Managerial control and identity regulation: a critical perspective
The paper focuses on the relationship between organizational control, diversity management, identity regulation and individuals’ subjectivities. Consistently with the Foucauldian post-structuralist approach, we particularly explore how the creation and management of diversities comprises a means for influencing the perception of individual and collective identities and regulating the employees organisational behaviours. In line with the particular features of post-Fordist organisational systems, management has changed the methods of implementing organisational control, institutionalising a concept of it that is less geared towards heteronomy and more focussed on self-regulation of behaviours. We further show how such managerial discourses tend to act on individual and collective self-positioning within groups instrumentally constructed, having an impact on organizational action in terms of control management.
Pezzillo I., Esposito V., Mercurio R. (2012), Controllo manageriale e regolazione dell’identità organizzativa: la prospettiva dei Critical Management Studies, Management Control, 1, pp. 7-26, Doi: 10.3280/MACO2012-001002
