Individual identity and organisational control

Empowerment and Modernisation in a Primary Care Trust

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2264584
AutoresRuth Mcdonald (0000-0002-3488-4209, University of Manchester, autor de correspondencia)
Año2004
Volumen26
Número7
Páginas925-950
Fecha de publicación2004-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.0141-9889.2004.00423.x
PMID15610473
OpenAlexW1981077365
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas38

The notion of empowerment has been increasingly used within management discourses in recent years. Enthusiastic supporters conceive it as an acknowledgement of the individual employee as a talented, creative being, and hence a productive resource for contributing to organisational goals. Alternatively, more critical commentators have interpreted it as another means of exercising control over employees and their identities. Although various commentators have speculated on the management of identity as a means of organizational control, there is very little empirical work from which to draw conclusions. This paper, using participant observation and interview data, represents a contribution to the small body of empirical research in the area. It focuses on an initiative aimed ostensibly at 'empowering' staff in an English Primary Care Trust, which may be seen as an attempt at increasing organisational control by shaping employee identities. As such, these processes can be understood more readily in terms of ethics rather than empowerment. The term ethics is used here in a Foucauldian sense and is linked to the processes of self-definition and self-constraint by which individuals train themselves to become ethical persons. The paper suggests that the outcome of attempts to manufacture particular forms of subjectivity by such methods as 'empowerment' programmes may be very different from those intended

Acknowledgement · Aesthetics · Control (management · Critical management studies · Empirical research · Empowerment · Epistemology · Identity (music · Management · Management control system · Modernization theory · Participant observation · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Organizational Learning and Leadership · Psychology · Public Policy and Administration Research · Social Psychology