Managing Identity

Modern managers might well ask ‘who are we and what are we becoming’? Two decades of downsizing, delayering, corporate liposuction, lean manufacturing, empowerment, knowledge management and networked organization have shaken traditional assumptions about management to their foundations. Postmodern conditions and post-modernizing processes have fragmented established identity resources and created a crisis of self-confidence, especially in middle managers. In this book I draw on my own empirical studies in manufacturing companies and recent theory on gender and power to explore the impact of these changes on managers’ sense of self and their responses in constructing new and multiple identities. I start by viewing identity as project — a process constantly changing, in flux, ambiguous and fragile — and develop models for explaining and assessing largely incomplete shifts from modern to postmodern management and the associated processes of constructing managerial subjectivities.