ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the changing mechanisms of control in operation in the life assurance sales division of Lifelong Assurance. The effect of the deregulation through the Financial Services Act (1986) was to encourage a number of financial institutions to branch into adjacent sectors of the market, leading to a rapid increase in the number of providers of life assurance, including the development of several direct, telephone-based operations The background of public scandals and increased regulation has led to more intense pressure on the direct salesforce of the life assurance companies, accompanied by in many cases by a significant reduction of the size of the salesforce. To examine the changes in progress at Lifelong, I begin with an analysis of the traditional identity of the salesman, and the links between this subjective construction and a number of related discourses with the intention of encouraging a self-disciplinary form of control in the individual. As has been noted elsewhere, the selling of life assurance is characterised by a particular 'masculine mystique' more usually associated with manual labour occupations (Willis, 1977: Collinson, Knights and Collinson, 1990). The specific construction of masculinity articulated in sales is based on the discourses of, on one side, autonomy and independence, and on the other, the careful development of the concept of the 'breadwinner'. Through the selection, training and dayto-day reinforcement of supervisors and colleagues, life assurance sales representatives are encouraged to construct a subjectivity reliant on their ability to act as 'breadwinner' through the heroic, individual pursuit of 'business' in the 'wide world'. By this means, a self-disciplinary form of control is potentially inculcated in the sales representative, which can operate without the direct supervision of sales management to ensure the
representative maintains a high level of activity and makes every effort to maximise sales.
