ABSTRACT
Frisch’s poignant observation of the situation of immigrant workers (Gastarbeiter) in West Germany in the 1960s who came to a country that was in need of labour but not prepared to integrate others into society, is taken here as the point of departure to investigate alternative constructions of the self in relation to work. The assertion at the outset is that the majority of HRD research and theorizing is based on an instrumental and commodified view of persons, a stance that is not only limiting in a practical sense but equally questionable from ethical and intellectual points of view. That HRD as a field of research and of practice focused on people in organizations should have adopted so intently a functionalist paradigm (Burrell and Morgan, 1979) might be explained by its proximity to the behavioural sciences, the need for legitimacy in academia and organizations, and the dominance of a managerialist discourse (Deetz, 1992). The foreclosure of alternative perspectives should, however, also be seen as a loss of opportunity to bring to the fore ignored areas of organizational life and to expand understanding, theorizing, and practical application. When, as Barley and Kunda (1992) have suggested, managerial emphasis has shifted over the past 25 years from rational to normative modes of coordination (e.g. “productivity through people” rather than through systems, policies and procedures), renewed and vigorous investigation and theorizing about people in organizations is likely, indeed, to yield fresh insight, and broader understanding. Organizations might find lessons from the experience of German Gastarbeiter policies: where persons are reduced to factors in the production process. Ethical, social, personal, and work-related problems result.
