Abstract
If you’re doing your job and delivering on things it’s almost like it feels like you get to a certain point and you get a tap on the shoulder by the organization ........ It’s almost like the organization is taking a view as to when you’re ready for that next step every step of the way really. Or it certainly feels like that to me ... it certainly feels like the organization is kind of keeping an eye on me.
(Middle manager talking about the implementation of talent management, in Harding, Lee and Ford [2015). What is this ‘organization’ that can both keep an eye on managers and tap them on the shoulder? To this speaker it appears to be an independent, anthropomorphised entity. In this chapter I explore the contribution of Lacanian theory to understanding how speaker and this (seeming) entity with an eye and a finger co-emerge. Lacanian theory illuminates how the unconscious and ‘organization’ are inevitably and caught up in each other. Lacan took Freud’s theories, subjected them to an inspirational re-reading, and thus contributed in a major way to poststructuralist theory.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Oxford Handbook of process philosophy and organisation studies |
| Editors | J Helin, T Hernes, Hjorth D, Holt R |
| Place of Publication | Oxford |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Chapter | 22 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780199669356 |
| Publication status | Published - 15 May 2014 |