Philosophising HRM

Philosophising HRM: uncovering the issues of the contemporary self
Philosophising HRM
Uncovering the Issues of the Contemporary Self
Acknowledgements
The present script has been written with the awareness of a profound change, both in the professional and personal life. For having left their doors always open, I would like to thank the all professors of the Master program in Human Resource & Knowledge Management at Lancaster University; especially Dr. Bogdan Costea whom ideas have represented an extraordinary intellectual challenge. Thanks also to my colleagues and friends Ioanna Chatziadoniu (and her coffee), Edurne Salceda, Tihana Belzmalinovich, Rui Pedro Teixeira, Katy Atkinson, and Sarah Jennings, for having kept high the same challenge with a tender and constant moral support.
To my brother Gian Marco,

Because the way is long Because the quest for knowledge never end
PHILOSOPHISING HRM
Uncovering the Issues of the Contemporary Self
Abstract In the light of a history of discontinuities, the present work takes shape as exegesis of HRM in its cultural connotation. HRM as the outcome of a series of more or less dramatic events characterising Western society during modernity, placing societys practices in the horizon of the valorisation of human life, through the language of authenticity. However, by considering the subject in terms of its essence rather than of its existence, and by approaching authenticity as sheer individualism, the new managerial rhetoric celebrates the reification of the self as well as its de-humanisation. Hence, the imperative call for a philosophical reflection upon the human being in order to raise existential questions that in the Atlantic culture of capitalism and consumerism seem to have been lost behind the establishment of peculiar discourses and myths,
institutionalised by the same culture.
Introduction The idea to philosophise Human Resource Management (HRM) stems from a critical reflection upon HRM as traditionally seen in management studies. In the last twenty-five years, the literature developed around this topic seems to have had little consideration both of the intrinsic meaning of HRM and of its essential implications on the individual either worker or employer1. Despite the fact that the critical positions to management practices have had a wide recognition (e.g., Legge, Ackroyd, Thompson, Keenoy, Guest, Knights, Willmott, Collinson), they seem to
In line with the nature of the argumentations presented here, there is no separation between employers and employees, since it is argued that HRM affects equally both parts. Accordingly, and especially in the second section, there will be a general crossreference to the individual, the subject or the human being in general.
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downplay broader questions of work inherent to the subject, and its existence in a context of life. Prevalently, criticism centres on managerial, organisational and almost economical positions: the relations between workers and managers, even though problematised, appear to be entrapped within an analytical, structural and rather non-existential conceptual framework. In line with this, an example is offered by the Labour Process Theory based on a Marxist perception of society. Albeit there is an interest on the repercussions that managerial conducts have had on the subject, comments generally wind along the notions of managerial advantage, exploitation, resistance, discrimination, power relations, etc. in a rather systematic view of society. However, this essay has been written from a different perspective and intention, that is, an attempt to explore, in order to understand, the real implications of HRM phenomenon seeking for, and realising, an authentic corporate colonisation of the self (Casey cited in Hancock & Tyler, 2001: 574). What is implicit in the whole work is the idea that there are some unexplored questions, territories that remain in the shadow of an excessive ambiguity (entertained by mainstream authors), which only a philosophical reflection may shed light upon. It seems that there has been a philosophical superficiality, currently requiring a return to philosophy as the means to further explore the implications of social phenomena, such as HRM, which are often unproblematised and taken for granted. Therefore, in this context, the act of philosophising does not refer to pure transcendental speculations about HRM; it does not mean to theorise some conjectures in the name of a purely abstract metaphysical language. On the contrary, it suggests the idea of going deeper in the object of analysis through philosophy as a study of the reasons of being and the nature human things. Although the link between the field of HRM and philosophy is particularly complex, the latter may be (at last, in the present work) the source for further questionings of the managerial ideology, in the light of a deeper and more open vision of man and the society in which s/he
operates and expresses. Thus it is argued that, going back to the greats of Western philosophical thought, will lead to a wider contextualisation of the issues inherent in management practices, and to their implications on the subject, as the title aims at suggesting. Hence, HRM and subjectivity are the central domains of this paper; two extremely dependent and intertwined categories, whose detached and monolithic analysis appears to be at least problematic, little interesting and almost sterile. It deals with a reciprocal and complex relationship whose difficulty mainly derives from the fact that the individual the human component of management and its object is a visible territory, concrete yet mysterious at the same time. From these assumptions, the present project is structured in three different but intimately connected parts. As a starting point the focus is mainly on the functional perspective of HRM, that is to say, how HRM is conceived in terms of its functions. After a brief introductory section about transformations of work, I will delineate the basic features of the new managerialism in relation to some of the academic exponents in British and American literature. Only in the second part is the history of HRM and the position taken by the individual in its natural and cultural dimension further explored according to the implied cultural themes, which presuppose the authenticity of the self in the horizon of the good, the healthy and of beauty. Here, through the explicit adoption of a post-structuralist way of reasoning, questions relating HRM to the self come to be stressed in further detail. More specifically, the historical philosophy of Michel Foucault is used as a framework of analysis and as a way to read the implications of HRM to the subject. The choice of using Foucaults thought is not casual; rather it is mainly due to the recognition of his originality in developing a genealogical method in which the cultural and historical components of Western society are taken in their complexity and never left aside from the analysis. This seems to be a quite valuable point from which to ask different questions about the nature of HRM. Thus the main
purpose of this central section is to suggest a double reflection: not only the subject (as homo culturalis) is socially constructed, but also HRM seems to be a cultural phenomenon rather than a planned project of management. Accordingly, there is a move away from the Marxist positions based on historical materialism towards the recognition of the cultural components of history. The new vision of HRM stemming from this analysis is likely to suggest that HRM refers to ways of talking about work and how to be at work, implying certain things regarding how to be a human in general. This is the basic link with the third and final part, where the focus is not on HRM per se, but on issues related with it such as questions regarding the very fundamental philosophical analysis of Being. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand whether there can be an analytical apparatus used to decide what has happened to the human in modernity. Accordingly, in order to fully grasp the implications that HRM has had on subjectivity, I adopt a theoretical and analytical position mostly derived from existential philosophy and its phenomenological method. For his emblematic interpretation of history, as well as for his consideration of the individual in terms of existence rather than essence, it is argued that the work of Martin Heidegger remains of especially important among the others2. A choice, primarily stemming from the ability of the German philosopher to articulate a deep reflection upon authenticity, the leit motif of HRM practices. What is argued is that his thought can contribute to a critique of HRM in three ways: showing HRMs incapacity to valorise human existence, showing HRMs excessive affection to a vision of the individual as having a manageable essence, and showing HRMs misinterpretation of the notion of the authentic self. Existential philosophy is then implicitly used to shed light on the enigmas in question: what does
2
The philosophical existential positions are generally characterised by multiple differences within the same stream, so that a coherent determination appears quite impossible. However, in the works of some exponents such as Buber, Husserl, Gadamer, Jaspers, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, or Arendt, it is possible to distinguish common traits, especially the sense of Being as existence rather than essence.
it mean to be human? What is the condition of the human and of humanity? What do we think about life? What does HRM say about the way Atlantic culture forges the subject?3 In other words, there seems to be a return to fundamental questions about the self, its nature, its life and the meaning ascribed to it.
It is important to inform the reader that the set of questions do not necessary need an immediate answer; rather they are a fundamental starting point for additional considerations upon HRM, the subject and its life in general.
1.
THE RISE OF HRM: THE FREE-FLEX MENTALITY OF AN INNOVATIVE RATIONALISM
1.1. The transformation in the world of work Before getting into the details of the cultural analysis of HRM and its relevance for subjectivity, a consideration of the contemporary situation of work is inevitable necessary to fully grasp the reasons encouraging the rise of this acclaimed and often underestimated phenomenon (HRM) at least in its existential implications. Since the 1970s the Western capitalistic society has witnessed a deep transformation of work and employment, framed in a more general context of change. The crisis of the monetary system in 1973 (Bretton Woods) has led to the break up of the compromise between Fordism and Keynesian political economy as premises of the Welfare State. In the same period a further destabilising element was the increasing power of the Japanese firms, modelled around the coordinates of JIT and lean production. All these factors, combined with the development of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), inaugurated a period of rapid flux and uncertainty in which life styles have also been modified (Harvey, 1989). By the early 1980s, an answer to the crisis was being sought in the idea of (planned) change, widely supported by the neo-liberal politics of
the New Right especially in the USA by Regan, and in the UK by Thatcher. From a macro perspective, the massive deregulation and liberalisation of markets (included that of work) resulted in a high dynamism of the economy what Sennett (1998) called flexible capitalism primarily testified by the exacerbation of globalisation processes, the
internationalisation of the economic and financial capitals, and the redefinition of the powers of the nation-state (Giddens, 1990). Despite the complexity of this transformation, it is possible to summarise this process of change in a few general points: from the Keynesian political economy to the Shumpeterian one (Jessop, 1992); from the economies of scale to the economies of scope; from mass production to individualised products and, last but not least, from manufacturing to a strong service sector due to the significance of information and knowledge (Drucker, 1993; Bell, 1974; Davenport and Prusak, 1998). In order to survive in a turbulent and unpredictable business environment, and in order to dance with the rhythm of change (note), organisations had to avoid the rigid, hierarchical and bureaucratic structures of the old industrial order via flexibility, the new panacea for restructuring and a word cancelling the individual identitys symbol of the last century, and the career as a continuous narrative (Grey, 1994). From a micro perspective, the theoretical models of flexible specialisation on the one hand (Piore and Sabel, 1984) and the flexible firm on the other (Atkinson, 1985), despite their differences, have both supported the reorganisation of labour along the coordinates of flexibility. The crucial aim of such changes has been to achieve competitive advantage, while retaining effective cost control. The re-organisation of work has occurred at different levels of the organisational structure, in different forms of work, and in different aspects of the employment and contractual relationship. Concepts such as downsizing, delayering, de-integration, disorganisation, core and periphery empowerment, team working, outsourcing, culture of excellence, strategic planning, organisational culture management,
BPR, TQM, etc., are all buzz words testifying a shift of paradigm from Fordism as rigidity to post-Fordism as flexibility4. The new wave of managerialism acquires its consistence along the assumptions that economic success comes not only from cost saving or perfectionism of technologies, but rather from an implacable personal creativity, innovation and knowledge production. A careful analysis of contemporary
organisational and managerial practices shows how they all may be considered as an expression of the well-known American Dream, and the rise of HRM in this context, does not stand outside this very dream (Guest, 1990). In line with the American and British production of the new mentalities of work, in the early 1980s HRM now even seen as Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) has been presented to the pagan majority as the dominant ideology, a new philosophy of management claiming both, that its roots lie in Personnel Management (PM) and that it is completely detached from its tradition. Since its emergence a consistent and multifaceted literature has flourished about HRM, its history, development and the positions held by individuals, in a way that a unitary characterisation of the phenomenon appears to be inappropriate yet constantly searched. Karen Legge (1995; 1989), one of the more dedicated authors to the detailed analysis of HRMs developmental history, has shown how one of the difficulties determining the impossibility to coherently define it may stem from the multiplicity of the models describing the phenomenon. Thus, within the normative (Beer and Spector, 1985; Guest, 1987), descriptive-functional (Torrington and Hall, 2002), critical-evaluative (Watson, 1986) and descriptive-behavioural models (Legge, 1995), it is possible to come across a range of different characterisations of HRM in a way that it seems to be highly challenging to find a logical determination of it. However, it is possible to perceive as the
In the field of organisation and management studies is still prevalent the dispute about the significance of a radical change, where the adjective radical refers to a revolution in a social order or system (cfr. Pollert, 1991; Hyman, 1991).
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common thread, the general agreement on identifying the individual subject as the basic unit of analysis for management practices. Moreover, a further element disturbing the innovative features of HRM and its unitary characterisation is given by the constant confrontation with PM. In facts, both seems to have compatible views of management and the individual, so that HRM is more likely to be read as a model of managing people at work that is more credible than personnel management (Legge, 1995: 28 emphasis added). A detailed scrutiny of the incongruence stemming from the comparison between HRM and PM requires a substantial effort of articulation in order to delineate each model describing the phenomenon. Although in the next sections, more comments on the reasons that have led to the legitimation of HRM on PM will be made, here the focus is more on the general functional perspective in which HRM is considered in terms of its supposed ability to respond in a more flexible way to the challenges of societal turbulence. In line with this, HRM is generally perceived as the management of people to achieve behaviour and performance that will enhance an organisations effectiveness5 or, as argued by Guest (1987: 503), HRM comprises a set of policies designed to maximise organisational integration, employee commitment, flexibility and quality of work. At least from the more functional perspective, HRM has thus constantly engaged with the new language promoting flexibility as the source towards economic success and individuals satisfaction. Through practices of recruitment and selection, appraisal and reward, training and
development, HRM is chronologically the last attempt to overcome the rigid rationalities and the exclusive emphasis on efficiency, towards a concern for the welfare and development of individuals at work (Legge, 1995: 11). One of the ways to grasp the meaning of this statement is through an understanding of the dichotomic language that has developed from the peculiar distinction between the Hard and Soft models of HRM. While the first has a more utilitarian/instrumental concern, the latter
5
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/library/learning/s_hrm.shtml
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is more likely to highlight the significance of a developmental humanism in the work dimension:
The hard model stresses HRMs focus on the crucial importance of the close integration of human resources policies, systems and activities with business strategies [] From this perspective the human resource, the object of formal manpower planning, can be just that, largely a factor of production [] In contrast, the soft developmental humanism, while still emphasising the importance of integrating HR policies with business objectives, sees this as involving treating employees as valued assets, a source of competitive advantage through their commitment, adaptability and high quality (Legge, 1995: 66).
By recalling the works of a range of authors, from Hendry and Pettigrew to Storey, from Guest to Morris and Burgoyne, Legge is visible willing to point out that, where in the hard models the focus is ultimately human resource management, in the soft version greater attention is given to human resource management. In view of that, HRM deals with a set of propositions decreeing a new rationality for the management of people that declares a clear break away from previous conceptions of paternalistic management, in which managers took responsibilities for their workers (Taylor, 1911; Fayol, 1949). Nowadays, the more direct relationship between managers and workers, and the consequent lowering of trade union power as mediating the relationship (Edwards, 1999), substantiate the foundation of so-called entrepreneurial (Schumpeterian) culture (du Gay and Salaman, 1992). In the last twenty years or so, in the context of work the subject has been approached in terms of its own ability to authenticate its position; the individual is said to be selfentrepreneurial and free to construct its own aspirations (du Gay and Salaman, 1992). The strengthening of notions such as empowerment, responsibility or practical autonomy (Willmott, 1993) all aim to develop in the subject a sense of being a self-actualising ego (Rose, ?), the self-
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employed individual disciplining himself. In view of that, soft models of HRM have embraced almost exclusively practices through which it is possible to flexibilise organisational members. The operation of fields such as recruitment, selection, appraisal, reward, training and
development, is now abundantly articulated through fervent highlighting of notions such as commitment, motivation and creativity at work, essential ingredients to meet the needs of a highly dynamic market. What is argued is that, within organisations, individuals flexibility is a vital requirement but it is possible only if he or she displays high organisational commitment, high trust and high levels of motivation (Legge, 1995; Beer, 1985; Guest, 1987). As Beer (1985) points out, the rationale behind this is based on the assumption that committed individuals will be more satisfied, more productive and more adaptable. The shift from compliance, imposed by bureaucratic control, to attitudinal (and not just behavioural) commitment (Beer, 1985) is constantly searched via communication, motivation and leadership (Storey, 1987: 6). Generally, it is via cultural change programmes and Organisational Culture Management (OCM) that individuals learn how to be committed. Considered as a central feature of HRM, OCM comprises discourses, legends, stories, myths and the production of artefacts all representing the soft means through which leaders shapes peoples values and goals. Especially the American literature of excellence (Peter and Waterman, 1982; Ouchi, 1981; Deal and Kennedy, 1982) has supported the idea for organisations to have strong cultures in order to achieve the competitive advantage via responsiveness to customers needs, in line with its sovereignty (du Guy and Salaman, 1992). Accordingly, the analytical categories of conformity (corporate
understanding) and collectivism (team work, group) appears to be particularly pervasive within the organisation, as a means to elicit in the individual a sense of belonging it, for a better performance and selfsatisfaction.
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In few words, identity and subjectivity are being (re) discovered both as sources of value and objects of far-reaching changes through the flexibilisation of organisations and the expansion of markets (Holtegrewe, 2003: 2).
1.2. An urgent criticism, a vital investigation Whilst part of the literature has prosecuted flexible managerial practices as having a corrosive nature for the self (Sennett, 1998), another part is more likely to analyse the reasons why flexible practices and HRM have emerged. In line with this tradition, authors such as Ackroyd and Procter (2001) argue that implicit in HRM models is the idea of employees flexibility for the employer. Such an approach recalling the Marxist dialectic between capitalists and proletarians, managers and workers, employers and employees is particularly attentive to the conditions of exploitation under which the employee exists. Looking at organisations, critics of HRM heavily focus upon the exploitative nature of work, which remains its central feature. Restoring Marxs argument, the essential aim of employers/managers is still that to create surplus value. With the triumphant emergence of capitalism (Meszaros, 1975: 33) the individual has to be reified converted into a thing, into a mere piece of property for the duration of the contract before it could be mastered by its own owner (Ibid, 34). Behind this assumption is a materialistic view of society and of the formation of man, rooted in the anthropological philosophy of Marx (18181883), widely known as dialectical materialism (or historical materialism). Marxs whole theoretical apparatus develops from a materialistic view of history, along a trajectory of thought leading from Hegel to Feuerbach. From the former, Marx has drawn the historical approach by refusing its metaphysical structure; from the latter, he has inherited a materialistic attitude declining, however, its historical deficiency. The outcome has been the articulation of a material view of history, solidly opposed to the
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historical idealism making spiritual causes prior to material ones6. To say that history has got a material foundation means to identify economy (structure) as the first source of historical processes shaping the institutions and ideologies (superstructure) alias, systems of ideas culture, politics, law, religion that respectively interact with history. Since it is within economy that Marx finds the roots of the super-structure, for every social fact there is an economic reason. Another core postulate in Marxs analysis is the conviction that society is made of economic classes, struggling continuously for the possession of the means of production, so that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle (Marx, 1964: 35). Without going much deeper into Marxs ideas it is vital here to transfer the discussion in the field of contemporary management, in order to appreciate the living theoretical separation, which still exists between managers and workers; a separation affirming a situation of power and economic advantage for the former. Especially Labour Process Theory literature has shown how the analytical categories implicit in HRM as commitment rather than compliance, the self-disciplined worker,
empowerment, de-centralisation of power, etc. have only masked the idea of mistreatment and control mainly associated with Fordism. However, what is commonly argued is that the very notion of managing the human resource raises questions of legitimacy of the non-exploitative nature of labour. In practice, HRM is conceived as a case of the wolf in sheeps clothing (Keenoy, 1990) involving new categories of control (e.g. OCM) and exploitation (e.g. the quest for conformity and commitment) legitimating management rituals. More or less the worker is depicted as Aristotle viewed the slave, that is, a talking tool. The instrumental use of flexibility thus depicts HRM as an assembly of strategies having deep and negative consequences on the individual self, whose essence comes to be destroyed by a new managerialism conceived in terms of sheer and premeditated laceration (fragmentation) of the self, flowing in a sense of
6
In Hegel (1977), for example, history flows from the Spirit.
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alienation. However, despite an unequivocal degree of validity, this scrutiny obstructs HRMs cultural features and the exploration of deeper issues relating the constitution of the modern self. This standpoint is usually trapped in a general structuralist perspective, identifying HRM as a planned set of practices specifically designed to favour the needs of capitalism and organisations against workers: HRM as furtively
undermining its own basic promises of non-exploitation and non-control. An alternative way to approach HRM and the subject is to question not the (functional) why, but rather the how of their history. To develop an exegesis of the cultural formation of management, leads to a rejection of Marxs materialism by emphasising the cultural nature of social practices: management does not serve only economic ends, it is not the product of a material dialectic; rather it follows a historical-cultural path. In such a view, HRM can be interpreted as a phenomenon genealogically determined by a multiplicity of events and discourses implied in Atlantic cultures, such as the accent upon freedom and authenticity rooted in the culture of modernity and substantiated by a universal need for humanity. Thus, a crisis of traditional and modern faiths, the rise of an existential sentiment is central factor in the rise of HRM. But it is also important to identify a set of events whose interconnections have paved the way for the emergence of this ideology. Among them (but not necessarily in a chronological order), can be mentioned neo-liberal ideologies and the attacks on the Welfare State, the advent of mass consumption, the Cold war, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, new processes of globalisation, the increasing development of ICTs, the rise of knowledge economy, privatisation, the free market, wealth, flexibility, and the renegation of rigidities, the power of advertising and marketing, the development of the psychological sciences, the processes of
christianisation and evangelisation after the discovery of America, the art of language and the printed word, the Socratic rhetoric, etc all having actually contributed to constitute HRM as a new way of doing things at work.
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2.
HRM IN THE ATLANTIC CULTURE: THE CONCERN FOR HUMANITY AND THE SEARCH FOR AUTHENTICITY
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future Jeremiah, 29: 11
2.1. The Shattering of Faiths To overcome the convictions that HRM is exclusively a planned product of the 1980s and 1990s in relations to the strengthening of notions such as flexibility and individual freedom implies wider considerations upon the Western society from a more socio-theoretical perspective and less political-economical. Whether it is possible to recognise a change in the world of work and in managerial practices (the rise of HRM), the very change cannot be taken apart from the mutation of the individual self in history, and from the conditions of social uncertainty traversing the Western society during modernity. Born in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, the epoch of modernity has generally determined a high degree of societal and economic progress, establishing a deep caesura with the previous traditional and religious bonds. However, since its naissance, it has also decreed a time for human beings decadence: the individual forms the backbone of modernity, in Europe, and like modernity it is born in perplexity (Bruckner, 2000:17).
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Since the seventeenth century (but even during the previous centuries), a series of deep transformations have in facts been the solid base for the spiritual crises of man: the scientific and industrial revolutions, the passage from monarchic states to liberal democracies, the motto of libert, egalit and fraternit, the waves of white colonialism, etc., are only few examples that have established both a solid anthropocentrism and, at the same time, the affirmation of a precarious and indeterminate condition for subjectivity. Rousseaus Le sentiment de lexistence and Goethes works during the eighteenth century, the paintings of Edward Munch in the late nineteenth century or the Kierkegaardian philosophy on anguish (retrieved by Heidegger during the last century) are absolutely exemplar of a sense of loss worsening in the first half of the twentieth century, when the crisis of reason endures a mortal blow (NB: I dont know how to eliminate all these century repetitions). The tragic vision of a world lacerated by two World Wars, and by the horrors of Nazis, Fascist and Comunists ideologies, manifests a consistent cultural delusion in the regard of the modern ideals; moreover, it founds the premises for the spreading of an existential atmosphere pervading the Old Continent and problematising a growing de-humanisation of human beings. Conceived as the maximum exposition of the sense of
indeterminacy tormenting man, existentialism has placed an increasing attention to the limiting and negative aspects of human condition. As Kafkas Metamorphosis is likely to stress the banality of life, taking out from man its human feature, Jasperss (1971) concept of limit-situation (Grenzsituation) is as much incisive in underlying a problematic existence, by considering life as a shipwreck situation. Whether France and Germany have been the cradle of the entire existential consciousness as well as of the existential philosophy Italy has participated to the same feeling via the affirmation of the so-called Hermetic Thought. Among the representatives, Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) has expressed in verse the precariousness of life through a powerful metaphor of sorrowful understanding:
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Si sta come dautunno sugli alberi le foglie They stand like leaves on the trees in autumn 7.
Similarly, Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), making deep considerations of existence and the mystery of being and time, wrote:
[...] E andando nel sole che abbaglia, sentire con triste meraviglia, come tutta la vita e il suo travaglio, in questo seguitare una muraglia, che ha in cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia. And going into the suns blaze, once more, to feel, with sad surprise how all life and its battles is in this walk alongside a wall, topples with sharps bits of glass from broken bottle8.
It deals with a sensation of anxiety and inconsistency of man that, by the mid-1950s, has been further amplified by the decisive development of communication technologies leading to the formation of a ever more global village (McLuhan, 1962), and to the advancement of information as a means resolving the social entropy (Wiener, 1954). In The Critique of Modernity (1995), Alan Tourain writes that the triumphant technocracy provokes a sense of alienation in the subject finding itself without any capacity to construct its own identity. What comes to be realised is a psychological experience of de-materialisation and de-contextualisation: our image becomes fragmented, whit the consequence lost of subjectivity and meaning. As Deleuze and Guttari (1977) have argued, the prevalence of the imaginary and images encourage a virtual self making the human beings bodies without organs at the mercy of a despotic capitalism. Some years before, also Heidegger (1968) wrote that the essence of the modern epoch resides in the release of man from the religious and medieval ties to focalise upon itself. However, the process of centralise responsibilities causes a sentiment of anguish for the subject who sees itself committed in the attempt to control the world: the modern individual
7
G. Ungaretti (1918) Soldati, translated from Italian by Stuart Flynn
E. Montale (1925), from Meriggiare Pallido e Assorto, translated from Italian by Millicent Bell
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testifies the passage from a status of alienation in the mechanic era to a feeling of existential anguish typical of the technologic society. The contemporary historical debate certainly perceives in the 1960s the germs of this epochal transformation leading to the altered interpretation of world and society (Gray, 1998). The so-called crisis of modernity comes then to be further substantiated through the affirmation of a post-modern sentiment. The apocalyptic postmodernism of Lyotard (1984) and Baudrillard (1996), the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the radical modernity of Giddens, Beck and Lash (1994), the disorganised capitalisms theory of Lash and Urry (1987) and the more nihilistic positions of post-structuralism (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and Guttari), despite their several differences, all recognise the failure of the modern project and of the Enlightenment instances that have encouraged it: faith in progress, science, and a linear view of historical development (Voltaire, 1965). The claim of modernity to propose itself as a universal culture has lost its strength. Nowadays, caducity, discontinuity, chaos, contingency, indeterminacy, and distrust in every universal and totalising language, contrast the previous uniformity, rationality and systemic logic of modernity (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991). What is argued is that, at the origins of this situation, there has been a process of social fragmentation based on the dichotomy of the individual and the institutions through which both man himself and his institutions are destroyed and dispersed into tiny little fragments which are no longer connected and related (Sievers, 1994: 12). Thus, in a world irreparably fragmented, the unified and rational subject of modernity turns to be problematic and weakened. Also in the dimension of work has been possible to notice a high degree of inconstancy for individuals, already articulated by Marx during the nineteenth century, in concomitance with the development of capitalism and the expansion of industrialism. If the freedom of man lies in the objectification of its own nature and in taking the distance from it if
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the essence of man is in work with the advent of machines, as Marx would say, the subject is alienated, that is, victim of the same object. Thus, pursuant to the era of machine started to take shape an exigency of freedom and defence against all that transform human into a tool, an object, that is, an absolute estrange (Simmel, 1978). Along the discontinuities, ruptures and multiple crises of history, has took place a consistent consideration of human beings freedom and dignity; a return to the authenticity of the self implying a moral ideal of selffulfilment, that is, being true to oneself, in a specifically modern understanding of the term (Alan Bloom cited in Taylor, 1991: 15).
2.2. A return to humanism: towards the re-constitution of the self It is from the recognition of such an uncertain historical condition that, generally, the issues of subjectivity have been shifted from pure theoretical argumentation to a more pragmatic administration, becoming often an object of real speculation and manipulation. The attempts to manage subjectivity in the workplace for example with HRM phenomenon have constituted not only the fundamental means leading to a (misinformed) superior economic performance, but also the pretext to a legitimate historical and social situation of uncertainty, so that the minutiae of the human soul [] had emerged as a new domain for management (Rose, 1990: 72). It is worth to notice that in this context, the new hymn to the self, both in life and work as the central dimension of human existence is articulated as the remedy for its re-constitution. Needless to say, that the core of such an assumption only makes sense into a definite cultural context. In the Western civilization the death of man prospected by Nietzsche (1974), has been further explicated from the 1950s through that that Taylor (1991:10) defines the loss of meaning, the fading of moral horizons, requiring an exigency of culturality, of a strong set of values capable to triumph over the modern scientism, positivism and empiricism:
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it is from here, then, that the questions of subjectivity have acquired central importance as the key to our humanity (Rose, 1990: x), obtaining a fundamental connotation as a value to be respected rather than subjugated (Ibid, 56). Whether from one side this situation has emerged as an antidote exorcisating the sense of loss of the world, from the other side it has been affirmed as the explicit and necessary consequence of the explosion of wealth, of the growth of production, the progressive centrality of the consumer, and the advent of the consumption era. Homeland the United States, that ascended to super-potency in the second post-war, not only has been proponents of a wealth based on the private, familiar and individual consumption, but they have also been the primal benchmark for the all European Countries freed from the multiple totalitarisms. Emblematically, Un Americano a Roma, a 1954 movie played by Alberto Sordi, is the prototype of an epochal change in which the modern lifestyles winded along the coordinates of freedom, the essential foundation of the Western political thought. At a societal level, the rise of the Yippy movement and the new modalities of expressing free love, the feminine emancipation, or the development of yoga and meditation practices, all testify the celebration of freedom as authenticity and self-expression (Rose, 1999: 62). At an individual level, the new ways of conceiving man has occurred in terms of possibility of choice in the constitution and re-constitution of the self and in its realisation: the self is to be a subjective being, it is to aspire to autonomy, it is to strive for personal fulfilment in its earthly life, it is to interpret its reality and destiny as a matter of individual responsibility, it is to find meaning in existence by shaping its life through acts of choice (Rose, ?: 151). It is still by following Rose (1990: ix) that becomes clear that the psychologies that are important in contemporary social regulation do not treat the subject as an isolated automation to be dominated and controlled. On the contrary, the subject is a free citizen, endowed with personal desires and enmeshed in a network of dynamic relations with
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others. The moral crisis tormenting our time is therefore at the heart of a constant exploration of the self, having the features of a new rationality although dissimilar from that of the Enlightenment and Tayloristic project. As far the main thread of study is consciousness and subjectivity, it is worth to notice that generally the psychological man of the twentieth century searches desperately for a personal peace of mind under social and psychological conditions that militate against it (Ibid, 216). It deals with a peace of mind that, both in life and work as a central experience in human life is searched in the humanity of man, in its history, in its culture as a mater of humans. Man is a biological reality becoming in the centuries a more cultural reality. The homo culturalis, referring to the transcendental dimension of man and its animal instincts, its very nature, reaches a status in which its natural essence is confronted with what he has created, that is, culture. Despite its very anthropological origins, this exploited and often-debated notion has been at the core of all human and social sciences and also, by the mid-1950s, becoming an essential element also in the field of organisation and management studies: A belief that something called culture is both somehow critical to understanding what is happening to, as well as practically intervening in, contemporary economic and organisational life (du Gay and Pryke, 2002: 1). After the 1930s the attempts to respond to the dehumanising effects of Taylorism and Fordism, and the need to re-found the meaning of work (Mayo, 1949; Maslow, 1954; McGregor, 1960; Herzberg, 1968) definitively contributed in shifting the concern from the hard to the soft and more humanistic components of the organisation9. Since the mid1950s with the new Human Relations schools, but especially in the last twenty-five years with the HRM phenomenon, management has found
9
The seven S of management refers to three hard components (Strategy, Structure, Systems) and four soft components (Staff, Skills, Styles, System of values). For the discussion on style (cultural values) see Thrift, 2002 while for an analysis on strategy and structure see Chandler, 1969.
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new ways of legitimising itself in terms of culture and the self at work. Thus, the managerial discourse, by developing meaning and
motivation(Heelas, 2002: 86), has gradually shifted from a paternalistic position to a non-paternalistic one, providing specific practices for the individuals as a means to realise their happiness and fulfilment (Rose, 1999). The recurring leit motif is, as stated by Sievers (1994: 33), that the meaning of work not only has to be seen in relation to the meaning of life, but [that] the search for the meaning of work can only be based on the goal of attaining the ability to overcome and transcend fragmentation. In the contemporary work organisation the question of the self come to be stressed in a historical period in which the whole Western society testifies a cultural turn to life embracing, first and foremost, a deep re-moralisation of the economic dimension, a process widely known as soft capitalism (Abby, 2004; Heelas, 2002; Legge, 1995; Thompson and McHugh, 2002; Thrift, 1997). This notion, overcoming the simplistic definition of capitalism given by Marx (that system of production centred on the private property of capital and paid employment lacking property, in which this relationship constitutes the dorsal spine of a class system), is likely to support the cultural dimension of economy, that is, the ensemble of soft components of economy for the good of the individual. It is from the recognition of an uncertain society and fragmented individual that the cultural turn not only involves acts of homage to the importance of capitalism (Thrift, 1997: 29), but also inaugurates the period of what academics use to name the therapeutic culture of the self. As summarised by Paul Heelas (2002: 81), soft capitalism is about culture, knowledge and creativity; about identity; about values, beliefs and assumptions [] about cultural expertise concerning the psychological realm of life how to explore it in order to develop it. The recognition of a kind of ethicisation of economy recall to the memory the statements of academics such as du Gay and Pryke, Heelas, Roberts, Thrift or Lash and Urry (1994: 64), for whom economic and symbolic processes are more than ever interlaced and interarticulated;
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that is [] the economy is increasingly cultural inflected and [] culture is more and more economically inflected. It is from the merger of economy and culture that has developed a new ethic of work, understood as the capacity to ascribe value to the accomplished work: the self-work ethic [] treats work as something to be valued as the means to those ends espoused by expressive and therapeutic culture (Heelas, 2002: 81). In line with this, the workplace is valued, that is to say, as a vehicle to the end of self-sacralisation (Ibid, 89). The Protestant vision of work comes back again, despite translated in the hic et nunc of practices: work is more conceived as a means for an end that is not transcendental the human life, but it is rather the means to affirm the salvation through the self-comprehension and actualisation10. As synthesised by Paul Heelas (2002: 80), takes place a new vision of the self which constitution takes distances from the pure consumer culture. The self becomes one considering itself to be something more,
something much deeper, more natural and authentic than the self of what is taken to be involved with the superficialities of the merely materialisticcum-consumeristic; a self which has to work on itself to enrich and explore itself, in the process dealing with its problems. Among the authors concerned on the development of soft capitalism, Abby Day Peters (2004) wonders whether this phenomenon may involve a real re-sacralisation and remoralisation of the workplace. Far from giving either explicit positive or negative responds, he opens up the debate with a strong statement leading to further reflections on the topic: what we may observe as a movement called soft capitalism or spirit at work is only an example of the every innovative nature of capitalism that creates the work environment and ethic necessary for the time [] It is not
10
The protestant revolution in the early 1500th is aligned with the raise of the modern individualism and the end of the Christian community. Both Luther and Calvin preached the salvation of human beings through the hard work, even though suppressing human dignity. The worker was said to identify himself with his wage needing no solidarity from the others. In this sense, Protestantism has legitimised the exploitation of man under a religious light (Cfr. M. Weber, 1930).
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new capitalism or different capitalism, but simply an example of how capitalism works (Italic added). However, the culturalisation of economy, according to the new spirit of capitalism, have had quite a few repercussions in the realm of intimate subjectivity since the prerogative of informed human resource
management now extend to the love, the heart and even the soul of everyone and everything it touches (Roberts, 2001: 61). In a context in which work has been given a wider non-economical significance, where the search for meaning and values is a rather fundamental component for the personal and professional growth, the all soft changes involve selfwilled transformations in consciousness and the opening up of personality so that selected employees will, through self-discovery and selfdevelopment, uncover the sources of a new dynamism in the context of love (Ibid, 73). Lying at the core of such a conception of individuals there is therefore the desire to pursue the authenticity of the self, where authenticity refers to the capacity of being true to oneself, being a genuine self. Even though it finds its roots in the eighteenth century being the consequence of a form of individualism mainly stemming form the Lockian tradition (Taylor, 1991; Sennett, 1977) the theme of authenticity arose with a major strength during the nineteenth century as support of the massive subjective turn of modern culture (Taylor, 1991: 26), re-calling Saint Augustines reflections on the self as a sanctuary of divine presence (Dupr, 1993: 93). It is from the progressive humanisation of work that it becomes then possible to visualize the birth of HRM as a surrogate of PM practices (cfr. first section). However, if there has been a change in the terminology, there is the need to dig deeper in the motivations leading the Atlantic culture to accept the overcoming of a traditional myth (PM) in favour of a new situation (HRM). Despite the fact they are in practice the same, they have a different flavour given by the human discriminant (the H of HRM). As tradition treated nature as an exploitable resource favouring the needs of men, today also its humanity constitutes an essential reserve. The body
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and corporeity of the individual no longer represent the coral element of work as the rhetoric of scientific management was likely to encourage rather its humanity and culturality. The binomial element culture-man goes hand in hand: man in a never ended cultural product and humanity plunges its roots into the culture of every time. It is not by chance that the emphasis on the human component of work develops in concomitance with the wave of culturalism. Briefly, this may be the reason why HRM is often promoted as an innovative and fertile event.
The grave return to humanism, as general and diffused concern for the human life, has been adopted as the leading motive of managerial practices, especially by HRM in the last twentieth-five years. By adopting the individual as the basic unit of analysis, HRM can be broadly interpreted as one of the ways encouraging a vision of the self as constitutively shaped and re-shaped towards authenticity. Although this notion hardly appear in organisation and management literature, it is however possible a regular confirmation with similar notions likely implying the search for authenticity. An example in this sense is given by those expressions that, mainly stemming from the scientific psychology, aim to underlie the significance of the self as capable of self-completion and selffulfilment through the free choice in a highly contingent context. Thus, self-actualisation or self-discovery rise from all those cultural themes, which are constitutional of HRM as a new managerial discourse, where notions such as freedom, commitment and motivation are the means for the self-understanding of the self according to the search for authenticity. A situation due to the fact that individuals decreasingly look to the outer situations, people, and structures to motivate their behaviour and impact their feeling and thinking [] they look increasingly inward for direction, esteem, and creation of their own happiness (Tischler, 1999:276). The idea of personal freedom, constantly reinforced by concepts such as empowerment, responsibility and practical autonomy
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(Willmott, 1993), is substantiated through the possibility of one to be selfmotivated. It is not a coincidence that in all HRM practices, the ideal status of liberty is sublimely and generally connected with all those motivational theories that, while proclaiming the subject as a self-actualising ego, reduce man and organisation, as well as their interrelatedness, into reified derivates (Sievers, 1994: 3). Interpreted as the scientific attempt to establish a casual relationship between motives and behaviour, in the sense that the latter is determined by the former (Ibid, 4), motivation derives its fortune especially from a set of psychological convictions. In line with this, the work of Maslow (1954) has propped up a new conception of human nature and subjectivity in terms of motivation and self-direction. The psychological matrix of Maslows theory of needs, adopted by HRM rhetoric, develops a number of fundamental needs hierarchically ordered. This comes to substantiate the conviction that the highest need (selfactualisation) can be realised after having overcome the essential and intermediary physical, security, social and achievement needs.
Nonetheless, without getting in further details in Maslows theorisations, here it is fair to highlight that the growing significance of psychological expertise in organisations, as a means to help the cultivation of the individual self, gives a re-configuration of the notion of management far from the scientific understanding of it. Accordingly, the discovery and rediscovery of the self occurs due a new school of experts grouping, apart from psychologists, clinical, occupational, educational but also social workers, personnel managers, probation officers, counsellors and therapists of different schools and allegiances have based their claim to social authority upon their capacity to understand the psychological aspects of the person and to act upon them (Rose, 1999: 2/3). Briefly, the self is now able to style its life through acts of choice, and when it cannot conduct its life according to this norm of choice, it is to seek expert assistance (Rose ?, 158), in a world in which institutions and organisations endow individuals with material and symbolic resources giving them a sense of autonomy (Holtgrewe, 2003: 3).
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In line with the cultural change and the formation of a new psychological evaluation of the individual and its desires HRM encourage a set of practices supporting the re-constitution of the subject by portraying peculiar teachings of how be the authentic and genuine self; a process that, absolutely fitting with the culture of our time, is abundantly supported by the turn to spirituality. Especially since the last 20 years, while the whole Western society has assisted to an increasing concern towards spiritual practices, within the workplace it has become a more known reality for management fully framed in the highly dedicated perspective of meliorating the management of a not ultimately natural resource, but spiritual (mental) as well. By transcending the anchorage in religious traditions, an example is offered by HRM, reinforcing the notion of spirituality in order to achieve a unified whole (Burack, 1999), so that increasingly managers can measure their spiritual intelligence. A major witness in such a turn to spirituality is the wave of New Age Management, often seen not only as a means to change people in order to change the management subject (Thrift, 1997: 46), but also as a way to reinforce the opportunity of self-expression and genuineness for the individual: a process in which come to be involved both managers and workers in their self-constitution.
2.3. Ethic as aesthetic of existence: the contribution of Michel Foucault A more theoretical as well historical vision of the subject capable of self-constitution is further substantiated by the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984). Emerging as one of the most eclectic figures of the Western contemporary philosophy, Foucault has participated to the hermeneutical analysis of the constitution of the self, for which he tried to define an ethic. Understood as practical way of evaluating and acting upon oneself (Foucault, 1988; Rose, ?), ethic as ethos is conceived in terms of discipline, that is, the means by which
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individuals come to construe, decipher, act upon themselves in relation to the true and the false, the permitted and the forbidden, the desiderable and the undesiderable (Rose, ?: 153). The essential notion around which develops the genealogical investigation of the self is the care of the self, in Greek hepimeleia hautou and in Latin cura sui. This has been the coral argument of a course in the Collge de France where, in 1982, Foucault has explored the great schools of Greek and Latin philosophy, stressing the significance in the classical phase of taking care of oneself, actively participating to the spiritual and mental growth of the self. In an interview given to Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, the French historian stated: What strikes me is that in Greek ethics people were concerned with their moral conduct, their ethics, their relations to themselves and to others much more than with religious problems [...] What they were worried about, their theme, was to constitute a kind of ethics which was an aesthetc of existence (Foucault, 1983: 231). Thus, it is by taking as a starting point of his analysis the physical and spiritual Socratic paideia, that Foucault arrives to define ethics as aesthetic of existence, where aesthetic does not refer to the search for elegance; rather it defines an ethical concept of a work upon the self, where the individual is artiste of himself. Despite finding its origins in the Stoic and Platonic philosophy, the attitude of the care of the self is still dominant today as surrogate of the shattering of religious and traditional faiths. The all-individual existential aesthetic is shaped on what Foucault called technologies of the self, turned to the auto-constitution of a subject master of himself. Particularly, it refers to a set of practices (or technologies) through which the individual subject acts upon himself in a self-referential process of construction, establishing the ways in which we are enabled, by means of the languages, criteria and techniques offered to us, to act upon our bodies, souls, thoughts, and conduct it in order to achieve happiness, wisdom, health, and fulfilment (Rose, 1999: 221). Thus, it is via specific technologies of the self that individuals define
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themselves becoming tied to an identity by self-knowledge (know oneself). It deals with a process in which the subject learn how to be free, how to be responsible of his choices, how to become the ideal human resource via ethical self-commandment. (The reflection on oneself as a way to be selfactualised restores the principles of the Protestant Christianity in which the voice calling is within the individual. As expressed by Dean (1999: 17), the ethical feature of the individual flows through technologies of the self, implying four dimensions: ontology, concerned with what we seek to act upon, the governed or ethical substance [] ascetic, concerned with how we govern this substance, the governing or ethical work [] deontology, concerned with who we are when we are governed [] the governable or ethical subject [] and teleology, concerned with why we govern or are governed [] the telos of governmental or ethical practices). There is a deep connection, then, between the need to be an authentic self and the ways through which such a condition, which is seen as ethical, is reached. However, despite the subject is given a specific autonomy for its edification in practices, such an autonomy seems to lose its original and ideal strength when the subject and society comes to be read via the historical analysis of languages and discourses. How can the search for authenticity and the re-constitution of the self be read outside linguistic practices? How is it possible to conceive an autopoietic self, immune to the influences of language? Is authenticity possible? And how HRM, being culturally produced, really approaches the need of an authentic self for its own good? In order to understand the profound roots of the new managerial discourses dynamics, in the following sections the analysis plunges in a path of prevalently post structuralist/modernist/essentialist matrix; an analytical trip which, accounting once again on the historical philosophy of Foucault, poses itself as essential postulate to uncover the issues of the contemporary self. In reality, the all post discourse, and especially postmodernism, asks how can we use a postmodern epistemology or theory of knowledge to analyse organisations and management
31
including HRM in a different way (Legge, 1995: 298). In fact, the poststructuralist deliberations on society and subjectivity represent not only a valuable starting point of understanding HRM as a cultural phenomenon (hence the deeper meaning of its cultural motives mentioned above), but also a way to develop profound questions about the self, the understanding of authenticity and self-understanding and, last but not least, its humanitas.
2.4. A post-structuralist approach to the self Post-structuralism is a conceptual scheme verging on nihilism which, developing by the mid-1960s, interprets a society in which an extreme technology upholds the fragmentation process of subjectivity, that is, the incapacity to construct its own identity. Despite the fact there is a general tendency to consider subjectivity and identity as
interchangeable notions, there is an ontological difference among them. In fact, while subjectivity represents the inner world, identity usually refers to the image and the idea that self and others have about themselves, and this impacts on subjectivity in crucial ways. Within the modern tradition identity has been considered as the stable and defined construct of man. Such an essentialist position supporting the tradition and stemming from modern humanism conceives identity as given by a prior structure, either rational (Descartes, Kant) or irrational (Freud). Around this view have developed structuralisms (Levi-Strauss, De Sussurre,) and the deterministic-holistic conceptions of the social reality conceiving man as the product of structures (Marx, Durkeim). However, the inability for structuralism to recognise the multiple contextual influences on human beings and his actions, has established the premises on which post-structuralist positions have developed and, with it, the view of an anti-essentiality of the subject (Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Barthes). Although Freud undermined the modern faith on the coincidence between the subject and his consciousness, it was with
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Lacans psychoanalysis that a further destabilisation of the subject has been accomplished: unconscious is a linguistic structure socially heterodetermined (Burkitt, 1991)11. Identity becomes the locus of multiple differences; it is no longer connected to an essence; the fatal implosion of the Cartesian subject (Kroker cited in Hetrick & Boje, 1992: 48), has realised its intimae non-authenticity. Briefly, the epoch of the crisis is symbolized by the openness of the boundaries of the classical identity, which becomes the final outcome of linguistic and discursive practices constituting subjectivity within precise power relationships. The discovery of identity as socially constructed (de-centred subject), has produced the premises to suspect that the Ego is just a pure illusion, a consequence of language artifices. With post-structuralism and the recognition of the self as a historical product not only the essence of subjectivity is irremediably traumatised, but the centrality of the structure is rejected. Identity is no more considered as the reliable heart funding the subjects truth, but the outcome of cultural, social and symbolic constructing processes. Post-structuralism suggests a completely desubjectivised reality in which the differences, free and multiple, are no more subjected to any organising structure or centre, but in a continuous process of becoming. As Burkitt (1991: 83) point out, structuralism and post-structuralism [] attempt the deconstruction of this humanist notion of the individual, showing how this vision of humans, and the actual capacities of agents produced by it, are simply the constructions of the humanist discourse itself. In few words, the subject is conceived as a socio-linguistic determined entity. This brings to the conclusion that the formation of the modern self is thus determined by a high precariousness. The vision of a subjectivity discursively forged, supports a historical constitution of the self, opened to possibility, contingency and to the desirable modes of being.
11
The Ego was an identity compounded and structured either by his conscious (SuperEgo) and his unconscious (Es). With Freudian psychoanalysis the subject loses his previous centrality.
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2.5. And to its constitution in the workplace Along this perspective, the question of subjectivity within
organisation can be further discussed through the work of Foucault, one of the authors advocating post-structuralism12. Along the coordinates of social-constructivism (Berger and Luckmann, 1964), he encourages a conception of reality as constituted through discourses, that is, how the objects become spoken in a certain manner. Also the subject itself is conceived as a linguistic invention, excogitated in a specific historical moment in order to control and direct. Despite the several attacks to his missing subject (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1995; Thompson & Smith, 1992) and despite his non-direct participation in managerial issues, Foucaults thought may offer a way to understand the deep link between HRM and its implications on subjectivity (Townley, 1993 & 1996; Parker, 2000; Collinson, 2003; Knights and Willmott, 1987; Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Jermier & Knights & Nord, 1994)13. Foucault supports a relational and dynamic model of identity in which language and discourse play a crucial role. By discussing Foucault, Townley (1996) remarks that he shows how objects are not natural, but are ordered or constructed by discourse which determines what is seeable and sayable14. This perspective holds a perception of reality as constituted through discourses, so that the subject itself is conceived as a
Foucauls work is here analysed from a post-structuralist standpoint, despite his intellectual positions have also embraced many yet different schools of thoughts: structuralism, hermeneutics and the existential phenomenology (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983; Mills, 2003). Within the management literature the questions on subjectivity often fall into the prominent debate between the Marxian positions of labour process theory from one side (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1995; Thompson & Smith, 1992) and the Foucauldians from the other (Dean, 1999; Townley, 1993; Rose, 1999). However, there is some attempt to reconstitute the deterministic positions of power with a consideration of power as a creative/positive instrument (Knights and Willmott, 1987; Knights, 1990; Collinson, 1993) Discourse refers to the a priori, to the underlying rules; it refers how objects become spoken in a certain manner (Cfr. Townley, 1996).
14 13 12
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linguistic invention, excogitated in a specific historical moment in order to control and direct. It is through power that the individual as a subject becomes an object of knowledge: The individual is continuously
constituted and constructed through social relationships, discourses and practices [] it is constituted through power/knowledge (Foucault cited in Townley, 1996: 11). Briefly, individuals are created through social techniques of power infiltrating subjectivity and inter-subjectivity. Hence, by acknowledging the discursive formations of the subject, what becomes crucial is the recognition of those practices aiming to produce the individual subject within organisation. Once again, the notion of technologies of the self comes to specify the process of constitution of the self, also in the workplace. Whether the practices of confession and examination are typical of the Christian tradition, they have been translated in management practices in order to emphasise the selfdisciplined nature of individuals according to his bodies and discursive capacities (Clegg, 1989: 103) in order to achieve control. A position justified via the notion of govern-mentality of the self, a neologism given by the synthesis of government (the conduct of conduct) and rationality: The idea that before something can be governed or managed, it must first be known (Townley, 1993: 520). That is because knowledge, it is the first presupposition for executing power in as much it is possible to govern what is known: it is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, it is impossible for knowledge not to engender power (Foucault, 1980: 52). Despite Foucault may be considered the forerunner of the technological facet of the self, a discrete part of HRM literature has used the same observations as a way of understanding how the subject is rendered visible, knowable and manageable within the workplace. Accordingly, the ensemble of psychometric tests, job interviews, comments about job satisfactions (developmental appraisal) are all means offered by HRM and used by individuals as a way to support the selfunderstanding of the self by self knowledge. Among the other multiple
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solutions considerable for that that Goffman (1971) named the presentation of the self, the curriculum vitae shows its significance apart from clothing and the use of a particular jargon/language (Collinson, 2003). This powerful autobiographical practice, commonly called upon to tell a story about ourselves (Miller and Morgan, 1993: 133), is seen as a part of an overall system of institutional surveillance and rationalism (Ibid, 134). Here, the process of mentoring comes to support a system of monitoring the individual in its spatiality, temporality and morality since it is through mentoring that managers can use mentoring to help cultivate desired norms and values in their organisation (Whyte, 1990: 46). The lost of identity and the fragmentation of the subject have in fact embodied the fundamental premise to legitimate an attempt to unify subjectivity within the workplace through procedures of personal behaviour
normalisation, according to the established canons of the organization. The all HRM practices are new forms of power functioning towards a normal status and represent the soft means through which leaders shape peoples value (Costea and Crump, 1999: 3). In his post-structuralist stage Foucault denies the autonomy to a fragmented and de-centred subject that however, in its final phase is able of self-constitution. In fact, as stated in the previous section, the subject is not moulded anymore by power mechanisms but able of edify itself in practices. This seems to be a quite substantive contradiction, typical of Foucaults theorisations. However, the combined understanding of the aesthetic dimension of the self and its being affected by mechanisms of power/knowledge, may be understood according to the fact that, the care of the self cannot be read outside discourses. HRM as a set of practices aiming to reveal the mysterious and hidden domain of the self, through a specific language acts upon the psyche identified as the new key to gain knowledge and performance. Understanding the working of these technologies means to understand the particular type of discourse and the particular techniques, which supposedly reveal our deepest selves. In fact, the key of technologies of
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the self is the belief that one can, with the help of expert, tell the truth about oneself: the conviction that the truth can be discovered via selfexamination of consciousness (cercare la nota di Foucault). Summarising what has been said up until this point, HRM serves to render organisations and their participants calculable arenas, offering, through a variety of technologies, the means by which activities and individual become knowable and governable (Townley, 1993: 526). This brings to the conclusion that, whether everything runs in proximity of the language, the self-analysis, made explicit by HRM, is a cultural invention as well as the language used in order to support the search for the authentic self; a language producing HRM and re-produced and reinforced by it in the cultural cycle of history. By following Taylor (1991: 14), the sensation is, then, that we have assisted to the concomitant shutting out, or even unawareness, of the greater issues or concerns that transcend the self, be they religious, political or historical.
2.6. An hegemonic power: HRM as education Whether is acknowledged the validity of the above assumptions, not only the idea of authenticity is ethic (discipline) for HRM, but also the whole self matter seems to be exploited in order to make the individual first of all the notions of motivation and self-actualisation. Through the investigation of freedom, some authors have implicitly substantiated the idea that some phenomenon such as HRM are fully structured in the framework of teaching freedom. In line with this argumentation, Rose (1996: 61) is attentive in underlying that, the importance of analysing the ethic of freedom, since the twentieth-first century have come to underpin our conceptions of how we should be ruled, how our practices of everyday life should be organised, how we should understand ourselves and our predicament. Therefore, freedom as a formula of power is promoted via models of reference mainly dictated by the Western tradition. An example may be offered by the diffusion of images ad hoc in life and work,
37
representative of a sophisticated consumerist culture, escaping from supermarket to become part of a media-commercial logic that is presented as a universal solution to every problem (Bruckner, 2000: 83). Thus, the individual learn the value of freedom in the very moment in which [it] has been articulated into certain rationalities for practising in relation to ourselves (Rose, 1999: 65), while consumption technologies, together with other narrative forms such as soap operas, establish not only a public habitat of images for identification, but also a plurality of pedagogies for living a life that is both pleasurable and respectable, both personally unique and socially normal. They offer a new ways for individuals to narrativize their lives (Ibid, 88). Worth to notice how, interpreted as such, HRM may be understood in terms of education, in the Latin conception of the term, that is, exducere (to lead out). Through the use of a specific language (which is this language and not another one), HRM assist the individual in the process of comprehending itself and search for itself; to orient its own choices towards an ideal, which is that described by the new managerial narrative. If there is a chance to make in one point everything has been said up until now, then it is worth to discern the new managerial discourse more as a mentality than a coherent set of practices; a diffuse sentiment, a way of thinking and being that transcend the workplace pending to the horizon of the social comprising it all. In his Manuscripts of 1844, Marx (1959: 30) claimed how the political economy can therefore advance the proposition that the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is not working, as a human being; but leaves such considerations to criminal law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to politics and to the workhouse beadle. What was implicit in such a consideration was a vision of the worker that only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and he is working when he is not at home (Ibid, 72). However, the hegemonic strength of HRM shoots down the barriers of the private and public sphere in a way
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that the clear distinction between them two loses its original significance. Similarly, the cretinism of the worker (Ibid, 71) becomes part of a general cretinism embracing the managerial positions, too. As Foucault would argue, the distinctions between the two categories cannot be taken apart one form the other, since not only the manager is a worker, but the worker, in the process of taking responsibilities for its self-actualisation, becomes a manager of himself. The discourses and myths provided by communications, rule the world with the aim to establish universal truths, in a way that conversations are the backbone of business (Roos and Van Krogh cited in Thrift, 1997: 49). The so-called Darwinism of world prospected by Blumenberg (1990) is likely to portray HRM as another and different discourse, a new myth controlling peoples moral and social behaviour. A myth willing to conquer the limits of human subjectivity and its very finite corporeity in a new manipulating subject which, by losing his human characteristics may acquire immortality (note).
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3.
QUESTIONING THE BENEVOLENCE OF HRM IN THE HORIZON OF HUMANITY AND AUTHENTICITY
Man is an animal in the process of shedding the species
G. Deleuze
3.1. HRM and the dilemma of existence From an attentive analysis of the peculiar essence of management practices, the perseverant sensation is a recall to the Platonic thought of Ideas in which, the most supreme of all, that of Good and Beauty, determine all the others without being determined in itself; An Idea that is in a dimension that only the thinking may grasp. Conceived as the capacity of bringing back to the Whole what is multiple and scattered, Beauty refers, in HRM, to the model of success, authenticity and selfactualisation: the Platonic benchmark, for individuals, in a context of life where more and more people renounce the quite and modest tasks of life [] in order to achieve something greater (Allan Bloom cited in Hannay, 2000: 109). But in the process of showing a supreme ideal, HRM as hegemonic power takes part to the more general process of negotiation of identity within modernity, subverting the logic of constitution, and provoking potential choices that contrast the fullness of identity15. For
15
Negotiation is a notion that focalise the multiple dynamics of individual identity, questioning the monolithic conception of subjectivity dominating the modern philosophical tradition.
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HRM, to take part of the process of negotiation, necessarily create deep imbalances at the level of the self, especially in terms of life orientation and possibility according to authenticity. The new postulate of management involve a mentality valorising the existence of man along the coordinates of authenticity, while in practice, conceiving man in terms of its essence, in line with the modern philosophical tradition. Also the very notion of management (from the Latin manus, hand), as argued by Fayol (1949), presupposes in fact the presence of a concrete reality. The hand grasps the tangible, the
concreteness of the objects; hands produce and transform; hands manipulate. Whether an essence may be moulded in all its part, an existence escapes from the attempt to be captured, as the Eraclitus process of eternal becoming would suggest (Panta Rei: everything flows). As the water in a river is never the same water, the human being is never the same being; it changes its forms in every passing minute of its life so that both its corporal and spiritual substance is never the same of yesterday. However, HRM commonly tends to approach the subject in its wholeness, in his view of subject-as-agent (Henriques, 1998), almost decontestualised, presupposing thus an essentiality of the willing-certainty subject. It deals with practices conceiving the subject as having a manageable essence, exceeding the very meaning of human life in terms of existence (Costea and Introna, 2004). It therefore deals with a way of organising activities by increasing a forced, yet veiled, participation to work (the 24 hours society of America), that, while proclaiming the reification of individuals (indisputability of Being in se) has supported their dehumanisation through the search of a new subject raising, insofar, a question of humanitas. Specifically, despite the value of human life is the leading factor for management practices and its ethics there seems to be an existential deficiency in the approach to the self. The position assumed here is the following: when the participation to work is placed in the individual perspective of valorising the self, notions such as motivation, freedom, and self-orientation all flowing in the
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exacerbation of commitment found the premises for the affirmation of a paradoxical condition, source of anxiety and weakness for the subject. In a world in which the natural and material resources are limited, how is it then possible to fight for the same ends? If, talking in Machiavellic terms, the end justifies the means, or better, if in order to obtain an ideal status of self-actualisation and originality (implying authenticity) every means is used with no consideration of the personal and the other consequences, then HRM is certainly the prototype of this way of thinking. As Diotime and Socrates in Platos Symposium discuss around the matter of desiring what is not possessed, individuals in their confrontation with management requests (and due to a instrumentalised knowledge), desire what they do not have, only after being led to the awareness of some lack to satiate. Needless to say, the potentialities of man are limited to its very corporality and spirituality; man is finite. Hence, the necessary evidence to dig deeper in the contemplation of the human finitude, abundantly undervalued by HRM. A contemplation that inevitably raises questions related to existence, to the being, to the human condition, to the moral of the self and to the more general meaning of life.
3.2. The essence anti-essence debate In order to fully understand the implications that HRM has on the individual self, here is suggested a return to the philosophical reflection of Being; a reflection presupposing a confrontation that wings along the dichotomy of essence and existence, developing in line with the existential theme of subjectivity (cfr. Chapter II). The main thread of the whole existential philosophy is constituted by the appreciation of human beings in terms of existence, in opposition to the philosophical tradition enjoyed, among the others (note), by Marxism perceiving essence as the means of existence. Despite both positions can be identified in terms of anti-subjectivism, the historical philosophy of Marx affected by the Durkhemian positivism emphasises the presence of a human
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essentiality in relation to the notions of species essence (the essential nature of man) and alienation. This latter concept comes to substantiate the idea that subjectivity is tied up with labour, so that human being realises their species essence through the creative act of work. In line with this, alienation is the process by which employees are separated from the products of their labour. Moreover, by asserting, man is a species being, Marx (1959: 74) supports the idea that, whether from one side man is a natural being (as well as conceived by Feuerbach), from the other side it possesses a specificity rendering him human, different from all the other beings. Such specificity is sociability, that is, the capacity to form a society. When sociability is denied as in the capitalistic society man ceases to be human becoming alienated from himself, from work and from the other beings. The capitalistic industrial system generates the alienation of man from the essence of its being (Zimmerman, 2000). However, whether come to be recognised an experience of decentration, or else, the essence of man come to be denied as claimed by post-structuralism or deconstructivism the individual is no longer alienated. The recognition of an incoherent subject (Cfr. p. 30) transforms alienation in fragmentation (Jameson, 1991). Along the same antiessentialist frontier, takes shape the phenomenological structure of thinkers such as Silo, for whom the human being takes part to the natural world as a body, but he has not any definite nature or determinate essence. However, what does it mean to conceive man in terms of existence? In all the phenomenological existentialism, to be, to exist means to be in a situation that is not choosen but is already given. JeanPaul Sartre (1946) argues that the subject is an existence thrown in existence, in a world that is already there, and is able to constitute itself through choices. Here, the main characteristic of individual, giving him the human aspect, is not sociability, but rather the possibility to choose and project himself. As Jasper would say, man is what he chooses to be.
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3.3. The ontological primacy of existence: the elucidation of Martin Heidegger An important contribution to the existential analysis of man has been given by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), whom philosophy is placed along the phenomenological tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Especially in his well-known Being and Time, Heidegger carries on the scrutiny of being through the phenomenological method, despite transforming it through a highly hermeneutic choice16. Despite the complexity of his thought, in the following pharagraphs Heideggers epochal account of being (defined as anti-essentialistic and anti-Cartesian) is briefly explored in order to further problematise HRM and its practices. What is argued is that the existential philosophy of Heiddger has contributed in exploring the loss of meaning and the understanding of being, in an era in which technology has had great impact as well as the peculiar jargon shaped around consumerism, freedom and the Protestant view of life. A contribution that, somehow, takes back the modern nihilism of Kirkegaard as the incapacity of the individual to give a meaning to his own life. Against the transcendental consciousness of Husserl (epoche), Heidegger proposes a fundamental ontology referring to man as concrete existence. Here, the ontological primacy of existence may be the source for a misunderstanding. Generally speaking, in fact, ontology refers to that specific part of philosophy concerning the concept of being in general. However, in Heiddeger ontology is defined as existential analytic, placing as coral concern the interpretation (hermeneutica) of existence as being-in-the-world. But since the distinctive character of existence is the possibility, ontology refers to the meditation upon the issues of existence according to language, so that philosophy is understood as ontological phenomenology (where phenomenological refers to the historical and cultural components, existentiell). In line with
16
On Phenomenology and the philosophy of Heidegger, cfr. Heidegger (1962), D. Moran (1990), M. Martini (1989), M. Wrathall and J. Malpas (2000).
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the Platonic tradition, Heidegger takes distance from the anthropological conception of philosophy, committed to see in the primacy of ontology the meaning of being. In Letter on Humanism written as a response of Sartres Existentialism and Humanism (1948) - Heidegger (1993) is willing to show that, along Aristotles view, humanism has always approached man in terms of rational animal, so that its essence is miscomprehended. Due to the fact that human essence is usually understood in relation to the animalitas rather than humanitas, man is often reduced to a natural phenomenon and similar to all the other beings, forgetting that man is fundamentally the who questioning the
(ontological) Being of being (entity originally unified to the world) and its essence. The subject asks to itself its Being through a process of interrogation making it a Being there (Da-sein), whose exclusive mode is the existence. Put simply, Dasein is a being (an essentially temporal and historical entity) understanding the Being. Hence, man acquires the awareness that s/he is called to respond of the meaning of its existence. The interpretation that Dasein gives to its particularity is affected by discourses, that is, the entire domain of Daseins expressive and communicative possibilities in virtue of which things become interpretable for it, an by, as such (Carman, 2000: 19). Critical of Marxs materialism, the phenomenological evaluation of human beings here supports its constitution in the cultural practices in which the individual develops: These practices form a background which can never be made completely explicit, and so cannot be understood in terms of the beliefs of a giving-meaning subject (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: xxi). Briefly, what Heidegger wants to highlight is the idea that, the sense we have about the world and ourselves depends upon the practices in which we are dipped in. Moreover, against Marxs ontology, the subject is ontologically understood as becoming (ontology of being versus ontology of becoming), that is, as declaration that there are not fixed entities, no
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ultimate terms, no essences [] each exist only as stabilised moment in an interminable process of becoming (note). Worth to notice here is that, the fundamental structure of Dasein is the Care (Sorge), in the Latin sense of uneasiness, worry, preoccupation that is, Dasein as anxiety. It deals with a notion that in its very essence is permeated with nullity (Nichtigkeit) through and through (Heidegger cietd in Carman, 2000: 13):
"Tu Jovis quia spiritum dedisti, in morte spiritum,/ tuque Tellus, quia dedisti corpus, corpus recipito,/ Cura enim quia prima finxit, teneat quamdiu vixerit."17
In living the daily life in relation to useable things (standing in the horizon of the world), for Dasein, the process of having care means to characterise itself as a never-ended project only partly realised. Man is not a substantial already-given reality; rather it is an entity facing an horizon of possibilities for realising itself, that are located at the two extreme of authenticity (Eigntlichkeit) and inauthenticity. These two different modes of carrying out life correspond to the ability of individuals to question the meaning of their existence. If to this excruciating question man responds with the escape, hiding himself (what Heidegger names fleeing), then the life is inauthentic. On the contrary, if man takes his responsibilities to answer the question of his meaning, his life is an authentic one. In Heidegger the authentic life is conceived in terms of being-towardsdeath, not implying the act of suicide, but rather the transcendental action of overcoming the anonymous existence, by listening the inner voice of consciousness. Alone with himself (not spatially), man grasps at one time both his own finitude and his possibility. In paraphrasing Heidegger, Carman (2000: 13) reminds that authenticity just amounts to owning up to that essential nullity in an attitude of openess and resolve, so that the
You, Jupiter, therefore you gave the spirit, shallst take with its death the spirit, you, Earth, therefore you gave the body, shallst take the body. But since Worry has first built this creature, therefore shall, as long as it lives, Worry own it (nota).
17
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authentic individual is someone whose way of living expresses an acknowledgement of the groundlessness of the sense she makes; an inauthentic individual, on the other hand, is someone who flees in the face of this groundlessness (Havas, 2000: 39). The act of falling is a structural component of the being-in-the-world living an inauthentic existence. Here Heidegger expresses his symphaty for the Kierkegardian notion of levelling, the process at which people more or less consciously connive in order to avoid exactly any sense of their being (Hannay, 2000: 106). Lavelling is for Kierkegaard what falling is for Heidegger, that is, a fleed from the authentic personality. To briefly sum up what has been said in this section, the realisation of authenticity is located in the recognition of the human being as existence; as the ability of man to ask himself about the meaning of his own existence. Only truly accepting finitude, individuals are invited to live an authentic existence, where authentic implies a high degree of coherence. However, in a world in which the ideologies of consumerism, freedom and individualism push individuals to live a life in the surface of thinking, the clarification of Being basis of the understanding of the entity disappears by being forgotten. Moreover, by following Hannah Arendt (1908-1961), if there is a chance of having something real or authentic, [it] is assaulted by the overwhelming power of mere talk that irresistibly arises out of the public realm, determining every aspect of everyday existence, anticipating and annihilating the sense or the nonsense of everything the future may bring (Arendt, 1968: ix).
In the Western culture dominated by technological advancement and by the affirmation of new myths (HRM) willing to conquer the limits of human finitude, individuals lose their sense and that of the world. What occurs is a situation in which men live in a banal life since the meaning of their existence evaporates. In this sense, the de-humanisation is selfevident in as much the problematisation of the meaning of the self loses its consistency. This is the fundamental link with HRM that seems to support
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a vision of the authentic self, able of self-realisation and selfunderstanding, flowing however in the re-vitalisation of an inauthentic life through its very practices.
Conclusions: HRM, the inauthentic self and the misunderstanding of authenticity
From the above assumption is clear that, in Heidegger, the inauthentic individual is that that, renouncing to himself, find his shelther in the anonimous mass and in the impersonality of its language. Accordingly, HRM is then a clear example of carrying out an inauthentic life; a model moulding the self and the possibilitites for the individual to fulfil its free choices. One of the ways in which HRM seems to support inauthenticity of human life is via the alimentation of acts of conformit, generally understood as a contemporary workplace survival strategy (Noon and Blyton, 2002). By referring to the act of homogenising individual and organisational values and goals, conformity mainly takes place on the behalf of leaders through specific practices of spirituality (Roberts, 2001) or via Organisational Culture Management (OCM) programmes18 - both largely encouraged by HR managers. Especially OCM may be conceived as a means through which management tries to help cultivating the self and its sense of being authentic in a way that the prerogative of informed human resource management now extends to the love, the heart and even the soul of everyone and everything it touches (Ibid, 61). What is proposed is then a process of normalisation and standardisation, introducing all the shading of individual differences (Foucault, 1977: 184). Moreover, apart from the restriction of the creative capacity, autonomy and identity, the request for conformity (flowing in a higher degree of fragmentation), flows in what Bauman (1998) calls the
In line with the OCMs literature, culture is often regarded as the the sum of a companys history, legends, heroes, values, rituals, communications, collective experience, and business environment (Sanders & Knights, 2001: 180); in other words, it is the social and normative glue that holds an organisation together (Smircich, 1983: 344).
18
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conformity
of
insignificance,
concept
re-calling
Heideggers
argumentations of the inauthentic life. The attitude to conform is diametrically opposed to the act of those free choices undeniable for the authentic existence. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre (1958) makes lucid this situation by claiming that every man ceases to be human when s/he refuses the original freedom, by adopting attitudes defined by the French philosopher in terms of bad faith, that is, s/he accepts codified and routinised roles. To conform and to aspire to authenticity are then the two faces of the same medal proposed by HRM. The problem is then that the human life becomes exploited in an instrumental way hidden by cultural values and assumptions. Looking at management, subjectivity is annihilated via a series of generalisation and categorisation (e.g. how to be the one for a specific task, how to create a curriculum vitae according to the standard values of the organisation, the all techniques for becoming the self-employed individual, etc.), while develops a peculiar language ever more difficult to resist: that of marketing, consumerism, advertising. In one word, the language of persuasion, producing and produced by HRM. In this context, the search of the authentic self takes place through a leading process, which is inadequately emergent or spontaneous. And the very notion of authenticity not only loses its significance, but it also becomes the source of intellectual diatribes. Especially the interpretation given by Heidegger, has found the bases for bitter disapprovals coming from the academic and philosophical world. As Seartle (cited in Wrathall and Malpas, 2000: 3) has declared, most philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition seem to think that Heidegger was an obscurantist muddleheaded at best or an unregenerate Nazi at worst. Also from the same Country of Heidegger, criticisms have been moved toward his ideological philosophy that, designed to favour the need of an unreasonable nationalism, has pushed to suspect upon existentialism as the mystification of the actual process of domination (Adorno, 1973: viii). The Jargon of Authenticity of Theodor Adorno (1903-
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1969) represents a twentieth centurys compelling evaluation of the existential positions, in continuation with the Frankfurt Schools theoretical context, of which Adorno was one of the maximum advocates19. The coral concern of the script is the notion of subjectivity which, according to the neo-Marxist, has been imbued with idealistic tendencies by the existential analysis. In the preface to the Jargon, Tent Schrover (1973: xvii) does not hesitate to affirm that Adorno examines the notion of Dasein, authenticity, death, care, etc., and shows that their use evades the issue of historical determinates by means of a primary and absolute creative subject which is, by definition, supposedly untouched by reification. The enemies of the authenticity culture tend to distinguish it as sheer individual comprehension of the self, escaping the moral ties with the social community: a form of what Tocqueville (1988) used to identify as self-despotism. Nonetheless, in Heidegger authenticity does not occur with an exclusive focus upon the self, since a self-determined human being, in a radical sense, is not a human being at all in as much there is no self or determination of it, without a comprehension of what is right to do (Havas, 2000): a situation that Arendt (1958) names as world alienation. What seems to be evident is than a missed understanding of the very notion of autenticity. As argued by Taylor (1991), such conceptions tend to identify authenticity as egoism of the self, as a way to distantiate the individual self from the others. Through a moral dissertation upon the moral crisis afflicting our time, the American philosopher faithful to the hermeneutic tradition of Heidegger and Gadamer tries to shed light on the reasons that have led to associate authenticity with pure individualism, as centring on the self. Through the analysis of modernity, he mantains the thesis that guilty is a missed differentiation between two different kind of individualism: the individualism of anomie and breakdown of course has no social ethic attached to it; but individualism as a moral principle or
19
The name of Adorno is generally associated to those of Horkeimer, Marcuse, Benjamin and Habermas, the only alive exponent of the Frankufurt School.
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ideal must offer some view on how the individual should live with others (Ibid, 45). Thus, authenticity remains a moral ideal implying coherency and originality: The notion that each of us has an original way of being human entails that each of us has to discover what is to be ourselves (Ibid, 61). However, the so-called atomism of the self-absorbed individual has led to a situation for which the real nature of the moral choices to be made is obscured (Ibid, 11). The problem, then, is neither that to condemn existentialism as incitation to sheer egoism, nor to sing an hymn to Marxism as the philosophy of the poors. The suggestion is rather that of taking a determinate denomination of the existential philosophy as a way of reevaluate the exisistence of the being-in-the-world. A human existence that has lost its essential meaning in change of a tormenting exteriority and only ostensible beauty (e.g. HRM).
Cuius regio Reius Religio.
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Methodological Appendix
The Challenges of Hermeneutics
Generally, everyone involved in a research project is asked the description of the employed method founding, and at the same time directing, the whole work. However, the attempt to fully satisfy such a need seems to be particularly complex in those works involving high degrees of theoretical argumentations, included my paper: Philosophising HRM: uncovering the issues of the contemporary self. Despite the inconvenient stemming from an exclusively library-based study, in the following pages an effort will be made in order to delineate my research methodology. However, before getting in the detailed explanation of the method, what is crucial here is a brief allusion to the main argument of the whole thesis.
In the light of a history of discontinuities, my work takes shape as exegesis of Human Resource Management (HRM) in its cultural connotation. HRM as the outcome of a series of more or less dramatic events characterising Western society during modernity, placing societys practices in the horizon of the valorisation of human life through the language of authenticity. However, by considering the subject in terms of its essence rather than of its existence, and by approaching authenticity as sheer individualism, the new managerial rhetoric celebrates the reification of the self as well as its de-humanisation. A philosophical reflection upon the human being then raises existential questions that in the Atlantic culture of capitalism and consumerism seem to have been lost behind the establishment of peculiar discourses and myths, institutionalised by the same culture. Worth to notice that philosophy is here mainly conceived, in terms of a critical reflection.
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In the whole work, the fundamental object of my analysis is represented by HRM and its implications for the constitution of the contemporary self. The choice to write about HRM and the self has not been casual; rather it has been dictated by the personal desire to dig deeper in a concept (HRM) that, in some Western countries (e.g. Italy), not only remains entrapped within highly functionalist definitions, but it is also little problematised by the academic world. Consequently, HRM comes to be seen exclusively in terms of its functions, through a positive emphasis on individual benefits. HRM as a new way of doing things at work that, through a specific set of practices recruitment and selection, appraisal and reward, training and development is said to support both the professional and personal growth in a context of work. Notions of leadership, motivation, high trust, commitment, flexibility, responsibility, empowerment, self-actualisation etc., all attribute an aura of brilliancy to the new conceptions of management. However, the all teachings of the Master program in Human Resource & Knowledge Management master to which I took part in the academic year 2003-2004 at Lancaster University have represented an explosive combination of managerial, technological, philosophical,
scientific, psychological, economical, political and social elements that have pushed me to further question HRM, overcoming the previous understanding of it. Hence, it has been through multiple and different readings that, ultimately, I have discovered a deep and specific concern in HRM and the self, rather than in other topics (equally significant) related to the course (e.g. Industrial Relations, Knowledge Management, Information Technology, Organisational Change).
Since the notion of HRM has made its appearance in the social scenario of the Western culture, an extensive literature has progressively taken consistency in order to develop an understanding around the reasons leading to the rise of this acclaimed phenomenon. The aim has been that of articulate an analytical framework, within which could be understood the managerial mechanisms and their interactions with
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individuals within organisations. Hence, in the light of an altered social, political and economical context, the question running from text to text has mainly referred to the why of HRM, that is: which are the fundamental reasons that have given rise to this phenomenon? In order to answer this question, has developed a multifaceted literature, within which is possible to identify the substantial consistency of the Labour Process Theory, generally sympathetic with a (neo?)-Marxist conception of reality. Along a realist perspective provided with strong critical abilities authors such as Legge, Ackroyd, Procter, Thompson or Kennoy (just to cite few of them) have been mainly concerned with the ontological analysis of HRM. Albeit there is an interest on the repercussions that managerial conducts have had on the subject, comments generally wind along the notions of managerial advantage, exploitation, resistance, discrimination, power relations, etc. in a rather systematic view of society. However, this essay has been written from a different perspective and intention, that is, an attempt to explore, in order to understand, the real implications of HRM phenomenon seeking for, and realising, an authentic corporate colonisation of the self (Casey cited in Hancock & Tyler, 2001: 574).
In line with my argumentations, and from the other site of the intellectual spectrum, authors such as Legge, Townley, Roberts, Heelas, Thrift, Rose, or du Gay have been more concerned in identifying the how of HRM. Directly or indirectly, they have been more attentive to the epistemological understanding of this phenomenon and the self. In few words, the how of things refers to the historical interpretation of events as well as the individual20. Hence, an epistemology of HRM asks which are the conditions of possibility behind its affirmation. (Among them, but not necessarily in a chronological order, can be mentioned neo-liberal
The fundamental distinction between ontology and epistemology may be summarised as follow: ontology generally refers to the what it is. It is that part of philosophy aiming to understand the structures of the being in general and not the phenomena in which it manifests itself (ontology also refers to the reflections upon the problem of existence according to language, but this occurs only in the analytic philosophy: e.g. Heidegger). On the other hand, epistemology is, in the general theory of knowledge, the critical study of the basis, nature and conditions of knowledge.
20
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ideologies and the attacks on the Welfare State, the advent of mass consumption, the Cold war, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, new processes of globalisation, the increasing development of ICTs, the rise of knowledge economy, privatisation, the free market, wealth, flexibility, and the re-negation of rigidities, the power of advertising and marketing, the development of the psychological sciences, the processes of
christianisation and evangelisation after the discovery of America, the art of language and the printed word, the Socratic rhetoric, etc all having actually contributed to constitute HRM as a new way of doing things at work).
In line with the same need to find an answer to the last question mentioned above, the present paper represents the final outcome of a theoretical work of research, which has last approximately one-year time. The starting point of my analysis has been determined by a glance to society as socially constructed and to the individual self as constructed in practices (Berger and Luckmann, 1964). It deals with a reflection matured during the last seven years, by being confronted in depth with the history of social sciences and their contribution to the understanding of the human affairs.
The first steps have moved from that Methodenstreit mainly articulated from the 1930s onwards as the debate about the method, in which have been confronted the methodological positions of individualism/actions (e.g. Weber, Parsons) and collectivism/structure (e.g. Marx). Without going in depth in the dispute of social sciences, hare it is worth to notice that a grave accent has been placed upon methodology as the adoption or coherent application of a method, for the analysis of social and human events.
Method generally refers to the organic procedures exploited in the course of whatever research activity, in order to achieve specific aims.
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Pragmatically, this dissertation has been written with no unitary or coherent method, a choice that has been mainly affected by the exclusive theoretical essence of the whole work. The choice to carry out a librarybased research rather than an empirical one has been determined by the belief that, for my necessities of understanding, knowledge could not be necessarily empirically established. My suspicion towards empiricism has pushed me to state that the very notion of knowledge is highly questionable, and that knowledge is fragmented. Accordingly, in order to shed light upon HRM formation and upon its implication at the level of subjectivity, I did not feel to provide organisations with questionnaires, interviews or life stories as well as case studies or observant participation. Overcoming in practice, the positivistic, hermeneutics or critical realist methods and techniques, my method has been an act of theoretical interpretation of HRM aiming to show what is hidden21. Through a long process of reading and understanding the review of a discrete range of authors often from different perspective I came to identify my work as a specula of the historical, philosophical, managerial, scientific textbooks as analytical framework within which understand HRM as a cultural phenomenon, and the flowing existential issues relating the self22.
Nonetheless, the theoretical method has mostly referred to the phenomenological tradition, a choice determined by a radical criticism upon the peculiar convictions of positivism, and from a recent problematisation of critical realism23. Whilst in the whole project is possible
For a deeper understanding of critical realism cf. Fleetwood (2003); forpositivism cf., Comte (1975).
22
21
The material I have used is not based on first data.

23
If there is a chance to summarise in one point the major criticism to critical realism, then is worth to stress that mainly it is about happiness and privation of man; it seems to have a quite material view of man and society, so that the questions of existence, here central concern of mine, tend to be downplayed. However, beyond positivism, it seems to me difficult to express a total devotion to critical realism or hermeneutics, due to the complexity of them both.
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to perceive the reasons of my criticisms to critical realism, due to time and space constrain here I will manly refer to the disputability of positivism.
In general terms, the expression positivism denotes the philosophical and cultural movement that developed in France in the first half of the nineteenth century. Despite the evolution of this tradition (cf. Popper and the Logical Positivism of Vienna Circle), it is mostly characterised by the privileged position attributed to natural science, the legitimate source of knowledge and model to which all other sciences have to be inspired in order to be considered worthy of such name. Positive is all that is real, effective and experimental; according to this reality consists in what is available to the senses (Hughes, 1990: 20). Thus, it is maintained that the scientific method is the only one valid and it has to be extended to the study of man and society (e.g. Understanding HRM and its benefits according to statistic and methods of quantification). In the first half of the nineteenth century Positivism was strictly connected to Enlightenment principles being the major interpreter of the climate of enthusiastic confidence in the human possibilities and in the potentialities of science and technique. These beliefs were based on the assumption that scientists [] could reduce even the most complex behaviours to the interactions of a few simple laws and then calculate the exact behaviour of any physical system far into the future (Freedman, 1992: 29). However, today the dominant complexity susceptible of various interpretations24, makes the validity of positivism quite questionable.
Excluding the positivistic choice, for the purposes of my work based on a multidisciplinary analysis there has been a reference to different theoretical methods according to the main two sections (second and third). However, the fundamental methodological postulate refers to the hermeneutical necessity in order to identify the historical conditions
24
Among others, also the Frankfurt School has moved this criticism. An example is represented by Horkeimer and Adorno, for whom is highly deviant the mentality of quantifying the social world.
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supporting the rise of HRM. There is a move away from the Marxist positions based on historical materialism towards the recognition of the cultural components of history. What is argued is that, in this specific case, the hermeneutical analysis of new management practices tends to elucidate what lies behind the appearance of a discourse.
The hermeneutical method finds its origins in phenomenology as the method of human sciences: a profoundly reflective inquiry into human meaning (Van Manen, 2002: 1), and one of the major philosophical streams of the contemporary thought, from which post-structuralism, the existential philosophy and post-modernism have developed. Against the all empiricisms, positivisms and relativisms, phenomenology consists in the attempt to bring philosophy back from the abstract metaphysical speculation wrapped up in pseudo-problems, in order to come into contact with the matters themselves, with concrete living experience (Moran, 2000: xiii). In this sense, the general conception of phenomenology refers to the radical way of doing philosophy, a practice rather than a system [] which emphasises the attempt to get to the truth of matters, to describe phenomena, in the broadest sense as whatever appears in the manner in which appears, that is as it manifests itself to consciousness, to the experiencer [] Explanations are not to be imposed before the phenomena have been understood from within (Ibid. 4).
Inaugurated by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) in its Introduction to Logical Investigation in 1900-1901 (although already mentioned by Hegel and Brentano), the phenomenological method has thus attempted to explain the inner structures of consciousness overcoming the third-person explanations. This can be better understood through the notion of epoche, that is, the suspension of the judgement and natural attitude.
Despite its solidity, phenomenology has never constituted a unitary or coherent movement. On the contrary, it has evolved in different forms,
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which have often clashed with the original version of Husserl, based on a elevate quantum of transcendentalism. As summarised by Van Manen (2002), within phenomenology is in fact possible to distinguish some different orientations, all leaded by authoritative names. Accordingly, an existential orientation with Heidegger in Germany and Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and de Bouvoir in France has been confronted with a linguistic one mainly supported by deconstructivism (e.g. Derrida) and poststructuralism (e.g. Foucault). Another important orientation has been that of hermeneutics which, quite close to the existential positions, has been articulated by the work of Heidegger and, in later years, by that of his students: Hans-George Gadamer (1975) and Paul Ricoeur (1965; 1981). They all have been concerned in the opening up the horizons of the contemporary philosophy through thinking as observation and rethinking of history and a new relation with the Being. The main connection between phenomenology and hermeneutics, as stated by Gadamer, has been the concern with describing the process by which meaning emerges (Moran, 2000: 248).
Originally hermeneutics, (from the Greek hermeneutikos, explaining), was part of philology, and it referred to the interpretation of sacra texts in order to uncover the hidden but true meaning. However, in the century of the German idealism, it also extended to the comprehension of the entire historical knowledge (Bauman, 1978). Exalted especially by Heidegger in his Being and Time, hermeneutics represented the specific method whose central concepts are interpretation, dialogue and pre-judgment in terms of comprehension. Conceived as such, the sheer description of Husserl becomes interpretation since, according to Heidegger, every description is already an interpretation.
By abandoning Husserls notion of consciousness or intentionality, what is emphasised is the discovery of both a conscious and uncousciuos universe, through which the subject takes part to the world. As
59
summarised by Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982: xix), hermeneutics gives up the phenomenological attempt to understand man as a meaning-giving subject, but attempt to preserve meaning by locating it in the social practices and literary texts which man produces. Hence, there is no counscious but only what Heidegger names the Being-in-the-world, the being in its temporality and historicity (facticity). But to appreciate historicity means to carry out an understanding that takes its form in a context of tensions given by history and culture.
Subjects are shaped within the cultural practices forming a background, which can never be made completely explicit, and so cannot be understood in terms of the beliefs of a meaning-giving subject. The background practices do, however, contain a meaning. They embody a way of understanding and coping with things, people and institutions (Ibid, xxi). The direct consequence is a view of objectivity according to subjectivity. As maintained by Paul Ricoeur (1981), the human meaning are mediated by culture in a way that, in order to fully grasp the meaning of phenomena, what is needed is an hermeneutics of suspicion: a hermeneutics which is rooted in the act of putting in discussion the acquired systems of values.
Especially against positivism, the basic assumption according to this specific method is that there are not facts but only interpretations focusing on the meaning in practices. Interpretation, in the sense relevant to hermeneutics, is an attempt to make clear, to make sense of, an object of study [] Interpretation aims to bring to light an underlying coherence or sense (Taylor, 1985: 16). By paraphrasing Gadamer, Moran (2000: 252) argues: when we understand an object, we do not grasp the object as it is in itself, but rather we grasp it through the accumulations of its historical effectiveness.
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Hence, in my dissertation Heideggers method has been particularly used for developing the ontological question of existence and the Being according to language. In order to understand HRM as a cultural phenomenon and the deep implications on the subject I took into consideration the combination of Foucaults genealogical and
archaeological method also rooted in an act of interpreting history.
Conceived as the investigation for the history of knowledge (Minson, 1985), archaeology is the way of showing that history is not the result of conscious actions of human beings, so that the field of the historical research is not given by what men has said or made, rather on the epistemological structures (discourses) that determine what is the subject or the object of history. (Episteme: implicit, unconscious and anonymous system of rules within which operates the knowledge of the time). In his final phase, however, Foucault approaches Nietzsches genealogy as a path forcing the concepts of the Western thought to expose their right to dominate, showing the mechanisms that govern them. The combination archaeology and genealogy (structuralism and hermeneutics) gave rise to a new method called interpretive analytics (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982: xii), chief benchmark for my analysis in order to show that HRM is a cultural phenomenon having deep implications on individuals. Complex implications that other methods are difficult to highlight (e.g. existential issues and deep fragmentation). The new vision of HRM stemming from this analysis is likely to suggest that HRM refers to ways of talking about work and how to be at work, implying certain things regarding how to be a human in general.
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Philosophising HRM

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Philosophising HRM: uncovering the issues of the contemporary self