MTU Library Catalogue

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Reframing human resource management : power, ethics and the subject at work / Barbara Townley.

By: Townley, Barbara.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: London : Sage, 1994Description: x,213p. ; 22cm.ISBN: 0803984960 (pbk) : .Subject(s): Personnel management | Personnel ManagementDDC classification: 658.3 TOW
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Barcode
General lending MTU Kerry North Campus Library First Floor Main 658.3 TOW (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 38888000562391
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • A Foucauldian Analysis of Human Resource Management
  • Dividing Practices
  • Control of Activity
  • The Individual as Object
  • The Individual as Subject
  • Towards an Ethical Subject

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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).