ORGANIZATIONS OF CO-OPERATIVE, COERCIVE

The Use By Organizations Of Co-Operative, Coercive And Conceptive Methods Of Overcoming Worker Resistance To Organizational Control

The Use By Organizations Of Co-Operative, Coercive And Conceptive Methods Of Overcoming Worker Resistance To Organizational Control

Introduction

Organisational misbehaviour (misbehaviour) has been a prominent feature of organisational studies throughout the twentieth century and continues to command similar attention in the first decade of the twenty-first century. For instance, from systematic soldiering identified by Taylor (1917/1967) at the beginning of the twentieth century, to quota restriction in the 1940s (Roy, 1952), to workplace fiddles and theft in the 1970s (Mars, 1994; Ditton, 1977), to employees resisting new forms of human resource management (HRM) in the 1990s (McKinlay and Taylor, 1996a, b), and more recently, with a range of studies conducted in the first few years of the twenty-first century that focus on employee misappropriation of the organisation's internet capabilities (Block, 2001; Lim, 2002; Griffiths, 2003; Lara et al., 2006).

More recently, misbehaviour has been the specific focus point of a range of scholarly debates that concern the tightening of management control over the labour process and job satisfaction under quality management regimes (Thompson and Ackroyd, 1995; Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999, Collinson and Ackroyd, 2005), and debates in many management circles about whether misbehaviour should be a more prominent feature of models, research and practical advice that emphasises the creation of positive behaviour (Sagie et al., 2003; Vardi and Weitz, 2004; Kidwell and Martin, 2005). If there is one thing that is certain about misbehaviour is that, however, the labour process has changed and continues to change throughout industrialisation, and however, much management theorists advise on the curbing of misbehaviour, misbehaviour is a lasting feature of organisations. However, misbehaviour may well be a lasting feature of organisations, yet as the brief examples given above suggest, misbehaviour continues to develop according to the nature of modern organisations, the people who work within them, and to an extent reflects broader social, political and technological trends.

Organisational misbehaviour: what is it and why has it recently become an emerging feature of organisational study?

Defining misbehaviour

It is only with recent additions to the literature on “organisational misbehaviour” that a range of definitions has been provided. For instance, key writers from industrial sociology - Ackroyd and Thompson (1999, p. 2) - advise misbehaviour to be “anything you do at work you are not supposed to do” a term used earlier by Sprouse (1992) to describe sabotage in the American workplace. Further, Ackroyd and Thompson (1999, p. 25) believe misbehaviour to concern employee-employer contestation over matters related to time, work, product and identity. Watson (2003, p. 230), moreover, provides a longer and more detailed definition:

[A]ctivities occurring within the workplace that (a) according to official structure, culture and rules of the organisation, “should not happen” and (b) contain an element of challenge to the dominant modes of operating or to dominant interests in the organisation.

Watson's definition echoes the ideas of the previous definition in that the main focus of attention is what should not ...