AGENCY AND DISCOURSE - RECRUITING CONSULTANTS IN A LIFE-INSURANCE COMPANY

This paper applies the work of Gallon in attempting to explore the rel ation between discourse and agency in an analysis of the hiring of man agement consultants by a large life insurance organisation, 'Lifeco': The data focus on the recruitment and deployment of management consult ants within Lifeco, and explore the actor network relevant to this pro cess. As well as examining the 'moments' of translation within the net work, attention is paid to the degree of longer term 'convergence' (Ga llon 1991) around the consultant's work within Lifeco. Whilst acknowle dging the advantage of Gallon's work to exploring agency and discourse , the paper remains critical of certain aspects of his theorising, esp ecially the question of access to particular locations in an actor net work.