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This paper takes the regulation of identity as a focus for examining organizational control. It considers how employees are enjoined to develop self‐images and work orientations that are deemed congruent with managerially defined objectives. This focus on identity extends and deepens themes developed within other analyses of normative control. Empirical materials are deployed to illustrate how managerial intervention operates, more or less intentionally and in/effectively, to influence employees’ self‐constructions in terms of coherence, distinctiveness and commitment. The processual nature of such control is emphasized, arguing that it exists in tension with other intra and extra‐organizational claims upon employees’ sense of identity in a way that can open a space for forms of micro‐emancipation.

This paper explores how organizational identity is constructed in four very different management consulting firms. The study suggests four broad dimensions that organizational members refer to in constructing their organizational identity: Knowledge Work, Management and Membership, Personal Orientation, and External Interface. We identify multiple themes within these broad dimensions of identity construction and highlight several broader identity-related issues, specifically: the extent to which shared ideas of a distinct organizational identity are present or absent in organizations, the relationship between organizational identity and the individual, and the balance of reality and fantasy in identity construction.

Discourse is a popular term used in a variety of ways, easily leading to confusion. This article attempts to clarify the various meanings of discourse in social studies, the term's relevance for organizational analysis and some key theoretical positions in discourse analysis. It also focuses on the methodological problem of the relationship between: a) the level of discourse produced in interviews and in everyday life observed as `social texts' (in particular talk); b) other kinds of phenomena, such as meanings, experiences, orientations, events, material objects and social practices; and, c) discourses in the sense of a large-scale, ordered, integrated way of reasoning/ constituting the social world. In particular, the relationship between `micro and meso-level' discourse analysis (i.e. specific social texts being the primary empirical material) and `grand and mega-level' discourse (i.e. large-scale orders) is investigated.

It is increasingly recognized that what makes a theory interesting and influential is that it challenges our assumptions in some significant way. However, established ways for arriving at research questions mean spotting or constructing gaps in existing theories rather than challenging their assumptions. We propose problematization as a methodology for identifying and challenging assumptions underlying existing literature and, based on that, formulating research questions that are likely to lead to more influential theories.

This article takes a sceptical view of the functionalist understanding of the nature and significance of ‘knowledge’ in so-called knowledge- intensive companies. The article emphasizes the slipperiness of the concept of knowledge, the ambiguity of knowledge, its role in what is constructed as knowledge work and the evaluation of work outcomes. Given this ambiguity, the management of rhetoric, image and social processes appears crucial in organizations of this kind. Difficulties in demonstrating competence and performance - as well as the significance of producing the right impression - make work identity difficult to secure. However, this is a key element in doing knowledge work. Successful rhetoric, image production and orchestration of social interactions call for the regulation of employee identities.

We argue that critical management studies (CMS) should be conceptualized as a profoundly performative project. The central task of CMS should be to actively and pragmatically intervene in specific debates about management and encourage progressive forms of management. This involves CMS becoming affirmative, caring, pragmatic, potential focused, and normative. To do this, we suggest a range of tactics including affirming ambiguity, working with mysteries, applied communicative action, exploring heterotopias and engaging micro-emancipations.

Scholarly and practitioner interest in the topic of authentic leadership has grown dramatically over the past two decades. Running parallel to this interest, however, have been a number of concerns regarding the conceptual and methodological underpinnings for research on the construct. In this exchange of letters, the cases for and against the current authentic leadership theory are made. Through a dialogue, several areas of common ground are identified, as well as focal areas where the cases for and against the utility of authentic leadership theory for scholars and practitioners sharply diverge. Suggestions for future theorizing and research that reflect areas of common ground are advanced, along with divergent perspectives on how research on authenticity and leadership should proceed.

This paper contributes to the understanding of relational aspects of leadership and followership. Our in-depth empirical study of the leader/follower relation uncovers how and why assigning team members into ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ positions may sometimes be a double-edged sword and lead to unintended consequences undermining both the team’s potential and member satisfaction. We report on a multi-voiced story of one team that at first looked like a well-performing one with effective, ‘good’ leadership and satisfied team members. However, a closer investigation revealed frictional understandings, unresponsiveness and dynamics of immaturization as the followers overly relied on the elected leader. Leadership seen as ‘good’ may indeed backfire and encourage satisfied, trustful followers to relax and focus on limited roles

 This article explores middle managers in the professions from their position in the sandwiched middle. Based upon interviews with senior academics in management roles and their subordinates in UK business schools, we investigate this experienced middle through a metaphor that informs one particular subject position: to be an umbrella carrier. This position entails protecting subordinates from what is seen as unnecessary and/or damaging initiatives and information from top management above, in order to allow for good professional work to take place below. This form of countermanagement, which aims to weaken hierarchical pressure rather than enforce or uphold it, is informed by a stronger identification with the profession and subordinates below than with the leader role or the superiors above, and aids the middle managers in their identity work.

This paper examines the reasons behind the popularity of leadership and leadership studies. We claim that at least part of the answer to why leadership is so celebrated and ubiquitous – in academia as well in society at large – can be found in how the term typically is (not) defined and presented. Leadership discourses are almost always persuasive; constructed to appeal and seduce audiences of the value and significance of leadership. Given their ambiguity, almost everything can be squeezed in and benefit from the aura of leadership. We propose the concept of hegemonic ambiguity to capture this and point at some basic problems associated with it, and argue for a more reflexive approach in relation to the signifier.

This paper identifies eight significant shortcomings in leadership studies. The field is large, divergent and fragmented, making it difficult to make broad generalizations, but the majority of all research suffer from most of what may be referred to as the Hollywood, Disneyland, closed system, two kinds of people, bees and the honeypot, reification, tautology and hyperreality problems. The paper suggests ways of reducing these problems.

Contemporary expert organizations rely heavily on cross-border, often temporary teams typically working through virtual means of communication. While static aspects of teams are well researched, there have been considerably fewer studies on team dynamics and team processes. Existing process studies tend to take a cautious, entity-based approach, emphasizing team structure as much as (or even more than) processual aspects. This article represents a shift from studying teams as entities and structures changing over time to studying teams as an on-going process. Participants engage in teaming and thus in the continued making and sometimes unmaking of teams. We report on a study of three anatomically similar, self-managed teams performing the same set of complex tasks with radically different teaming processes. With more or less successful shared sensemaking, the team members collectively create (or fail to create) not only team task outputs but also the team itself.

This article addresses the temporality of resistance in the work context. We focus on the challenge of increasingly diminishing professional autonomy in higher education institutions as well as the vulnerability of staff subjected to academic managerialism. A case where a lecturer is exposed to the requirements to revise grading by senior administration is investigated. Power is understood from the “target’s” perspective and viewed as the erosion of resistance. We introduce the concepts honorable surrender and smoothers to capture the process of giving up of resistance. We argue that these concepts are of special significance in autonomy-espousing work contexts where multiplicity of power resources are employed to subordinate employees and influence their professional identities. We contend that de-subjectification is key in understanding the erosion of resistance.

Famous scene in Life of Brian that Mats points to in our dialogue: You are an individual!

The question "What does it mean and to what end does one study universal history?" is the title of Friedrich Schiller's inaugural lecture in Jena on 26 May 1789.

Link to the "Frankfurt School" of Critical Theory