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.
It has been argued that management support is important to successfully translate new management ... more It has been argued that management support is important to successfully translate new management ideas into practice. Through focusing on the obstacles to the translation of a management guru text in a manufacturing organization, we point towards a far more uncertain situation. First, we explore the paradoxical situation of engaged managers undermining the implementation of new ideas. Second, we consider how attempts to use humour to aid translation may generate a variety of unintended employee translations. Third, we examine how the objects that management enlist to support translation can thwart change. It has been argued that 'Technological' and 'textual' objects exercise agency through making humans act in intended ways. Into this mix, we add 'cultural' objects (in our case costumes) and argue that whilst they exercise agency, the outcomes they produce may hinder managerial designs.
... Darren McCabe, Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester, UK. ... An earlier body of... more ... Darren McCabe, Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester, UK. ... An earlier body of work considered trade unions responses to technological change and questioned the popular Luddite perception of trade unionism (McLoughlin and Clark, 1994, p. 2). Focusing ...
... Magasin 11, rue Lavoisier 75008 PARIS Tél.: +33(0)1 42 65 39 95 Fax: +33 (0)1 42 65 02 46. Ho... more ... Magasin 11, rue Lavoisier 75008 PARIS Tél.: +33(0)1 42 65 39 95 Fax: +33 (0)1 42 65 02 46. Horaires d'ouverture du magasin: Du mardi au vendredi, de 09h30 à 18h30 sans interruption Le Samedi, de 10h00 à 18h00 sans interruption. ... Auteur : MCCABE Darr. ...
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.
It has been argued that management support is important to successfully translate new management ... more It has been argued that management support is important to successfully translate new management ideas into practice. Through focusing on the obstacles to the translation of a management guru text in a manufacturing organization, we point towards a far more uncertain situation. First, we explore the paradoxical situation of engaged managers undermining the implementation of new ideas. Second, we consider how attempts to use humour to aid translation may generate a variety of unintended employee translations. Third, we examine how the objects that management enlist to support translation can thwart change. It has been argued that 'Technological' and 'textual' objects exercise agency through making humans act in intended ways. Into this mix, we add 'cultural' objects (in our case costumes) and argue that whilst they exercise agency, the outcomes they produce may hinder managerial designs.
... Darren McCabe, Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester, UK. ... An earlier body of... more ... Darren McCabe, Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester, UK. ... An earlier body of work considered trade unions responses to technological change and questioned the popular Luddite perception of trade unionism (McLoughlin and Clark, 1994, p. 2). Focusing ...
... Magasin 11, rue Lavoisier 75008 PARIS Tél.: +33(0)1 42 65 39 95 Fax: +33 (0)1 42 65 02 46. Ho... more ... Magasin 11, rue Lavoisier 75008 PARIS Tél.: +33(0)1 42 65 39 95 Fax: +33 (0)1 42 65 02 46. Horaires d'ouverture du magasin: Du mardi au vendredi, de 09h30 à 18h30 sans interruption Le Samedi, de 10h00 à 18h00 sans interruption. ... Auteur : MCCABE Darr. ...
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