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    ‘In the name of capability’: a critical discursive evaluation of competency-based management development

    Finch Lees, Tim and Mabey, Chris and Liefooghe, Andreas (2005) ‘In the name of capability’: a critical discursive evaluation of competency-based management development. Human Relations 58 (9), pp. 1185-1222. ISSN 0018-7267.

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    Abstract

    This paper illustrates a number of ways in which competency or capability-based management development (CBMD) can work simultaneously both for and against the interests of organizational agents. It does so by demonstrating how CBMD might usefully be understood as both ideological and quasi-religiously faith-based. These features are shown to provide opportunities for resistance and micro-emancipation alongside those for repression and subordination. The study employs a combination of ‘middle range’ discourse analytical techniques. In the first instance, critical discourse analysis is applied to company documentation to distil the ideological stance of an international organization’s CBMD programme. Critical discursive psychology is then used to assess the ways in which employees’ evaluative accounts both support and resist such stance. The analysis builds upon previous insights from Foucauldian studies of CBMD by foregrounding processes of discursive agency. It also renders more visible and discussible the assumptions and dilemmas that CBMD might imply.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): competency, capability, identity, regulation, ideology, religion, management development
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Depositing User: Sandra Plummer
    Date Deposited: 24 Jan 2006
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 16:46
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/300

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