This paper takes the regulation of identity as a focus for examining organizational control. It considers how employees are enjoined to develop self-images and work orientations that are deemed congruent with managerially defined objectives. This focus on identity extends and deepens themes developed within other analyses of normative control. Empirical materials are deployed to illustrate how managerial intervention operates, more or less intentionally and in/effectively, to influence employees' self-constructions in terms of coherence, distinctiveness and commitment. The processual nature of such control is emphasized, arguing that it exists in tension with other intra and extra-organizational claims upon employees' sense of identity in a way that can open a space for forms of micro-emancipation. Conceptualizations of organizational control have tended to emphasize its impersonal and behavioural features with scant regard for how meaning, culture or ideology are articulated by and implicated in structural configurations of control. Mintzberg's (1983) review of control structures, for example, identifies five means of coordination, each of which is concerned principally with such configurations. Yet, the coordinating and controlling of organizing practices is hardly restricted to the design and implementation of impersonal, generally bureaucratic, mechanisms, where issues of identity are less overtly addressed.A couple of decades ago, Ouchi (1979, p. 840) observed how 'present organization theory . . . concentrates on the bureaucratic form to the exclusion of all else'. Since then, interest in organizational culture and symbolism has undoubtedly increased

The article subjects the assumptions and prescriptions of the 'Corporate Culture' literature to critical scrutiny. The body of the article is devoted to teasing out the distinctive basis of its appeal compared with earlier management theory. It is seen to build upon earlier efforts (e.g. 'theory Y') to constitute a self-disciplining form of employee subjectivity by asserting that 'practical autonomy' is conditional upon the development of a strong corporate culture. The paper illuminates the dark side of this project by drawing attention to the subjugating and totalitarian implications of its excellence/ quality prescriptions. To this end, parallels are drawn with the philosophy ofcontrol favoured by the Party in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Specifically, the paper critiques the 'doublethink' contention that autonomy can be realized in monocultural conditions that systematically constrain opportunities to wrestle with competing values standpoints and their associated life projects.

and the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Toronto, Canada, 2000. We are thankful for comments received at these meetings and especially for the conversations with Julian Orr and Jean Lave during 2000. We would also like to thank the three referees for their instructive and supportive comments.

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