The paper draws on the distinction between the concepts of individual and person to show how management rhetoric addresses workers as persons whereas actual management practices organize work as if workers were self-interested individuals. We argue that this paradox is partly due to the widespread influence of agency theory whose conception of the firm, based on the agency problems generated by supposedly non-cooperative workers, became an influential normative model. Our argument is that agency theory's basic assumptions powerfully contributed to further and legitimize the deterioration of work life witnessed in the last decades. We end by sketching some of the theoretical and institutional changes in corporate governance regulation and labor law that would be required to make firms' behavior consistent with their rhetoric.