This article emerged through ethnographic research into strike action at a UK university. It prov... more This article emerged through ethnographic research into strike action at a UK university. It provides three insights. First, it adds to the literature linking humour to resistance that has largely focused on subterranean, disguised, hidden, camouflaged or decaf opposition. The resistant humour explored in this case is more diverse and challenges extant distinctions because it was overt and covert, individual and collective, decaf and ‘real’. Second, it posits that during strike action the already ambiguous distinction between humour and seriousness becomes even more blurred. Third, it contributes to our understanding of power-resistance relations through introducing the term solidaristic humour which conveys a neglected expression of opposition that reflects and seeks to galvanize solidarity.
Why is resistance a pervasive feature of organisations? We seek to add to the established ways of... more Why is resistance a pervasive feature of organisations? We seek to add to the established ways of understanding resistance by arguing that it may emerge due to the rationality and irrationality, order and disorder that imbues organisations. We explore how such conditions create ambivalent situations that can generate resistance which is ambivalent itself as it can both facilitate and hinder the operation of organisations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a manufacturing organisation, we introduce the concept of pragmatic resistance as a means to grasp the everyday resistance that emerges through and reflects cracks in the rational model of organisations. Rather than being anti-work, we demonstrate how pragmatic resistance is bound up with organisational disorder/irrationality, competing work demands and the prioritisation of what is interpreted as 'real-work'. Overall, the concept of pragmatic resistance indicates that resistance may be far more pervasive and organisations more fragile and vulnerable to disruption than is often assumed to be the case.
The 'dark side' of organizations has been represented in the literature as dysfunctional or abnor... more The 'dark side' of organizations has been represented in the literature as dysfunctional or abnormal, while more critical scholars regard it a condition of the 'normal' way in which organizations operate within a capitalist system. Drawing on the work of Franz Kafka, this paper develops a critique of both approaches. It is argued that we can learn much from Kafka because his representations challenge a top-down view of power and, therefore, suggest that there is light in the darkness. These insights are applied to a case study of a United Kingdom bank, to explore how managers, who are often neglected in critical accounts, are constituted through power relations, and how in the process of enrolling and controlling others, they discipline themselves. In taking this approach, the paper makes four main contributions. First, it elucidates how the 'dark side' has become an integral feature of everyday life in a contemporary organization and, second, it indicates limitations to the power that managers are able to exercise. Third, it explores how managers are fabricated as particular types of subject as they endeavour to discipline others, and finally it argues that whole layers of management can be understood as victims of the 'dark side'.
The dominant wellbeing discourse (DWD) in neoliberal economies can be understood as a form of bio... more The dominant wellbeing discourse (DWD) in neoliberal economies can be understood as a form of bio-power that presupposes healthy individuals. It seeks to produce subjects who take responsibility for their wellbeing and, in this way, render themselves productive. Drawing on interviews with individuals who volunteered a diagnosed mental health condition (MHC), we explore how they resisted the negative associations with MHCs through making their conditions invisible. Hence they sought to blend in and make themselves visible as ‘normal’, well, healthy, responsible, productive subjects. Although we call this chameleon resistance it is bound up with consent and compliance as it reproduces the DWD and negative associations with MHCs.
In the early 1980's in the context of a deep recession a number of commentators talked of maj... more In the early 1980's in the context of a deep recession a number of commentators talked of major changes which heralded the demise of trade unionism (Brown, 1984), (Massey and Miles, 1984). Towards the mid‐1980's the debate became polarised between those who argued for change (Basset, 1986) versus those stressing continuity (MacInnes, 1987). Towards the end of the 1980's a more sophisticated analysis suggested that there had been both change and continuity (Kelly, 1991), however, the emphasis was largely upon continuity in view of the surveys at that time (Legge, 1988). The issues from the mid‐1980's have become more complex due to terms such as the “New Industrial Relations” (Dunn, 1990; Keenoy, 1991), “Human Resource Management” (Guest, 1987, 1989, 1991; Storey, 1989; Keenoy, 1991), and “Japanization” (IRJ, 1988; Oliver and Wilkinson, 1988) which suggest a transformation of industrial relations.
This article explores how a strategy discourse in a UK bank reproduced a managerial preoccupation... more This article explores how a strategy discourse in a UK bank reproduced a managerial preoccupation with costs, control and numbers that was grounded in the extant culture. Through engaging with this discourse, strategists displayed numerical ways of thinking, which suggested that they did not ‘see’ those on the receiving end of the strategy as human beings. The article contributes to the strategy literature first by exploring how ‘strategists’ are constituted and how they forge themselves as particular types of subject through participating in strategy discourses. Second, it examines the consequences of numericalization for those on the receiving end of strategic discourses. It is argued that the accountability that numbers seek to generate can undermine accountability, and so numbers are not entirely the servant of strategists or frontline staff but instead reflect and contribute to ongoing workplace struggles. Finally, it is argued that both strategists and academics need to reflect on the discourses that they (we) employ because otherwise we risk further numericalizing the other.
A number of critics have analysed management guru ‘texts’ and their analysis suggests that we hav... more A number of critics have analysed management guru ‘texts’ and their analysis suggests that we have much to fear from them. This article, by contrast, explores a customer service intervention in a UK bank that drew on ‘some’ of the ideas of the management guru, Stephen Covey. The article highlights that guru texts do not translate from the page to practice in an unproblematic way. This is because they must be interpreted and are filtered through existing social contexts. Second, the ideas are often flawed and third, they meet with resistance. The central argument is that management gurus are less powerful than many critics assume because neither gurus nor managers are able to control how their ideas are consumed.
ABSTRACT This article draws on fieldwork conducted in the back-office of a major retail UK bank a... more ABSTRACT This article draws on fieldwork conducted in the back-office of a major retail UK bank and explores how, when introducing change, management drew on contradictory normative and rational discourses. Its primary concern is to explore how, in this context, employees engaged in contradictory acts that combined elements of both resistance (‘making out’) and consent (‘making do’) that are difficult to disentangle. It is argued that although both are moves within the game, they can be distinguished from each other because the former works against the grain of corporate intentions, whereas the latter works with them.
This Chapter presents three influential and widespread approaches towards analysing workplace res... more This Chapter presents three influential and widespread approaches towards analysing workplace resistance to management ideas. The first (industrial relations) has primarily focused on union resistance. The second (labour process) considers individual and collective resistance to management ideas in a context of antagonism between labour and capital. The third (post-structuralism) has sought to introduce subjectivity and identity into the analysis to further enhance our understanding of resistance. The Chapter begins with a brief contextual sketch of resistance to management ideas as a means to situate the subsequent discussion of these issues. Then, after presenting the three approaches, we consider 'productive/facilitative' resistance, which suggests that resistance can facilitate organizational change and can be beneficial for both organisations and employees. We examine whether this position can be considered to constitute a fourth approach towards understanding resistance. Our argument is that, at the current stage of its development, it would be premature to do so because (1) it is still quite recent, and, by necessity, under-explored (2) it contains different strands and (3) it shares similarities with previous approaches. Nevertheless, we believe that productive/facilitative resistance does raise some important questions and opens promising avenues for future research and so finally, we conclude with some thoughts about directions for future work on resistance to management ideas.
The literature on organizational culture suggests that ceremonies or rituals reinforce control. B... more The literature on organizational culture suggests that ceremonies or rituals reinforce control. By contrast, this article contributes to the literature on resistance, culture and ceremony by arguing that ceremony can also be understood as a form of resistance. It does so through drawing on ethnographic research first to explore how a ceremonial one-day rally during an academic dispute was productive for frontline employee resistance (ceremony as resistance). Second, it considers how such resistance can also be productive in generating consent for it is infused with and reproduces established norms, subjectivities and power relations (resistance as ceremony). Finally, it is asserted that resistance can be productive in fostering a subjectivity characterised by stability and instability and so practices such as a rally are necessary to try to stabilise both the organization and subjectivity of resistance. The article therefore illustrates the ambiguity of productive resistance which has been neglected to-date. These insights and arguments indicate that all forms of workplace resistance are decaf for they are imbued with the context and norms through which they arise. Nevertheless, resistance remains dangerous for those in positions of authority because it means that power is never totalising and so outcomes continue to be uncertain.
1. Introduction 2. Do Managers Dream of Electric Staff or a Design for Drudgery? 3. Manufacturing... more 1. Introduction 2. Do Managers Dream of Electric Staff or a Design for Drudgery? 3. Manufacturing the Enterprise Self 4. Mechanizing Emotions 5. In the Belly of the Machine 6. Coping through Teamwork or How Staff Oil the Machine 7. Divided and Conquered? 8. Conclusion
This paper explores two discourses that are bound up with `producing' two types of subject in... more This paper explores two discourses that are bound up with `producing' two types of subject in a UK Bank. An enterprise discourse, which stresses responsible, customer focused, team players that use their initiative and a Fordist discourse, which conceives of employees as mechanical beings who repetitively process work. Through attending to the work experiences of back office clerks, the paper considers how the latter discourse `represses' the former. Although distinct, the two discourses share a common bureaucratic rationale and a logic of individualization that represses more collective ways of being or alternative subjectivities that might challenge or question the status quo. Nonetheless, the paper indicates limits to the power that management is able to exercise through enterprise, given the contradictory and flawed approach that was adopted.
This article is part of a case study history, from the British auto-components industry involving... more This article is part of a case study history, from the British auto-components industry involving a changing workplace regime from the late 1970s through to the 1990s. Employing the concepts of 'dual commitment' and 'incorporation' we explore, partly through the voices of participants, the process of involvement in that regime. We consider the implications for how trades unions might respond to policies on 'jointism', and for management vis-à-vis the choices on union involvement or anti union strategies. This article explores the changing character of trade union-management relations in manufacturing in a period of increasing economic competition. We focus upon the autocomponents industry, being an industry which is, in general, highly unionised, albeit with a growing number of exceptions, and subject to increasing local and global competition. Management is thus continuously exposed to pressures to be both 'lean' in the production process and 'world class' in respect to the product. Both management and union are confronted with choices and dilemmas as to how to respond. For management, one approach to achieving 'world class' is through 'jointism'[1]. However, management may fear bestowing legitimacy upon
This article explores management's strategic decision making in relation to Total Quality Man... more This article explores management's strategic decision making in relation to Total Quality Management (TQM). It demonstrates that management's strategies are fraught with politics and power relations, which influence the ‘choice’ of strategy and the way in which such strategies are ‘implemented’. Hence, management's strategic decision making may not be planned and rational, and their behaviour is often contradictory which may undermine TQM or render its outcomes uncertain and contestable.
This article analyses the ‘enterprise’ discourse (Miller & Rose, 1990; Rose, 1989) that e... more This article analyses the ‘enterprise’ discourse (Miller & Rose, 1990; Rose, 1989) that endeavours to reinvent employees as responsible, autonomous, self-regulating, customer-focused, team players. In this study of a major UK bank, the staff both endorsed and turned the enterprise discourse back on management and so the boundaries between dissent and consent are blurred. The case study highlights that enterprise does not arrive fully formed and can be a weapon of employees rather than simply a tool of those who seek to exercise power. It is argued that whilst enterprise is a contemporary discourse, it reproduces aspects of a much older ‘career’ (McKinlay, 2002; Tempest et al., 2004) discourse in UK financial services. The continuity and discontinuity between the two discourses fuelled resistance, whilst oiling and obscuring, the reproduction of enduring inequalities, that straddle both discourses.
Managers are often represented as exercising power over others through different discourses such ... more Managers are often represented as exercising power over others through different discourses such as strategy, total quality management and reengineering. This article seeks to add to our understanding of innovation by considering how managers are also constituted through power relations such that their subjectivity becomes embedded within a particular cultural context that in turn imbues the innovations they adopt. A case study of an insurance company is drawn upon so as to explore how managers may resist new discourses that seem to threaten established ways of thinking and acting. It is argued that innovations reflect and reproduce the past, while simultaneously reshaping it, in ways that are intended and unintended.
International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management, 2007
ABSTRACT This paper argues that the hard/soft distinction used in relation to new management inte... more ABSTRACT This paper argues that the hard/soft distinction used in relation to new management interventions is potentially dangerous because it serves to reproduce the status quo by reinforcing taken-for-granted assumptions about the world. Thus considering innovations to be 'hard' can result in a failure to think through the social implications of one's actions. It is suggested that our understanding of organisations can be enhanced through reflecting on the dichotomy and its underlying assumptions. It is thought that through such reflection, the number of innovations that are instigated with little thought for employees and their Quality of Working Life can be reduced, even though asymmetrical power relations are likely to remain. These issues are explored by drawing on some qualitative research from a company that introduced Statistical Process Control (SPC), which has been described as a 'hard' intervention, in conjunction with Total Quality Management (TQM).
This article draws on industry-level research to explore the enterprise discourse in the UK passi... more This article draws on industry-level research to explore the enterprise discourse in the UK passive fire protection industry. It highlights the theoretical weaknesses of the enterprise discourse by questioning the assumption that employers and managers necessarily support enterprise. It examines how employers, not just employees, may seek to resist or evade enterprise and how, far from offering a united front, employers may oppose each other. The article points towards the need for industry-level studies due to the limitations and potentially misleading insights that can flow from organization-level studies. Overall, it is argued that there may be more common ground between employees and employers in terms of opposition to enterprise than has previously been suggested.
This article explores how power is exercised by managers in both 'repressive' ways so as to chase... more This article explores how power is exercised by managers in both 'repressive' ways so as to chase out or deny alternative interests/subjectivities and in ways which are 'productive' of the subjectivity of those they employ and indeed their own subjectivity. Rather than necessarily an intention of managers, exercising power in productive and repressive ways, is a condition and consequence of the strategies they deploy. Nonetheless, the concern here is to question the totalizing effects of power whether in relation to management strategy, total quality management, business process reengineering or culture change. Through exploring innovation in an established automobile manufacturing company, it is argued that a necessary though not sufficient condition of such a prospect, is that managers reconstitute themselves. It is demonstrated that such a reconstitution is problematic when one considers managers as thinking, social beings, situated in a historical context of power and inequality rather than structural automatons or agents that are free of power. Recent commentators have critically scrutinized a variety of corporate discourses including culture (
This article contributes to an understanding of the nexus between humans and animals by drawing o... more This article contributes to an understanding of the nexus between humans and animals by drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a British chicken factory and, more particularly, by exploring the emotional subjectivity of Meat Inspectors employed by the Food Standards Agency to oversee quality, hygiene and consumer safety within this plant. We argue that these Inspectors displayed a complex range of often contradictory emotions from the 'mechanized' to the 'humanized' and link this, in part, to the technocratic organization of factory work that compartmentalizes and sanitizes slaughter. This serves to de-animalize and commodify certain animals, which fosters an emotional detachment from them. In contrast to research which suggests that emotions switch off and on in a dialectic between violence and nonviolence, (Pachirat, 2011) or that we are living in a post-emotional society (Mestrovic, 1997), we elucidate the coexistence, fluidity and range of emotions that surface and submerge at work. While contributing to the extant literature on 'emotionologies' (Fineman, 2006), we add new insights by considering how emotions play out in relation to animals.
This article emerged through ethnographic research into strike action at a UK university. It prov... more This article emerged through ethnographic research into strike action at a UK university. It provides three insights. First, it adds to the literature linking humour to resistance that has largely focused on subterranean, disguised, hidden, camouflaged or decaf opposition. The resistant humour explored in this case is more diverse and challenges extant distinctions because it was overt and covert, individual and collective, decaf and ‘real’. Second, it posits that during strike action the already ambiguous distinction between humour and seriousness becomes even more blurred. Third, it contributes to our understanding of power-resistance relations through introducing the term solidaristic humour which conveys a neglected expression of opposition that reflects and seeks to galvanize solidarity.
Why is resistance a pervasive feature of organisations? We seek to add to the established ways of... more Why is resistance a pervasive feature of organisations? We seek to add to the established ways of understanding resistance by arguing that it may emerge due to the rationality and irrationality, order and disorder that imbues organisations. We explore how such conditions create ambivalent situations that can generate resistance which is ambivalent itself as it can both facilitate and hinder the operation of organisations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a manufacturing organisation, we introduce the concept of pragmatic resistance as a means to grasp the everyday resistance that emerges through and reflects cracks in the rational model of organisations. Rather than being anti-work, we demonstrate how pragmatic resistance is bound up with organisational disorder/irrationality, competing work demands and the prioritisation of what is interpreted as 'real-work'. Overall, the concept of pragmatic resistance indicates that resistance may be far more pervasive and organisations more fragile and vulnerable to disruption than is often assumed to be the case.
The 'dark side' of organizations has been represented in the literature as dysfunctional or abnor... more The 'dark side' of organizations has been represented in the literature as dysfunctional or abnormal, while more critical scholars regard it a condition of the 'normal' way in which organizations operate within a capitalist system. Drawing on the work of Franz Kafka, this paper develops a critique of both approaches. It is argued that we can learn much from Kafka because his representations challenge a top-down view of power and, therefore, suggest that there is light in the darkness. These insights are applied to a case study of a United Kingdom bank, to explore how managers, who are often neglected in critical accounts, are constituted through power relations, and how in the process of enrolling and controlling others, they discipline themselves. In taking this approach, the paper makes four main contributions. First, it elucidates how the 'dark side' has become an integral feature of everyday life in a contemporary organization and, second, it indicates limitations to the power that managers are able to exercise. Third, it explores how managers are fabricated as particular types of subject as they endeavour to discipline others, and finally it argues that whole layers of management can be understood as victims of the 'dark side'.
The dominant wellbeing discourse (DWD) in neoliberal economies can be understood as a form of bio... more The dominant wellbeing discourse (DWD) in neoliberal economies can be understood as a form of bio-power that presupposes healthy individuals. It seeks to produce subjects who take responsibility for their wellbeing and, in this way, render themselves productive. Drawing on interviews with individuals who volunteered a diagnosed mental health condition (MHC), we explore how they resisted the negative associations with MHCs through making their conditions invisible. Hence they sought to blend in and make themselves visible as ‘normal’, well, healthy, responsible, productive subjects. Although we call this chameleon resistance it is bound up with consent and compliance as it reproduces the DWD and negative associations with MHCs.
In the early 1980's in the context of a deep recession a number of commentators talked of maj... more In the early 1980's in the context of a deep recession a number of commentators talked of major changes which heralded the demise of trade unionism (Brown, 1984), (Massey and Miles, 1984). Towards the mid‐1980's the debate became polarised between those who argued for change (Basset, 1986) versus those stressing continuity (MacInnes, 1987). Towards the end of the 1980's a more sophisticated analysis suggested that there had been both change and continuity (Kelly, 1991), however, the emphasis was largely upon continuity in view of the surveys at that time (Legge, 1988). The issues from the mid‐1980's have become more complex due to terms such as the “New Industrial Relations” (Dunn, 1990; Keenoy, 1991), “Human Resource Management” (Guest, 1987, 1989, 1991; Storey, 1989; Keenoy, 1991), and “Japanization” (IRJ, 1988; Oliver and Wilkinson, 1988) which suggest a transformation of industrial relations.
This article explores how a strategy discourse in a UK bank reproduced a managerial preoccupation... more This article explores how a strategy discourse in a UK bank reproduced a managerial preoccupation with costs, control and numbers that was grounded in the extant culture. Through engaging with this discourse, strategists displayed numerical ways of thinking, which suggested that they did not ‘see’ those on the receiving end of the strategy as human beings. The article contributes to the strategy literature first by exploring how ‘strategists’ are constituted and how they forge themselves as particular types of subject through participating in strategy discourses. Second, it examines the consequences of numericalization for those on the receiving end of strategic discourses. It is argued that the accountability that numbers seek to generate can undermine accountability, and so numbers are not entirely the servant of strategists or frontline staff but instead reflect and contribute to ongoing workplace struggles. Finally, it is argued that both strategists and academics need to reflect on the discourses that they (we) employ because otherwise we risk further numericalizing the other.
A number of critics have analysed management guru ‘texts’ and their analysis suggests that we hav... more A number of critics have analysed management guru ‘texts’ and their analysis suggests that we have much to fear from them. This article, by contrast, explores a customer service intervention in a UK bank that drew on ‘some’ of the ideas of the management guru, Stephen Covey. The article highlights that guru texts do not translate from the page to practice in an unproblematic way. This is because they must be interpreted and are filtered through existing social contexts. Second, the ideas are often flawed and third, they meet with resistance. The central argument is that management gurus are less powerful than many critics assume because neither gurus nor managers are able to control how their ideas are consumed.
ABSTRACT This article draws on fieldwork conducted in the back-office of a major retail UK bank a... more ABSTRACT This article draws on fieldwork conducted in the back-office of a major retail UK bank and explores how, when introducing change, management drew on contradictory normative and rational discourses. Its primary concern is to explore how, in this context, employees engaged in contradictory acts that combined elements of both resistance (‘making out’) and consent (‘making do’) that are difficult to disentangle. It is argued that although both are moves within the game, they can be distinguished from each other because the former works against the grain of corporate intentions, whereas the latter works with them.
This Chapter presents three influential and widespread approaches towards analysing workplace res... more This Chapter presents three influential and widespread approaches towards analysing workplace resistance to management ideas. The first (industrial relations) has primarily focused on union resistance. The second (labour process) considers individual and collective resistance to management ideas in a context of antagonism between labour and capital. The third (post-structuralism) has sought to introduce subjectivity and identity into the analysis to further enhance our understanding of resistance. The Chapter begins with a brief contextual sketch of resistance to management ideas as a means to situate the subsequent discussion of these issues. Then, after presenting the three approaches, we consider 'productive/facilitative' resistance, which suggests that resistance can facilitate organizational change and can be beneficial for both organisations and employees. We examine whether this position can be considered to constitute a fourth approach towards understanding resistance. Our argument is that, at the current stage of its development, it would be premature to do so because (1) it is still quite recent, and, by necessity, under-explored (2) it contains different strands and (3) it shares similarities with previous approaches. Nevertheless, we believe that productive/facilitative resistance does raise some important questions and opens promising avenues for future research and so finally, we conclude with some thoughts about directions for future work on resistance to management ideas.
The literature on organizational culture suggests that ceremonies or rituals reinforce control. B... more The literature on organizational culture suggests that ceremonies or rituals reinforce control. By contrast, this article contributes to the literature on resistance, culture and ceremony by arguing that ceremony can also be understood as a form of resistance. It does so through drawing on ethnographic research first to explore how a ceremonial one-day rally during an academic dispute was productive for frontline employee resistance (ceremony as resistance). Second, it considers how such resistance can also be productive in generating consent for it is infused with and reproduces established norms, subjectivities and power relations (resistance as ceremony). Finally, it is asserted that resistance can be productive in fostering a subjectivity characterised by stability and instability and so practices such as a rally are necessary to try to stabilise both the organization and subjectivity of resistance. The article therefore illustrates the ambiguity of productive resistance which has been neglected to-date. These insights and arguments indicate that all forms of workplace resistance are decaf for they are imbued with the context and norms through which they arise. Nevertheless, resistance remains dangerous for those in positions of authority because it means that power is never totalising and so outcomes continue to be uncertain.
1. Introduction 2. Do Managers Dream of Electric Staff or a Design for Drudgery? 3. Manufacturing... more 1. Introduction 2. Do Managers Dream of Electric Staff or a Design for Drudgery? 3. Manufacturing the Enterprise Self 4. Mechanizing Emotions 5. In the Belly of the Machine 6. Coping through Teamwork or How Staff Oil the Machine 7. Divided and Conquered? 8. Conclusion
This paper explores two discourses that are bound up with `producing' two types of subject in... more This paper explores two discourses that are bound up with `producing' two types of subject in a UK Bank. An enterprise discourse, which stresses responsible, customer focused, team players that use their initiative and a Fordist discourse, which conceives of employees as mechanical beings who repetitively process work. Through attending to the work experiences of back office clerks, the paper considers how the latter discourse `represses' the former. Although distinct, the two discourses share a common bureaucratic rationale and a logic of individualization that represses more collective ways of being or alternative subjectivities that might challenge or question the status quo. Nonetheless, the paper indicates limits to the power that management is able to exercise through enterprise, given the contradictory and flawed approach that was adopted.
This article is part of a case study history, from the British auto-components industry involving... more This article is part of a case study history, from the British auto-components industry involving a changing workplace regime from the late 1970s through to the 1990s. Employing the concepts of 'dual commitment' and 'incorporation' we explore, partly through the voices of participants, the process of involvement in that regime. We consider the implications for how trades unions might respond to policies on 'jointism', and for management vis-à-vis the choices on union involvement or anti union strategies. This article explores the changing character of trade union-management relations in manufacturing in a period of increasing economic competition. We focus upon the autocomponents industry, being an industry which is, in general, highly unionised, albeit with a growing number of exceptions, and subject to increasing local and global competition. Management is thus continuously exposed to pressures to be both 'lean' in the production process and 'world class' in respect to the product. Both management and union are confronted with choices and dilemmas as to how to respond. For management, one approach to achieving 'world class' is through 'jointism'[1]. However, management may fear bestowing legitimacy upon
This article explores management's strategic decision making in relation to Total Quality Man... more This article explores management's strategic decision making in relation to Total Quality Management (TQM). It demonstrates that management's strategies are fraught with politics and power relations, which influence the ‘choice’ of strategy and the way in which such strategies are ‘implemented’. Hence, management's strategic decision making may not be planned and rational, and their behaviour is often contradictory which may undermine TQM or render its outcomes uncertain and contestable.
This article analyses the ‘enterprise’ discourse (Miller & Rose, 1990; Rose, 1989) that e... more This article analyses the ‘enterprise’ discourse (Miller & Rose, 1990; Rose, 1989) that endeavours to reinvent employees as responsible, autonomous, self-regulating, customer-focused, team players. In this study of a major UK bank, the staff both endorsed and turned the enterprise discourse back on management and so the boundaries between dissent and consent are blurred. The case study highlights that enterprise does not arrive fully formed and can be a weapon of employees rather than simply a tool of those who seek to exercise power. It is argued that whilst enterprise is a contemporary discourse, it reproduces aspects of a much older ‘career’ (McKinlay, 2002; Tempest et al., 2004) discourse in UK financial services. The continuity and discontinuity between the two discourses fuelled resistance, whilst oiling and obscuring, the reproduction of enduring inequalities, that straddle both discourses.
Managers are often represented as exercising power over others through different discourses such ... more Managers are often represented as exercising power over others through different discourses such as strategy, total quality management and reengineering. This article seeks to add to our understanding of innovation by considering how managers are also constituted through power relations such that their subjectivity becomes embedded within a particular cultural context that in turn imbues the innovations they adopt. A case study of an insurance company is drawn upon so as to explore how managers may resist new discourses that seem to threaten established ways of thinking and acting. It is argued that innovations reflect and reproduce the past, while simultaneously reshaping it, in ways that are intended and unintended.
International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management, 2007
ABSTRACT This paper argues that the hard/soft distinction used in relation to new management inte... more ABSTRACT This paper argues that the hard/soft distinction used in relation to new management interventions is potentially dangerous because it serves to reproduce the status quo by reinforcing taken-for-granted assumptions about the world. Thus considering innovations to be 'hard' can result in a failure to think through the social implications of one's actions. It is suggested that our understanding of organisations can be enhanced through reflecting on the dichotomy and its underlying assumptions. It is thought that through such reflection, the number of innovations that are instigated with little thought for employees and their Quality of Working Life can be reduced, even though asymmetrical power relations are likely to remain. These issues are explored by drawing on some qualitative research from a company that introduced Statistical Process Control (SPC), which has been described as a 'hard' intervention, in conjunction with Total Quality Management (TQM).
This article draws on industry-level research to explore the enterprise discourse in the UK passi... more This article draws on industry-level research to explore the enterprise discourse in the UK passive fire protection industry. It highlights the theoretical weaknesses of the enterprise discourse by questioning the assumption that employers and managers necessarily support enterprise. It examines how employers, not just employees, may seek to resist or evade enterprise and how, far from offering a united front, employers may oppose each other. The article points towards the need for industry-level studies due to the limitations and potentially misleading insights that can flow from organization-level studies. Overall, it is argued that there may be more common ground between employees and employers in terms of opposition to enterprise than has previously been suggested.
This article explores how power is exercised by managers in both 'repressive' ways so as to chase... more This article explores how power is exercised by managers in both 'repressive' ways so as to chase out or deny alternative interests/subjectivities and in ways which are 'productive' of the subjectivity of those they employ and indeed their own subjectivity. Rather than necessarily an intention of managers, exercising power in productive and repressive ways, is a condition and consequence of the strategies they deploy. Nonetheless, the concern here is to question the totalizing effects of power whether in relation to management strategy, total quality management, business process reengineering or culture change. Through exploring innovation in an established automobile manufacturing company, it is argued that a necessary though not sufficient condition of such a prospect, is that managers reconstitute themselves. It is demonstrated that such a reconstitution is problematic when one considers managers as thinking, social beings, situated in a historical context of power and inequality rather than structural automatons or agents that are free of power. Recent commentators have critically scrutinized a variety of corporate discourses including culture (
This article contributes to an understanding of the nexus between humans and animals by drawing o... more This article contributes to an understanding of the nexus between humans and animals by drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a British chicken factory and, more particularly, by exploring the emotional subjectivity of Meat Inspectors employed by the Food Standards Agency to oversee quality, hygiene and consumer safety within this plant. We argue that these Inspectors displayed a complex range of often contradictory emotions from the 'mechanized' to the 'humanized' and link this, in part, to the technocratic organization of factory work that compartmentalizes and sanitizes slaughter. This serves to de-animalize and commodify certain animals, which fosters an emotional detachment from them. In contrast to research which suggests that emotions switch off and on in a dialectic between violence and nonviolence, (Pachirat, 2011) or that we are living in a post-emotional society (Mestrovic, 1997), we elucidate the coexistence, fluidity and range of emotions that surface and submerge at work. While contributing to the extant literature on 'emotionologies' (Fineman, 2006), we add new insights by considering how emotions play out in relation to animals.
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Papers by Darren McCabe