Disrupted Identities in a Still-Organized World

This book began by raising the question of whether the criteria through which managers, especially middle managers, define management and shape their identities have changed over the past 20 years as new organizational and social forms, sometimes labelled postmodern, have changed the context of their practice. Gowler and Legge’s seminal paper on the meaning of management became the starting point and assuming the rhetorical formation of identity in this paper to have been modernist, I used my reading in organizational, management and social theory to project the directions in which change could be expected to occur under conditions of postmodernity. The criteria developed related to underlying questions of structure, where the shift of process from differentiation to de-differentiation should have led to a corresponding shift from hierarchy as core to identity, to networking as a major shaping feature of identities; to questions of representation, where shifts from rationality to enchantment should have led to demands for accountability being displaced by processes of seduction; and finally to considerations of behaviour, where shifts from commodification to consumption should have led to concerns for achievement being displaced by concerns for commitment.