Psychoanalysis and Human Resource Management: A Depth Analysis

by Sarah Gilmore

Overview

Since the 1980s, Human Resource Management (HRM) has risen to prominence as a highly influential area of practice and scholarship, yet critical examinations remain rare. This book applies psychoanalytic ideas to challenge HRM’s core theories and practices, exposing the dark side of organizational life and human motivation. By engaging with a broad range of psychoanalytic thinkers and theories, the book disrupts established perspectives and offers fresh insights into the field. Essential reading for scholars and practitioners, it reconfigures HRM as both an intellectual field and a site of organizational practice, offering a novel means of reshaping the ways in which we understand the subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529217940
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	10/31/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	206
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Sarah Gilmore is Professor of Organization Studies and Head of the Management, Employment and Organisation Section at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1: A Psychoanalytic Analysis of Key Themes in Human Resource Management Research

1. The ‘Human’ in Human Resource Management

2. The Inevitability of Conflict

3. Strategic Human Resource Management and the Professionalization of Human Resources: A Search for the Transformational Object?

4. The Devolution of Human Resource Management: The Manager as Mother

Part 2: Psychoanalysis, Human Resource Management and Work

5. Organizational Change and the Changing Nature of Work: Subjectivity and Wellbeing

6. The Family in the Firm: Sibling Rivalry and the Law of the Mother

7. Leadership and Its Discontents: Miasma, Abjection and Mourning

8. On Thinking

Conclusions

Editorial Reviews

If you are puzzled about what happened to the 'human' in human resource management, this is the book you need. It offers the perfect combination of conceptual sophistication and practical insight with the narrative zest of a gifted writer who actually cares about what being 'human' in modern organisations truly means.” Steve Linstead, University of York

"A welcome recognition of workers – including managers — as whole beings, and a challenging call to consider how to do better in putting the ‘human’ more centrally in human resource management." Aoife McDermott, Aston University

From the Publisher