Discourse and agency: the example of personnel psychology and 'assessment centres.'

Organization Studies, Mid-Winter, 1994 by T.J. Newton

Introduction

This paper examines the role of the discourse of personnel psychology in providing a logic and a technology for formalizing personnel selection. The principal theoretical reference point of the paper is the work of Michel Foucault, and the paper will both draw on this work, and consider some of its limitations when relating discourse to human agency.

The phrase, 'personnel psychology', is used to refer to the discourse which has applied psychological theory and techniques to personnel management and human-resource management (typically focusing on areas such as selection, appraisal, training and development: see McCormick and Ilgen 1987; Herriot 1989; or Cascio 1991, for recent textbook summaries of the discourse). An analysis of the development of 'assessment centres' (hereafter, ACs) will be used as the primary vehicle for this study, because ACs represent a form of technology which (it will be argued) encapsulates much of the theory and method of the personnel psychology discourse.

By way of introduction, three issues are outlined below. First, the relation between personnel psychology, formalization and discrimination is considered. A brief outline of the work of Foucault is presented, which is then related to an examination of the discourse of personnel psychology. Finally, the relevance of ACs to both selection discrimination, personnel psychology and so-called 'new human-resource management' (HRM) is summarized.

In personnel selection, formalization refers to the use of formal methods which are supposed to aid an objective, fair and rational selection decision, in contrast to the kind of informality epitomized by the conventional selection interview. At a pracical level, formalization implies that written records will be kept and monitored, and that a professional 'best practice' model of personnel management will be deployed (Jenkins 1986). Such professional models draw heavily on the discourse of personnel psychology and technology such as ACs, since they provide a systematic basis for the testing of selection criteria, and a procedural rationale for the conduct of selection. Formalization is increasingly associated with a professional model of personnel practice (and hence with its technical knowledge base in personnel psychology), and is currently advocated by bodies such as the Institute of Personnel Management (I.P.M. 1978), the Equal Opportunities Commission (E.O.C. 1981), the Commission for Racial Equality (C.R.E. 1978, 1985, 1987) and the Confederation of British Industry (C.B.E 1970). In addition, whilst noting that formalization is not a panacea for all ills, a number of writers have argued that it represents an important means of protecting equal opportunities (e.g. Arvey 1979, 1983; Morgan et al. 1983; Jenkins 1986; Collinson 1987; Pearn et al. 1987; Iles and Robertson 1988, 1989). In contrast, informal methods of selection (e.g. the use of 'traditional' interviews) are seen as placing emphasis on the 'acceptability' rather than 'suitability' of a job candidate (Jenkins 1986).

The work of Michel Foucault provides a vehicle by which to examine the role of the personnel psychology discourse in relation to arguments for formalization. Foucault explored power and knowledge through a particular focus on the role of discourses, or bodies of knowledge which 'systematically form the object of which they speak' (Foucault 1979: 49). In the factory, the school, the prison or the home, Foucault saw the development of discourse as critical to the forming of the employee, the pupil, the prisoner, the child, etc. Thus, with regard to the child, Foucault examined the relationship between medical, educational and psychiatric discourse, and the constitution of the 'normal' Victorian child (Foucault 1981). He argued that the definition of the childhood normality was based on a problematization of sexuality by a developing medico-psychiatric discourse which promoted definitions of sexual perversions (e.g. the 'child's vice', masturbation) as forms of assessment which could differentiate (sexual) abnormality from normality. Foucault (1981) examined how the local power of medical and psychiatric practitioners were closely interrelated with the 'scientific' knowledge they held of the problems of 'abnormal' sexuality. Central to this power was the ability to observe and survey, to 'gaze' upon the subject of the discourse (e.g. childhood sexuality). The idea of surveillance is most graphically illustrated by Foucault's (1979) reference to Bentham's 'Panopticon', a form of prison design in which a prison warder can see into the cell of every prisoner. Recent writers have explored Foucault's ideas of discourse, power/knowledge and surveillance in relation to the construction of subjectivity and identity (e.g. Henriques et al. 1984; Rose 1985, 1990; Knights 1990; Hollway 1991; Knights and Morgan 1991). For example, Knights and Morgan analyzed the discourse of corporate strategy and argued that it illustrated 'the way in which individuals are transformed into subjects whose sense of meaning and reality becomes tied to their participation in the discourse' (1991: 3).