Comments on: Towards a qualitative society – Personnel Management in management http://rethinkuva.org/blog/2015/05/18/towards-a-qualitative-society-personnel-management-in-management/ UvA Staff for a New University Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:41:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1 By: Arjen Noordhof http://rethinkuva.org/blog/2015/05/18/towards-a-qualitative-society-personnel-management-in-management/#comment-1320 Mon, 18 May 2015 16:55:45 +0000 http://rethinkuva.org/?p=1391#comment-1320 Well, if we aim to change discourse, we should start by underlining that Foucault described this as not an easy task at all. For example, it certainly doesn’t suffice to promote a specific ideal of maturity (Allport, in your other article) that arose from the scientific culture that you criticize. Especially since personality-psychology since then has moved into a very quantitatively-oriented direction (e.g. aiming to quantify the very qualities you seem to appreciate in maturity) with strong normalizing tendencies.

There are many ways in which we repeat and reinforce discourses without wanting to. For example, you say: “A right way of management begins with personnel management.” I would argue that a right way of management begins with questioning the very distinction between management and personnel. How did it happen that at the university we speak of managers and personnel? Why not scholars and those who kindly support and facilitate their work? I sincerely doubt whether scholars (and many other professionals) need to be managed, with which I do not mean that they wouldn’t need some kind of organization to support their work.

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