ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author outlines the operation of complementary yet distinct modes of power in the control of employees in Information Technology (IT) and Sales in Financial Services. He first analyses the objedification of employees in these areas through the application of a number of fields of power/knowledge, based in the human sciences and and techniques of Human Resource Management, personnel, accounting, and so on. The author then focuses on the operation of disciplinary power through mechanisms of hierarchical surveillance and normalising judgement, in the construction of the employee as an object to be understood and instrumentally manipulated. The issue of ethics is also central to his broader project; the development of a non-essentialist form of critical social research which can avoid positing and imposing fundamental moral certainties. Finally, the author clarifies the relationship between his analysis of the empirical material on Buzzbank and Lifelong and the theoretical debates which underpin the analysis of the empirical material throughout.
