“I Shot the Sheriff”: Irony, Sarcasm and the Changing Nature of Workplace Resistance

• Author: John Hassard,Rafael Alcadipani,Gazi Islam
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12356
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Published date: 01 December 2018

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and S ociety for the Advancement of Ma nagement Studies

“I Shot the Sheriff ”: Irony, Sarcasm and the Changing

Nature of Workplace Resistance

Rafael Alcadipani, John Hassard and Gazi Islam

FGV-EAESP (Brazil); Alliance Manchester Business School; Grenoble École de Management,

U. de Grenoble Com UE-IR EGE and Insper

ABST RACT The spread of L ean management has fuelled debates over the chang ing nature of

workplace dominat ion. While L ean discourses often espouse a ‘huma n relations’ approach,

research has sugg ested the proliferation of coercion systems and questioned whether L ean is

instead shortha nd for cost-cutting a nd new forms of dominat ion. The varied inter pretations of

Lean have expla ined the heterogeneity of worker responses, including forms of resi stance. Our

ethnography explores t his heterogeneity by examining t he implementation of Lean i n a

printing fact ory and tra cing the emergence of shopfloor opposition. Various tact ics were

devised by workers, ra nging from tangible procedures such a s sabotage and working-to-rule to

more subtle forms ref lecting irony and contempt. We argue that the dist inctive manifestations

of domination emergi ng during the Lean program me stimulated particula r forms of worker

reaction, which are e xplained through fieldwork il lustrations. Overall, we produce a

theoretical expl anation of domination and resistance t hat builds upon and extends the extant

scholarship.

Keywo rds: ethnogr aphy, domination, resistance, lean production, organ izational

change

INTRODUCTION

Management and organizational scholarship has increasingly noted the hetero-

geneous and complex nature of domination and resistance at work (Courpasson,

2017; Courpasson and Vallas, 2016; Courpasson et al., 2017; Fleming and Spicer,

2007; Mumby et al., 2017; Prasad and Prasad, 2000; Thomas et al., 2011; Willmott,

2013). We follow Courpasson and Vallas’ (2016, p. 7) view that domination can

Journal of Man agement Studi es 55:8 December 2018

doi : 10.1111/jom s.123 56

Address for reprints: Rafael A lcadipani, Organisat ion Studies, FGV-E AESP (Br azil), Av Nove de

Julho, 2029, 01330-0 00, Sao Paulo, SP – Brazil (R afael.Alcadipan i@fgv.br).

“I Shot the Sheriff” 1453

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and S ociety for the Advancement of Ma nagement Studies

never be total, presupposes a level of freedom on the part of those who are sub-

jected to it, and is almost always a ‘fractured phenomenon, riddled with complex

and intersecting forms’. Indeed several decades of research have built upon the

idea that domination and resistance can take multiple and complementary forms

(Hodson, 1995), giving rise to t heorizing about the multiple ‘faces’ (Fleming and

Spicer, 2007), ‘quadrants’ (Mumby et al., 2017), or ‘affordances’ (Alcadipani and

Islam, 2017) of resistance. With this multiplicity of forms, domination and re-

sistance have become somewhat fluid targets, leading to questions of what con-

stitutes ‘real’ versus, for example, ‘decaf’ resistance (Contu, 2008). Amid such

complexity, recent surveys have lamented that we still know little about how ‘struc-

ture(s) of domination shape the forms that resistance takes? And in what ways

does resistance return the favour’ (Courpasson and Vallas, 2016, p. 3).

One explanation for this conundrum is that in any given organizational setting,

it is difficult to differentiate the types of domination and resistance that operate

– because any single policy can be subject to diverse interpretations (Islam et

al., 2017). Although domination and resistance seem to respond to each other

(Hodson, 1995), forms of resistance most likely depend on how domination is un-

derstood on the ground, suggesting a ‘bottom-up’ approach to examining domi-

nation–resistance dynamics (e.g., Ybema and Horvers, 2017). Moreover, because

actors` understandings of domination are likely to be heterogeneous (Fleming

and Spicer, 2007), attempts to define ‘real’ resistance depend on actors` construc-

tions of domination from within this heterogeneity.

In this paper, we examine how workers individually and collectively understand

their situations so as to promote or reject certain types of resistance. We advance

the argument that domination occurs not only in ways that are already organiza-

tionally constituted, but also within manifestations of routine practices involving

interpersonal interactions, especially between managers and those they manage.

While a broad body of literature has recognized various reactions to the imple-

mentation of Lean (Stewart et al., 2009; Zanoni, 2011), we move a step further

in systematizing these approaches by showing their relational implications and

couching them within a new theory of domination and resistance. Our research

question in this regard is: How do managerial approaches generate heterogeneous forms

of resistance, and how do these forms reflect different manifestations of domination latent in

a given approach?

We examine this question empirically in the specific context of resistance to

‘Lean management’ (mainly hereafter ‘Lean’), a series of re-engineering prac-

tices receiving much support (Liker, 2004; Liker and Morgan, 2006; Womack et

al., 1990) but also much criticism (Carter et al., 2013; Delbridge, et al., 2000;

McCann et al., 2015; Rinehart et al., 1997) over recent decades. Lean is symp-

tomatic of the ambivalence of contemporary work experience because of a per-

plexing duality noted by scholars, in which Lean seems at once empowering yet

exploiting, decentralizing yet controlling (e.g., Anderson-Connolly et al, 2002;

Niepcel and Molleman, 1998). Such interpretative variability creates a dilemma

about how to conceptualize resistance potential within Lean and raises questions

145 4 Alcadipani et al.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and S ociety for the Advancement of Ma nagement Studies

about the status of workplaces claiming the Lean moniker. For our research, it

is exactly this surfeit of interpretation on Lean, its implementation and manage-

ment that makes possible the analysis of different configurations of domination

and resistance, and notably so in terms of how they play out empirically on the

ground.

The paper proceeds as follows: First we argue that exploring the diverse under-

standing of domination and resistance around a specific strategic policy allows for

exploration of resistance that moves beyond current analytical bifurcations, such

as overt/covert or material/symbolic (Courpasson and Vallas, 2016; Mumby et al.,

2017; Ybema and Horvers, 2017). Second, we describe the results of a nine-month

ethnographic study of Lean implementation in a UK printing factory (PrintCo),

detailing how Lean manifests dynamics of domination and resistance at three

levels: a sociotechnical level of practice; an ideological level of rhetorical justifi-

cation; and a fantasmatic level of domination-laden imagination, We argue that

each involves distinct (and sometimes contradictory) domination and resistance

tactics, and such heterogeneity creates the appearance of inconsistency in the

nature and implications of Lean policy. Finally, in the discussion, we draw out

implications of this view of domination and resistance for management and orga-

nization studies and suggest some potential limitations of this perspective.

DOMINATION AN D RESISTANC E

Noting their co-production in workplace settings, scholars have explored how

forms of domination and resistance relate to each other in complex ways (Ashcraft,

2005; Hodson, 1995; Mumby, 2005). Stemming in part from interest in post-str uc-

turalist perspectives, researchers have noted how Foucault’s focus on the produc-

tion of domination and resistance at the level of micro-practices (e.g., Foucault,

2004, 1980 ) requires us to reconceptualize traditional views of worker resistance

(Knights, 2016; Thomas et al., 2011; Vallas and Hill, 2012). Hodson’s (1995) work,

for example, illustrated how organizational resistance depends on how members

experience forms of domination. Studying resistance thus involves understand-

ing the bottom-up interpretations of the subjects of domination ( Jermier et al.,

1994). Domination and resistance are, therefore, considered emergent properties

of groups, rather than forms or types of domination systems existing outside of

micro-relations.

So as to not assume a theoretical frame of domination and resistance a priori,

we bracket the question of types and focus, instead, on the experience of domina-

tion in what Deranty (2016, p. 33) called a ‘phenomenology of social experience’.

This means that, rather than presume the nature of the system within which dom-

ination and resistance relate, we leave the question open of how actors interpret

the system, albeit recognizing they are likely to vary in how they conceive this

relation. In other words, a single organizational policy could manifest itself in

heterogeneous and even overlapping approaches to domination and resistance

by actors. To cite Lukes (2005, p. 113), what seems like domination or resistance