This article explores the growing interest in selves and subjects at work. In particular, it examines the analytical importance of insecurity for understanding the subjective power relations and survival strategies of organization. Insecurity in organizations can take many different, sometimes overlapping forms. Highlighting how these insecurities can intersect in the reproduction of workplace selves and organizational power relations, the article argues that attempts to overcome these insecurities can have contradictory outcomes. It also illustrates how 'conformist', 'dramaturgical' and 'resistant' selves may be reproduced, particularly in surveillance-based organizations. The article concludes that a greater appreciation of subjectivity and its insecurities can enhance our understanding of the ways that organizational power relations are reproduced, rationalized, resisted and sometimes even transformed within the contemporary workplace.Western thinking has traditionally viewed human beings as unitary, coherent and autonomous individuals who are separate and separable from social relations and organizations. Post-structuralist approaches have criticized this perspective for its dualistic tendency artificially to separate individual from society, mind from body, rationality from emotion (e.g. Henriques et al., 1984). Rejecting such dichotomies and the Volume 10(3): 527-547

This paper seeks to contribute to the growing interest in naming men as men as part of a critical analysis of gendered power relations in organizations. The paper highlights the way in which men and masculinities are frequently central to organizational analysis, yet rarely the focus of interrogation. They remain taken for granted and hidden. Examining recent studies that contribute to a critical analysis of gendered power relations, we consider the growing interest in multiplicity, diversity and difference. In particular, we explore the issue of ‘multiple masculinities’ as well as some of the conceptual difficulties that surround it. Arguing for an approach which addresses the unities, differences and interrelations between men and masculinities, we suggest that critical studies of gendered power need to examine the management of organizations in much more detail. Highlighting five masculinities that seem to be routinely embedded in managerial discourses and practices, we conclude by advocating further research in this previously neglected area.

The focus of this paper is on the organizational significance of shop-floor humour and in particular its relationship to gender identity and working-class resistance. A brief review of the literature on organizational humour is followed by a more detailed examination of the illuminating analysis by Willis of school/shop-floor counter-culture. Although his research provides a strong basis for the case study presented below, it is criticized for a tendency to romanticize working-class culture, humour and informal opposition. In contrast, by means of an empirical analysis of joking forms in the components division of a lorry producing factory, the paper then explores not only the collective elements, but also the internal divisions and contradictions that characterize shop-floor relations. By critically questioning the workers' manifest search to secure a highly masculine sense of identity, the paper is able to highlight a 'darker side' of shop-floor culture, which underpins and ultimately undermines the creative humour and collectivity found in the factory.

Mainstream leadership studies tend to privilege and separate leaders from followers. This article highlights the value of rethinking leadership as a set of dialectical relationships. Drawing on post-structuralist perspectives, this approach reconsiders the relations and practices of leaders and followers as mutually constituting and co-produced. It also highlights the tensions, contradictions and ambiguities that typically characterize these shifting asymmetrical and interdependent leadership dynamics. Exploring three interrelated ‘dialectics’ (control/resistance, dissent/consent and men/women), the article raises a number of issues frequently neglected in the mainstream literature. It emphasizes that leaders exercise considerable power, that their control is often shifting, paradoxical and contradictory, that followers’ practices are frequently proactive, knowledgeable and oppositional, that gender crucially shapes control/resistance/consent dialectics and that leaders themselves may engage in workplace dissent. The article concludes that dialectical perspectives can provide new and innovative ways of understanding leadership.