Reframing Human Resource Management: Power, Ethics and the Subject at Work - Hardcover

Townley, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803984936 ISBN 13: 9780803984936

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, this book reconceptualizes the field of human resource management (HRM) and explores an alternative politics and ethics of work.

The central thesis is that personnel/HRM techniques play a crucial role in constituting the self, in defining the nature of work, and in organizing and controlling the workforce. Human resource management, it is argued, comprises a nexus of disciplinary practices - a technology of power - aimed at making employees′ behaviour and performance predictable and calculable, in a word, `manageable′.

The author analyzes a wide range of HRM procedures, including job evaluation and ranking, selection, appraisal and self-assessment, relating these to Foucauldian concepts of taxinomia, mathesis, examination and confession. The book concludes by linking Foucauldian and feminist ideas to sketch a potentially emancipatory and ethical agenda for HRM.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Townley is Associate Professor in the Department of Organizational Analysis, University of Alberta, Canada. She has taught HRM and industrial relations at the Universities of Lancaster and Warwick and is author of Labour Law Reform in US Industrial Relations (1986).

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803984936
• ISBN 13: 9780803984936
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224