Post-bureaucracy - control through professional freedom

This article develops a framework for understanding autonomy and control in post-bureaucratic organizations. It reviews two dominant discourses on post-bureaucracy - the managerial discourse and the critical management discourse. Whereas the one pictures post-bureaucracy as an emancipating regime based on the personalities and social networks of individuals, the other pictures it as a totalitarian regime, which subordinates individuals' thoughts, emotions and identities to its instrumental schemes. Both discourses are criticized for being grounded in a view of post-bureaucracy as a "total" organization. An alternative conceptualization is developed, which shows that post-bureaucracy neither emancipates individuals from control, nor captures them in totalitarian control A distinguishing characteristic of post-bureaucracy is that it displaces the responsibility for setting limits between professional and non-professional concerns from the organization to the individual Via a case study it is shown how this implies a specific form of control that does not restrict individual freedom, but uses it as its prime vehicle.