The Strategic Deployment of Workplace Empowerment

Workplace empowerment and the issues surrounding it have been well documented in the organizational literature on the topic, with critiques centered on the question of whether it is possible to craft an ‘empowered’ workplace where employees who are embedded within capitalist relations of production are actually able to exercise meaningful control over the environ-ment in which they labor. Our contention in this paper is that workplace empowerment cannot be analyzed in isolation, but must be seen as a part of a broader managerial discourse that attempts to serve the organizational project. Following on from Foucault’s delineation of the concept of govern-mentality and Gramsci’s notes on hegemony, we read empowerment as a part of the modern operation of power, and as an integral component of a system of signification that is employed in order to produce a governable, organiz-ational subject. Key Words empowerment governmentality management power workers workplace Quién hizo ceremonia de cenizas? Who made a ceremony of ashes? (Pablo Neruda) Is it possible to imagine or craft an ‘empowered ’ workplace, where employees who are embedded within capitalist relations of production are actually able to exercise meaningful control over the environment in which they labor? Workplace empowerment and the issues surrounding it have been both well documented and well critiqued in the organizational litera-ture, and the term ‘empowerment ’ continues to stand in as an exemplar of all that is positive about work practices (Causon, 2004). While some scholars believe that the concept of empowerment represents a reasonable 17(1): 51–72. [DOI: 10.1177/0921374005057601] www.sagepublications.co