On Being At Work. The Social Construction of the Employee

Nancy Harding’s book is about killing dreams, murdering selves, organisational death, violence and workers as zombies. This sounds both captivating and frightening, particularly if one has in mind that this book is about developing a twenty-first century theory of what it means to be at work. Her aim is to provide a theory that is based on Judith Butler’s later work.

In Chapter 1 Harding argues that we need to distinguish between the terms “labour” and “work”. She builds this argument on Butler’s (2009) Frames of War and uses an account of Julie, Harding’s sister, as empirical illustration. Labour for Harding “involves the tasks that are done as a means of sustaining life or [and this is the focus of her book, IW] fulfilling the conditions of one’s job” (p. 21). In contrast, work “encompasses workplace possibilities, over and above labouring, of constituting selves recognised as human” (p. 21). Harding claims that paid work constitutes the primary means through which people aspire to develop their self, hence, becoming recognised as a human being. However, the organisations, in which people do the paid work, reduce workers to their organisational role and thereby restrict the possibilities of who one might be. Whilst engaging in paid work, people are required to become what Harding calls “zombie-machines”, not full human beings but a labour force, which is supposed to exclusively think, feel and act for the purpose of the organisation.

In Chapter 2, Harding weaves the account of a business owner through Butler’s (1997) The Psychic Life of Power. She introduces the manager into the four acts of the Hegelian master/slave dialectic, thus, rereading Butler rereading Hegel. From Harding’s point of view the organisation takes the position of the master, who the manager subjects to in order to become recognised as a manager. The workers are positioned as the slaves, who need to be effectively managed as to contribute to the purpose of the organisation. Managerial subjectivity for Harding is grounded in the bad conscience of the manager that if she/he fails, the business will fail, which would mean that the manager was unable to fulfil the cultural norm of the successful manager. This circumstance makes the manager work harder and harder for the organisation, thereby both becoming reduced to the master’s requirements of the role of a manager and in turn reducing workers to their organisational role. In so doing the manager constructs workers as a labour force that needs to be actively managed in order to ensure its continuous contribution to the organisation.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to the workers (i.e. the bondman in the master/slave dialectic). Harding rests her argument upon an worker’s account of what it means to be a worker interpreting it using Butler’s (2000) Antigone’s Claim. Workers develop self-consciousness, hence, a consciousness of their own worth, through their work and the social relationships they establish among each other. Managers are merely seen as intruders, who attempt to determine how work should be done. However, these attempts are rejected and workers only ostensibly fulfil the management’s wishes. As soon as the management turns its gaze away, the workers themselves determine how they should do the work. Harding offers a reading of the same territory, the workplace, from the perspective of managers and workers. The so-called master’s cave is the organisation as apprehended by management. Here workers “are reduced to nothing but role, all individuality is lost” (p. 80). The so-called “seemingly submissive worker’s cave” refers to the staff members’ interpretation of the workplace when the manager is present. Workers appear to be “zombie-machines”, hence, only act in the way their organisational role requires them to. However, this is a façade that is intentionally built in order to pretend that the staff is bent to the organisational role. The insouciant workers’ cave reflects the possibilities workers use or create in order to enact agency and to have autonomy, even within the conditions defined by the organisation.

In Chapter 4, Harding illustrates how the workers’ selves become constituted through their social relationships at work. She uses an account of an archaeologist in order to further explore how workers accomplish a self beyond the rule and regulation following labour force. Again Harding uses Butler’s (2000) Antigone’s Claim as the theoretical background. She argues that the recognition to work on the self does not come from the organisation (the organisation only requires to labour within the narrowly defined organisational role) but from workplace friends. It is through giving and taking care and nurture within workplace friendships that staff members become recognised as human beings.

Drawing on Butler’s earlier work, in Chapter 5 Harding explores what gender might have to do with the distinction between labour and work. She analyses the role of Starbuck from the television series Battlestar Galactica. Additionally, she interviewed two academics, in order to show to which extent it is possible to combine elements from both the female and male subject position, thus, to enact a fluid gendered identity. Harding argues that whilst doing their work, most of the time people are unaware of their gender, and of being gendered, even when their body conforms to gendered cultural norms. Furthermore, twenty-first century organisations offer, at least to some extent an emancipatory space by not fixing gendered subject positions but allowing staff members to free the self from the control of gender. However, when being at work, people become repeatedly surprised back into gender, claims Harding. Working in gendered (i.e. rational, objective, emotion free) organisations, in sex-typed (hence, male or female) jobs, but also interacting with others, people become continually reminded about their gendered identity. Harding suggests that to labour, i.e. to work in a particular organisational role, means to be “imprisoned” into fixed gender roles. To work, however, implies to have and to use possibilities to escape from gender norms and to enact some freedom in terms of moving in and out of gendered identity and thereby choosing to constitute oneself as female or male, or both, or in completely different terms.

In Chapter 6, Harding names (and blames) organisations as being the murderer of the “me’s-I-might-have-been”. People engage in employment in order to have the possibility to work on their selves, i.e. becoming a human being through paid work. This desire, however, is murdered by the organisation that rigorously limits the possibilities to become more than what is prescribed in the worker’s narrowly defined organisational role. The organisation’s power to reduce workers to their organisational role results in workers’ dissatisfaction, sense of loss, frustration and so forth. Workers realise that within the constraints of paid work there are only few possibilities to work on their dreams of who they aspire to be, dreams about who one might become as a human being. Hence, this chapter is about death, what death means to humans, how death is referred to in management and organisation studies but also in the arts, humanities and social studies. Furthermore, Harding outlines how organisational death, that is the death of aspired identities, occurs. In doing so, she turns away from Butler and towards popular culture (particularly detective stories and the fascination with death in popular culture) in addition to Dollimore’s (2001) Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture and Marx’s (1844/1988) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 for theoretical framing.

Chapter 7 again uses Butler in addition to Foucault and Marx in order to elucidate the persons that people might become when being at work. The questions, Harding seeks to answer are: can one escape being reduced to zombie-machines? Could one become a human being through paid work? Harding proposes, I believe, that each of us should become micro-revolutionary, “doing what we can within the conditions of possibility of capitalist workplaces to change those conditions of possibility” (p. 178). Following Foucault, Harding suggests that one should identify the discourses that position people as certain subjects and to question these discourses, hence, their power to constitute particular subjects. Referring to Butler, who also draws on Foucault, one has to identify dominant interpretations (those that frame) and how they organise people’s ways of thinking and talking in order to be able to become free of the limits they put on our thoughts and speech. Therefore, we need to understand how we become subjected and subjectified within dominant discourses. Such an understanding forms the ground to move beyond constraints and work on possibilities of a self that is able to ethically relate to others.

So, is this book worth reading? Well, for those who are working within a critical tradition of organisation and management studies, much of what Harding writes sounds familiar. However, she offers a new vantage point using the later work of Butler in order to develop a theory of work and the worker in the twenty-first century. I am convinced that this is a fascinating endeavour, even though I had wished to be more familiar with Butler’s work in order to better understand Harding’s argumentation. Another contribution of the book is to offer a different language, a language of death, to express the social construction of the employee. Such a language enables us to speak and think of the selves that people dream to realise through paid work, yet, that are continuously murdered by organisations. It also enables us to articulate the workers’ struggle to avoid such murder, hence, establish and use possibilities to accomplish their dreams through paid work. Furthermore, this book is worth reading because it asks the reader to question the self-actualisation talk within motivation theory and the human potential development talk in for example human resource management and leadership studies. To what extent do the current capitalist conditions under which work is performed allow such a development? Additionally, Harding invites us to contemplate the necessity to engage in paid work and what this does to people’s lives in capitalism. Eventually the book contributes to understand workers’ (and managers’) selves, how they feel, think and act whilst being at work. As I continue telling my students, this is essential for a field of studies that claims to develop knowledge about work, organisations and the management of people.