This article provides an in‐depth case study of a UK mutual life insurance company with the pseudonym Pensco. The case is presented partly to illustrate some theoretical and empirical weaknesses within the managerialist literatures on human resource management (HRM), and in those academic critiques which perceive it to be all ‘hype’and no substance. Our concern is not with the questin of whether Pensco ‘fits’an HRM model, but with examining changes in management practice, their effects on the nature of management control and the growth of self‐discipline throughout the company's hierarchy. Focusing on two management techniques regarding the development of ‘team’spirit among company employees, we see these changes as coinciding with the emergence of a language, if not directly the practice, of HRM which has come to pervade management in this and other contemporary organizations.