psychoanalysis
Recognizing the human: A psychoanalytic engagement with HRM and its discontents
Introduction
‘It is joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found’
Donald Winnicott, Communicating and not communicating
To many critics and readers of this journal, the ‘human’ in HRM is hardly human. The images of Marx’s alienated proletarian, Weber’s disenchanted bureaucrat, or Foucault’s biopolitical subject are now so etched in the mind to render a practical engagement with HRM impossible. Best to abandon the enterprise altogether.
Work and play in management studies: A Kleinian analysis
Introduction
Play is a capricious concept dragged hither and thither by its many meanings – Burke (1971) identified fifty-three different dictionary definitions of ‘play’ and thirty-nine of ‘work’. While some authors like Huizinga (1955), Sutton-Smith (1997), and Caillois (1961) have used this ambiguity to fruitfully analyse different types of play, I instead focus on the normative understandings of play (and work) within the discipline of management studies.
