The Panopticon: From Bentham's Obsession to the Revolution in Management Learning

Abstract

Foucault has shown us how Bentham's ideal design for a prison, the panopticon, stands as an archetype of disciplinary organization, that is, organization assured by the mutual reinforcement of power and knowledge. In this paper, we shall examine management eductaion from Foucault's perspective, tracing its growth from the 1960's to the present, to consider its significance for the modern organization conceived as a disciplinary apparatus. In this view, management education, personnel, and human resource management (HRM) represents some of the latest stages in the "formalization" of the individual within power relations, which began at the end of the eighteenth century with the emergence of the "clinical" human sciences. Finally, it is suggested that research concerning the documentary methods accompanying such "formalization," via the machinery M.E.D. and H.R.M., would benefit from ethnomethodological analyses of the type originated by Garfinkel.