Australia's Frontline Management Initiative (FMI) marks a political move toward workplace learning and provides evidence concerning development of managing identities and management of such workplace learning. The FMI was examined as a technology of identity within the discourse of enterprise and an instrument of textualization of the workplace. Evidence collected from more than 200 interviews and 500 questionnaires indicated that the FMI text has been subject to diverse interpretations. According to the research findings, within some enterprises, the FMI appears within a discourse of flexibility but is represented by codified national competences and regulated by managerial imperatives. Within other organizations, meaning is more defined by participants, often in a developmental partnership with wider management. Occupying the central space in the field of interpretation is the people development manager. FMI thus appears positioned on the battleground of representation, subjectivity, and production for the development of manager identity. The emergence of enterprise-directed learning processes, such as the FMI, have immediate implications for organizational actors as they are asked to reinvent identity and adapt subjectivity as a cyclic responsibility. As the workplace develops as a pedagogic agency, the critical and problematized role of managing people development has emerged as a primary future research focus. (Contains 33 references.) (MN)