Psychoanalysis and Human Resource Management : A Depth Analysis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilmore, Sarah.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (207 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bristol : Bristol University Press, 2025.

Summary:

Since the 1980s, Human Resource Management (HRM) has risen to prominence as a highly influential area of practice and scholarship, yet critical examinations remain rare.This book applies psychoanalytic ideas to challenge HRM's core theories and practices, exposing the dark side of organizational life and human motivation.

Contents:

Front Cover

Psychoanalysis and Human Resource Management: A Depth Analysis

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

'Make it a large one'

An artificial self

Why psychoanalysis and human resource management?

Defining terms

The Tavistock Institute tradition

Overview of the chapters

Finally, a reflexive account

Part I A Psychoanalytic Analysis of Key Themes in Human Resource Management Research

1 The 'Human' in Human Resource Management

What does it mean to be human?

The 'human' in human resource management: foundational texts

Defining the 'human'

Psychoanalysis and the human: the alien within

Divided against itself: Freud's mental model

The work of D.W. Winnicott

The example of workplace socialization

What does this mean for the human within HRM?

If this is the case, then where might that take us in future, given where it has taken us to date?

Conclusion

2 The Inevitability of Conflict

The women's conference

Conflict, HRM and psychoanalysis

Postwar reconstruction and the employment relationship

Psychoanalysis and conflict

Corporate change at KleanCo

Conflict and systems anxiety

The advent of human resource management

Line managers

Psychoanalytic interpretations

3 Strategic Human Resource Management and the Professionalization of Human Resources: A Search for the Transformational Object?

The search for human resources advantage and the professionalization of human resource management

The professional project

A psychoanalytic reading

Christopher Bollas and the transformational object

The importance of disappointment and self-​elaboration

Disappointment, alternatives and curation

Disappointment and the possibilities for a new agenda.

4 The Devolution of Human Resource Management: The Manager as Mother

The devolution of human resource management activities to line managers

The human resource management-​line manager relationship

Outcomes of devolution

Managers and managing

The manager as mother

Mentalization

Mentalization, management and human resource management

Part II Psychoanalysis, Human Resource Management and Work

5 Organizational Change and the Changing Nature of Work: Subjectivity and Wellbeing

The work of Dejours

Suffering

Sublimation

The role of the body

Cooperation and the work collective

The 'crise de travail' and the case of France T é l é com

Beyond FT

A Dejourian analysis

6 The Family in the Firm: Sibling Rivalry and the Law of the Mother

The development agency

Why siblings?

People in organizations, organizations in people

The contemporary family

Psychoanalysis and the family

The vertical: Freud and the Oedipus complex

The development agency and the father

Continuing the vertical: Lacan and the name of the father

The development agency and being the phallus

The lateral, the Law of the Mother and siblings

Returning to the development agency

The Maternal Covenant

The case of the Bank of Scotland (HBOS) and Royal Bank of Scotland

Siblings and human resource management

Recruitment and selection

Socialization and the helpers

Strategy and siblings

Conflict handling

7 Leadership and Its Discontents: Miasma, Abjection and Mourning

Vignette 1: The test

Questioning leadership

Vignette 2: The viva

Psychoanalysis and leadership

Organizational miasma and abjection

Vignette 3: The union

Leadership, the abject and abjection.

Vignette 4: The theatre company

Vignette 4 revisited

Concluding discussion

Vignette 5: Ann

8 On Thinking

Getting into the head (1): neoliberalism and the curriculum

Getting into the head (2): psychoanalysis

Thinking within the neoliberal business school

1. The human need to know the truth

2. It takes two minds to think our own disturbing thoughts

3. Thinking develops in order to cope with thoughts

Conclusions and other ideas

Conclusions

Towards the (post)human?

The hauntology of HRM

Notes

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-5292-1795-4

9781529217957

OCLC:

1546904754