Durkheim in the Neoliberal Organization: Taking Resistance and Solidarity Seriously

Abstract

Durkheim’s contributions to organization studies have so far been decidedly marginal, and largely concentrated on culture. In this paper, we draw upon his theory of anomie and solidarity to show how a Durkheimian view of contemporary organizations and work has special relevance today for debates about how workers, particularly middle managers, can reshuffle a capacity to resist neoliberal efforts to profoundly disrupt their working conditions, in particular their autonomy to define what is a job well done. We show how Durkheim’s insights can account for the unexpected rekindling of forms of social solidarity in highly competitive and individualistic organizational settings, through dissident efforts that convey a renewal of a certain work ethos severed by neoliberal managerial policies and practices. Recent studies on resistance confirm Durkheim’s view that forms of collective activity, resembling supposedly ‘old’ mechanisms of former days, continue to exist and develop in contemporary societies and organizations, in response to pressure to put people in situations of inter-individual competition that disrupts social relationships.

Stigmatizing commoning: How neoliberal hegemony eroded collective ability to deal with scarcity in Lebanon

“…The necessity of shared values (or beliefs) to “glue” a group of individuals together without the intervention of an outside party is now well documented, as it goes back to Durkheim's work on societies (Durkheim, 2005a, 2005b, 2014), and it is shown to allow for the survival of values alternative to the dominant ones (Courpasson et al., 2021). As such, shared values appear as facilitators of the problem of governance in collective action.…”

“…Neoliberalism is an economic ideology with a value system that enables its own survival (Jessop, 2012). Its hegemonic ideology entails a perception of success based on individual accumulation and an individualization of consumption and choices required for the construction of a marketable entrepreneurial self (Courpasson et al., 2021; Ferguson, 2010; Harvey, 2007; Vallas & Cummins, 2015). Celebrating these dominant values and standards induces a feeling of guilt or punishment for those who adhere to them and fail to achieve them, as the ideology relies on the idea of deservedness (McCabe, 2016).…”

Impactful Theory: Pathways to Mattering

“…In organization theory, there has been a long tradition of critical management as well as feminist scholarship that challenges the legitimacy of managerial power (e.g., Benschop, 2021;Collinson, 2020;Courpasson et al, 2021;Cutcher et al, 2020;Janssens & Zanoni, 2021). Scientific activism has also played a long-standing role in research on multistakeholder partnerships where some scholars have produced academic knowledge aimed at combining knowledge production with intervention in stakeholder negotiations (e.g., Gray, 2008).…”

Best Friends Forever: Relationship Schemas, Organizational Forms, and Institutional Change

“…I propose to do this by focusing on one kind of institutional schema and its placement in a larger framework of cultural beliefs: that of personal relationships. Institutionalist scholars have treated personal relationships as the basis for institutional innovation rather than conformity (Dorado, 2013), and as sources of creative resistance to constraining institutional logics rather than as an incarnation of them (Courpasson, Younes, & Reed, 2021; Hallett & Ventresca, 2006). But such approaches miss the extent to which local, intimate, idiosyncratic relationships are also shaped by norms that come from outside the relationship.…”