Psychological Technologies at Work: A History of Employee Development in Denmark

In: Economic and industrial democracy, Volume 24, Issue 3, p. 411-436

Abstract

Inspired by Michel Foucault's analysis of governmental and ethical practices, this article seeks to repoliticize the contemporary quest for employee development by analysing how the psychological technologies have been used to govern individuals and human relations at Danish workplaces since the beginning of the 20th century. It is argued that while the technologies circulating under the headings of psycho-technics and mental hygiene both assumed that the workers freely subjected themselves to managerial deliberations, it is only the employee development techniques launched from the late 1980s that take ethics, the work the individual exerts upon him- or herself and thereby his or her exercise of freedom, as their key principle of operation.