Journal of Organizational Change Management

Post-bureaucracy – control through professional freedom

Christian Maravelias
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Control through
Post-bureaucracy – control professional
through professional freedom freedom

Christian Maravelias
School of Business, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden 547
Received 16 January
Keywords Bureaucracy, Post experience learning, Professions, Freedom 2003
Abstract This article develops a framework for understanding autonomy and control in Accepted 19 February
post-bureaucratic organizations. It reviews two dominant discourses on post-bureaucracy – the 2003
managerial discourse and the critical management discourse. Whereas the one pictures
post-bureaucracy as an emancipating regime based on the personalities and social networks of
individuals, the other pictures it as a totalitarian regime, which subordinates individuals’ thoughts,
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emotions and identities to its instrumental schemes. Both discourses are criticized for being
grounded in a view of post-bureaucracy as a “total” organization. An alternative conceptualization
is developed, which shows that post-bureaucracy neither emancipates individuals from control, nor
captures them in totalitarian control. A distinguishing characteristic of post-bureaucracy is that it
displaces the responsibility for setting limits between professional and non-professional concerns
from the organization to the individual. Via a case study it is shown how this implies a specific form
of control that does not restrict individual freedom, but uses it as its prime vehicle.

Introduction
In recent years an increasing number of works have pointed to the demise of
the bureaucratic organization and the emergence of a new post-bureaucratic
form of organization – referred to as the entrepreneurial or networked-shaped
organization. Two apparently contrasting images of post-bureaucratic
organizations have come to dominate the literature. One, constructed by
management theory, reveals post-bureaucracy as a form of organization that
has made a distinct break with the bureaucratic legacy. For the sake of
flexibility post-bureaucracy is alleged to emancipate individuals from the
formalistic constraints of bureaucracy, arranging them instead in organic and
fluid networks. The other, constructed by critical management theory, reveals a
form of organization that is only superficially more emancipating than the
bureaucratic organization it replaces. Under the surfaces of these
networked-shaped organizations we supposedly find less apparent but no
less disciplinary technologies of control, which set as their targets not
individuals’ direct behavior, but their thoughts, emotions and identities. Hence,
rather than emancipating individuals from control this perspective reveals

The author is obliged to the two reviewers at JOCM, and to Ali Yakhlef, Jannis Kallinikos, Hans Journal of Organizational Change
Management
Hasselbladh and Katerina Adam for helpful comments on an earlier version of the article. The Vol. 16 No. 5, 2003
author also acknowledges funding support from FAS and Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser. pp. 547-566
q MCB UP Limited
A special thanks, finally, to the old café Ritorno in Stockholm, where most of the article was 0953-4814
written. DOI 10.1108/09534810310494937
 JOCM post-bureaucracy as a form of organization that controls human conduct more
16,5 completely than bureaucracy.
In this paper it will be argued that both images, despite apparent differences,
imply that post-bureaucracy dissolves the distinction between professional and
non-professional concerns that distinguished bureaucracy. Both images thus
make post-bureaucracy emerge as a “total” organization, i.e. a form of
548 organization that involves the whole of the individual in its practices. The
difference is that the managerial discourse celebrates whereas the critical
discourse denounces this form of organization.
This paper finds both these viewpoints problematic. It draws on Weber’s
work (1947, 1970) on the distinction between bureaucratic organizations and
pre-modern organizations and Foucault’s work (1977, 1991) on disciplinary
institutions to develop the argument that post-bureaucracy marks an extension
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rather than a break with basic bureaucratic principles. It is pointed out that
there is considerable strength in critical management theory’s
conceptualization of post-bureaucracy as seeking to exploit those
non-professional aspects of individuals’ lives (social relations, personalities,
emotions, etc.), which bureaucracy kept outside work. However, it is argued
that just as little as post-bureaucracy emancipates individuals from control it
captures them in totalitarian control. Post-bureaucracy is suggested to be
distinguished by its specific mode of modulating the individual-organization
relation. In post-bureaucracy the responsibility for setting limits between the
professional and non-professional spheres has been displaced from the
organization to the individual. In this respect, post-bureaucracy is not tending
towards a total organization, it seeks to exploit aspects of individuals’
“personal” spheres, which may be valuable in work, while leaving aspects that
are unproductive outside work.
The paper proceeds by briefly reconstructing the main thrusts of
management theory and critical management theory. Through a critical
assessment of these theories, the arguments of this paper are then developed.
These arguments are illustrated and further advanced with a case study and a
discussion.

The managerial discourse on post-bureaucracy

Even though the managerial literature on post-bureaucracy is diverse it is
possible to discern two general assumptions: post-bureaucratic organizations
are better represented as networks than as hierarchies (Child and McGrath,
2001; Hedberg, 1997; Miles and Snow, 1992; Volberda, 1998). Moreover, they
constitute a positive break with the bureaucratic legacy – they are explicitly
“anti-bureaucratic” (Baker, 1992; Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1997; Peters, 1992;
Quinn, 1992; Savage, 1996). Two main reasons are typically used to account for
this networked and anti-bureaucratic stance. On the one hand, the literature
more or less repeats the point of critical humanism (Adorno and Horkheimer,
 1972; Marcuse, 1955) that bureaucracy is a mechanism of oppression, which Control through
degrades human dignity and inhibits emancipation. It is argued that, whereas professional
bureaucracies are built on distinct splits between work and leisure, reason and freedom
emotion, pleasure and duty, etc., post-bureaucracies are all of a piece. Hence,
post-bureaucracies are suggested to be morally superior to their bureaucratic
predecessors (Kanter, 1990; Savage, 1996). On the other hand, the literature also
points out that bureaucracies’ ways of constraining individual freedom also
549
give rise to functional limitations. The hierarchical and impersonal structures
of bureaucracies are claimed to make them stale and sluggish and unable to
handle contemporary markets’ demand for constant innovation. In contrast, the
flat and organic structures of post-bureaucracies make them creative and
capable of molding themselves to the variety of new problems they face (Adler,
2001; Benveniste, 1994).
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The novelty of this literature is that it has managed to convert decades of

critique of bureaucracies’ moral adversities into a model of post-bureaucracy,
which achieves functional superiority, not despite, but by giving individuals
freedom. Through emancipating principles the organization may supposedly
win individuals’ trust and commitment, thereby generating the vitality and
flexibility needed to cope with the radical uncertainty brought about by global
capitalism and postmodern culture (Adler, 2001; Handy, 1997).
But how is coordination achieved in this emancipating understanding of the
post-bureaucratic organization? In contrast to bureaucracies, where the social
structure is seen as based on an artificial and hierarchical role system, which
force individuals into specified patterns of interaction, the social structure in
the post-bureaucratic organizations is seen as founded on an “organic”
communitarian system (Heckscher, 1994; Kanter, 1990). More specifically, it is
made up from webs of affect-laden relationships among individuals,
relationships based on personal loyalties that interweave and reinforce one
another. Furthermore, these relationships are anchored in a commitment to a
set of values, norms, and meanings, which are rooted in a shared history and
identity (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1997; Volberda, 1998).
From this perspective individuals who (are allowed to) participate as
members or associates in a post-bureaucratic organization would do so because
they are committed to and constitutive of the basic values and norms that
permeate organizational activities. They do not feel restrained by general and
role specific rules defining proper conduct, they feel empowered to act
spontaneously by a shared sense of belonging to the community or
communities making up the organization (Adler, 2001). An important
implication of this idea of community-based organizations is that it makes it
less important whether or not individuals and activities are properly inside or
outside the orbit of the formal organization. What matters is instead
individuals’ abilities to activate the energy, the cultural glue and competence
inherent in communities, and to align these “resources” with the goals and
 JOCM visions of the organization (Volberda, 1998)[1]. Within this discourse leadership
16,5 is essentially this particular ability of “coaching” individuals to a sense of
belonging and purpose and to the faculty of self-control[2].

The critical discourse on post-bureaucracy

550 The dominant strand of the critical discourse on post-bureaucracy builds on
Marxist thought, as developed by labor process theory (Braverman, 1974;
Burawoy, 1979; Edwards, 1979). In contrast to management theory, labor
process theory sees the structure and functioning of capitalist enterprises not
primarily as the result of a competitive process of pursuing efficiency, but as
the result of a “structural antagonism” between sellers of labor who seek secure
and meaningful employment, and owners and managers who seek
accumulation of capital. Given this basic antagonism, bureaucracy and
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Taylorism have been identified as the most significant innovations in owners’

and managers’ pursuit of subordinating labor to capital (Braverman, 1974).
Through their “scientific disguise”, it has been argued, they provide
management with more legitimate and efficient means to subordinate labor
to capital. That is, rather than as impartial tools furthering universal efficiency,
they have been seen as part of an ideological domination of the labor process
(Sewell, 1998).
Against this background, the demise of bureaucracy and Taylorism and the
turn towards post-bureaucratic modes of organization, involving teamwork,
decentralized and consensual decision-making procedures, fuzzy boundaries
between the organization and its environment – between insiders and
outsiders, and increased individual autonomy, would seem to make labor
process theory superfluous. Yet, studies drawing on labor process theory argue
that under a more liberal façade post-bureaucracy involves sophisticated forms
of managerial domination (Barley and Kunda, 1992; Carr, 2000; Delbridge,
1995; Jermier et al., 1994; Ogbor, 2001; Willmott, 1993). That is, these authors
see the presentation of post-bureaucracy as an emancipatory regime (that
departs distinctly from the bureaucratic legacy through its emphases of trust
and autonomy) as a way of masking its more fundamental discourses of
instrumental efficiency and control (Barley and Kunda, 1992). Under the
surface it is the latter rather than the former that is pursued by management
and that rules organizational procedures, perhaps more intensively than ever.
Organizational culture and teamwork are typically seen to play important
roles in this subtle system of domination where professional freedom and trust
are only superficial (Willmott, 1993). For if the teams and the individuals in
them, it is argued, do not measure up to the values and norms, which make up
the culture of the organization, the trust they hold is quickly taken from them.
Through team work combined with sophisticated recruitment procedures,
trainee programs, a continuous emphasis of hyper competition (which makes
continuous adaptations and improvements mandatory), etc., management is
 seen to “engineer” an organizational culture and identity, which impels Control through
individuals to take responsibility to rationalize and intensify their own work professional
activities, i.e. “to work smarter to work harder” (Sewell, 1998). The target of this freedom
control is not individuals’ behavior, but their emotional commitments, modes of
thinking and identities. What this is implies, the critical discourse argues, is
that such organizations seek to take over the very selves of individuals. As
stated by Ogbor (2001, p. 605) “the organization becomes a substitute for living
551
one’s own life, when the organization enhances its centrality in the lives of its
employees, and when we accept unfreedom as freedom, the indoctrination can
become so powerful that the emotional refusal to go along appears neurotic”.
Hence, an all-pervasive control is alleged of being exercised in which “negative
divergences from expected behaviour and management defined norms” are
squeezed out (Delbridge, 1995, p. 814).
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Rethinking bureaucracy
Fundamental in all studies of organizations is the modulation of the
organization-individual relation. The notion of post-bureaucracy implies a
modulation of the organization-individual relation, which differs in particular
respects from the bureaucracy it is suggested to replace. The two theoretical
orientations accounted for above are miles apart both in terms of their view of
the underlying dynamics which have given rise to post-bureaucratic
organizations, and in terms of the social and individual effects such
organizations give rise to. However, both in fact share the view that
hierarchical control of the individual-organization relation is indeed possible
and effective, and, in that connection, that post-bureaucracy is distinguished
from bureaucracy by its involvement of the whole of the individual in
organizational practices. This paper finds both stances problematic. Through
an elaboration of the basic principles of bureaucracy I will show that
contemporary demands for flexible organizations give us reason to
conceptualize post-bureaucracy not as marking a break with the
bureaucratic legacy, but instead as expanding basic bureaucratic principles.
Let me first note that my understanding of bureaucracy draws on a
sociological tradition, which treats it as an institutional form essential to the
expansion of modern industrial society (Luhmann, 1994; Weber, 1947). This
understanding differs from the mainstream understanding of bureaucracy in
management and organization theory, where it is typically used to refer to a set
of characteristics – standardization, formalization, centralization and
functional specialization – that organizations display in various degrees (e.g.
Kanter, 1990; Pugh et al., 1963; Scott, 1981)[3]. A careful reading of Weber’s
work (1947, 1970) shows that the distinctive feature of bureaucratic
organization was not its more centralized, formalized and standardized
procedures of control, but its radically new way of modulating the
individual-organization relationship (Du Gay, 2000; Kallinikos, 2003a). In
 JOCM contrast to pre-modern organizations, bureaucratic organizations involved
16,5 individuals in non-inclusive terms. It did not contain individuals in the
experiential totality commonly associated with their personality and social
position. Differently put, bureaucratic organizations were not made up of
aggregates of persons, as were pre-modern organizations (Weber, 1947), but of
552 roles and the patterns brought about by the interdependence of roles
(Kallinikos, 2003b; Luhmann, 1994).
This basic principle of bureaucracy – non-inclusiveness – had far reaching
implications for the spatial and temporal structuration of society. In
pre-modern societies work, home and social position were mainly
undifferentiated and closely related to hereditary social status (Weber, 1947).
In the emerging modern society bureaucracy played a fundamental role in
separating work from home and from public life, thus structuring society in
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separate spheres. This was essential for social equality. With work separated
from persons with specific inherited social positions, work performance could
be standardized (as role requirements), which in turn made it possible to
elaborate labor contracts that gave people legally enforceable rights and duties
(Du Gay, 2000; Kallinikos, 2003a).
In addition to its moral implications bureaucracy gave rise to important
“functional” implications. By disengaging itself from the compound totality of
people’s lives, bureaucracy opened up greater opportunities than pre-modern
organizations to reshuffle and reorganize flexibly their elements in response to
changes (Kallinikos, 2003a; Perrow, 1986). A role is by far less complex than a
person is. It can be designed, modified, adapted, abandoned, or repositioned in
response to the emerging technical, social, and economic changes an
organization faces. Since roles are taken, interpreted and carried out by
persons there are of course human limits to the flexible remaking of
organizational roles. There is, as Barnard (1968) and Simon (1976) once noted, a
“zone of acceptance” on the part of the individual. Yet, these limitations are less
constraining than pre-modern organizations’ inclusive mode of modulating the
organization-individual relation. First, the legally endorsed distinction between
the professional role and person by itself implied that an individual who
accepted to take a role was more or less willing to substitute her personal
interests for the contingent demands of the role she played in the organization.
Second and more importantly, bureaucracy played an important role in
“making up” a new type of individual. Foucault (e.g. 1977, 1991) forcefully
demonstrated this in his accounts of the transition from a pre-modern to a
modern order. To him modern bureaucratic institutions such as hospitals,
schools, factories, etc., were best described as disciplinary institutions. Not only
or even primarily in the sense that the individual was placed in a hierarchical
system where she was – potentially – continuously controlled. Bureaucratic
institutions made the capacity of role-taking essential and thereby also the
 ability to control and improve one’s own actions with regard to the Control through
requirements of the role. professional
Hence, bureaucracy both created a demand for individuals who were willing freedom
and able for role taking and fulfilled that demand by furthering the maturation
of individuals conforming to these requirements. As Rose (1999) remarks,
bureaucratic organizations functioned as “normalizing machines”, not only in
that they established professional norms separated from private and public life,
553
but also, and more fundamentally, in that they made it “natural” for individuals
to play and to switch among various roles. In short, the bureaucratic institution
“made up” a new type of individual with a willingness and capacity of treating
herself as an object of discipline and control – a self-disciplining individual
capable and willing to learn from and to adapt to contingencies (Foucault, 1977,
1991; Gordon, 1991; Rose, 1999).
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Post-bureaucracy as the extension of bureaucracy

The discussion above is not intended to subvert decades of critique of
bureaucracy’s moral and functional adversities. However, with this brief
elaboration I wish to point out that contemporary demands for organizations
capable of reshuffling their behavioral programs in response to contingent
demands accentuate rather than remove the non-inclusive modulation of the
individual-organization relation concomitant with the emergence of
bureaucracy.
The managerial discourse’s and the critical discourse’s conceptualization of
post-bureaucracy as modulating the organization-individual relation in
inclusive terms shows striking similarities with the organization form that
Goffman (1961, from Kallinikos, 2003a) once called “total” organizations. That
is, mental hospitals, prisons, religious sects, etc., in which individuals were
contained as “inmates”. There is indeed some evidence that family and public
life are increasingly subordinated to work, or more specifically, to forms of
work structured according to a capitalist logic (Castells, 2000; Touraine, 2000).
In this respect not only our formal and technical competence and professional
relations, but also our personal characteristics and private social relations
would increasingly be subordinated to the instrumental logic of capitalism. As
pointed out by the critical discourse (e.g. Ogbor, 2001; Willmott, 1993), in new
organizations emphasizing shared missions and values, an employee is not free
to express his/her personality and to work with colleagues /heshe likes. He/she
is required to have a personality that fits with the culture of the organization
and an ability to activate a network of professionals both inside and outside the
organization with whom he/she has trustful personal relations. In this respect,
there is indeed considerable relevance in the critique of the liberal
conceptualization of post-bureaucracy advanced by the managerial discourse.
It is difficult to see how the intrusion of work in family and public life could be
viewed unambiguously as morally superior to orthodox bureaucratic
 JOCM principles, which implied a separation of these three societal spheres (Du Gay,
16,5 2000).
However, the discussion above points out that the inclusive
conceptualization of post-bureaucracy is not only questionable from a moral
point of view, but also from a functional point of view[4]. The flexibility so
eagerly pursued by contemporary organizations accentuates the significance of
554 a non-inclusive modulation of the organization-individual relation. An
organization capable of adapting to changing conditions implies individual
agents capable of moving between different and shifting roles (Luhmann,
1994). This, in turn, implies a separation of work from family and public life.
An organization has little reason of seeking to internalize family or community
issues of its employees such as children’s schooling, disputes among neighbors,
infidelity, etc. It has considerable reason, however, of seeking to exploit the
personalities, social relations, and private interests, of individuals to the extent
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these may be valuable to its instrumental concerns.

Based on the above, two arguments may be formulated. First, in contrast to
what is suggested by the dominant discourses, post-bureaucracy does not
break with the bureaucratic legacy. It involves individuals in non-inclusive
terms. However, it does not settle for those aspects of individuals’ lives which
bureaucracy constituted as professional. It seeks to internalize particular
aspects of individuals’ non-professional lives, which may be valuable in work.
Second, to the extent bureaucracy – through formal systems of rules and
regulations – largely took responsibility for outlining the content of
individuals’ roles, post-bureaucracy displaces this responsibility to the
individual herself. The arguments will be illustrated and further developed
via a case study.

Skandia AFS – governing through trust and freedom

The case study concerns Skandia Assurance Financial Services (AFS), a global
corporation formed in 1988, which provides long-term savings products. It
capitalizes on the trend that state assured retirement systems are gradually
breaking down in many countries all over the world and that individuals thus
experience a need to increase their long-term savings. Skandia AFS seeks to
collect a portion of these savings via a network alliance consisting of, on the
one hand, regionally-focused financial consultants, which sell AFS’ products,
and globally well-known fund managers, which provide legitimacy and
expertise in investing end customers’ money, on the other.

Research design
The company was selected because it was a “critical case” (Beckhofer et al.,
1968) in the sense that its business environment and its modes of organization
displayed characteristics that appeared typical for post-bureaucratic
organizations. To illustrate, the company was strongly geared towards
 product and service innovation. Much of the company’s innovation oriented Control through
procedures were organized in projects handled by highly autonomous professional
“multi-skilled” teams involving members both from AFS and from partner freedom
firms. The fluid innovation-oriented environment was furthermore seen to
make traditional bureaucratic control inappropriate. Instead the culture – the
so-called “high trust culture” – was seen as an important means of integration.
The study was conducted between 1996 and 2000. As far as possible a
555
“naturalistic inquiry” (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) was pursued that intervened as
little as possible in the practices studied. The ambition was to account for how
work was structured and authority distributed, the techniques of control
deployed, and the effects following from these control techniques. Basically
three main techniques were used to construct “data”:
(1) reading and analyzing written material;
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(2) loosely structured interviews; and

(3) participant observation.
The study focused on two main issues. How was the seemingly
non-hierarchical and organically structured organization controlled, and in
that connection, what was the nature of the “freedom” individuals appeared to
hold?

Trust-based control
The managerial discourse typically suggests that post-bureaucratic
organizations, by freeing individuals from the shackles of bureaucracy,
building their modes of operation around people and organic social formations,
emerge as fine soils for growing trust-based cultures (e.g. Adler, 2001). At first
glance, this case appeared to confirm these visions. As stated by a product
development manager:
Our chances of leaving the rigidities of the bureaucratic legacy behind without ending up in
chaos depend on our abilities of establishing a culture based on trust. We attempt to achieve
this here through an organization that is based on the strength and weaknesses of the people
that work here. We haven’t built the organization around some rational model; we have built
it around individuals and social relations.
There was certainly a lot of talk about the significance of trust and shared
values. However, this was not because the company’s practices were in fact
based on and permeated by shared values and trust, it was because shared
values and trust were ideals that were in constant short supply. To illustrate,
when recruiting new employees, especially younger employees, it was the
company’s policy not to provide them with clear roles and assignments. As
said by the president of the company:
[. . .] we give new employees time to get to know the organization and to develop roles and
relations to colleagues that they are personally committed to.
 JOCM This policy appeared to work as a double-edged sword. On the one hand it gave
16,5 employees the opportunity to work with people they liked and with tasks they
found interesting. It also provided the company with employees that appeared
to be committed to their work. On the other hand, however:
[. . .] by insisting on that you embrace this freedom to choose colleagues and tasks the
556 company burdens you with a level of uncertainty and responsibility you may sometimes feel
you are unable to cope with (an employee at AFS).
In the long run any member had to show that the roles he/she played were
valuable to his/her colleagues and superiors:
You will not make it here if you don’t succeed in becoming a member of one or perhaps
several teams by earning your colleagues’ trust and respect. In that process you also have to
prove your worth to the company.
Another example concerned the decision-making procedures of the teams. The
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teams were described as highly autonomous not only in that they could freely
choose how to organize work, but also in that the objectives pursued often
originated in the teams themselves. People felt that “the organizational climate”
drove them to take risks, to come up with new ideas for new projects, and to
team up with other members and partners. As said by an employee:
[. . .] in this company you cannot expect to be given assignments with clearly stated
objectives. You have to search for things to do and be able to motivate why the company
should bestow you with the trust, time, and resources to pursue those projects.
The president of the company explained his view of the “AFS culture”:
I picture AFS as a collection of dice. My main role is to keep these dice rolling. I travel back
and forth to the different business units and meet as many people as I can. During these
meetings I tell them what other business units do and I ask questions about their plans, new
ideas, etc., and try to twist and turn with their arguments in order to make them think a little
bit differently about their operation. I never know exactly what will come out of these
meetings. My objective is not to reach conclusions or to make official decisions, but to create a
form of vacuum, towards which new ideas and energy are drawn and mixed. In this way the
“AFS-dice” are flipped over a couple of times more. I do not know on which side they will
land, but I do know that the frustration and inspiration that I leave behind will trigger some
kind of action.
The company’s unrestricted procedures gave individuals considerable
freedom, created opportunities, and spurred their enthusiasm. At the same
time, however, these procedures, where roles and directives were ambiguous
and subject to continuous change, and where professional relations tended to
be ephemeral as a result of the project-based structure, also made trust and the
related notion of a strong culture based on shared values constant issues. A
product manager said:
When you first hear about AFS and its high trust culture you tend to believe that there is no
stress, no stepping on other peoples toes, that we are a big family, and so on. That is not the
case. If you do not constantly take new initiatives, come up with new ideas, if you do not work
long hours, etc., and constantly prove that you are a trustworthy participant, you would
 Control through
probably end up in a small corner somewhere. No one forces you to do it, but you still feel that
you have to.
professional
Individuals took initiatives to new projects, worked overtime, and teamed up freedom
with new people, not because they were given directives to do so, but because
the absence of any clear directives created a situation where trust was a
constant issue. Hence, what were shared were not a sense of a distinct culture 557
and trust but a sense of uncertainty, ambiguity and insufficient trust.
What does this tell us? For one that the high degrees of freedom – in the
choice and in the formulation of assignments, in the mode of solving problems,
and in the choice of colleagues – did not, as the managerial discourse suggests,
imply emancipation from control, but an intensification of control. Does the
case thus confirm the critical discourse’s image of post-bureaucracy as a subtle
totalitarian regime? The case shows that on the other side of those
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characteristics the managerial discourse refers to as freedom and emancipation

we find uncertainty, potential distrust and unclear responsibilities which drive
individuals to work harder and to pay closer attention to their own and their
colleagues’ behavior. However, individuals did not appear to be forced to
subordinate to implicit roles commissioned to a distinct system of instituted
norms and values – a particular organizational culture – as the critical
discourse suggests. In fact, the term subordination did not seem to apply; what
drove individuals to work harder and smarter were not a pressure to
subordinate to a distinct culture, but the lack of any clear system to
subordinate to. The constant feeling of uncertainty and potential distrust
introduced a form of reflective attitude among participants, making them
aware of the value of acting in a manner that made them trustees. Interestingly,
being a trustee appeared to have less to do with subordination to roles and
procedures implied by a particular culture, and more with an ability to develop
and play roles with a distinct personal style. An employee said:
In this company it is those who express their personal opinions and standpoints, those who
stick their necks out, who appear to come forth as trustees.
Another employee said:
When you look around this place, it is easy to think that people are very informal. I don’t
think that would be a correct interpretation. On the contrary I think most people that work
here are best described as highly disciplined and professional. What tends to create this
informal image is the fact that acting professionally in this environment is to do your job in a
manner that makes it seem natural, just like it was, in fact, not a job.
In his works on trust Luhmann (1979) pointed out that persons seeking to win
trust cannot simply conform to general and impersonal role requirements, they
must develop roles and learn to play them with their own unique styles.
Furthermore, he noted that as society became increasingly modular and
differentiated personal trust would become based more on individuals’ abilities
of displaying unique but nevertheless consistent symbolic patterns and less on
 JOCM their abilities of building intimate relationships. Correspondingly, in order to
16,5 come forth as trustees employees in this company sought to manage a highly
personalized image of their selves. It was generally said that a person that
merely conformed to some generalized norms would eventually become a
calculable factor in specific situations, but he would not be a potential trustee.
As put by an employee:
558
[. . .] in this fluid environment you don’t trust someone who appears to hide his personal
standpoints behind some stereotypical and impersonal role, you need to see who you are
actually dealing with.
The main point here is that the ambiguous core of this organization produced a
need for trust and thus for individuals who were willing and able to bring their
individuality into play as essential organizational resources. This was not, as
the managerial literature tends to maintain, a matter of emancipating
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individuals from control. It implied a type of control, which was less apparent
but more intense than traditional bureaucratic control. Neither, however, was it
a case of ideological domination through cultural engineering, as asserted by
the critical discourse. Even if the “high trust culture” functioned as a control
mechanism, it did not operate through some – implicitly – centralized
managerial function, but through individuals in their self-managed practices.
Its fluid “identity” urged individuals to bring their heart and soul into work, to
exercise professional freedom in a highly personalized manner, and in that
process, to manage the images of their selves thus projected as crucial
immaterial assets.
At these points the case shows some likeness with Townley’s (1993, 1998)
usage of the concept of “technologies of the self”. Drawing on Foucault (1977),
Townley (1993, 1998) argues that new human resource management (HRM)
practices, such as performance appraisal systems, total quality management
and management training programs, are systems of power, which operate on
individuals in two ways:
(1) through forms of examination that objectify them, i.e. make them objects
of knowledge, which may be managed in particular ways; and
(2) through forms of confession that subjectify them, i.e. techniques that
make individuals speak out who they are and what they think and feel –
thus uncovering their selves.
Examinations, says Townley, categorize individuals and establish over them a
visibility through which one may differentiate and judge them, while
confessions present individuals with an image of themselves, an identity,
which may then be used as the basis of their self-knowledge and self-discipline.
The notion of the “high trust culture” was not an HRM technique in any
traditional sense; it possessed neither the conceptual rigor nor the managerial
authorization to be classified as such. Yet, it appeared to produce similar effects
as those implied by Townley’s (1993, 1998) notion of “technologies of the self”.
 The ambiguous and ephemeral characteristics of this organization made two Control through
questions central for all participants: “Whom can I trust?” and “How do I professional
become a trustee?”. The first question drove individuals continuously to freedom
perform a form of peer reviews, i.e. a form of examinations of one’s colleagues
for the sake of determining whether or not they were classifiable as trustable.
The second question drove individuals to confess their personal standpoints
and beliefs, their selves, in order to present and to manage images of
559
themselves, which signaled their trustworthiness.
Without a centralized control function, could we still refer to this as control?
Yes, because in driving individuals to reveal their personal standpoints and
beliefs, managing them as a form of symbolic capital, a social transparency
was created, which reduced those aspects of people’s lives that would otherwise
have remained private and concealed. Stinchcombe (1968) once noted that the
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private spheres of people’s lives function as a blurring filter, which limits the
visibility and reach of any system of power. The “high trust culture” tended to
take away that “filter of privacy”, which otherwise would have reduced the
scope of what could be known about persons or groups. As noted by Rose
(1999, p. 240): “In compelling, persuading and inciting subjects to disclose
themselves, finer and more intimate regions of personal and interpersonal life
come under surveillance and are opened up for expert judgement, normative
evaluation, classification and correction.”
The high trust culture enabled a distributed form of control, a form of peer
control, which did not restrict individual freedom, but used it as its primary
means of operation. Yet even though it urged individuals to bring their
personalities and personal opinions into play, it was not an organization made
of aggregates of people, but of a subtle system of professional roles. That the
roles individuals played were highly personalized still implied that they
carefully and consistently had to put off all those other personal or social
aspects that did not bear on their roles in the organization. In fact, to a certain
extent the distinction between professional and private concerns had not
become less but more important. Because an individual’s trustworthiness
depended on her subtly calculating ability of bringing in precisely those
aspects of her private sphere that were professionally relevant while leaving
other aspects out. It was the individual’s, not the organization’s, responsibility
of drawing this line.

Discussion
A central characteristic of contemporary organizations, says Rose (1999), is
that they no longer view the freedom of the individual as an obstacle to be
controlled, but as a central economic resource. The case study has attempted to
explore the nature of this “freedom”. More specifically, it has explored the
relation between organizations, which provide individuals with professional
freedom for individual expression and social interaction, and forms of
 JOCM organizational control. As pointed out, although they deliver contrasting
16,5 propositions, the two dominant discourses on post-bureaucracy both revolve
around this issue. It should be sufficiently clear that the paper by and large
refutes the managerial discourse’s emancipatory propositions, but lends some
support to the critical discourse’s proposition that post-bureaucracy intrudes
into the “free spheres” of individuals’ lives. However, the latter’s suggested
560 totalitarian tendencies of post-bureaucracy have emerged as exaggerated and
implausible. The paper has argued that the greater flexibility required from
contemporary organizations should make the basic principle of bureaucratic
organizations, non-inclusiveness (role-based organization), more rather than
less important.
Yet, in suggesting a substitution of direct regulatory controls with cultural
controls the critical discourse takes an important step towards developing a
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notion of more subtle principles of control in organizations. Its notion of control

shows considerable likeness with the general thesis in constructivist social
theory, namely that collective and individual identities are not pre-given and
original but at least to some degree formed in social practices (Harvey, 1989;
Jameson, 1991; Miller and Rose, 1995). As has been indicated, bureaucratic
organizations played a significant role in forming these identities by providing
and controlling the discrete places (office, shop floor, clinic, etc.) where social
practices were performed (Hardt and Negri, 2000). Bureaucratic control of these
clearly delimited places was reflected in the regular and fixed form of the
professional identities – collective and individual – produced.
The case study illustrates that a distinguishing characteristic of
post-bureaucratic organizations is that they have limited control over the
discrete places where social practices are performed, and thereby over the form
of the collective and individual identities produced (Brocklehurst, 2001; Hardt
and Negri, 2000). This is where the critical discourse fails to grasp the
functioning of post-bureaucratic organizations. For if we take the notion that
post-bureaucratic organizations are structured in networks seriously, we have
to recognize that they do not possess the clear distinction of bureaucracies
between, on the one hand, an organizational center which sets up and controls
procedures and in that process fabricates individual and collective identities,
and a mass of employees that execute procedures and conform to these
identities, on the other (Garsten and Grey, 2001).
As argued by Hardt and Negri (2000) and Sennett (1999), these
characteristics make post-bureaucratic organizations simultaneously less and
more powerful than bureaucracies to control the lives of individuals. They
make them less powerful because the indefiniteness of the place of production
corresponds to the indeterminacy of the form of the collective and individual
identities produced. However, they make them more powerful because the
indefiniteness of the place of production tends to make them ever-present,
driving individuals to incorporate and subordinate aspects of those “other”
 characteristics, which bureaucracies kept on their outside. As member or Control through
participant of a post-bureaucratic organization one runs the risk of being professional
“always still at work” (Brocklehurst, 2001). It is up to the individual to maintain freedom
a balance between work and non-work that is at the same time professionally
rewarding, and personally and socially bearable. The increase of stress-related
problems connected to work in most advanced capitalist countries signals the
difficulty of maintaining such a balance.
561
Hence, to appreciate the distinguishing characteristics and the functioning of
post-bureaucratic organizations we have to take one step further than the
critical discourse’s notion of an implicitly centralized principle of control. I
would suggest post-bureaucratic organizations to be distinguished by a more
indirect and de-centered principle of control. As illustrated by the case study,
such principle of control does not provide a homogenously engineered culture
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that subtly indicates a specific organizational identity and specific individual

identities commissioned for it. It provides a continuous and pressing need of
filling a lack of culture and of organizational and individual identity.
Post-bureaucratic organizations make it the responsibility of each individual to
engineer and re-engineer the organizational culture and the identities and roles
it implies. In breeding a lack of identity the post-bureaucracy leaves individuals
with no other choice than to bring their personal and social registers into play.
It sucks them into its cultural void, as it were, introducing them to challenges,
which may lead to self-actualization or to self-exhaustion (Sennett, 1999). Here
strategic management appears to play the indirect role of seeking to “make up”
individual employees or partners as agents capable and prone to construct their
roles and identities, i.e. individuals who are willing and active in their
self-government (Du Gay et al., 1996).
The difference between this view of power and organizational control and
that of the critical discourse has close affinities with what Rose (1999) refers to
as the difference between a “disciplinary regime” and an “actuarial regime”.
Whereas a disciplinary regime seeks to normalize individuals by aligning their
thinking, their sources of motivation, and ultimately their behavior with
overarching moral standards, an actuarial regime allocates resources –
financial, physical, social and technological – to individuals and monitors their
pursuits according to a principle of inclusion and exclusion. It is not so much
bothered with how things are being done – i.e. according to which moral
standards and in the name of which individual and collective identities. Rather,
it sets people in motion, or more specifically, it actuates some individuals, ideas
and projects and puts others off. In either case it makes governance the
responsibility of each and every individual.
The difference between these two regimes may not seem considerable. Yet,
as Rose (1999) points out, an actuarial regime operates according to a principle
of power which is more economical and less obtrusive – because a disciplinary
regime’s ambition of altering individual and collective identities is difficult,
 JOCM ineffective and possibly disrespectful. Furthermore, an actuarial regime also
16,5 makes resistance less plausible than a disciplinary regime. A disciplinary
regime, which generates specific collective and individual identities, produces
the possibility of resistance in the name of those identities:
Actuarial practices, in that they do not produce individual and collective identities of that
562 sort, minimize the possibilities of resistance in the name of that identity (Rose, 1999, p. 236).
Hence, rather than producing identities an actuarial regime produces a need
among individuals of producing identities, which cannot be resisted or
criticized, because they do not originate from a source of power external to
themselves, but from their own practice.

Conclusions
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The picture of post-bureaucracy outlined in this paper does not reveal a form of
organization that has taken a distinct step away from basic bureaucratic
principles, but that continues and in certain respects intensifies the process of
rationalization of human conduct that bureaucracy set underway. However,
post-bureaucracy is not simply bureaucracy dressed in a new and subtler
disguise. It is controlled by a decentralized principle of power, which is only
marginally disseminated from an organizational center; it is immanent within
the networks of practice it sets in motion. In this respect we may conclude that
post-bureaucracy emerges as simultaneously more totalitarian and more
democratic than bureaucracy: more totalitarian because it lacks clear
boundaries, it is continually present, and seeks to subordinate aspects of the
personalities and social networks of individuals to the requirements of
instrumental role-playing; more democratic, because these incessant
expansionist powers follow an inclusive not exclusive logic. That is, in
contrast to bureaucracy that excludes those individual characteristics, which
fall outside its instrumental schemes, post-bureaucracy, in its urge to harness
aspects of the “free spheres” of individuals’ lives, does not obliterate these
“other” forces it faces, it opens itself to them and includes them in the networks
of practice. It may be at this particular point that the spirit of
post-bureaucracy’s flexible capacities is to be found, for precisely because of
this inclusive tendency post-bureaucracy emerges as profoundly reformist. It is
less interested in normalizing individuals to make sure that they behave
according to certain moral standards than in producing action. It produces a
drive towards initiative and action, not by locking individuals into specific
organizational and professional identities, but by producing a continuous lack
of identity. On an empirical level we have shown how this logic produces a
need of personal trust, because trust is inescapably linked to identity. The
continuous lack of trust and identity produced by post-bureaucracy appears to
be one of the primary forces that drive individuals to bring their potential and
individuality into play.
 Notes Control through
1. The increasing interest in concepts such as “social capital” (Adler and Kwon, 2002; Ghoshal professional
and Nahapiet, 1998) and “latent organizations” (Starkey et al., 2000) reflects this logic.
2. Reverberating leadership research’s (e.g. MacGregor Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985) distinction
freedom
between “transactional leadership” (leadership as an exchange relationship of, e.g. wage for
labor) and “transformational leadership” (leadership as a moral undertaking where the
leader uses his/her power to engage the full person of the follower by offering him/her 563
opportunities to satisfy “higher needs”) this discourse typically characterizes management
as a moral task, namely that of helping individuals develop as professionals and thus as
persons. Developing as a leader is then to develop employees into self-managing
entrepreneurs and managers into leaders (e.g. Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1997).
3. Such an understanding does not let us appreciate whether or not post-bureaucratic
organizations should be understood as a new form of organization or as a mere variant of a
basic form. For instance, it is indeed difficult to see in which particular respects
post-bureaucratic organizations, as outlined by popular and critical discourses, differ from
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Burns and Stalker’s (1961) classical distinction between “organic” and “mechanistic”
organizations or from Selznick’s (1984, first edition published 1957) equally classic
distinction between “organizations” and “institutions”.
4. It is in fact in addition questionable from the perspective of the basic tenets of the critical
discourse. In picturing post-bureaucracy as a total institution the critical discourse tends to
neglect a basic principle in Marxist thought. Namely that organizational structures are the
function of structural antagonism and thus imply a level of autonomy on the part of the
sellers of labor (Ezzamel et al., 2001).

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11. Hans Siebers. 2009. (Post)bureaucratic organizational practices and the production of racioethnic
inequality at work. Journal of Management & Organization 15, 62-81. [CrossRef]
12. Alexander Styhre. 2009. The cinematic mode of organizing: Media and the problem of attention in
organization theory. Information and Organization 19, 47-58. [CrossRef]
13. Jonas BäcklundRoyal Bank of Scotland, Stockholm, Sweden Andreas WerrStockholm School of
Economics, Stockholm, Sweden. 2008. Constructing the legitimate buyer of management consulting
services. Journal of Organizational Change Management 21:6, 758-772. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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15. Thomas Riise Johansen. 2008. ‘Blaming oneself ’: Examining the dual accountability role of employees.
Critical Perspectives on Accounting 19, 544-571. [CrossRef]
16. Leslie BuddOpen University Business School, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. 2007. Post‐
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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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organizations to learning organizations. The Learning Organization 13:4, 337-352. [Abstract] [Full Text]
[PDF]
19. Martin Harris and Harro HöpflMartin HarrisEssex University, Colchester, UK. 2006. Technology,
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20. Martin Harris and Harro HöpflHarro M. HöpflDepartment of Accounting, Finance and Management,
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21. Martin Harris and Harro HöpflLouise BriandAccounting Department, Université du Québec en
Outaouais, Québec, Canada Guy BellemareIndustrial Relations Department, Université du Québec en
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Outaouais, Québec, Canada. 2006. A structurationist analysis of post‐bureaucracy in modernity and late
modernity. Journal of Organizational Change Management 19:1, 65-79. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
22. Martin Harris and Harro HöpflBrendan McSweeneySchool of Management, Royal Holloway, University
of London, Egham, UK. 2006. Are we living in a post‐bureaucratic epoch?. Journal of Organizational
Change Management 19:1, 22-37. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]