The Self-Infantilised Adult and the Management of Personality

Abstract

The new practices of human resource management can be seen as an expression of management communication, which has become increasingly pedagogical. This article is based on Luhmann systems theory regarding second-order observation. The article tries to observe how management communications observe the self-observations of employees, and claims that these observations take place within the code of the pedagogic. A number of effects are discussed: how the employee becomes a formator of him/herself as the medium child, how the employee is expected to observe him/herself with a corrective pedagogical gaze, and finally how this installs a kind of a self-screening of the employee.

Potentialising the potential: Dream of everything you can become, and become everything you dream of

“…In the teaching, these elements are selected, and an attempt is made to shape them. In lifelong learning, they might also include the students’ job experiences, their previous education, the books they talk about, their ambitions, the challenges they are struggling with at work and so on (Anderson, 2007). In other words, everything that can somehow be considered a mental disposition constitutes latent turning points and, hence, becomes relevant in the teaching.…”