Authenticity and Autonomy in the Subjectification of Management Consultants in a Small Firm

This article contributes to the debate about the room for agency in the relation between organizational discourses and individual subjectivity by shedding light on a site of discursive struggle and identity work: the social construction of subjectification. To do so, this article offers empirical illustrations of how consultants mobilize discursive resources to talk about subjectification in a small management consulting firm where consultants are required to subject to a dominant organizational discourse sustaining their professional activities and ways of being - The Practice. The analysis illustrates how consultants mobilize discursive resources and moves drawn to account positively or not for subjectification in the context of this firm. Based on these findings, I argue that talk about subjectification is a major site of identity work guided by the discourses of Authenticity and Autonomy. Such identity work performs existentially by maintaining one’s sense of self-identity as dignified individuals and professionals despite the threats of subjection; politically by sustaining different groups through the (de-)legitimization of different configurations of power relations; organizationally by facilitating or complicating one’s subjection and by bringing into being different lived experiences of one’s link to the organization.