Make your presence known! Post‐bureaucracy, HRM and the fear of being unseen

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to critical management studies (CMS) by developing an empirically grounded understanding of how post‐bureaucratic control operates implicitly, by seeping into the very identities of individual employees. Design/methodology/approach – One longitudinal case study of multidisciplinary teamwork in a large insurance company was conducted during a five‐year period, beginning in the late 1990s. Findings – Evidence from the case study shows how human resource management (HRM) techniques established among employees a desire to be recognised as a trustworthy member, on the one hand, and a constant fear of being unseen, on the other. This drove employees to continuously take initiatives that placed them in a self‐regulating limelight. Research limitations/implications – The study uses a single case study, which limits the scope of the findings Originality/value – The paper provides interesting clues as to how post‐bureaucratic control is driven not only by the risk of being “caught misbehavin'”, as CMS primarily has it, but also by the risk of being unseen and by the desire to be recognised.