Theorizing Subjectivity The Failure of Foucauldian Studies?: Organizations

Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations: The
Failure of Foucauldian Studies?

Tim Newton
Abstract
Tim Newton This paper examines the promise of Foucault as a vehicle for addressing subjec-
Birbeck College, tivity and organizations. It questions the supposed non-essentialism and non-
University of dualism of Foucauldian work, and argues that such work has difficulties in
London, UK theorizing agency, and the relation between self and discourse. Though the paper
is critical of previous attacks on the anti-materialistic stance of Foucauldian work,
it nevertheless suggests that Foucauldian studies have been unable to adequately
theorize 'material' relations, and that they have so far provided an inadequate
basis by which to develop an ethics of either individual or collective change. In
developing this critique, the paper largely focuses on Foucauldian work rather than
the text of Foucault himself, though some attention is paid to Volumes 1 to 3 of
The History of Sexuality. Feminist work is also employed in order to illustrate the
limitations of Foucault in theorizing the self and subjectivity.
Descriptors: Foucault, subjectivity, agency, materialism, resistance, ethics
Introduction
This paper is concerned to critically explore the 'success' of Foucauldian
work in dealing with the issue of subjectivity within organizations. The
turn to Michel Foucault was to some reasonable extent about a turn to prob-
lematic issues in theorizing subjectivity both within organizational analy-
sis (e.g. Knights and Willmott 1989; Collinson 1992, 1994; Townley 1994),
and without (e.g. Henriques et al. 1984; Rose 1985; Hollway 1989). Two
writers feature prominently in work applying Foucault to the analysis of
subjectivity within organizations, David Knights and Hugh Willmott.
Necessarily therefore, this paper will concentrate on their writing, but it
will also explore the work of other organizational writers who apply
Foucault (e.g. Townley; Grey; Du Gay).
In describing writers as 'Foucauldians', it is not meant to suggest that they
Organization
Studies are necessarily faithful advocates of the totality of Foucault's work. For
1998, 19/3 example, Willmott is critical of aspects of Foucault, and has argued that
415-447 'Foucault paints himself, and his devotees, into a corner' (1994: 115) by
C 1998 EGOS
0170-8406/98 refusing to spell out clearly what Foucauldian emancipation might mean.
0019-0017 $3.00 Yet Willmott still draws strongly on Foucault (for example, in his own
416 Tim Newton
arguments for emancipation), and defends Foucault against criticism (such

as, as we shall see, against 'sins' such as essentialism). It is in this sense
that his work, and that of others such as Knights, Townley, Grey, and Du
Gay are classified here as 'organizational Foucauldian'. This classification
does however exclude from consideration a number of writers who refer-
ence but do not centrally draw on the work of Foucault, or whose work is
Foucauldian but lacks an organizational concern.
The paper will proceed by firstly considering the success of Foucauldian
work in creating its own truth effect in the field of organization studies.
The Foucauldian approach to subjectivity will then be outlined. Given the
centrality of Knights and Willmotts' work, the paper will continue by exam-
ining the core argument of Knights and Willmott on subjectivity. The
remainder of the paper will explore a 'shopping list' of 'thorny' issues which
have dogged attempts to tell plausible stories about subjectivity, and con-
sider whether Foucauldian work has helped to resolve them. In critically
examining the limitations of such work, some examples will be drawn from
feminist writers whose work highlights difficulties in theorizing subjectivity.
Throughout the paper, the concern is less with deconstructing 'organiza-
tional Foucauldian' work in the sense of exploring the epistemological pat-
terns they develop than with their ability to address critical issues in the
theorizing of subjectivity. The paper focuses solely on this issue: it is beyond
the present scope to develop alternative theoretical accounts.'
The Triumph of Foucault?

Foucauldian work has been remarkably successful in re-writing our under-
standing of organizations. For instance, Knights and Willmotts' work has
reached a broad international audience, while some Foucauldians have
entirely re-written areas of organizational analysis such as human resource
management (e.g. Townley 1994). Work influenced by Foucault is com-
monly found in organizational journals, and Foucault now routinely fea-
tures in introductory textbooks in the area. Indeed, texts are appearing which
focus exclusively on the relevance of Foucault to management (e.g.
McKinlay and Starkey 1997). In sum, Foucauldian work has moved increas-
ingly towards the centre stage of organization studies. At the same time,
however, this work has attracted critical commentary (particularly from
labour process writers), with Chris Smith and Paul Thompson (1992) and
Thompson and Stephen Ackroyd (1995) making particularly strident
attacks, decrying what they see as the practical apoliticism of Foucauldian
analysis, and its inability to provide a theoretical basis by which to con-
sider resistance, struggle and change. Yet such attacks have failed to address
the ability of Foucauldian work to actively theorize subjectivity and deal
with the 'missing subject', and instead have tended to dismiss the focus
upon subjectivity as a further reflection of Foucauldian apoliticism (Smith
and Thompson 1992; Thompson and Ackroyd 1995). As Willmott rather
justly argues, there is a need for a 'more consistent and engaged response'
by those critical of the Foucauldian emphasis on, and treatment of, sub-
Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations 417
jectivity (1995: 19-20). The lack of a serious critique of the Foucauldian

accounts of subjectivity also appears somewhat ironic, given that the
'slogan' of the 'missing subject' (Smith and Thompson 1992: 14) was
itself coined and advanced by Thompson on the grounds that its 'con-
struction' was 'probably the greatest tasks facing labour process theory'
(1990: 114).
The main concern of the present paper is to respond to Willmott's call for
a more 'engaged' critique of the Foucauldian treatment of subjectivity, and
so to question whether this work deserves a dominant position in our
theorizing about power and subjectivity in organizations.
Foucault and Subjectivity

For Foucauldians, subjectivity is ineluctably linked to power-knowledge
practices; the 'condition of being a subject' is 'produced' by 'particular
discourse and practices' (Henriques et al. 1984: 3). Organizational
Foucauldians both dramatized the significance of this interrelation and
pointed to its omission within organization studies. As Knights and
Willmott argued in their article published in Sociology in 1989, there was
'an absence of an adequate theorisation of the connectedness of power and
subjectivity in the organization of social life' (1989: 535). Alternatively,
as Collinson argued more generally, 'a common problem with a great deal
of the current critical literature on employee behaviour is its failure to
address adequately the way in which power relations are subjectively ex-
perienced' (1994: 52).
For Knights and Willmott, Foucault's work appeared particularly relevant
to two already existent problematizations in the theorizing of subjectivity,
namely those of dualism and essentialism. In their 1989 paper, Knights and
Willmott underscored these problematizations, and proffered Foucault as
the solution. Traditional accounts of subjectivity seemed dualistic in either
defining subjectivity chiefly in terms of the individual, and their feelings,
behaviour and so on, or chiefly in relation to social structures. The former
remains a strong characteristic of approaches taken within psychology,
whilst the latter is symbolized by those sociological approaches which split
off the subjective, treating it as though it existed almost independently of
objective 'structures' and 'constraints'. For example, neo-Marxist theory
such as labour process theory has (historically) 'been inclined to a view of
subjectivity as representing the productive and autonomous aspects of
human existence, which are to be contrasted with the objective structures
that constrain them' (Knights 1990: 303). Though some may question
whether sociological variants of dualism are 'such a sin' (Thompson and
Ackroyd 1995: 626), it is difficult to get around the 'difficulties [which]
arise when it is forgotten that "structures" and "contingencies" are abstrac-
tions that "do not do anything' (Willmott 1994: 88, quoting Collins 1981:
1009). Not only is such dualism in danger of promoting a reification of
structures and systems, it also downplays the significance of human agency
418 Tim Newton
and subjectivity in the reproduction and transformation of social structures

(Giddens 1984).
In this context, Foucault's advantage lies in the way in which he interre-
lated power and the subject, drawing 'analytical attention towards the sense
in which power and identity are major preoccupations and affects of mod-
em subjectivity' (Knights and Willmott 1989: 551). As Julian Henriques
et al. (1984) noted, Foucault showed how we can no longer assume the
existence of a pre-given unitary and sovereign subject. From a Foucauldian
perspective, the dualism between the subject and 'objective' structures is
misplaced, since the subject herself is not some independent, bounded and
fixed unity, but, instead, is intimately bound to power/knowledge relations
which traverse both subjects and (what are conventionally seen as) social
structures. For Knights, this appears to mean that Foucauldian and decon-
structionist work is not merely 'anti-dualistic' in the sense of Gidden's
work, but is post-dualistic (Parker 1997)2 since the aim is not 'simply to
replace one set of deterministic orderings with another' [e.g. replacing
'structure' by 'agency'], (Knights 1997: 11), but rather 'their complete erad-
ication' (Knights 1997: 16).
Foucault also appears to avoid the other major 'sin' in conceptualizing sub-
jectivity, namely the tendency to implicitly or explicitly assume that there
is some essential nature to human behaviour. His work provides a point of
contrast to essentializing tendencies exhibited elsewhere, such as that found
amongst some writers associated with the Frankfurt School (Arato and
Gebhardt 1994; Wiggershaus 1994; Newton et al. 1995). For instance, Erich
Fromm argued that the self is 'threatened by powerful superpersonal forces,
capital and the market' with the consequence that 'man (sic) loses the
answer to the meaning of life' (1942: 52). The problem with this argument
is its 'false consciousness' allusions and its dubious assumption that there
is some essential 'true' and unalienated self which would emerge if capi-
talism could be 'overthrown'. Even writers concerned to address the prob-
lems of dualism have not avoided essentialistic images of the self, including
the most notable exponent of anti-dualism, Anthony Giddens. For at the
core of Gidden's theorizing is the notion of 'ontological security', the deep-
rooted concerns that he supposes we all have with maintaining a sense of
continuity and order in our lives (Giddens 1991). Ultimately, human feel-
ings of anxiety and existential loneliness derive from this essential need
for ontological security, the desire for which appears as an almost inevitable
part of childhood development. However, as Ian Burkitt (1992) notes, this
essentialism effectively precludes further analysis of the relation between
subjectivity, social structure and discourse.
In contrast, Foucault's work appears compatible with the argument that
there is no essential self, since following Foucault, the self cannot be 'read'
outside discourse. As the self cannot be prediscursive, it cannot be essen-
tial 'since no two individuals can have precisely the same discursive expe-
riences' (Knights 1995: 13). In this way, Foucault's work creates the
impression of being strongly anti-essentialistic.
419
Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations
TheorizingSubjectivity
in
Organizations 419~~~~~
'Organizational Foucauldians'? The Work of Knights and Willmott and
their Colleagues
The work of Knights and Willmott and their colleagues stresses the close
correspondence between modern management discourse and employee sub-
jectivity. For example, in a recent paper on management strategy, Knights
and Morgan argue that the 'corporate strategy discourse' stimulates 'a pos-
itive sense of self-discipline by transforming individual employees into sub-
jects who secure their sense of identity, meaning and reality through
participating in strategic practices' (1994: 194; cf. Knights and Morgan
1991). The core argument of Knights and Willmott is that modem discourse
and practice produces afragility of the self precisely because of the way
it individualizes the self and asserts a sovereign subject. This operates
through the questioning of the self which modem discourse incites
(Foucault 1981), and through discursive practices which allow hierarchical
observation and normalization (Foucault 1979). As Knights puts it: 'all
identities ... are constituted, yet made vulnerable, by the individualising
effects of modern technologies of power (for example, the examination,
career-hierarchical observation, human rights and the proliferation of sex-
ual discourses)' (1990: 321).
Willmott makes similar arguments with regard to the fragility of the mod-
em self. He suggests that the plurality of modern discourses mean that the
subject lacks a clear sense of identity, and 'is obliged to live with a sense
of responsibility for choosing what s/he makes of him/herself' (1994: 105).
On the one hand, modem discourse denies the kind of certainty of self tra-
ditionally associated with the pre-modem (e.g. feudal) relations. On the
other, its very problematization of self-identity makes the practices of mod-
em discourse all the more seductive in seeming to hold out the answer to
making sense of ourselves. Accordingly, Willmott argues that modem dis-
course and practice both create 'feelings of dizziness' and hold out the
promise of 'some relief' from such feelings (1994: 109).
In sum, central to the work of Knights and Willmott is an image of a frag-
ile self coping with the 'heightened sense of indeterminacy, freedom and
responsibility which is typical of modernity' (Willmott 1994: 109). To this
extent, their work is strongly reminiscent of writers such as Fromm who
argued that modernity has resulted in a self who 'is freed from those ties
which used to give him (sic) security and a feeling of belonging' so that
'doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life' (Fromm
1942: 52, added emphasis). Yet to the extent that they draw on Foucault,
Willmott and Knights manage to avoid the blatant dualism and essential-
ism that underpins Fromm's work. There is no image of a 'true' self that
exists in some celestial sphere untainted by the false consciousness induced
by capitalism. The effects of capitalism are referenced, particularly in
Willmott's writing where, employing Marxist language in a manner remi-
niscent of Frankfurt School writers, it is acknowledged that capitalist rela-
tions are 'corrosive of all that is seemingly solid - including "all feudal,
patriarchal, idyllic relations" where self-identity is fixed' (Marx and Engels
420 Tim Newton
1848/1967: 82-3; Berman 1982; Willmott 1994: 103). Yet particularly in

Willmott's more recent writing, Marx's sense of a capitalist 'corrosion'
whereby, 'all that is solid melts into air', appears as just the backdrop to
the real dynamic of self fragility, namely the individualizing effects of
modem discourse and the plethora of ways such discourse provides in
both questioning and potentially 'knowing' the self (cf. Willmott 1990,
1994).
This (largely) Foucauldian account of the relation between discourse and
subjectivity is appealing in that we are all aware of the plethora of ways
that modem discursive practices tell us how we can 'be', such as the impor-
tance of being environmentally 'aware', or the consciousness of the many
ways we should attend to our diet, or the measures we might follow in
becoming 'stress-fit', or the ways in which we 'have learned to recognize
[ourselves] as subjects of "sexuality"' (Foucault 1982: 208; Newton et al.
1995). Yet for all these advantages, there are also a number of criticisms
that may be levelled at such Foucauldian work. The remainder of this paper
will focus on these criticisms, and try to examine the question of whether
such work successfully tackles difficult issues in theorizing subjectivity.
Much of the ensuing analysis will focus on 'organizational Foucauldians',
with continuing attention to the work of Willmott and Knights, given the
centrality of their work.
Psychologizing the Self?

At the level of the self, the 'motor' for human agency in the account of
Willmott and Knights appears to be that of a discursively created desire
for a secure identity. Their account rests on an assumption of the fragility
of the self (arising from modem discourse) which prompts the desire for a
secure identity (and so further immerses us in modern discourse). Are we
so fragile, though, and are we so 'open' to modem discourse in the con-
stitution of our identity? For example, we may all be in some contact with
discourse on sex, diet, stress, health, the environment, etc., but do these
discourses problematize our sense of ourselves as much as Knights and
Willmott appear to suggest?
In a genealogical sense, the sense of a fragile identity which Knights and
Willmott espouse is as close to the Frankfurt School, critical theory and
labour process theory, as to Foucault. For example, their focus can be seen
to result partly from an historical trajectory wherein 'concepts of social
identity have been at the centre of labour process theorists' descriptions of
the subject' (Jemier et al. 1994: 6-7). At the same time, their emphasis on
the fragility of identity appears close to writers such as Fromm (e.g. Knights
and Willmott 1989; Knights 1990; Willmott 1990, 1994), as well as those
who draw heavily on psychoanalysis and critical theory in order to empha-
size that 'we are produced as capable of assertive action, yet also fragile
and acutely vulnerable' (Henriques et al. 1984: 368, quoted in Willmott
1990: 368). Nevertheless, the question remains as to whether those tradi-
tionally concerned with identity have had a tendency to overplay the
fragility of the self. This is an important question since once one starts
to question the fragility of the self, one must also question the significance
of modem discourse, the terrific power of which, according to Knights
and Willmott, is meant to have made us all rather vulnerable. For if it
were are not so vulnerable, modem discourses of, say, sexuality or cor-
porate strategy would also not be so significant in 'sorting ourselves out',
and therefore modem bio-social discourse appears far less critical for
identity constitution. In sum, the notion of a fragile self does a lot of
theoretical work within Knights and Willmotts' writing, being central both
to their notion of identity and to their defence of the power of modem
discourse.
The significance of identity and security needs has also been further drama-
tised by Knights (1997) who has placed them at the core of his critique of
organizational theory. According to Knights, it is the concern to 'sustain
secure identities' (1997: 12) which is central to the failing of all organi-
zation theory other than "postdualistic" work; whether such work is uni-
tarist (e.g. systems theories), dualist (e.g. labour process theory), or
anti-dualist (e.g. Giddens' structuration theory). Knights argues that such
studies are inadequate because they are 'invariably grounded in a desire
for order and security' (Knights 1997: 11, added emphasis). The attempt
of such 'non-postdualistic' work to 'provide exhaustive accounts of orga-
nizational reality' (Knights 1997: 12) apparently merely reflects a latent
desire for a secure identity, 'often [representing] the unacknowledged out-
come of a desire to order the world as a means of securing the self (Knights
1997: 13, added emphasis).
Yet aside from the question of whether we are so 'fragile' and desiring of
'security', it also remains debatable as to whether the stress upon identity
and 'latent' desires is consistent with Foucault' s work. Knights and
Willmott need to invoke the concept of identity precisely because Foucault
did not provide any clear elaboration as to why the subject is so readily
constituted in discourse, even in his later work. In other words, at the level
of the self, there remains a need to explain why discourse is so meaning-
ful to us, or to use Knights and Willmotts' paraphrasing of Foucault, how
is it that 'modem technologies of power subjugate by forcing individuals
back in on themselves so that they become "tied to [their] own identity by
a conscience or self-knowledge"' (Foucault 1982: 212; Knights and
Willmott 1989: 550; see also Knights 1990: 319). Acknowledging this
theoretical deficit, Knights notes that 'Foucault remains silent' about this
process (Knights 1990: 321). Not constrained however, Knights and
Willmott attempt to fill in the missing theoretical gap:
'Although he is never so explicit, we would not see it as a misreading to suggest
that subjugation occurs where the freedom of a subject is directed narrowly, and
in a self-disciplined fashion, towards participation in practices which are known to
provide the individual with a sense of security and belonging.' (Knights and
Willmott 1989: 550, my italics)
Yet one has to question whether this is a 'misreading', since it significantly
extends Foucault' s work through implicitly drawing on psychodynamic and
422 Tim Newton
Frankfurt School language in order to place an emphasis on 'latent' identity

needs for 'security and [a feeling of] belonging' (Knights and Willmott
1989: 550, and Fromm 1942: 52; both added emphasis). Though such needs
are portrayed as an outcome of discursive problematization, such a psy-
chologization of the self appears out of kilter with both the decentring of
the subject in Foucault's earlier work, and with the attention to an ethics
of the self in his later work (see below). While Knights and Willmott stu-
diously avoid essentialism, one still has to ask why Foucault would have
turned to language, which appears closer to the concerns of critical theory
and neo-Freudians than to his own project. For though Foucault acknowl-
edged the relevance of the Frankfurt School in his later work (Foucault
1982, 1991), this does not mean that his arguments are compatible with,
or reducible to, the language of critical theory (Dews 1987). As Foucault
himself noted, he wished to 'suggest another way' to that of the Frankfurt
School (Foucault 1982: 210). In sum, Knights and Willmott have addressed
a critical gap in Foucault's work, but at the expense of invoking precisely
the kind of psychologization of the self which Foucault appeared keen to
avoid.
De-emphasizing 'Materialism'?
Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) have strongly criticized Foucauldian stud-
ies for their lack of attention to what are conventionally defined as "'real"
"material" circumstances' (Du Gay 1996: 67). For instance, they argue that
'in these [Foucauldian] studies workers are not disciplined by the market,
or sanctions actually or potentially invoked by capital, but by their own
identity and subjectivity' (Thompson and Ackroyd 1995: 627, added
emphasis; cf. Smith and Thompson 1992). Implicit in their critique is the
promotion of a more clearly 'materialistic' theory such as that of labour
process theory (Thompson 1990, 1993). Yet the problem with Thompson
and Ackroyds' criticism is that its dualistic underpinning is in danger of
hiding agency and subjectivity altogether. In other words, the 'market' and
'capital' don't actually 'do' anything, and neo-Marxist theories such as
labour process theory still have to provide a convincing account of how
capitalistic 'structures' work through agency, and what this means at the
level of subjectivity (Willmott 1995). Equally, the advancement of the sig-
nificance of materialism tends to be accompanied with an unquestioning or
unsubstantiated adherence to realist positions (Newton 1996b), and an
insensitivity to the argument that 'material relations' cannot be split off
from discourse since they are discursively defined. It is not that the 'mar-
ket' or 'capital' simply denote the 'real' material conditions since the nature
of any such supposed 'reality' is a matter for contestation and debate; they
do not exist in some pre- or non-discursive arena' (Knights and Murray
1994; Knights 1995; Du Gay 1996; Newton 1996b).
Nevertheless, reference to the 'material' is of interest to the extent that its
use may reflect power relations which have a stability, deriving from
repeated patterns in their social construction and reproduction over the
medium- to long term. Gender relations provide one example of such

stability. For instance, there has been a fair degree of stability within the
gendered nature of labour markets, and to this extent they can be seen to
condition the 'material circumstances' in which women and men work.
Furthermore, if one follows the argument that gender distinctions with
respect to work and economy reflect the continuance of feudal relations
within industrial society (Beck 1992), then the gendering of power relations
may be seen as having some fairly long-term stabilities. Such stabilities are
significant to the extent that they condition the way in which discourses are
established. As Wetherell and Potter note, there is a need to examine 'how
a new piece of discourse is established and gains its plausibility in terms of
what is already there, already in place' (1992: 86).
Foucauldians can appear insensitive to stabilities in power relations to the
extent that they are sensitive to instabilities. For example, Knights and
Vurdubakis argue that 'we cannot a priori assume, as Foucault (1984b: 3)
has pointed out, that any ... stability [in power relations] is anything more
than contingent and precarious' (1994: 178). This sensitivity can be seen
as conditioned by Foucault's emphasis on the perilousness of semblances
of historical order (Foucault 1984a). Consistent with this position, Foucault
often exhibited an inattentiveness to the establishment of discourse, and to
the way in which discursive developments are conditioned by stabilities in
power relations, and changes in such stability - such as those associated
with gender. For example, in reading The History of Sexuality (THS), Vol. 1
(Foucault 1981), it is almost possible to believe that the nineteenth century
problematization of sexuality had no relation to the 'material conditions'
of the day, but instead was solely a result of the development of the med-
ical and 'psy' sciences, and of eugenics discourse (Rose 1985, 1990). With
respect to gender relations, such neglect may be seen as being responsible
for some feminist critique of THS, Vol. 1 (e.g. Ferguson 1993). Foucault
does allude to gender issues through, for example, his examination of the
'hysterization of women's bodies' within nineteenth century medical and
'psy' discourse (1981: 104-111). Yet he provides little analysis of how the
portrayal of women as 'histrionic' and 'neurotic' may have related to pre-
vailing 'medium term' conditions wherein women tended to be associated
with the private, domestic and the subservient, while men occupied the
public, employment and professional arenas (MacDonald 1995). It remains
difficult to argue that the establishment of discourse is unrelated to such
socially constructed stability, and to the way in which the 'material con-
ditions of the day' did appear to be strongly gendered. Equally, it is also
the case that discourses may be established in the context of changes to
former stabilities. Is, say, the post-war establishment of feminist discourse
entirely unrelated to the perception of changing 'material' relations - in
relation to changes in economic dependency in gender relations, or develop-
ments in contraception, etc.?
Though the above criticism does not apply equally to all of Foucault' s work
(e.g. Discipline and Punish) there is a marked tendency to downplay the
significance of stabilities in power relations, and the way they condition
424 Tim Newton
the perception of 'material' relations. This neglect is also apparent amongst

Foucauldian writers who analyze organizations. Chris Grey (1994) provides
a particularly striking example of this tendency in his Foucauldian study
of the careers of young accountants. As my re-reading of this study partly
attempts to show (Newton 1996a; Newton and Findlay 1996; Findlay and
Newton 1997), though careers are conventionally seen as being closely
linked to economic benefits, Grey almost entirely suppresses such mater-
ial relevance. Instead, the significance of careers is seen as arising chiefly
because they provide a 'continuing realisation of the project of the self'
(Grey 1994: 484, original italics, quoted in Newton 1996a: 138). It seems
strange that Grey hardly appears to consider the more usual interpretation
that careers are significant, at least in part, because of their relation to mate-
rial rewards and the economic 'glory to come'. Once again, the significance
of the 'material' interests associated with 'careers' can be seen to be related
to certain medium-term, socially constructed stabilities, such as those
reflected in the relatively better mobility and 'opportunities' of professional
and managerial groups within capitalist societies.
A similar insensitivity to 'material' concerns can be witnessed in the work
of Paul Du Gay and his colleagues, particularly in relation to their extolling
of the contemporary salience of enterprise and excellence discourse.
According to Du Gay et al., such discourse has occupied 'an absolutely
crucial role in contemporary discourses of organizational reform' (1996:
267), and elsewhere Du Gay (1996) also argues that it has been central to
the government of individuals, organizations and the state in the 1980s and
90s (cf., Miller and Rose 1990; Rose and Miller 1992). However, at one
point, Du Gay notes evidence (drawn from Storey and Sisson 1989) that
'the facts suggest that the Excellence vision is not being adopted in most
organizations' (1996: 66, added emphasis). Yet he does not consider the
possibility that this observation completely re-frames his arguments con-
cerning the tremendous significance of enterprise-excellence discourse.
While he notes the relevance of such "'material circumstances"' (Du Gay
1996: 67), he appears to see no need to qualify his argument. Furthermore
there is a kind of 'Catch-22' in the arguments of Du Gay and his colleagues
regarding the significance of enterprise discourse, since it appears that it will
remain salient whatever counter-argument or empirical data may suggest.
For instance, Du Gay et al. acknowledge that there is 'the possibility of sub-
verting the entrepreneurial norms' associated with enterprise discourse
(1996: 278-279), and that the 'degree to which technologies of enterprise
meet with resistance ... are, of course, matters for empirical investigation'
(1996: 278, added emphasis). Yet were 'resistance', or 'subversion' or
'exclusion' to be observed (1996: 278), this would not be seen by Du Gay
et al. as detracting from the salience of enterprise discourse and practice
since it 'does not automatically erase their significance as regulatory mech-
anisms in the lives of individuals' (1996: 279). Therefore, even if 'empiri-
cal investigation' suggested that entrepreneurial norms were excluded,
subverted, or perhaps just ignored, enterprise discourse would still be judged
to be salient to people's lives. On the one hand, the constitution of the sub-
Organizations
Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations
in 425
Theorizing Subjectivity 425~~~~~
ject can be argued to arise as much from resistance to, as acceptance of, dis-
cursive practices (e.g. Foucault 1981). Yet, on the other hand, the applica-
tion of this argument by Foucauldians does appear to result in a 'Catch-22'.
The arguments of Du Gay et al. (1996) do imply that the salience of enter-
prise should be unquestioned, whatever contrary argument or empirical data
might suggest. However, if we actually accept the evidence cited by Du Gay
(1996) regarding the lack of establishment of enterprise-excellence dis-
course, the question arises as to whether it is of a rather short-term signif-
icance, reflected in an inability to gain a notable 'material foothold'.
In sum, both Foucault and Foucauldian work exhibit a tendency to de-
emphasize the significance of socially constructed stabilities in power rela-
tions, and the way in which these condition the establishment of discourse
and the perception of the material. At the same time, there is a 'Catch-22'
in the argument that the salience of particular discourses are revealed as
much by their resistance/denial/non-establishment as by their acceptance
and establishment. It almost appears that just as the patients on Freud's
couch revealed their pathology through their denial of it, so individuals and
groups who deny their constitution in a particular discourse reveal their
'real' enrolment.
Agency, the Self and Discourse

Before considering the implications of Foucauldian work for the conceptu-
alization of agency and the self, it is necessary to say something about the
sense of agency which is employed in the present paper. In brief, it resem-
bles that advanced by Anthony Giddens. Yet this does not imply an endorse-
ment of Giddens' structuration theory since it can be subject to a range of
critique (e.g. Held and Thompson 1989; Bryant and Jary 1991), such as dif-
ficulties with its related concepts of ontological security (Burkitt 1992; see
above) and sequestration (Newton et al. 1995: 154-155), and with Giddens'
conceptualization of power, particularly his argument that 'power is logically
prior to subjectivity' (1984: 15). However, contra Reed (1997), it is not
accepted that the adoption of the anti-dualism associated with Giddens need
necessarily imply the abandonment of a concern with social 'ordering', 'hier-
archy' or 'location' (e.g. see Law 1994; Newton 1996c). That said, Giddens
can appear insufficiently attentive to the ways in which the problematic of
the self relates to discourse. Yet the central advantage of Giddens' work
remains his underpinning of the significance of agency and the ability of the
agent 'to "make a difference" to a pre-existing state of affairs or course of
events' (Giddens 1984: 14). As Giddens argues, 'human agents never pas-
sively accept external conditions of action, but more or less continuously
reflect upon them and reconstitute them in the light of their particular
circumstances' (1991: 175). From this perspective, the problem with
Foucauldian work is not that it does not recognize this argument, but that it
lacks a means to explore its implications. Specifically, within a Foucauldian
framework it is hard to gain a sense of how active agential selves 'make a
426 Tim Newton
difference' through 'playing' with discursive practices (Newton 1994, 1996c;

Newton et al. 1995). To emphasize such agency is not to posit some essen-
tial subject, but rather to argue that understanding how the subject is consti-
tuted in discourse requires attention to the social processes through which
people actively manoeuvre in relation to discursive practices. For though the
work of Foucault and Foucauldians are significant in furthering our under-
standing of the history of the subject, their historicism is often achieved at
the expense of a one-dimensionality in their treatment of the social, wherein
it becomes something 'invented by history and cathected by political pas-
sions' (Rose 1996a: 3). The Foucauldian dissection of the supposedly long-
dead body of the social (Baudrillard 1983) runs the risk of never really
engaging with the ways in which people may have made sense of themselves
and the social in an agential sense, since this dissection tends to take place
on the lofty plane where the social is but another series of discursive con-
structs. Though, following Foucault, agency may be 'a product or an effect',
(Law 1994: 11), this does not mean that we can ignore how it affects both
the establishment and the deployment of discursive practices.
For some writers, Foucault's work lacks any sense of agency at all. Thus
Nicos Mouzelis attacks Foucault because he presents 'the absence of any
concept of agency' (Mouzelis 1995: 48) and since 'social practices con-
tinued for him [Foucault] to be presented in a decentred, "subjectless" man-
ner' (1995: 46) with the consequence that 'discursive practices' become
"'subjectless' practices"' (1995: 47). It is possible to counter this critique
on the basis that the subject is at least implicated in 'discursive practices'
and because Foucault emphasized that 'power is only exercised over free
subjects' (1982: 221) who are able to resist and invert discursive practices
(Foucault 1981; Knights and Vurdubakis 1994). Yet such counter criticism
does not detract from a major difficulty for organizational analysis that does
revolve around the question of agency. The problem is that Foucault leaves
us with an inadequate framework to explore how agency is played out in
particular contexts. Foucault was, of course, deeply attentive to local power
relations (e.g. Foucault 1981), but he nevertheless provides little means of
analyzing how decisions are made in particular local situations.
The consequences of this position for organizational analysis can be illus-
trated by examining Barbara Townley's (1994) analysis of the power rela-
tions which surround personnel selection. Drawing on the Foucauldian work
of Nikolas Rose (1990), Townley argues that personnel selection decisions
are liable to be 'captured' by the discursive practices of organizational psy-
chology. Such a situation has supposedly arisen because the discourse of
organizational psychology has provided 'technicist "solutions"' to person-
nel selection which 'through [their] claims to rationality, fairness, and a
"scientific" approach, may parade as being in the best interests of all' (1994:
106). She further suggests that:
'The danger of an emphasis on the technical is that there is the virtual monopo-
lizing of an area [by organizational psychologists] to the exclusion of those who
do not have specialist training to interpret results, who are usually those most
directly concerned with the outcome.' (1994: 106)
Personnel selection is faced with the prospect of being chiefly determined

by psychologists and personnel specialists who act in a manner strangely
reminiscent of the one-time depiction of business managers in labour
process theory. That is to say, just as managers were once portrayed as the
automatic agents of capital (Braverman 1974), so Townley almost appears
to suggest that organizational psychologists will act as the unthinking 'pre-
programmed' puppets of their discourse. Her argument comes close to
implying that there is a relatively straight line from modem discourse to
the constitution of both action and identity, and can therefore be seen to
provide support for Mouzelis's charge that discursive practices become
'subjectless practices' (1995: 97) in Foucauldian hands, as well as the
similar refrain of Benhabib that the Foucauldian subject reflects 'a kind of
Lockean tabula rasa in latter day Foucaultian garb!' (1992: 217). Although
Townley qualifies her argument by noting that 'it would be a mistake to
assume that the individual is a passive participant in the constitution of
identity' (1994: 107), her general thesis creates the impression that there
is an extremely powerful modem social science in existence which, if not
actively resisted, will constitute the subject and define local power rela-
tions, such as that of organizational psychology in disciplining the selec-
tion process. While Townley can be seen to reflect Foucault's description
of 'struggles against the privileges of knowledge' (Foucault 1982: 212),
the requirement for such 'struggles' needs to be established. For instance,
it remains the case that both contemporary (e.g. Hollway 1984, 1991) and
historical evidence (e.g. Newton 1994) suggest that selection 'outcomes'
have not been in danger of being 'captured' by the practising 'priests' of
social sciences, such as psychologists. Rather, this work indicates that
throughout the development of selection practices, selection decisions have
continued to be made largely by line managers or their equivalents, with
little sign of serious 'struggle'. In consequence, there is little evidence that
the local power relations of selection have been at risk of being solely deter-
mined by the expertise of those grounded in the appropriate discourse.
Nevertheless, this casting of the politics of HRM in something that some-
times comes close to 'linear' 'Foucaultian garb' does appear understand-
able in the context of Foucault's work. Foucault drew attention to local
power relations and to the 'watch-crews' who surround such relations, but
he did not examine how such 'watch-crews' 'acted'. For example, in The
History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Foucault notes how:
' ...the body of the child, under surveillance, surrounded in his cradle, his bed, or
his room by an entire watch-crew of parents, nurses, servants, educators, and
doctors, all attentive to the least manifestations of his sex, [and this] has consti-
tuted, particularly since the eighteenth century, another "local center" of power-
knowledge.' (Foucault 1981: 98, my italics.)
However, as elsewhere in Foucault's work, no theoretical frame is provided
for understanding how decisions will be made within the local power rela-
tions that pertain to 'the body of the child'. We have no theoretical basis
for, say, considering the relative influence of the 'parent' vs. the 'doctor',
the 'nurse' vs. the 'servant', or how all of these actors may manoeuvre
428 Tim Newton
around modern discourse, may 'elaborate', or 'manipulate', or 'subvert' its

ideas and practices. In consequence, it is not surprising that Foucauldians
such as Townley cannot easily consider, say, the relative influence of the
'psychologist' vs. the 'line manager' in the context of personnel selection
decisions. So long as they remain faithful to Foucault, they have no easy
means by which to analyze agency and decision-making in local power
relations.Yet to understand power and subjectivity in organizations, we
need to attend to such issues, and to examine the historical development
of the 'stage' upon which local power relations are enacted, such as the
developmental processes through which personnel specialists and psychol-
ogists have often become marginal to selection decisions (Legge 1978;
Newton 1994).
It might be objected that the above arguments ignore Foucault's emphasis
upon the freedom of subjects, and its corollary that there is no automatic
linear constitution in discourse since there is 'a freedom for the individual
to ... deviate from criteria of rationality' (Miller and O'Leary 1987: 263).
Yet noting the problematic relationship between the subject and discourse
is not equivalent to explaining how the subject relates to discourse. For
instance, Du Gay observes that managers are more easily enrolled within
enterprise/excellence discourse than other employee groups. This observa-
tion leads Du Gay to argue that 'not all employees will be subjects in the
new [enterprise/excellence] regime of the self' (1996: 68). However, Du
Gay has difficulty in explaining this critical observation about how the
subject relates to discourse while remaining faithful to a Foucauldian frame-
work.
Instead, he employs an account which owes far more to traditional man-
agement theory than to Foucault, explaining the stronger enrolment of man-
agers on the basis of factors such as the 'economic success' and 'career
progress' which excellence discourse offers managers, but not 'peripheral'
employees (1996: 68). Yet it is hardly surprising that Du Gay should
employ a more conventional managerial account in trying to explain vari-
ation in discursive constitution. The problem is that Foucauldians have dif-
ficulty in explaining active agential subjects who manoeuvre and 'play'
with discourse and practice in the context of power relations which are
often asymmetrical in character (see below). Unless one attends to such
'play' and to the power asymmetries that often exist between managers and
other workers, it will remain difficult to explain why excellence discourse
may have more appeal to the former group than the latter. At the same
time, the language adopted by Foucauldians often encourages an image of
passivity. Thus Knights and Townley use identical language in referring to
how 'identities .. are made vulnerable' by 'modern technologies of power'
or 'power/knowledge practices' (Knights 1990: 321; Townley 1997: 23),
whilst Willmott observes how the lack of clear identity 'renders the modem
subject vulnerable to seduction by diverse disciplinary powers (Willmott
1994: 108, my italics throughout). This is hardly language which promotes
the notion of an active agential subject. The subject is 'done to'; she does
not appear to do much doing.
Theorizing Subjectivity
in Organizations
in Organizations
429
It also largely remains the case that though Foucauldians may qualify the
relation between self and discourse, the predominant focus of their argu-
ment still lies with the programmatic prescriptions of different discursive
fields rather than with the manoeuvring of agents in relation to discursive
practices. For instance, though Foucauldians may note the freedom of sub-
jects, their emphasis is largely upon the rationalities of discursive pro-
grammes such as accounting practices (e.g. Miller and O'Leary 1987, 1990,
1993; Miller and Rose 1990), or Taylorism (e.g. Miller and O'Leary 1987;
Miller and Rose 1990; Townley 1994), or theories of leadership and work
reform (e.g. Miller and O'Leary 1987; Miller and Rose 1990; Townley
1994), or enterprise and excellence discourse (e.g. Miller and Rose 1990;
Du Gay 1996; Du Gay et al. 1996). There is limited concern with the
manoeuvring of social selves in relation to such discursive fields. Instead,
for those who aim to be true to Foucault, any sense of agency lies primarily
within discourse, language and calculation. For instance, Rose and Miller
ally Foucauldian analysis with concepts drawn from actor network theory.
Yet they are careful to avoid the stronger sense of agency that is apparent
in actor network theory. Thus, whereas Latour describes 'centres of calcu-
lation' such as centres of government, military and business, as providing
a means by which a 'few men or women can dominate' (1987: 227, added
emphasis), for Rose and Miller the power in such centres lies chiefly with
the calculations themselves, not their interaction with the human agents
applying them: 'The figures themselves are the mechanisms that enable
relations to be established ... rendering "the population", "the economy",
"public opinion", "the divorce rate" into thought as calculable entities ...'
(1992: 186).3 However, this emphasis on agency as inscription means that
Miller and Roses' work appears limited in its ability to explore how dis-
cursive practices are 'played out' in local contexts. For example, they have
paid considerable attention to discourses of enterprise, entrepreneurship,
and excellence (e.g. Miller and Rose 1990; Rose 1996b). For Miller and
Rose, the 'vocabulary of enterprise' means that 'the government of work
now passes through the psychological strivings of each and every individ-
ual for fulfilment' (Miller and Rose 1990: 27). However, they do not attend
to the reasons why such 'promise' of enterprise discourse may not be
realised in practice for many employees. For instance, enterprise and 'excel-
lence' discourse may appear much closer to the exploitation than the
empowerment 'of every individual [toward] fulfilment' (Miller and Rose
1990: 27); as an invitation to take more responsibility, do more work for
similar levels of pay, etc., rather than a means for 'self-actualization of the
worker' (Miller and Rose 1990: 27). It is not that Miller and Rose in any
way resemble advocates of the kind of neo-human relations and neo-liberal
messages apparent in enterprise/excellence discourse. Rather, the problem
is that they pay little attention to the relation between discourse and social
selves; how, in this case, enterprise/excellence discourse is played out
through the 'networked' manoeuvring of individuals and groups within
organizations frequently characterized by power asymmetries and hierar-
chies (Law 1994; Newton 1996c, 1998). On the one hand, we can debate
430 Tim Newton
the extent to which a discourse such as that of 'enterprise', accounting or

organizational psychology 'imposes a law of truth' and represents a 'form
of power which makes individuals subjects' (Foucault 1982: 212). On the
other hand, unless we understand how people agentially play with discur-
sive practices, we can never comprehend the social processes which deter-
mine the form of their constitution as subjects of power/knowledge
relations.
Where Foucauldians do examine the social processes surrounding local
power relations, it is noticeable that they tend to employ frameworks that
do not derive principally from Foucault. For example, in their study of their
life insurance company, 'Pensco', Knights and Murray employed a con-
ceptualization of power relations clearly influenced by Foucault (e.g. 1994:
1-50, 179-185). Yet, when they present the Pensco data, they adopt an
analytical approach which has close affinities with the 'processual'
approach to organizational politics associated with the Carnegie School and
writers such as Andrew Pettigrew and Jeffrey Pfeffer (cf. Knights and
Morgan 1991). In these interesting Pensco analyses, Knights and Murray
exhibit what might be called a 'de-functionalized processualism' attentive
to the way in which 'micro-organizational power relations are constituted
and sustained within both specific identities/subjectivities and broader
[socially constructed] politico-economic markets and inequalities' (1994:
199). However their analytical language remains strikingly processual in
character, and they conclude by arguing that 'political process lies at the
heart of organisations' (1994: 245). What remains remarkable however is
that they do not examine why they need to invoke a de-functionalized
processualism rather than a Foucauldian framework, particularly as else-
where Knights is notably associated with the promotion of Foucauldian
study. Neither do they consider the disjunctures between Foucauldian analy-
sis and the processual approach which they employ, especially with respect
to the very different concepts of human agency which both entail. For
instance, they note that 'discourses do not automatically "colonise" man-
agerial subjectivity' and that 'they are challenged, change, resisted and
rejected' (1994: 43), but they do not acknowledge that analytically explor-
ing such manoeuvring around discursive practices requires them to adapt
processual models of organizational politics which, in contrast to much of
Foucault's work, entail a strong sense of human agency. Their analyses
repeatedly explore how human agents attempt 'to "make a difference" to
a pre-existing state of affairs or course of events' (Giddens 1984: 14). To
take just one example, in discussing the social construction of one partic-
ular Pensco project they note how 'senior management was able to mobilise
its superior forces to encourage closure around a "successful" construction
of the project', although 'this was challenged by other senior managers as
they fought shy of taking responsibility for those systems shortcomings
which could be admitted' (1994: 177, added emphasis). Through this
processual language we gain a sense of the social processes through which
agents tactically manoeuvre and 'play' (by 'mobilizing', 'challenging', not
'taking responsibility', etc.) in a way that is quite alien to much of
Foucault's work. The lack of attention to the disjuncture between Foucault

and processual accounts appears even more surprising when, throughout
their book, Knights and Murray argue for the 'importance of organisational
subjectivity and identity' (1994: 245), themes which elsewhere Knights and
his co-authors have enveloped within what they see as a strongly
Foucauldian framework (e.g. Knights and Willmott 1989; Knights 1990;
Knights and Morgan 1991, 1995). In sum, it almost appears as though
Knights and Murray address the difficulties of a Foucauldian framework
for organizational analysis by abandoning it in favour of alternative, more
agential, accounts of organizational life.
Theorizing Resistance and Change

'Not only is the Foucauldian framework inherently flawed, it is not, as claimed, a
better alternative to accounts of workplace social relations.' (Thompson and
Ackroyd 1995: 625)
Thompson and Ackroyd have delivered a virulent attack on the work of
Foucauldians, arguing that Foucauldian studies largely deny the possibil-
ity of workplace resistance to the capitalist labour process. They suggest
that 'no actual accounts of resistance can normally be found in such studies'
(1995: 624) because Foucauldian work under-plays resistance, and replaces
a concern with 'labour' with a concern with identity/security needs to the
extent that 'the labour process is just part of the scenery' (1995: 627). The
'decentring from labour', and the focus upon identity needs means that the
sense of the collective is also severely downplayed: 'It is difficult to see
how anything more than individual consciousness raising, rather than col-
lective action, could be on the agenda' (1995: 628).
There are however a number of limitations to Thompson and Ackroyds'
attack. First, they over-emphasize the denial of resistance by selectively
attending to the repressive images of an all constraining power that are
found in some Foucauldian studies, particularly those that lean heavily on
the architecture of the panopticon (Foucault 1979). Second, they mistak-
enly attribute human agency to Foucauldian analyses of local power rela-
tions. For example, they note how Foucauldians such as Townley (1994)
and Marsden (1993) present an image of 'power/knowledge discourse
controlled by management' and the "'soft cops" in HRM, accounting and
consultancy' (Thompson and Ackroyd 1995: 623). Yet such notions of man-
agement control and 'soft cops' are contradictory to Foucault's decentring
from the subject, and relative inattention to human agency. However, the
attribution of human agency to Foucault's theorizing only further serves to
reinforce the image that Thompson and Ackroyd cultivate, whereby
Foucault and Foucauldians are portrayed as projecting a repressive over-
arching notion of power which marginalizes thoughts of resistance. Third,
Thompson and Ackroyds' critique of the limits of Foucauldian work in
attending to 'individual', but denying 'collective consciousness raising',
can be argued to present a false dichotomy between individual 'struggle'
432 Tim Newton
and collective workplace-based 'struggle'. For instance, to the extent that

gender relations have changed, it has largely not been as a result of collec-
tive struggle focused on the workplace. Indeed, barring events such as that
at Greenham Common in the UK, there has been little of the sense of the
collective struggle traditionally associated with organized labour. Instead
feminism can be argued to have advanced largely through an inter-weaving
of individual consciousness raising (through, say, feminist non-fiction and
fiction/drama), and group consciousness raising (through, say, women's
groups and collectives). Finally, there is a difficulty with Thompson and
Ackroyds' central argument that Foucauldian and post-structuralist discourse
represent a principal cause of the marginalization of employee resistance
and collective struggle within organization studies literature. The problem
here is that they load an awful lot of 'power' on the ability of Foucauldian
studies to re-write the agenda whilst simultaneously ignoring their own argu-
ments about the significance of 'material' relations. For the 'turn' to Foucault
appears more likely to represent a consequence of the failure of workplace
collective struggle, than a cause. Foucauldian discourse had been established
largely under conditions of neo-liberal government (particularly in the
UKIUSA), and such conditions may help to explain why, for some, it was
'no longer "fashionable" to be interested in the labour process' (Smith and
Thompson 1992: 7). In spite of arguments for the continuing significance
of the 'collective worker' (e.g. Martinez Lucio and Stewart 1997), it seems
hard to deny that neo-liberal programmes have reduced the 'power' of both
workplace collective struggle and employee resistance (especially in the
UK). In such conditions, it should not be surprising if some writers turn to
perspectives which are less attentive to the 'power' of workplace struggle.
In sum, the conditions associated with weakened collective resistance appear
as a more likely explanation of its neglect within the literature than the turn
to Foucault per se.
In spite of the above criticisms of Thompson and Ackroyd (1995), it is
difficult not to have some sympathy with the general critique which asserts
that Foucault's work is limited in theorizing both resistance and change
(e.g. Dews 1987). On the one hand, Foucault alerts us to the ways in which
modern senses of the self, such as that of our 'individuality' and our 'free-
dom', are themselves effects of power (e.g. Foucault 1981, 1982). Yet, on
the other hand, by itself, awareness of such constitution does not provide
us with grounds for resisting our 'subjection' within modern discourse and
practice. Though Foucault argued that 'we have to promote new forms of
subjectivity' (1982: 216), except for his attention to the 'technology' and
'care' of the self (see below), he provides little guidance as to how we
attain this goal. Willmott goes as far as to argue that Foucault 'offers no
lead on how any new de-subjected form of subjectivity is to be realized'
(1994: 115). Not deterred however, Willmott attempts to outline 'de-
subjectifying' practices that will move us beyond the constituting effects
of modern discourse such as the '(modern) constitution of employees (and
citizens) as individualized, responsible, sovereign subjects' (Willmott 1994:
108). Yet one has to question whether Willmott's proposed forms of de-
subjection constitute an effective basis for either collective or individual

action. For example, Willmott' s main prescription for change is that people
need to 'de-subjectify' themselves through 'dissolving the habitual separa-
tion of subject and object through which the myth of the continuous, sov-
ereign ego is routinely sustained' (1994: 121). He provides two examples
of such de-subjectifying practice, one the 'free-form' jazz player who sus-
pends 'egoistic interpretation' so as to achieve a 'more "selfless" ... action'
(1994:120), the other drawing on Zen practice in order to allow a ."deso-
cialization ... or deconditioning"' (Willmott 1994: 121, quoting Preston
1988: 91), and so remove a 'preoccupation with confirming and securing
self-identity' (1994: 121). Debates about such personal 'de-centring from
the sovereign subject' have been going on for some time within feminist
analyses of identity. For example, Jane Flax has argued that 'those who
celebrate ... a "decentered" self seem self-deceptively naive and unaware
of the basic cohesion within themselves that makes the fragmentation of
experiences something other than a terrifying slide in psychosis' (1990:
218-219). In contrast, Kathy Ferguson suggests that Flax overplays the
dangers and argues that 'the self does not have to revolve around an
immutable core to have coherence' (1993: 166).
Yet whether the result of de-subjectifying is psychosis or the creation of a
new identity, it does seem debatable as to how much the individual or the
collective will be re-invented through activities such as free-from jazz play-
ing, or Zen practice. As an alternative to, say, 'workers' struggle', they
don't look very convincing. On the one hand, it is the case that 'struggles'
such as those of feminism have involved individual consciousness-raising.
Yet such changes in the self have been allied to broader social movements.
Ironically, the problem with Willmott's prescriptions is that they almost
appear too individualistic. Elsewhere however, Foucauldians have sug-
gested more collective senses of agency, though even here they appear to
flounder in trying to construct a convincing basis for resistance and change.
For example, drawing on feminist work, Townley promotes collective
forms of organization where 'responsibility, knowledge and accountability
would be shared by all', and where there would be 'consensual non-hier-
archical decision-making' (1994: 165). Yet such visions are open to the
charge that they represent idealized and humanistic imperatives cloaked in
'Foucaultian garb' which conveniently ignore both the failure of an earlier
generation of collective democracy, and the question of how one squares
postmodern epistemology with feminist political action (Calas and Smircich
1992; Ferguson 1993; Newton 1996c).
In general, the problem of theorizing resistance and change within
Foucauldian accounts can be seen as interrelated with their difficulties in
theorizing agency and the self (see above). It is not that Foucault leaves us
with an account which is entirely fatalistic and pessimistic, or necessarily
biased towards 'positive' rather than the 'negative' views of power, even
if Foucauldians appear to have difficulty in retaining such a positive image
when undertaking organizational analysis (Newton and Findlay 1996;
Findlay and Newton 1997). Rather, his elision of the question of how the
434 Tim Newton
self manoeuvres in relation to discursive practices means that we are left

with an impoverished basis by which to explain why power may appear
positive rather than negative, or how an optimistic rather than a pessimistic
history might be produced. To construct such a political agenda, we need
a more detailed theory of how the self agentially relates to power/
knowledge, how in thought and practice, people accept, resist and play with
discursive practices.
Politics as an Ethic?
In the foregoing discussion, it has been argued that Foucault provides an
insufficient basis by which to analyze how the self relates to discourse and
practice. Such an argument is however open to the charge that Foucault
addressed precisely these issues in his later work, most notably in Volumes
2 and 3 of The History of Sexuality (THS) and related work (e.g. Foucault
1988) where he provides a 'history of how an individual acts upon him-
self' (1988: 19). Furthermore, it is the case that this later work does begin
to offer some scope for envisioning personal, if not collective, change. For
instance, in the introduction to Volume 2 of THS Foucault describes how
his concern has shifted to an interest in how 'the individual constitutes and
recognises himself qua subject' (1987: 6), and he examines this question
as it relates to the pre-modern era by analyzing classical Greek and Latin
texts. For Foucault, such texts have an advantage in that they point to:
;.. the way in which individuals are urged to constitute themselves as subjects
of moral conduct ... developing relationships with the self, for self-reflection,
self-knowledge, self-examination, for the decipherment of the self by oneself,
for the transformations that one seeks to accomplish with oneself as object.'
(1987: 29)
Translating this concern to Foucault's earlier work, he appears far more
directly interested in the issue of how the self is experienced in the con-
text of power-knowledge relations. For instance, he analyzes Greek and
Latin texts as "'practical" texts [which] were designed to be read, learned,
reflected upon, and tested out, and .. were intended to constitute the even-
tual framework of everyday conduct' (1987: 12-13). Throughout Volumes
2 and 3, we develop a sense of how men in antiquity might have related
to the 'practical' texts of the day and how, had an individual been sensi-
tive to their prescriptions, he might have developed an "'arts of existence"'
(1987: 10), a 'relation to self that enables an individual to fashion himself
into a subject of ethical conduct' (1987: 251).
Townley has argued that this attention to the aesthetics and 'care of the
self' in Volumes 2 and 3 of THS can be used to promote a 'self-formation'
that allows the self 'to recall principles of acting and how one acts'
(Townley 1995: 275) and encourages the sense of "'being one's own mas-
ter"' (Townley 1995: 276). She argues that such 'self-knowledge is nor-
mally omitted from formal management education in business schools'
(1995: 272) and is also denied through contemporary managerial forms of
'self-awareness', such as those produced by performance appraisal. In con-
trast, her advocacy of 'self-formation' reflects Foucault's sense of the clas-

sical Greek prescriptions for the self as 'one [who] is answerable only to
oneself' and who can 'turn away from the preoccupations of the external
world' (Foucault 1990: 65). However, this ethics of the self has been
severely criticized on the grounds that it is overly individualized, repre-
senting 'a vision of the greater freedom and autonomy of the individual,
which removes the self from a social context and shirks the uncomfortable
issue of the continued existence of relations of power and constraint'
(Burkitt 1993: 67). This problem of decontextualization can be observed
in Townley's advocacy of 'self-formation'. As Peter Anthony notes,
Townley's general prescription 'implies the need for equality of exchange,
the identification of common interests, and moral exchange' (1995: 292).
But as he then asks, 'Why should managers of organizations ... provide
such goods'? (1995: 292). Implicit in Anthony's remarks is the same asser-
tion of decontextualization witnessed in Burkitt (1993). In other words,
Townley's advocacy of self-formation is open to the charge that it belittles
the stability of a socio-political context in which it remains unlikely that
managers will 'provide such goods', and in so doing she downplays the
significance of social and power relations for the 'care of the self'. As Lois
McNay notes, 'not all practices of the self are simply an exercise in aes-
thetics; some are more crucially linked than others to the maintenance of
social hierarchies' (1992: 77).
There are also a number of limitations if one wishes to translate Foucault's
later precepts into a concern with how the self relates to discourse - even
though this is an issue which is critical to the 'cultivation of the self'
(Foucault 1990: 37) since, following Foucault, the self cannot be pre-dis-
cursive. The relation between self and discourse is never static, and, in
addressing such issues, the main question is how people change in relation
to developments in discourse; how, for instance, women and men change
their sense of themselves in relation to feminist discourse. Unfortunately,
Volumes 2 and 3 of THS provide limited purchase on this question since
Foucault operated very largely within the bounds of a chronological tax-
onomy, classifying the prescriptions of classical texts within the context of
the era in which they were deployed. In a historical sense this makes per-
fect sense, but it offers limited scope for analyzing how senses of ourselves
may have changed across time, the disjunctures, continuities, etc., because
it provides an essentially static analysis of the relation of self to discourse.
Where Foucault deals with issues of change in Volumes 2 and 3 of THS,
he either makes large historical 'jumps', such as from Greek towards
Christian ethics (e.g. 1987: 250), or makes rather sweeping statements, as
in his argument that the shift from classical Greek thought towards the
Christian and the modern was marked by a move from a problematization
of sexual relations between men and boys to that between men and women
(1987: 253). As Foucault himself acknowledges (in relation to changes in
marital practice), 'to establish changes [across epochs] would demand an
entirely different documentation and very different analyses as well' to that
which he provides in the later volumes of THS (Foucault 1990: 149). Such
436 Tim Newton
an acknowledgement, and Foucault' s doubts about existing arguments

concerning changes in the self (e.g. 1990: 41), mean that his later work
does not constitute a basis for considering how senses of ourselves change
as power relations change. In consequence, it cannot easily inform our
understanding of how changing senses of ourselves relate to changes in
discourse.
Self and Discourse

In order to show the limitations of Foucault's ethics of the self, I shall turn
again to feminist work which dramatically illustrates how our theorizing
about subjectivity needs to be able to relate changes in the self to changes
in discourse. Foucault's work in THS cannot theorize such issues because
he provides no clear guidance as to how individuals are supposed to han-
dle the conflicts which they personally experience in relation to changing
discourse, and how people are meant to change themselves or the world
they inhabit. Feminist work provides an illustration of these difficulties by
addressing the tensions between feminist discourse and ethical practice.
Some studies, such as those on sexuality, are of particular interest since
they provide a focused point of contrast to Foucault's own work on sexu-
ality. At the same time, these studies examine issues which are experienced
as both highly 'personal' and difficult to change. One such example comes
from work on heterosexuality (e.g. Richardson 1996), and the struggle of
heterosexual feminists to personally develop alternatives to androcentric
gender stereotypes. For instance, feminist writers have questioned the equa-
tion of a masculine-feminine dichotomy with a dominance-submission
dichotomy in heterosexuality. Mary Boyle (1993) and Sheila Jeffreys
(1995) illustrate the way that discourses of sexuality such as sexology rein-
forced this dichotomous association. They both quote the 'high priest' of
sexology, Havelock Ellis, by way of illustration:
'the primary part of the female in courtship is in the playful yet serious assump-
tions of the role of the hunted animal who lures on the pursuer, not with the object
of escaping, but with the object of being finally caught ... [the male] will display
his energy and skill to capture the female or to arouse in her an emotional condi-
tion which leads her to surrender herself to him, this process at the same time
heightening his excitement' (Havelock Ellis 1923: 68, quoted in Jeffreys 1995: 200,
and part quoted in Boyle 1993: 205).
Based in part on his 'scientific' study of animal behaviour, Havelock Ellis
further suggested that it was easy to 'trace in women a delight in experi-
encing physical pain when inflicted by a lover, and an eagerness to accept
submission to his will. Such a tendency is certainly normal' (Havelock
Ellis 1923: 89, my italics). This image of the 'bio-naturalness' of male
domination within 'sexology' discourse appears as a fundamental political
issue, given the evidence of domestic violence, murder, rape, marital rape,
date rape, and surveys of male college students that indicate that more than
thirty percent would rape if they were sure they could get away with it
in Organizations
in Organizations
437
(Tieger 1981; Briere and Mulamuth 1983). Yet challenging the association
of masculinity with domination is a far from straightforward task, particu-
larly at a personal level. Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson note how 'sado-
masochistic themes surface repeatedly in descriptions of women's
heterosexual eroticism' with 'fantasies of bestiality, rape, passivity, being
looked at, tied up, beaten' (1993: 17). They quote Jeffreys' comment that
'if your oppression turns you on you have a much harder time fighting
your oppression' (Jeffreys 1990, quoted in Kitzinger and Wilkinson 1993:
17). Though some feminist writers have questioned the strength of the
masculinity-dominance association (e.g. Smart 1996), this issue does
underscore the need to explore how changes in the self interrelate with
changes in discourse, such as that of how feminist subjectivity interrelates
with feminist discourse. For otherwise, how can we understand how
individual and collective change is achieved?
Foucault's work is of course of direct relevance to feminist work in pro-
viding a basis to deconstruct, say, sexology discourse, and the truth effects
it heralds through recourse to 'science' and definitions of normality.
Equally, his work is helpful in relation to feminist critiques of androcen-
tric sexuality and the patriarchal presentation of romance ('he swept her
off her feet', etc.), as well as serving 'as a corrective to some of the essen-
tializing tendencies of theories of "feminine" ethics' (McNay 1992: 115).
Yet one must debate the 'affinities' that some writers are keen to see
between feminist and Foucauldian thought (e.g. Townley 1994, 1995).
Heterosexual feminists who turn to the later Foucault as a base for resist-
ing androcentrism and changing their own sexuality are likely to be dis-
appointed. On the one hand, as argued above, the static nature of Foucault' s
analyses in Volumes 2 and 3 of THS cannot provide a way of conceptual-
izing the interrelation between changes in subjectivity and changes in dis-
course. On the other hand, there is a distinct tension between the desire to
construct an 'ethical feminist subject' and Foucault's recourse to the highly
patriarchal ethics of the classical Greek and Latin period, where men were
the "'active actors"' who operated on 'the objects of possible pleasure:
"4women, boys, slaves"' (Foucault 1987: 47). Writers such as Townley
(1994, 1995) appear to overlook these tensions in their attempts to derive
a feminist 'care of the self' from the later Foucault. Yet it needs to be
remembered that Foucault was concerned with societies where a man
'would be punished less severely if he committed rape, overcome by the
voracity of his desire, than if he deliberately and artfully seduced a woman'
since the 'rapist violated only the woman's body, while the seducer vio-
lated the husband's authority' (Foucault 1987: 146). One can of course
argue for the adoption of the (Foucauldian) ethics without the context, but
such a removal of 'the self from a social context' (Burkitt 1993: 67) only
further supports the image of Foucauldian 'de-subjectifying' as overly indi-
vidualized and decontextualized. Can one abstract Foucault's description
of the male care of the self from a classical Greek society where women
were on a par with slaves? As McNay notes, 'by reducing all practices
of the self to the level of self-stylization, Foucault does not elaborate
438 Tim Newton
sufficiently on the socio-cultural determinants which may impose some

practices, more than others, on the individual' (1992: 82).
Removing Essentialism?
As noted above, Foucault's work heralds the promise of overcoming the
trap of essentialism which has circumscribed work on subjectivity, both in
psychology and in sociology. Yet some of Foucault's work does appear to
convey an image of essentialism, most notably in his oft-quoted 'Afterword'
paper, where he asserts that:
'At the very heart of the power relationship and constantly provoking it are the
recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence offreedom. Rather than speaking of
an essential freedom, it would be better to speak of an "agonism"; of a relation-
ship which is at the same time reciprocal incitation and struggle; less of a face to
face confrontation which paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation'.
(1982: 221-222, my italics)
Aware of the seeming essentialism in the above passage such as the 'recal-
citrance of the will' and the 'intransigence of freedom', Willmott part-
quotes it, but then argues that 'Foucault does not ascribe to human beings
an essential desire either to become free or to resist the authority of
power-knowledge relations' (1994: 114). Willmott's defence against essen-
tialism appears to be based on Foucault's arguments that power is impos-
sible without freedom (1982: 221). In consequence, the possibility of
freedom represents a universal aspect of power relations, rather than an
essential human desire. Yet as Ian Burkitt (1993) has noted, other aspects
of the above quotation suggest that an essentialistic theoretical legacy did
continue to inform Foucault' s thinking. Burkitt questions whether
Foucault' s invocation of agonism is itself in danger of replacing one essen-
tialism with another, since Foucault seems to suggest here that 'struggle'
and 'permanent provocation' are endemic and essential features of life (see
quotation above). Burkitt observes that Foucault's metaphor of 'struggle'
has close parallels with the work of Nietzsche, whose 'will to power' can
be seen to draw on a neo-Darwinism wherein social struggle and conflict
are essential aspects of human existence. As Burkitt notes, Nietzsche pre-
sents a fundamentally asocial view of human beings since struggle and con-
flict are not the consequence of social relations, but arise because of 'the
clash between disparate individuals each struggling for their own survival
and the satisfaction of their instincts' (1993: 60). Though Foucault gener-
ally avoided such explicit naturalism, his notion of agonism still appears
to essentialize in evoking an image of human life wherein 'struggle' and
'provocation' are endemic features of the natural order. Furthermore,
Burkitt argues that Foucault romanticizes naturalistic images in a manner
again reminiscent of Nietzsche. As Burkitt observes, 'in Volume 1 of The
History of Sexuality, Foucault constantly posits the state of "pleasure"
against the construction of various sexualities within relations of power,
appealing to the vision of a more natural life, free from the constraints of
social organization, in a way that is almost Rousseauian' (Burkitt 1993:
67). The combination of universalism - the 'inevitability' of freedom for

'power relations' - and the evocation of Nietszchean essentialism and nat-
uralism mean that Foucault provides a less than entirely reliable basis upon
which to resist the sins of essentialism.
It is perhaps not entirely surprising therefore that some of those influenced
by Foucault employ descriptions of the self which can appear essentialis-
tic. For example, David Collinson stridently argues that 'identity [is] inher-
ently unstable for all organizational members and therefore highly
problematic, especially for those seeking security' and that 'issues of iden-
tity are always likely to be one feature of multiple motives that inform
human action' (1994: 56, partly my italics). Whilst any organizational
Foucauldian worth her salt might say that identity is only currently impor-
tant because of the incessantly questioning effect of modem discourse
(rather than because of some inherent essentialism), Collinson's language
does appear to be strongly supportive of traditional attempts within psy-
chology to arrive at universal and essential characteristics of the modem
self. Certainly for practical purposes, Collinson is clearly arguing that there
are particular defining features of the modem self. But isn't this rather
reductionistic, and are we really so confident about our knowledge of mod-
em discourse and the modem self that we can say that our twentieth cen-
tury psychology is 'always' of a particular form? Isn't this falling straight
into the trap that Foucauldians say they are concerned to avoid?
Resolving Dualism?
As noted above, one of the other chief promises of the turn to Foucault
was that such work could traverse the dualism which has continually beset
sociological accounts of subjectivity. Townley (1997) has furthered this
argument by trying to show how Foucault provides a way of overcoming
more or less all dualism in organizational analysis. She uses the concept
of dualism in a very broad sense to refer to a wide variety of dichotomous
differentiation such as that between Taylorism and Human Relations, HRM
vs. traditional personnel management, unitarist versus pluralist, etc.. She
argues that Foucault avoids the problems of such supposed dualisms
through his emphasis on the practices associated with disciplinary power.
For example, since disciplinary practices pervade both Taylorism and
Human Relations, HRM and traditional personnel management,etc., there
is no need to maintain the dualistic distinctions between them. Furthermore,
following Townley, it appears that any conflict of interest between man-
agement and workers is itself dissolved by the way in which Foucauldian
study allows an analysis in terms of 'depth' which 'goes beyond good and
evil' (1997: 30).
Yet the question arises as to whether such Foucauldian promise elides the
difficulties of dualism rather than resolves them. In the case of Townley's
(1997) work, one can argue that the dichotomies between say, human rela-
tions and scientific management, are not resolved just because a 'depth
analysis' shows them both to be forms of power-knowledge practice; they
440 Tim Newton
still remain different kinds of practice which use contrasting sets of assump-
tions, and which may have quite different effects within the power rela-
tions of the workplace. Whilst it takes a naive humanism to present them
as 'good' and 'evil', the disjunctures do not just disappear because one
observes that they both constitute forms of disciplinary practice. In any
case, we are a long way 'beyond good and evil' (Nietzsche 1990): critical
organizational analysis has long been aware of the discipline implied by
both scientific management and human relations (e.g. Baritz 1960), yet has
still felt comfortable with what Townley sees as the dualistic distinctions
between them. Though Foucauldian relativisation may aid Nietszchean
desires to 'recognize untruth as a condition of life' (Nietzsche 1990: 36),
by itself this does little to resolve existing dualisms.
There is however that 'other' dualism central to the theorizing of subjec-
tivity, namely the tendency to define subjectivity either in terms of indi-
viduals, and their feelings and behaviour, or in terms of social structures,
capital-labour relations, etc. (see above). For Willmott (1995), this dualism
still remains the sin, and he regales against writers such as Burawoy (1985)
and Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) for continuing to perpetuate it. Yet the
question remains as to whether the work of organizational Foucauldians
such as Knights, Willmott and Townley does present an alternative. In par-
ticular, does such work present a seeming resolution which works by
repressing the subject rather than resolving dualism?. Since the subject
largely appears as a function of power-knowledge practices - which make
her vulnerable, and embroil her in a disciplinary matrix - the problem of
the subject largely disappears (see above). In other words, because the
subject seems to be possess very little agency, there is no need to resolve
dualisms that might exist between say, an agential subject and disciplinary
power. Yet, as we have seen from feminist work, such issues do not dis-
appear as a result of theoretical suppression: people still need to actively
work through the contradictions between their individual sense of them-
selves and their allegiance to discursive positions. As 'constitution' in dis-
course involves such active subjects, this process is never likely to be
straightforward, and can perhaps only be analyzed through a theoretical
account which positions a changing subject within the context of changing
discursive and 'material' relations. Developing such an account remains an
impossibility within current Foucauldian readings because they appear
unable to 'give life' to active subjects.
Conclusion
Though this paper has presented an array of criticism, I would not wish
to end it without pointing to some of the major theoretical benefits of
Foucault's work. In the first place, reading Foucault still occasions a won-
drous inversion of many of the traditional premises of history and of the
medico-social sciences, which challenges the traditional assumption of
the unity of the subject. He illustrates how notions of the self cannot be
considered beyond discourse, and his work continually underscores how

power is relational, not 'a naked fact' or 'an institutional right' or 'a struc-
ture which holds out or is smashed' (Foucault 1982: 224). In addition, orga-
nizational theory has traditionally had difficulty in developing a convincing
theory of the self and of subjectivity, and Foucauldian work has arguably
done a lot to open up this area to critical inquiry. For example, Foucault's
'decentring from (and of) the subject' encourages us to consider how the
subject is constructed, how, say, individuality and the sense of an
autonomous coherent self, is achieved, and, in spite of Foucault's suspi-
cions regarding histories (e.g. Foucault 1984a), his focus on genealogy does
underscore the need to develop an historical account of organization, power
and subjectivity. Furthermore, we have a lot to be thankful for in
Foucauldians' questioning of dualism and essentialism, even if the work of
Foucault does not resolve these issues. Finally, Foucauldian work still con-
stitutes a welcome challenge to orthodox positions within labour process
theory. On the one hand, labour process writers have the considerable
advantage of maintaining a clear, critical commentary. Yet, on the other,
some labour process writers continue to evidence a tendency to deal with
critique by returning to an orthodoxy wherein subjectivity remains largely
a consequence of economic 'structures' (e.g. Martinez Lucio and Stewart
1997), a party line which ignores the long standing critique that structures
do not 'do' anything (Giddens 1984; Willmott 1994).
Nevertheless, for all this promise, there are still serious 'sins' associated
with Foucauldian work, most notably the difficulty which Foucault and
Foucauldians have in conceptualizing how modern selves socially 'manoeu-
vre' in relation to changing discursive practices, how they 'play', resist,
ignore, subvert (etc.) such practices within the context of particular socially
constructed stabilities in power asymmetry (e.g. hierarchy, gender). Related
to this difficulty is the inability of Foucauldian analysis to explore how the
self and discourse are established in the context of changing political and
material relations. Foucauldians have overcome such deficits, either through
invoking a psychologization of the self, which appears at odds with
Foucault (e.g. Knights and Willmott 1989), or through the deployment of
largely non-Foucauldian frameworks for purposes of organizational analy-
sis (e.g. Knights and Murray 1994), or by down-playing the salience of sta-
bility and 'material' relations (e.g. Grey 1994, Du Gay 1996), or by using
'Catch-22' arguments that imply that discursive practices remain signifi-
cant whether they are employed, resisted, or just ignored (e.g. Du Gay et
al. 1996), or by disregarding the stabilities of power asymmetry and hier-
archy in which discursive practices are 'played out' in organizations (e.g.
Miller and Rose 1990; Du Gay 1996). Together, these limitations also mean
that Foucauldians are hampered in constructing convincing processes of
either individual or collective change, while Foucauldian prescriptions for
'de-subjectifying' and care of the self provoke a decontextualization that,
ironically., can appear supportive of individualization. In sum, we still
appear to be looking for a means to arrive at an understanding of subjec-
tivity and organization which attends to agency and 'materialism' yet avoids
442 Tim Newton
dualism, essentialism and reductionism, and is at the same time relevant to

constructing an ethics of individual and collective change within and with-
out organizations (Newton 1998). This is a tall order perhaps, and one that
runs the danger of creating an all-encompassing, and hence dubious, meta-
narrative. Yet, does this mean that we should just ignore the question of
the self altogether? If we are to make sense of both ourselves and organi-
zations, we need plausible accounts of subjectivity which can explore how
changes in the self relate to changes in discourse and 'material' practice.
In consequence, we may need to further doubt the Foucauldian 'truth
effect', if only to pay greater consideration to other theoretical perspectives
which might inform our understanding of power and subjectivity.
Note 1. Elsewhere, I have drawn on the work of Elias in order to reconsider current debates
concerning power and subjectivity (Newton 1997a, 1997b, 1998). Though not without its
limitations, Elias's work represents an interesting alternative conceptualization, and one that
is pertinent to many of the issues raised in the present paper.
2. Strangely, Knights appears to use the term 'post-dualistic' in a manner at variance with
Parker's (1997) original formulation of the term. For Knights, postdualism implies writers
who have 'gone beyond' the anti-dualism of writers such as Giddens. For Parker (1997),
however, post-dualism includes post-structuralists and more modernist writers such as
Giddens, Bourdieu and Elias.
3. For Rose and Miller, understanding translation means analyzing how 'language.. .serves
as a translation mechanism between the general and the particular', such as in early twen-
tieth century Britain when 'the language of national efficiency served both to establish the
proper role of government and the kinds of problems that it could and should address...'
(Miller and Rose 1990: 6). Following Latour, other forms of agency are acknowledged by
Rose and Miller, but even here it merely reflects 'the extent that actors have come to under-
stand their situation according to a similar language and logic...' (Rose and Miller 1992: 184,
added emphasis).
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Theorizing Subjectivity The Failure of Foucauldian Studies?: Organizations

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Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations: The

Failure of Foucauldian Studies?

Descriptors: Foucault, subjectivity, agency, materialism, resistance, ethics

arguments for emancipation), and defends Foucault against criticism (such

The Triumph of Foucault?

jectivity (1995: 19-20). The lack of a serious critique of the Foucauldian

Foucault and Subjectivity

and subjectivity in the reproduction and transformation of social structures

1848/1967: 82-3; Berman 1982; Willmott 1994: 103). Yet particularly in

Psychologizing the Self?

Frankfurt School language in order to place an emphasis on 'latent' identity

medium- to long term. Gender relations provide one example of such

the perception of 'material' relations. This neglect is also apparent amongst

Agency, the Self and Discourse

difference' through 'playing' with discursive practices (Newton 1994, 1996c;

Personnel selection is faced with the prospect of being chiefly determined

around modern discourse, may 'elaborate', or 'manipulate', or 'subvert' its

the extent to which a discourse such as that of 'enterprise', accounting or

Foucault's work. The lack of attention to the disjuncture between Foucault

Theorizing Resistance and Change

and collective workplace-based 'struggle'. For instance, to the extent that

subjection constitute an effective basis for either collective or individual

self manoeuvres in relation to discursive practices means that we are left

trast, her advocacy of 'self-formation' reflects Foucault's sense of the clas-

an acknowledgement, and Foucault' s doubts about existing arguments

Self and Discourse

sufficiently on the socio-cultural determinants which may impose some

67). The combination of universalism - the 'inevitability' of freedom for

considered beyond discourse, and his work continually underscores how

dualism, essentialism and reductionism, and is at the same time relevant to

References Arato, Andrew, and Eike Gebhardt Boyle, Mary

Newton, Tim Rose, Nikolas, and Peter Miller

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