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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Beyond Istj: A Discourse-Analytic Study Of The Use Of The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator As An Organisational Change Device In An Australian Industrial Firm, Karin Garrety
Karin Garrety
Although the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is widely deployed in work organisations, very little is known about how HR practitioners customise it for use, how employees react to being typed, and how (or if) they apply it in their daily work. This article reports the findings of a study that used interviews with HR practitioners and employees to investigate perceptions and uses of the MBTI in an Australian manufacturing site. A variety of interpretations and uses was found, illustrating that the effects of a device like the MBTI cannot simply be read off from the normative claims contained within it. …
The Use Of Personality Typing In Organizational Change: Discourse, Emotions & The Reflexive Subject, Karin Garrety, R Badham, V. Morrigan, W. Rifkin, M. Zanko
The Use Of Personality Typing In Organizational Change: Discourse, Emotions & The Reflexive Subject, Karin Garrety, R Badham, V. Morrigan, W. Rifkin, M. Zanko
Karin Garrety
This article is based on a study of an organizational change program that sought to alter employees’ self-perceptions, emotions and behavior through the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular personality-typing tool. The program affords an opportunity to explore the various ways in which discourses advocating personal and organizational change work through employees’ subjectivity.We argue that theoretical approaches that view the targets of such programs as passive – as either ‘colonized’ or constructed by discourses – fail to capture the complex and contradictory nature of organizational control, and subjects’ changing positions within it. Drawing on symbolic interactionism, we argue …