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

Rafael Alcadipani, John Hassard and Gazi Islam
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Rafael Alcadipani: FGV-EAESP - Fundação Getúlio Vargas - Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo = Fundação Getulio Vargas’s Sao Paulo School of Business Administration - FGV - Fundacao Getulio Vargas [Rio de Janeiro]
John Hassard: Manchester School of Management
Gazi Islam: MC - Management et Comportement - EESC-GEM Grenoble Ecole de Management, IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie - USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry] - Université Savoie Mont Blanc

Grenoble Ecole de Management (Post-Print) from HAL

Abstract: The spread of Lean management has fuelled debates over the changing nature of workplace domination. While Lean discourses often espouse a 'human relations' approach, research has suggested the proliferation of coercion systems and questioned whether Lean is instead shorthand for cost-cutting and new forms of domination. The varied interpretations of Lean have explained the heterogeneity of worker responses, including forms of resistance. Our ethnography explores this heterogeneity by examining the implementation of Lean in a printing factory and tracing the emergence of shopfloor opposition. Various tactics were devised by workers, ranging from tangible procedures such as sabotage and working-to-rule to more subtle forms reflecting irony and contempt. We argue that the distinctive manifestations of domination emerging during the Lean programme stimulated particular forms of worker reaction, which are explained through fieldwork illustrations. Overall, we produce a theoretical explanation of domination and resistance that builds upon and extends the extant scholarship.

Keywords: Ethnography; Domination; Resistance; Lean Production; Organizational Change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-12
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Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01959081v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Journal of Management Studies, 2018, 55 (8), pp.1452-1487

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