ABSTRACT
In Manufacturing the Employee, Roy Jacques examines, through Foucauldian method, the discursive and practice based shifts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which precipitated the development of modern American Management Knowledge. This chapter seeks to complement Jacques' work by extending his arguments about the construction of management knowledge, and extending his method to examine the live talk of an executive in a newly privatized public utility who explicitly constitutes his practice through the language of new managerialism. The chapter examines P. A. Clark's representation of the process of forging 'a separate metering business', and explores the discursive resources he uses in legitimating his position and reality in CoastMeter. The CoastMeter case highlights how an executive in an organization constructs an identity as someone who cunningly and entrepreneurially leads through change, surfing the environment for opportunity. He uses themes pertaining to Charisma, Anachronism, Inevitability, External Alliances, and Empowerment to position his narrative.
