The Question Concerning Empowerment: Subjects of the Enterprise or Enterprising Subjects?

Enterprise Systems (ES), historically justified as means of control, are paradoxically also becoming integral to empowerment. Some researchers suggest that achieving the right balance between control and empowerment is a key challenge for today’s organizations. Others argue that such simple dichotomous conceptualizations fail to account for the co-existence in practice of a high degree of control and empowerment. To account for these seemingly paradoxical effects, we argue that empowerment does not result from the relaxation of organizational controls over particular functions but rather from the application of techniques of control, including the ES, aimed at shaping employee identities in accordance with organizational goals and desires. Understanding control as intrinsic and not separate from empowerment, we suggest that the empowered employee is not merely a subject of the enterprise but more so continually constructed as an enterprising subject. We discuss implications for theorizing the role of ES in empowerment initiatives.