Stretching the Iron Cage: The Constitution and Implications of Routine Workplace Resistance

Abstract

Organizational scholars have shown considerable interest in the rise of complex systems of organizational control, sometimes referred to metaphorically as the process of tightening the iron cage, as well as patterns of workplace resistance to it. More recently, the scholarly spotlight seems to have shifted from formal modes of employee resistance to more informal or routine forms of workplace resistance. This paper presents a detailed ethnographic account of informal resistance and its ability to limit managerial control in a health maintenance organization undergoing the computerization of its administrative functions. Our study adopts a more problematic approach to understanding routine resistance, tracing its discursive constitution in the workplace. Using the findings of an ethnographic study involving observation and interviews, we show how routine resistance was discursively constituted and how it limited organizational control in interesting and unexpected ways. This discursive constitution was achieved through (a) owning resistance, (b) naming resistance, and (c) designating indirect resistance. The paper also analyzes how these different discursive constructions limited managerial control by affirming autonomous self-identities, renegotiating roles and relationships, and reinterpreting dominant managerial discourses. Finally, broader implications for understanding routine resistance in organizations are drawn.

Unable to resist: Researchers’ responses to research assessment in the Czech Republic

“…Analyses of workplace change and resistance have shifted from conceptualizations of 'big', overt forms of resistance to quotidian resistance, stressing the everyday mundane, individualized modes of opposition (Prasad & Prasad, 2001;Prasad & Prasad, 2000;Smith, 2010;Thompson & Ackroyd, 1995). Attention is thus paid to capillary exercises of power in the schizophrenic university (Shore, 2010).…”

La liberté de penser son identité professionnelle : la résistance des responsables de formation au discours managérial en France

“…Elle devient individuelle et clandestine (Ackroyd et Thompson, 1999;Prasad et Prasad, 2000). Le salarié n'est plus un support des intérêts de sa classe sociale.…”

“…Les apports de Scott (1990) compléteront ce cadrage en soulignant l'existence d'un dédoublement dans les mécanismes de résistance. Enfin, nous utiliserons les travaux de la LPT (Labour Process Theory) qui donnent une dimension comportementale à la résistance (Prasad et Prasad, 2000). Ce travail est porteur de plusieurs enjeux.…”

An innovation resistance factor model

“…A number of previous studies have linked resistance to cognitive (Marakas and Hornik, 1996) and behavioural characteristics (Cenfetelli, 2004;Lapointe and Rivard, 2005;Martinko, Henry and Zmud, 1996), and to social and political factors (Joshi, 1991;Kim and Kankanhalli, 2009;Meissonier and Houzé, 2010;Prasad and Prasad, 2000). However, few studies go beyond consideration of resistance taken from a particular perspective: human, social, technical or organisational.…”