Enrolling Technologies of the Self in Employee/Leader Conversations

Abstract

Employee conversations between manager and employee focused on employee development is widespread in the public and private Danish labour market. It is implemented through numerous labour market agreements. These formalized conversations aim in a continuing process to adjust personal competences to corporate visions, missions and goals. As a tool of development, employees are invited to participate in conversations once every year. The article aspires to uncover the hidden technologies of power at work during these conversations. Influenced by the analytical framework of Michel Foucault, the article seeks to compare early Christian rituals of confession, exomologesis and exagoreusis, with modern day employee conversations. It implies the existence of rituals of self-examination, identification of inner impurities, disclosure of the self and renunciation of the self as basic elements of the technologies of the self. Through time these rituals have undergone changes and transformations, only to resurface in our time as a widespread method of modification of the self. In examining a variety of models of employee/leader conversations, it documents that subjectification of the employee is implemented in a framework of freedom and choice, which seems to be part of the modern rationale of control. Technologies of the self, combined with formal relations of domination, form a specifi c type of governmentality that requires the voluntary participation of the employee to confess his or her imperfections that keep them from achieving corporate goals and transform the soul in an endless strive for perfection as an employee.