as they are accompanied by increased stress and job insecurity. At the same time, emancipatory practice based upon the politics of identity, such as the membership of a work group or team, is precarious and can result in the substi tution of more totalizing, 'concertive' forms of control (Barker, 1999) for bureau cratic, supervisory methods of job regulation. As Axford (1995, p. 207) has observed, identity is 'capable of service in more suspect causes . . . because it is grounded in nothing more compelling than the legitimation of difference, rather than in institutional scripts which give meaning and legitimacy to certain kinds of behaviour more than others'. In the context of work organizations, the lan guage of liberation and self-actualization may be promulgated as a seductive means of engineering consent and commitment to corporate goals such that the 'feelgood' 'ell'ect of participation and \"empowerment\" disguises their absence\" (Casey, 1995, p. 1 13). Flexible activation and deactivation of a set of identity ele ments is increasingly on the agendas of human resource strategists and develop ers'.l2l New forms of control may be seen to involve or solicit a processing 0f suly'ectivigr in order to constitute employees who are not only more 'adaptable' but also more capable of moving more rapidly between activities and assignments Where they may occupy quite varied subjective orientations or subject positions, especially within selfmanaging, multi-funetional work groups or teams (Ezzamel and Will mott, 1998). In turn, increased exibility and 'multiskilling' can be accompanied by, or stimulate keener questioning of, established hierarchies and practices, and can create pressures and opportunities for the removal of constraints upon the exercise of initiative and responsibility. In principle, such movement may foster forms of micro-emaneipation. In practice, however, the uidity and fragmentation of identity may render employees more vulnerable to the appeal of corporate iden tications, and less inclined to engage in organized forms of resistance that extends their scope for exercising discretion and/ or improves their material and symbolic rewards. Having pointed to some relatively farreaching social and organizational changes affecting constructions of selfidentity, a few qualifying comments are called for. It is important to check any inclination to assume that the trends sketched above are already universally established. There is certainly space for debate and doubt regarding how signicant the claimed changes are (Gray, 1999; Ruigrok et a1., 1999; \\Narhurst and Thompson, 1998). There is also a danger of exaggerating the fragility and \"vulnerability\" of subjects to the discourses through and within which they are allegedly constituted (Alvesson and K'arreman, 2000; Newton, 1998). We do not argue that the production of subjectivity has changed radically during recent decades. we argue, nonetheless, that contemporary devel opments make Drocesses of constructing and securing identity an increasinglv i 1.? L3 1 J I. J opments make processes of constructing and securing identity an increasingly relevant focus for conceptual and empirical analysis. Blackwell Publishers Ltd 20052 IDENTITY REGULATION AS ORGANIZATIONAL CONTROL 625 ANALYSING IDENTITY REGULATION Studies of identity that have a direct bearing upon organizational control include analyses of institutional and other macro level phenomena (e.g. Albert and VVhetten, 1985, Christensen, 1995; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1994) as well as studies that concentrate upon individuals and forms of identication and subjectivity (Alvesson, 2000; Deetz, 1992). Identity regafation encompasses the more or less inten- tional effects of social practices upon processes of identity construction and recon- struction. Notably, induction, training and promotion procedures are developed in ways that have implications for the shaping and direction of identity. When an organization becomes a signicant source of identification for individuals, corpo- rate identity (the perceived core characteristics of the organization) then informs (self)z'dentigy work. Analyses that focus directly upon processes of identity (re)for mation and regulation have been governed by one or more of the following over lapping and interrelated ways of constructing and exploring identity: central life interest, coherence, distinctiveness, direction, positive value and self-awareness. 'Central life interest\" refers to questions about a person's or a group or a social institution\"s feelings and ideas about basic identity concerns and qualities. The question 'Who am 1?\" or 'What are we?\" calls for a response in terms of some dominant or dening identity. In the context of work organizations, this may be answered in terms of, for example, professional or occupational afliation (e.g. engineer, electrician) or organizational position (e.g. head of the produc tion department), but also in less formal terms, e.g. 'highly interested in ideas and experiments\" or 'a people manager\". 'Coherence\" describes a sense of continuity and recognizability over time and situation. A sense of identity is understood to connect different experiences and to reduce fragmentation in feelings and think- ing. It counteracts or closes the possibility of responding to contingencies with limitless plasticity. 'Distinctiveness\" means that somebody is denable, by herself and others, as different to someone else. Such a characteristic, sometimes deemed to be unique (e.g. a genius), is shared with others (e.g. men, employed), but still dif- to be unique (e.g. a genius), is shared with others (e.g. men, employed), but still dif- ferent from others (women, unemployed, retired). A fourth aspect is 'direction'. It implies what is appropriate, desirable and valued for a specic subject. The iden- tity or self-image of a person offers guidelines for decisionmaking (Mitchell et al., 1986). A 'manager' manages. Implications for action may be vague, but never theless they make some routes appear reasonable and others less so. A fth aspect concerns 'social values\". Identity is invariably related to selfesteem as aspiredfor identity is attributed a positive social meaning. Conversely, one's enemies, but also others who serve as objects of comparison, tend to be seen and described in less positive terms (Turner, 1984). A sixth aspect is 'self-awareness'. Identity is also an \"object\" of self-consciousness. An awareness of self-identity (see below) is a medium and outcome of how a person feels, as well as how she thinks and ascribes value (Hassarcl et al., 2000). Giddens' concept of 'self-identity' usefully differentiates such concerns from those who study 'personal' or 'social' identity as a comparatively conscious set of selfimages, traits or social attributes, although the concepts overlap and share common elements. Following Giddens, self-identity is conceptualized as a reflex- ively organized narrative, derived from participation in competing discourses and various experiences, that is productive of a degree of existential continuity and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002 626 M. ALVESSON AND H. WILLMOTT security. 'Selfidentity is not a distinctive trait, or even a collection of traits, pos sessed by the individual. It is the self as reflexively understood by the person . . . selfidentity is continuity (across time and space) as interpreted reflexively by the agent' (Giddens, 1991, p. 53). The reexive construction of self~identity is assem bled out of cultural raw material: language, symbols, sets of meanings, values, etc. that are derived from countless numbers of interactions with others and exposure to messages produced and distributed by agencies (schools, mass media), as well as early life experiences and unconscious processes. It forms a complex mixture of conscious and unconscious elements, an interpretive and reflexive grid gradually shaped by processes of identity regulation and identity work. In comparatively stable or routinized life situations, the narrative of self identity runs fairly smoothly. Identity work is comparatively unselfconscious, albeit contingent. upon life history and the unchallenged position of the hegemonic 'I !\\.'I I 1'1'1 .. '1 'IT 'I. ('1