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Management Control in Bureaucratic and Postbureaucratic Organizations

A Lacanian Perspective

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

The notion of the postbureaucratic organization has been employed in organization theory to denote a number of movements beyond the control mechanisms of the bureaucratic organization. This article aims to use the notions of the symbolic and the imaginary, developed by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and applied to technology studies by Friedrich Kittler, when examining control in these two archetypical organizational configurations. The article argues that the departure from the use of written documents, scripts, and protocols and the increasing emphasis on identity, culture, ideology, and other unobtrusive forms of control can be examined in terms of being a change of emphasis from the symbolic to the imaginary register, from the register of language to the register of images.

Key Words: postbureaucracies • the symbolic • the imaginary • management control • Jacques Lacan • Friedrich Kittler

Group & Organization Management, Vol. 33, No. 6, 635-656 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1059601108325697


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