Cages in Tandem: Management Control, Social Identity, and Identification in a Knowledge-Intensive Firm
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- 1 January 2004
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Organization
- Vol. 11 (1), 149-175
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508404039662
Abstract
Developments in organization studies downplay the role of bureaucracy in favour of more flexible arrangements and forms of organizational control, including socio-ideological control. Corporate culture and regulated social identities are assumed to provide means for the integration and orchestration of work. Knowledge-intensive firms, which typically draw heavily upon socio-ideological modes of control, are often singled out as organizational forms that use social identity and the corporatization of the self as a mode for managerial control. In this article we explore and discuss social identity and identification in a large IT/management consultancy firm with a strong presence of socioideological or normative control, but also with strong bureaucratic features. Structural forms of control—formal HRM procedures and performance pressures are considered in relation to socio-ideological control. We identify organizational and individual consequences of identification in a context of social, structural, and cultural ‘closures’ and contradictions, including the tendency to create an ‘iron cage of subjectivity’.Keywords
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