Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Management Learning
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gagnon, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Compelling Identity: Selves and Insecurity in Global, Corporate Management Development

Suzanne Gagnon

Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Canada, Suzanne.gagnon{at}mcgill.ca

Adopting a post-structuralist analytical framework, this article fuses two seminal notions, Alvesson and Willmott's identity regulation in organizations and Collinson's emphasis on insecurity within processes of identity construction, to unravel subjectivities and the production of identity in two global, corporate management development programs. Drawing on interviews and observation in the settings, the article contrasts discursive practices in the two programs. It then examines the micro-processes of program participants' identity work in each context, using as a heuristic tool Collinson's theory of conforming, dramaturgical and resisting selves. Contributing to critical studies in management education, this framing draws attention to the dynamics of power in shaping identities within management development. The study suggests new notions of how identity regulation and insecurity interact, relating to two `ideal types' or models of management development emerging in the fieldwork.

Key Words: critical management education • identity work • insecurity • management development • subjectivity

Management Learning, Vol. 39, No. 4, 375-391 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1350507608093710
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?