A good employee is a learning employee: The textual construction of 'employees of choice'

To be or not to be an ‘employee of choice’:  that is the question this paper will address.  To be explored are the mechanics of a text-based work process known as employee development planning.  The paper will focus on the organizing power of texts associated with the work process to align employees’ consciousness and actions with corporate expectations about the way in which and the extent to which they are to ‘perform’ as work-related learners.  

Of particular interest are the inscriptive practices upon which the work process depends – in other words, those practices of working with, working from or working to produce various texts by which employees’ work-related learning is officially planned, implemented, reviewed and rewarded.  It is through these inscriptive practices that employees are enlisted to become ‘employees of choice’, a term that organizes and standardizes the idea that those who are willing and able to meet corporate expectations of their ‘performance’ as work-related learners are more valuable to and valued by their employer than those who do not. 

In the textual construction of ‘employees of choice’ marginalized by lower pay and a perceived closing off of opportunities for advancement are those employees whose performances are deemed not to have met corporate expectations.  Clearly fitting within the stream of IE research that addresses the private sector, this paper draws attention to the active part employees play as co-constructors of the textual circumstances under which it is possible for them to be distinguished as being or not being an ‘employee of choice’.  The author will argue that there is room in IE for fuller exploration of the text-based work processes by which employees implicate themselves into ‘competitiveness projects’ through and by which corporations give primacy to using human capacities within the social relations of capital (Darville, 1999).