A Lacanian Organizational Perspective on a High Tech Company : the case of Personnel Assessment
Résumé
In this paper, we look at Meganets organizational culture and annual assessment interview through the fantasy of informational transparency which is at the heart of the system of signifiers inside this company. The first step of our work merely consisted in listening to several kinds and levels of language while trying to understand the links between these levels. This later brought us to Lacans theory on the treasure chest of signifiers and the master-signifier working unconsciously inside this kind of organization. What are the meanings behind the profusion of words stemming from the technical, emotional or managerial world which are expressed simultaneously ? Pursuing a Lacanian perspective, we then tried to move further along from a merely symbolic or metaphoric approach to Meganet. Next came the metonymic hypothesis. If there is desire in an organization and if metonymy is the way that desire chooses to manifest and express itself, what is the system of correspondence between desire and its metonymic expression? We applied this hypothesis to research material primarily taken from formal annual assessment interviews. Our interpretation is that a metonymic process takes place during the interview process itself, the aim of which is to support an unconscious formulation that is opposed to official transparency, and which is all the more effective because the terms of the opposition are equally hidden to both the manager and the managed subjects. Therefore, if such a managerial situation is not manageable, if its hidden rationality is more important than its rationality limited though that may be-, does that mean that the managerial relation is an impossibility? And if so surely not in the same way as the impossibility to bypass the difference between the signifier and the signified.