Inside Management: Studying Organizational Practices 3030619346, 9783030619343

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Inside Management

Studying Organizational Practices David Vickers

Inside Management “Participant observations of positions high in the hierarchy are very rare; not the least because the job is too demanding to play the two roles—of participant and an observer—at the same time. This is why both students and general readers will be very pleased to learn what a Human Resource Manager actually does—from David Vickers’ book”. —Barbara Czarniawska, Professor of Management Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden “A strong ethnographic account of managerial and HR work. I will definitely have a copy on my bookcase”. —Aileen Lawless, Reader in Human Resource Development (HRD) and Head of the Leadership, Education and Development (LEAD) research group at Liverpool Business School, UK

David Vickers

Inside Management Studying Organizational Practices

David Vickers Institute for Research into Organisation University of Central Lancashire Preston, Kirkcudbrightshire, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-61934-3    ISBN 978-3-030-61935-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61935-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

I dedicate this text to Brian and Mary for instilling a passion for learning and fairness in me.

Preface

This book provides a series of insider accounts about managerial and Human Resource practices. Such accounts are still very rare, with the most notable accounts in long form (books) being from 1959 (Dalton) and 1994 (Watson). There are several ethnographic accounts of workers perspectives but not from managerial ones. As such, the book satisfies a key need for more thick descriptions of managerial practices in situ in order to challenge and critique the neat and tidy remote descriptions of managerial work found in most textbooks. The book also seeks to advance thinking in the theoretical areas of strategy as practice, actor-network theory, safety as practice and human resource management practices. This is achieved by exploring several accounts such as production asset optimisation, redundancy handling, community safety practices and contested HR practices and policies. In short, this book provides accounts of how actual managerial, human resource and organisational practices are performed in the workplace. This involves the conflicts, the power struggles and the contested terrain that is largely ignored in most textbooks on management, human resources and organisations. Castle Douglas, UK

David Vickers

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Acknowledgements

I would like to give my thanks to Louise Vickers and Professor Stephen Fox for their support and encouragement along the way. I would also like to thank all my colleagues at ‘Burnsland’ for their cooperation. I greatly appreciate the time and effort of the reviewer, Sylvia Gherardi, and for her insightful comments on an earlier draft. Finally, I would also like to thank Jessica Harrison and Srishti Gupta at Palgrave Macmillan for their patience and advice.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Research Overview and Theoretical Contributions  7 3 Strategy as Practice—Asset Optimisation Process 31 4 ‘Delivering’ the Strategy: The Engine Room 57 5 Safety Practices: Espoused Theory and Practice 85 6 Nonhuman Resource Practices: Control, Conformity and Contestation111 7 Conclusion135 Appendix A145 Index Terms147 Index151

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List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2

Managerial and Business Technologies Recordable injury rate performance for the four years prior to acquisition. (Rate; 12 month average injuries per 200,000 hours) Burnsland recordable injury rate first year in Chemco. (Number of injuries per 200 K hours)

75 100 101

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This chapter will set the scene for the remaining chapters by outlining the organisational context and the practices to be explored in subsequent chapters and why these practices and accounts are of particular relevance. Finally, the chapter considers the overarching conclusions of each chapter. Keywords  Ethnography • Burnsland • Actor-Network Theory • Strategy-as-practice

Introduction The book draws upon events from an 18-month period of ethnographic study where the author was a Human Resource Manager inside management. As Czarniawska (2012, p. 132) points out, ethnographic accounts, where the researcher is a full management participant like Dalton (1959) and Watson (1994), are an “undoubtedly superior” form of organisational research. This chapter gives an overview of organisational context and the book layout, and highlights its conclusions.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Vickers, Inside Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61935-0_1

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Overview of the Burnsland Account The accounts draw upon an 18-month period of events in ‘Chemco’, an America multinational chemical company. Chemco acquired three production sites (Burnsland, Norzeburg, Squaretown) and a research centre (Bilton) from Halcyon Chemicals International (‘HCI’), a UK multinational in the same sector, for $1 billion. Events largely centre around one site, ‘Burnsland’, based in a small rural UK town. At the point of takeover, Burnsland employed 650 employees and all automatically transferred from HCI to Chemco along with their terms and conditions of employment. The Author/HR Manager was an HCI employee with ten years’ service who chose to transfer. He was a newcomer to both Burnsland and Chemco but an old-timer as far as HCI was concerned. Pseudonyms are used for people, places and organisations to allow a fuller telling of the events without compromising anonymity—except for the Author. It needs to be recognised such an approach leaves the Author vulnerable as he is no longer anonymised (Czarniawska 2000). This use of pseudonyms is typical of the tradition of organisational ethnographies (e.g., Dalton 1959; Watson 1994). A list of characters in the accounts is included in Appendix A. The overarching account is of managerial power relations and contestations. This includes events surrounding production line closures, product transfers between sites, redundancies, safety and Human Resource Management (HRM) practices. In summary, at the end of the research period the outcomes of proposed closures, redundancies and product transfers were (1) Only two out of three production lines announced for closure as part of the plan were closed on time; (2). The third production line was kept open; (3) The proposed 200 compulsory redundancies did not happen, instead 100 volunteers signed up for redundancy but these redundancies happened over 18 months not immediately; (4) delays which kept the third production line open allowed Burnsland managers to demonstrate the site in Holland had difficulties masked by its projected production figures and, consequentially, Burnsland secured £9  m investment into its remaining lines; (5). Two ‘unannounced’ production lines privately earmarked for closure were reprieved indefinitely; (6). The Site Manager returned to America to take early retirement just after the research period. The focus now moves on to an overview of the theoretical contributions of the book.

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Theoretical Contributions The book employs an at-home ethnography (AHE) (e.g., Vickers 2019) methodology with the application of two analytical lenses—Strategy as Practice (SasP) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Cordella and Shaikh (2006, p. 3) criticised the use of ANT as an analytical lens as doing so takes ANT away from its ontological root “that reality is constructed by the interplay of more than one actant and this reality emerges outside the mind of any individual”. To use it as a lens they argue is adopting an interpretivist ontology which is constructivist in nature with reality being constructed in the mind of the interpreter. Whilst ethnography is largely seen as a form of interpretivism, it was used here as a mechanism to gather information for a ‘study of managers in situ’ with no a priori judgements made and certainly with no idea of what would unfold over the 18-month period. The Author’s relays accounts using only the data gathered without initial interpretation and to let the reader be interpretivist if they so wish. By using AHE the Author is not neutral as he had an HR and managerial role to play, but the data is based purely on notes and documents from the specific moment. Many of the interpretations and pictures emerged after the events had occurred. Prime examples are Chaps. 5 and 6 on safety and HR respectively. This means the ANT lens is used not in an interpretivist fashion but instead takes ANT’s intended approach to symmetrically following flows of intermediaries (Nicolini 2017) and mediators between actors (both nonhuman and human). Employing this approach, the book makes contributions to four theoretical areas. These are Strategy as Practice; Actor-Network Theory; Communities of Practice Theory; and Critical Human Resource Management. In addition, the AHE methodology approach used provides both an example of how to conduct such insider research and explores some of the issues and benefits of the approach. All these contributions are discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters. In particular, the book explores: • Adding nonhumans to the mix of considerations of power relations and networks in everyday managerial practice of strategy to develop an ANT inform SasP approach. • Employing the ANT idea of “netted-networks” (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999) to show how one network “nets” another for strategic purposes in a series of multi-connections and multi-locations.

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Thus developing Hansen and Mouritsen’s thinking and demonstrating suggestions for future ANT deployment in SasP studies. • Considering how the “practice turn” might be applied to HR instead of the tired binary thinking of normative-critical. Like Whittington’s (1996) strategic practice turn to highlight micro practices of doing strategy, the book demonstrates this approach to HR practice studies, focusing on everyday issues faced by HR practitioners. • Offering a constructive critique of Communities of Practice (COP) theory, by studying newcomers learning safety culture and exploring how COP might better engage with power relations issues.

Structure of the Book Chapter 2 explores the ontological, epistemological and methodological perspectives taken before considering methodology and two analytical lenses (ANT and SasP) in more depth. The remainder of the book focuses on the AHE accounts and theoretical contributions. Chapter 3 considers rationalisation of production and the contestation surrounding production line closures and redundancies. Through the application of SasP and ANT analytical lenses the chapter explores power relations issues and network configurations in everyday managerial practice of strategy. By adding nonhuman actors to our considerations and applying ANT to “zooming in”, in Nicolini’s (2012) framework, a fuller exploration of the account is developed. Chapter 4 is focuses on the ‘Engine Room’—the name given to a group of Burnsland managers with the task of managing redundancies. This chapter draws upon the ANT idea of “netted-networks” (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999) to consider how the Engine Room network is able to “net” the Asset Optimisation network from the account in Chap. 3. It identifies multi-connections and multi-locations and develops Hansen and Mouritsen’s original thinking. The chapter then offers suggestions for future ANT deployment in SasP studies. Chapter 5 is focused on safety practices giving an account of the integration of newcomers into Chemco’s safety culture. Safety had strategic importance to Chemco as it was recognised by other organisations as the leader in the field and made a considerable return from selling consultancy services. The account explores how newcomers, with extensive experience, learn to become old-timers in a new organisation that has acquired them. Through the application of ANT and SasP lenses the chapter offers a

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constructive critique of Communities of Practice (COP) theory and how COP might better engage with power relations issues. Chapter 6 considers Human Resources and focuses on performance management and employee relations practices. A ‘practice turn’ is applied to HR and aims to identify a path between hegemonic normative approaches to HR and the critical HR literature that sometimes fails to provide practitioners with an alternative approach. The normative debates tend to be based around issues such as ‘best practice’ and identifying practices that appear to impact positively on the bottom line. However, much like the literature, research and teaching of strategy, this HR literature neglects key issues faced by practitioners in the everyday practice of HR. Thus, normative HR literature appears to ignore how practitioners might be interpreting and employing practices, whilst critical HR literature is sometimes accused of failing to offer practitioners a practical alternative. The chapter identifies the ‘practice turn’ and ANT have something to offer in studying HR in situ. Chapter 7 provides a conclusion and draws together thoughts and contributions from each chapter. In particular, the chapter considers AHE, ANT, SasP and the implications for future practice studies and AHE accounts. As this book is an AHE account, the concluding chapter also reflexively considers the Author’s roles as researcher and HR Manager.

References Cordella, A., & Shaikh, M. (2006). From epistemology to ontology: Challenging the constructed “truth” of ANT. London: School of Economics. Czarniawska, B. (2000). The uses of narrative in organisation research. GRI Report 5. Czarniawska, B. (2012). Organisation theory meets anthropology: A story of an encounter. Journal of Business Anthropology, 1(1), 118–140. Dalton, M. (1959). Men who manage: Fusion of feeling and theory in administration. New York: Wiley. Hansen, A., & Mouritsen, J. (1999). Managerial technology and netted networks. ‘Competitiveness’ in action: The work of translating performance in a high-­ tech firm. Organization, 6(3), 451–471. Nicolini, D. (2012). Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nicolini, D. (2017). Is small the only beautiful? Making sense of ‘large phenomena’ from a practise-based perspective. In A.  Hui, T.  Schatzki, & E.  Shave (Eds.), The nexus of practices: Connections, constellations and practitioners (pp. 98–113). London: Routledge.

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Vickers, D. (2019). At-home ethnography a method for practitioners. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 14(1), 10–26. Watson, T.  J. (1994). In search of management. Culture, Chaos and control in managerial work. London: International Thomson Business Press. Whittington, R. (1996). Strategy as practice. Long Range Planning, 29(5), 731–735.

CHAPTER 2

Research Overview and Theoretical Contributions

Abstract  This chapter outlines the ontological and epistemological positioning of this book and then explores the at-home ethnographic methods employed in this book and the underpinning literature (e.g., Alvesson, Methodology for close up studies—struggling with closeness and closure. Higher Education, 46 (2), 167–193, 2003; At-home ethnography: Struggling with closeness and closure. In S. Ybema, D. Yanow, H. Wels, & F. Kamsteeg (Eds.), Organizational ethnography: Studying the complexity of everyday life (pp. 156–174). London: Sage, 2009; Punch, The politics and ethics of fieldwork. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1986; Van Maanen, Ethnography as work: Some rules of engagement. Journal of Management Studies, 48(1), 218–234, 2011; Vickers, At-home ethnography: a method for practitioners. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 14 (1), 10–26, 2019). The book then gives an overview of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (e.g., Latour, Reassembling the social. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Strategy-as-Practice (SasP) (e.g., Whittington, Strategy as practice. Long Range Planning, 29 (5), 731–735, 1996) and explores the wider theoretical contributions of the book. Keywords  At-home ethnography • Actor-network theory • Strategy-as-­ practice • HR

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Introduction This chapter establishes the ontological, epistemological and methodological perspective of the book before progressing to discuss Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Strategy as Practice (SasP).

Ontology and Epistemology A flat ontological perspective is taken intending to avoid privileging any entity, nonhuman or human, and avoiding the dualisms such as subject-­ object and micro-macro. This is opposed to a layered ontological view with structure, power and fields such as that inspired by Giddens and Bourdieu (Nicolini 2017). This ontological perspective is combined with an ecological epistemology which encompasses the knowledge emerging from the flat ontology. As such it seeks to merge human and nonhuman as part of the same space (Carvalho 2016). Gherardi (2020, p. 140) describes this combination as “a social constructionist and new materialist conception that does not distinguish between the production of knowledge and construction of the object of knowledge (between ontology and epistemology). From this are derived different methodologies for the conduct of practice-based studies”. This ontological-epistemological perspective has strong association with ANT and with an ANT-informed view of SasP (more of these two below). Methodologically a study of the minutiae of managerial practices lends itself to immersion and in this case At-Home Ethnography (AHE) (Alvesson 2003, 2009).

At-Home Ethnography: An Overview Ethnographic accounts usually involve outside researchers conducting research in an unfamiliar setting. For example, Pettigrew’s (1985) research into management within the chemical sector. However, here AHE is adopted using the researcher’s position and home setting for research purposes. This is based on the premise that insiders are potentially better able than outsiders to investigate and interpret events (Alvesson 2009), making a virtue out of their access, intimate knowledge of culture, history, language and nuances. Therefore, AHE is about “creating knowledge through …interpret[ing] acts, words and materials used by oneself and

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one’s fellow organisational members from a certain distance” (Alvesson 2009, p. 162). AHE builds on ethnographic traditions (Samra-Fredericks 2010) but there are two distinct differences. First, there is difference relating to insider-participation and second, outsider-observation. AHE researchers are immersed in the research setting as insiders but need an awareness of their “closeness and personal involvement”. This is achieved through reflexivity and “breaking out” (Alvesson 2009, p. 167) or stepping outside socially shared and accepted frameworks. Coffey (1999, p. 32) following her own ethnographic immersion called for it to be followed by “a critical, analytical, self-conscious awareness” (Coffey 1999, p. 32).

At-Home Ethnography: Method The method used here addresses six key areas that are shared, with subtle differences, by ethnography and AHE. These areas are: (i) gaining entry; (ii) conduct in the field; (iii) recording the data; (iv) analysis; (v) exiting the field and (vi) reflexivity. Gaining Entry to Burnsland As outsiders, ethnographers must “break into” a research setting (Alvesson 2009, p.  162). For example, Samra-Fredericks (2003, p.  148) talks of “protracted negotiations” to gain access. However, AHE researchers are already an insider. In the AHE accounts here, the Author had worked in HR for 15 years, 10 of these for HCI, prior to conducting this research. During Chemco’s acquisition he managed HCI’s processes related to transferring all European employees to Chemco. He then elected to transfer to Chemco and relocated to Burnsland as HR Manager. He had met several of his new managerial colleagues in his previous roles. Alvesson (2009, p.  169) suggests an at-home ethnographer’s understanding of organisational practices and job role makes it “intellectually easier, but politically riskier and, possibly, emotionally more stressful”. The Author was a newcomer to Burnsland and Chemco but, like fellow managers being acquired, he was an HCI old-timer. As a researcher this enabled some detachment from colleagues and ‘breaking out’ was much easier as a newcomer. However, he also had to prove his credibility as an HR manager ‘breaking in’.

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Informants can have an initial feeling of unease towards ethnographers (Gold 1969, p. 35) early in the research process but after establishing trust this may disappear. The Author faced the problem of trust as a practitioner (insider) rather than as researcher (outsider). Entering Burnsland as the new HR Manager, transferring from elsewhere in the UK, meant he was sometimes mistaken by employees as a Chemco employee, and some saw him as being an outsider to Burnsland. Some Burnsland managers knew the HR Manager’s career history as he had met several of them in his prior roles, or in the handling of the acquisition. However, he gained credibility as a practitioner by producing what one manager described as “the best communication pack we have received from HR”. One of the Operations Managers (Max Hoddom) said, “it was [Andy Dalton, HR Manager] who wrote this”. This led to his acceptance as a full insider. His credibility as HR Manager was, however, quickly tested when the Site Manager announced one of the Operations Managers (Otto Dornock) would be transferred from his job to another role, as yet unidentified. The HR Manager was away on business when this happened and on returning, he was questioned by three managers to ascertain if he had known about it and had planned his absence to avoid the issue. However, the HR Manager had not known the Site Manager’s intentions. This became clear when he told the managers the Site Manager’s behaviour was not acceptable and if he had known he would have insisted that the Otto was notified in private before telling the team. This was a challenging time for the Author as he was put under pressure and his words and facial reactions were clearly scrutinised by the three managers. Any concerns for the Author and his research were a long way behind what this might have meant for his future as an effective and trusted HR Manager. In AHE terms, however, the Author re-established his ‘acceptable presence’ as an HR Manager and had a clear understanding of the scene being observed as both an Author and HR Manager. Conduct in the Field Ethnographers may become actively involved in activities of the field and while they acquire some understanding of participants’ subjective states this understanding remains that of the ethnographer not the participants (McCall and Simmons 1969, p. 5). In this AHE account, the Author, as an insider, was involved in managing redundancies and deciding on production line closures. No assumption is made by the Author that his own

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experience is the same as that of others nor is it assumed that his motives as an HR Manager are reflected in the behaviour of others. However, AHE accounts cannot ignore this emotional engagement and such research cannot be done effectively without it. Many of the Author’s actions as HR Manager were based on his HR professional need to treat people in ways they were accustomed to, and legally entitled to, under their contracts, which had transferred with them. He was fully aware the impact redundancies would have on the small rural community, given Chemco was the largest and best paying employer in the area. The Author felt a personal need to respect the needs and concerns of others and believed they should be treated fairly. This is a strong part of the Author’s value system and was one of the reasons he chose HR as a career. As the HR Manager was involved in making people redundant, he had a strong sense of his social responsibility. The only issue where the Author struggled with fairness and dignity was in relation to the duplicity towards his own manager, the Site Manager. However, the power relationship was skewed in the Site Manager’s favour. The HR Manager had faced intimidation to comply from the Site Manager and Directors above him. For example, several Directors told him he “could have a promising future” [aiming to get the HR Manager to conform to their strategy] and he “should align himself to the organisation”. This is consistent with Brinkmann’s (2007) suggestion of the interplay between qualitative researchers’ skills and their moral virtues. Today, the economic decline caused by these redundancies is apparent in shop closures and dilapidated buildings in Burnsland town centre coupled with the rise in the number of cheap goods and charity shops. As both insider and outsider there was a strong personal and professional need to be comfortable with behaviour and actions. Visiting the town nowadays the Author feels guilt and some responsibility for its demise—even if he was instrumental as HR Manager in saving some jobs. During AHE research dilemmas arise which researchers must work through in situ, making decisions that appear right at the time and there are no simple answers to dilemmas yet to happen (Van Maanen 1982, p. 138). However, it is not for researchers to sanitise or airbrush out such dilemmas. Instead we need to surface and deal head on with dilemmas through reflexive writing and making the vulnerabilities of our research visible even when it is not possible to resolve these dilemmas. AHE researchers are often better placed at each moment to make “live” judgements of the beneficence and non-maleficence to participants in a dynamic setting (Iphofen 2013,

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p. 16). Whilst judgements may be challenged with the benefit of hindsight and societal views may change on the acceptability of decisions, surfacing how decisions were arrived at helps to some extent. In the ‘live’ situation the HR Manager was faced with dilemmas over his values and the need to treat people fairly, within the law and with an eye to the longer term for business and the community. Simultaneously he had to cope with intimidation and threats to his role and career. The consequences for him as an HR Manager and the possibility of losing his job because of his actions caused constant angst. As a researcher these issues were not explored until he had left Chemco. One HR practitioner the Author recounted the accounts to felt the Author should have been loyal to the organisation but on revisiting the accounts the HR practitioner then changed her mind as she recognise the Author had stood up for his professional values. Personally, the Author (and HR Manager) never had these doubts as he would have rather left Chemco than compromise his principles. For the HR Manager it was always about the day job of HR Management, and his role as a Researcher was often relegated to a note taker who worked harder in the evenings. Recording the Data Researchers should record detailed notes as soon after observation as possible to avoid memory lapses (Lofland 1971, p. 112) as this enables vivid pictures to be summoned up later from field notes and not from vague or tainted memory. In writing field notes the Author adopted the common practice of Burnsland managers of writing notes in their notebooks—even if in his case these notes were more copious. Where it was not possible to make notes in situ, he wrote notes during toilet breaks, immediately after meetings, or writing up and adding any reflections every evening. During the research, he had access to managerial practices beyond his HR role and was rarely marginalised. When he was marginalised, he persuaded others to give him access or to give him information or documentation about an event he missed. In addition, wide-ranging documentary evidence was gathered from e-mails, letters, procedures, presentations, agreements, media reports and internal records. Gathering as much information and ethnographic evidence as possible cannot be underestimated as the importance or ‘remarkability’ of events is not always obvious until sometime later. The Author was grateful for the prior knowledge of Orr’s (1996) honest reflection that his own field notes omitted certain information that

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was taken-for-granted and obvious to participants but perhaps less obvious and more remarkable at the analysis stage. Where data was known, but not in the field notes, the Author at the analysis stage had to either find the data in other documentation or it was not used as this is rigorous AHE practice. However, given the wide range of topic areas the Author omitted from his doctorate this did not prove to be a substantial issue in writing this book. Ethnography is a “debilitating” (Samra-Fredericks 2005, p.  807) method and AHE perhaps more so. Adding observational and note taking duties to the, already exacting, role of a management practitioner is tiring both physically and mentally. As HR Manager, the Author, worked an average ten hours a day, was quite often involved in working against the direction his senior manager intended and had to retain competing agendas in his head and think on his feet. All these activities were as an insider and form part of the everyday role of the manager. However, as an outsider, the Author went home and wrote his notes up each night. It was hard some evenings to summon up the energy but he persevered. The Author was also new to the Burnsland region, so he had to buy a new house and manage removals and renovations. So often, this method is “a lonely, exhausting and, at times, tedious experience” (Vickers 2019, p. 18). Analysis In the field AHE researchers are insiders, close to people and events being studied. However, when leaving the field or undertaking analysis, they need to become outsiders and create distance. Have researchers usually remain as participants beyond the research period. Whereas ethnographers are originally outsiders and normally return to so being and thus find creating distance easier. To overcome this, AHE accounts “need to make the taken-for-granted, cryptic and the familiar sufficiently strange as to become critically analysable, storyable and remarkable” (Vickers 2019, p. 18). So, this book provides context, taking care to explain background knowledge and employing cryptic utterances, quotes and actions made by managers in situ. An example of this taken from the Author’s earlier work (Vickers and Fox 2010, p. 907) is: the [HR Manager] suggested “HCI severance procedures could be used to manage things”. (A cryptic utterance) These procedures had evolved to resolve a specific dispute elsewhere in HCI and were common practice across sites

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(­ explanation of background knowledge assumed) …Thus, HCI old-timers could infer from [HR Manager’s] cryptic comments that the Engine Room process using “HCI severance procedures” would be voluntary and could be used to delay redundancies and production line closures. Picking up on this cryptic inference, in reply, one middle manager said: “I’m glad that [Site Manager] is away in the States”, a remark, which made transparent to everyone what was being agreed here, behind [Site Manager’s] back was a way of slowing down the redundancy strategy whilst appearing to progress it by due procedure (explanation of background knowledge assumed). This view was echoed by negative comments made throughout the meeting as participants.

Alvesson (2003) suggests several ways the researcher could look at the familiar home environment with fresh eyes. This included: (i) Taking naturally occurring breakdowns of participants’ understandings within the research setting as opportunities to test their assumptions and expectations; (ii) Considering “irony and self-irony… to create a certain distance to more serious arguments put forward” (pp. 185–6); and (iii) challenging common sense and “shaking around fixed pre-understandings” (p. 186). In this book the AHE account draws upon (i) The acquisition and post-acquisition process which pitted the new Chemco management view of Burnsland against the local (former HCI) management view creating a natural breakdown of assumption and expectations; (ii) The newly acquired (former HCI) managers readily ironised the viewpoints and manoeuvres of the incoming Site Manager, making visible amongst insiders, emerging differences of opinion about the nature of proper or improper HR management practices; and (iii) As an insider, the Author analysed daily activities within conceptual frameworks and carried out careful reflection of his field notes to start the process of ‘breaking out’ and ‘liberating’ himself from the frameworks of Burnsland and Chemco. The Author, as an outsider after the event, applied different lenses to the research data. This allowed for the home-base to become strange to him and reportable in terms which describe and explain management work practices to his own satisfaction but viewed through a filter of outsider analysis. These lenses included SasP and ANT and are discussed below. Additionally, the Author employed two devices to create distance between insider and outsider—a third-person style in writing the accounts and using pseudonyms throughout the accounts. Pseudonyms enable a fuller telling of the account and the third-person style enables the Author to adopt two identities as inside participant (Andy Dalton, Burnsland HR

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Manager) and outside observer (the Author/Researcher). This third-­ person approach helps create distance from his own setting and research and see things differently. The Author prefers writing this way as he is not an auto-ethnographer and prefers to focus on events not self. Such a distancing device is supported by Gannon (2006, p. 480) in drawing upon Foucault, in adopting “writing practices that aim to displace or “disassemble” the self” (Rabinow 1997, p. xxxviii). As such this book is about events at Burnsland and not about the Author. With the use of pseudonyms and a third-person style readers may suspect this is a covert account. However, the study was overt, and, in the interest of ethics, managers were aware of the research. Additionally, there was no a priori idea that redundancies would become the key focus of events, how events would unfold and what the research outcomes were likely to be. In AHE some themes may emerge part way through the data-­ gathering process or later in analysis of field notes. In this case some stories emerged after a few months, for example, Chap. 4—Engine Room. Other stories only became clear from subsequent analysis of field notes after the Author left Chemco, for example, Chap. 5—Safety and Chap. 6—Human Resources. It may not be immediately obvious where the gap is between the data-gathering and analysis phases and this can make distance harder to achieve. However, there needs to be a significant break moving from data gathering to analysis to create that distance. The Author achieved this distance through a three-phased process of:—familiarisation; categorising and creating a conceptual framework. Familiarisation involved immersion in the data to identify (i) data that did not fit with previous knowledge, theory or official accounts; (ii) apparent contradictions and inconsistencies between expressed beliefs and attitudes and what was said and done at other times; (iii) actions, words or behaviours that appeared repeatedly; (iv) things commonly done or said in one context but not in others; (v) unremarkable and taken-for-granted common occurrences may be viewed differently and made remarkable. The official story on redundancies was to progress redundancies quickly and compulsorily with product transfers made to other product lines around Europe and America. However, an alternative story was evident on the redundancy process. The data, actions, behaviours and words did not fit the official account and were recurring. Similar behaviours and actions were also evident in other areas (e.g., safety practices, human resource practices and product transfers to other production lines). All the accounts

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in the subsequent chapters of this book involve contestations, power relations and contradictions. The next phase of analysis, categorising, involved examining field notes in detail to identify quotes and behaviours that fitted patterns identified in the familiarisation phase. The key areas identified in the familiarisation phase are covered in the next four chapters. These being the Asset Optimisation Process (production line closures, product transfers), the Engine Room process (redundancy handling), Safety practices and Human Resource practices (performance management and employee relations). Asset Optimisation represents the key strategic issue of the 18-month period with the rationalisation of product assets post acquisition, and the Engine Room was related to the subsequent job loss and redundancy handling processes and the practices of senior managers at Burnsland. Safety was chosen (although it really chose itself) as the safety culture of Chemco was renowned worldwide and the newcomers from the acquired Burnsland site had to learn this strategic issue. Safety is critical in any chemical plant and company’s right to operate and in Chemco’s case it also provided a significant reputation and income through safety consultancy across the sector. Finally, many of the practices employed throughout the account are steeped in Human Resources and an exploration of the human and nonhuman actors in this field was fundamental to the strategy. Finally, the application of additional analytical lenses made it possible to create a conceptual framework to provide a deeper analysis and critique of accounts. The creation of a conceptual framework also provides another way to create distance. When parts of this account have been told elsewhere other lenses have been used—Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Vickers 2005); Narrative Analysis (Vickers 2008) and Communities of Practice Theory combined with ANT (Vickers and Fox 2010, 2019). In this book the lenses employed are SasP and ANT (more of which later in this chapter). This reflexive (Alvesson et  al. 2008) application of critical lenses is achieved, in part, in this book by decentring the Author in a third-person style and by creating distance between insider data gathering and outsider analysis and writing. Much of the analysis took place after the Author left Chemco, although it had not been his original intention to leave.

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Exiting the Field Traditionally, ethnographers as outsiders recognise, they will leave the field at some point. However, AHE researchers cease their research data-­ gathering activity to return to complete participation or may leave the organisation for another job. In this case the Author remained as HR Manager for another few months and then left to work in a University. In both his roles as Author and HR Manager he did not compromise his principles and moral virtues. Whilst this was undoubtedly a tumultuous time in the Author’s life as an HR professional, he learned a lot about himself, his professionalism and his capabilities as a researcher. Anyone who has completed a doctorate knows, it requires incredible tenacity to stick with it to the end. Similarly, in AHE, tenacity is required in keeping field notes, writing up nightly and remembering to collect documents. The Author’s intention was to remain as an HR Manager and he had no intention of becoming an academic, so the maintenance of professional credibility and personal values was incredibly important and challenging. Whilst leaving Chemco was the right thing to do it was a worrying time as he needed to find another job. When the Author moved into academia, it was his HR professionalism that got him the job as he had credibility to teach HR practitioners. Once in a university it enabled ‘break out’ and the use of ‘fresh eyes’. Reflexivity Reflexivity is important in ethnography but perhaps more so in at-home ethnography as it is through the process and practice of reflexivity that the researcher can create distance between the insider and the outsider. Building on Pack (2011, p. 62) the Author (Vickers 2019) offered a useful vehicle for ethnographic self-reflexivity which focuses on—producer, process, practices and product. Product is the output (e.g., this book) and in journals is often “sanitized” (Donnelly et  al. 2013, p.  7) with reflexivity either “ducked” all together or the ethnographer becomes the “central figure” (Buroway 2003, p. 653) or subject of the accounts. Product brings the ethnographic account into the public spotlight but because of presentational conventions the account is likely to be neat and tidy rather than “messy, irrational, [and] complex…” (Samra-Fredericks 2005, p. 833). Thankfully, a book offers more scope for an at-home ethnographer to explore these issues.

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The producer of ethnographic accounts is usually highlighted as this enables several issues such as role, work experience, credibility, location and biopic information to be addressed. This background information on the producer may also enable dialogue with the reader but equally this should not overwhelm the account or be “self-indulgent” (Coffey 1999, p. 155). Instead, readers need to understand how a researcher is capable of having “acceptable presence in the field”, can understand subtle nuances and jargon (Lichterman 2017, p.  39); declares “biases” (Tracy 2010, p. 841) and “epistemological and political baggage” (Johnson et al. 2006, p. 142). As the producer of this research the Author writes about the HR Manager in the third person as he does not wish to privilege his own role or write a self-indulgent account. In avoiding a self-centred account, the Author reflexively explores his role as research account producer and HR Manager in the concluding chapter of this book. For now, though the reader is asked to suspend judgement on the Author but is welcome to judge ‘Andy Dalton’ (Burnsland HR Manager). Process provides an overarching framework or structure and practices exist within this framework but are not constrained by it as they also offer spontaneity and ideas. “Process has to find the least amount of constraint necessary to enact the necessary amount of structure, to produce rigour without rigidity” (Brown and Duguid 2000, p. 93). Therefore, the aim has to be to find a balance between the rigidity of process and the messiness of practice. This is achieved through reflexivity and transparency, honesty and openness (Punch 1986) about ethnographic practices. Yet there is no rigid methodological prescription of processes as this undermines our epistemology and would constrain ethnographic practices. The overarching process used here is quite simple to explain. For the Author the at-home ethnographic process framework is clearly laid out above. For the HR Manager it is the processes of asset optimisation, redundancy, employee relations, performance management and safety. However, by focusing on practice, the dilemmas and choices of an at-­ home ethnographic researcher and the messiness of accounts becomes more apparent. This is where the idea of AHE practices (rather than prescribed processes) comes into play. There may be creative and/or spontaneous solutions to practice issues arising in the field that cannot be pre-scribed for every context and circumstance. Here contextual practice may need to override process rigidity. This book also highlights the messiness and complexities of the HR Manager’s work and the need for spontaneous and creative professional practice.

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Actor-Network Theory Broadly speaking ANT is material-semiotics where it maps material (between things) and semiotics (concepts) and assumes that many relations are sociomaterial “entanglements” (Orlikowski 2007, p.  1439). Fuller accounts of ANT can be found elsewhere (e.g., Michael 2017) and the reader is referred to key ANT practice accounts by Callon (1986, 1987), Latour (1988, 1993) and Law (1986). Nicolini (2017, p. 99) argues, rightly, that ANT adopts a flat ontological perspective as it views macro actors and large phenomena as being created and reproduced at a micro level. ANT’s flat ontology “has the aim of illustrating how the composition of entities and orders is accomplished in practice” (Gherardi 2020, p. 309). ANT adopts the principle of “generalized symmetry” (Callon 1986) which involves human and nonhuman actors being treated equally and configured in networks. It is the relations between these actors that are important rather than actors themselves. In addition, ANT rejects other dualisms, these being Close/Far, Small Scale (Micro)/Large Scale (Macro) and Inside/Outside. • ANT is interested in connections rather than the proximity of unconnected actors. Therefore, connected actors may be close by or far apart; • ANT sees macro actors (e.g., multinationals) as merely micro-actors seated on a series of stabilised (black-boxed), unproblematic arrangements of relations and equally capable of enrolling other actors to act like a single entity (Callon and Latour 1981). As such there is no large or small; and • ANT is interested in the connections between two elements instead of filling in spaces between connections (rejection of inside/outside). The key ANT tenets are problematisation, interessement, enrolment and translation. Problematisation (Callon 1986) occurs when a stable situation is destabilised and is the first stage in a series of actions by which an actor makes itself indispensable to others. Interessement is described (Callon 1986, pp. 207–8) as the “actions by which an entity attempts to impose and stabilize the identity of other actors it defines through its problematization”. This is “achieved by interposing oneself between the target entity and its pre-existing associations” (Michael 1996, p. 53). In ANT, power is

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not a possession, but involves enrolment, a mutual process of “capturing” as well as “yielding” (Latour 1986, p. 173) to form an “arrangement of assent” (Michael 1996, p. 53). Finally, translation is the means whereby one actor gives roles and voice to others and sets itself up as spokesperson for the newly enrolled network. ANT’s approach to spatio-temporality considers how the interests of a variety of actors are translated and inscribed into socio-material arrangements. Through this process of translation and inscription a range of heterogeneous interests become aligned with each other and embedded into materials that stabilise (at least temporarily) the actor-network (Callon 1991). Callon (1991) suggests social meaning can be inscribed into most materials or media which can include formal discussions, public declarations, texts, technology, and so on. This spatio-temporality in ANT involves facets such as ‘durability’ and ‘mobility’ more of which below. In most accounts macro actors are taken for granted or portrayed as stable, but they are always open to problematisation, reversible and uncertain. Stability is maintained by processes and manoeuvres designed to uphold the status quo. Humans and nonhumans are the effects of this performance, regardless of its stability (Gherardi and Nicolini 2019). As such, it takes considerable work to maintain a network over time in a way actors see their aspirations continuing to be met and choose to remain enrolled in the network (Callon and Latour 1981, p.  297). Stable networks can be problematised so this “web of relations only hold[s] if they are enacted [or performed], enacted again, and enacted yet again” (Law 2008, p. 635). From an ANT perspective this means a network is problematised because actors see their interests are better served by enrolling into an alternative network configuration. Where a network is established, it attempts to stabilise and make itself irreversible. Irreversibility has a range of facets such as Durability, Mobility, Anticipation of reactions of targeted entities and even some of the issues that normally would be associated with destroying a network (e.g., problematisation). Durability is where materials or artefacts create a more stable network. It is a concept that needs to be treated with care. For example, the walls of a prison appear to be durable at keeping prisoners in, but they are no use without prison officers. They also form part of another network, namely, keeping aggrieved victims and relatives out! Durability is sometimes known as material embodiment. Material embodiment may make it more difficult to reverse a network (e.g., Maps used by Portuguese sailors, Law

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1986). Durability does provide stability and usually it provides order to a network over time. Mobility also provides stability to networks and it usually provides order over space. Law (1986) describes such mobiles in his study of transportable navigational aids used by Portuguese traders in the east. These mobiles could be in a range of intermediary forms but will typically be robust and relatively easy to transport—for example, bills of credit, e-mails. Latour refers to such mobiles as “immutable mobiles”. The Immutable mobile (Latour 1987), is a text—writing, graphs, figures, formulae—which can be moved, remains stable, and is combinable with other such texts. It facilitates the capacity of particular actors (mainly scientists) to centralise and monopolise such meanings at centres of calculation, such as laboratories, where these materials, traces and so on can be tied together. But it is also important to note that the immutability of such mobiles is still contingent on the network. (Michael 1996, p. 55)

Anticipation of reactions of target entities are where the reactions of the target entity are anticipated and are either dealt with or avoided/diverted to ensure continued enrolment. Anticipation of reactions of targeted entities or what Latour (1988) calls “centres of translation” are treated as relational effects. For example, the creation of medical practice and systems is potentially a very threatening thing as surgeons dissect live human beings. Therefore, the system itself creates the relational effect of confidence so that we are being dissected by competent professionals and it is for our own self benefit. So it is the black box called a ‘body’, or a ‘patient’, and not John Smith the personalised human being. It is possible in some circumstances for the issues that normally cause the breakdown of networks to make the networks irreversible. Normally, problematisation or unblack boxing causes networks to unravel. However, this can actually reiterate/resurface the reasons for and importance of the original network or bring about a new and stronger alliance. A potential threat to a network’s irreversibility can allow the target entity to be confronted with the issues that it will face and the position it may lose by dis-enrolling.

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Strategy as Practice (HR as Practice) The turn to practice reflects an increased interest in human practices in the social sciences (Schatzki et al. 2001). This practice turn has been developed in strategy (Whittington 1996, 2006; Johnson et al. 2006; Samra-­ Fredericks 2003, 2005; Jarzabkowski 2005; Jarzabkowski et  al. 2007; Vaara and Whittington 2012; Balogun et al. 2014; Seidl and Whittington 2014) and organisational and management research (e.g., Brown and Duguid 2001; Gherardi 2000; Nicolini et al. 2003) and in studies of technology in organisations (e.g., Orlikowski 2000). “This practice turn involves a radical reformulation of the intractable problem of agency and structure that enables us to bypass the ‘micro/macro’ distinction” (Chia and MacKay 2007, p. 217). Strategy as Practice involves studying activities constituting a departure from the static and classical strategy literature. Ontologically SasP sees strategy at the micro level as created and recreated between actors (Golsorkhi et al. 2010, p. 8) and increasingly those actors may be human and nonhuman entities. Whittington (1996, pp.  733–4), for example, suggested that teaching strategy practitioners required an “appreciation of the distinct skills, responsibilities and predicaments of the various participants involved in the strategy-making process, whether planners, consultants, middle or senior managers” as well as understanding the tools and theoretical background to strategy. As Golsorkhi et al. (2010, p. 1) note SasP “is interested in the ‘black box’ of strategy work” or the everyday practice. Thus SasP places ontological primacy on practices (Chia and Rasche 2018) rather than on individuals or organisations. SasP studies focus on understanding practitioners, praxis and practice. Practitioners include managers at all levels, strategy consultants, planners and others involved in making strategy. In other words, practitioners are all “those involved in, or seeking to influence, strategy-making” (Vaara and Whittington 2012, p.  6). Praxis involves “all the various activities involved in the deliberate formulation and implementation of strategy” (Whittington 2006, p. 619). It is “the day to day stuff of management. It is what managers do and what they manage” (Johnson et al. 2003, p. 15). Praxis includes writing, decision-making, consulting communicating, presenting, meetings routines and the general doing and execution of strategy. Practices involve the activities associated with strategy such as strategy workshops, away days, projects, tools, methods, procedures, how thinking

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is conducted, analytical frameworks and the way things are used (Whittington 2006, p. 619). According to Nicolini (2009) SasP practice research draws upon a wide range of, sometimes competing, sociological approaches (e.g., Bourdieu 1990; Giddens 1984; Schatzki 2005) as well as employing an array of methodologies. Here the SasP approach is about studying: practitioners (those doing the work of strategy); practices (the social, symbolic and material tools through which strategy work is done); and praxis (the flow of activity in which strategy is accomplished) (Jarzabkowski 2005; Jarzabkowski et al. 2007; Johnson et al. 2006; Whittington 2006). This approach differs markedly from ‘top-down’ classical approaches to strategy research. However, in studying micro practices it is important not to become cut off in “micro-isolationism” (Seidl and Whittington 2014, p.  1408) and lose sight of the larger macro strategic linkage. Nicolini (2012) suggests that such isolationism is lazy social science. Whilst SasP has more work to do in this area ANT has more to offer here as ANT (like Schatzki et  al. 2001) has a “flat” ontological perspective (Seidl and Whittington 2014) and sees the world in a more holistic way, constructed of networks across space and time. ANT rejects key dualisms, includes nonhuman actors and follows the flow of power over all terrain. Nicolini (2012) has highlighted the use of ANT in his methods toolkit or “pragmatic eclecticism” (p. 218) that draws upon three key streams of practice theory—learning and knowing situated practices (e.g., Lave and Wenger 1991; Brown and Duguid 1991; Cook and Yanow 1993); technology as practice (Orlikowski 1992, 2000; Suchman 2000); and SasP (e.g., Whittington 1996, 2006; Jarzabkowski 2005). Nicolini’s (2012) toolkit involves “zooming in” and “zooming out”. Zooming in involves what is said and done, what tools and artefacts are engaged, tensions between creativity and normativity, and processes of legitimisation and stabilisation. Zooming in brings practices into the foreground and makes them visible. Zooming out considers how practices are associated and connected to contribute to the wider picture. Nicolini (2012) suggests that ANT is useful for zooming out as it is adept at dealing with issues of space, time, materiality and power relations. However, it is argued here that there are benefits to employing ANT in both zooming in and zooming out. ANT’s approach to spatiality means the rejection of scale (micro-­ macro) and inside-outside and this gives it resonance both in zooming in and zooming out. This view is consistent with Gherardi and Nicolini (2019) and Chapman et al. (2015).

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However, drawing upon Nicolini is still useful as he has expertly pulled together the many and varied strands of practice studies by combining their similarities and merits. Indeed, Nicolini’s (2012) approach to SasP has strong resonance with ANT through “performance”; “materiality… or nonhumans”; “knowing, meaning and discourse… inscribed in objects and embodied in networks”; and “power, conflict and politics as constitutive elements of the social”.

ANT and SasP? As well as Nicolini (2012), Vaara and Whittington (2012) have also suggested that SasP draws upon ANT. The Author’s preference is perhaps to do this the other way round but that is largely semantic. There are undoubted variances between ANT and SasP but here the focus is on the synergies and the complementarity. Taking Schatzki’s lead on the practice turn SasP has a flat ontological perspective like ANT and both seek to move beyond dualism debates such as macro-micro and subject-object. For example, Schatzki (2002) argued that there should be no distinction between micro and macro and talked of practice-material arrangement bundles. Whilst ANT suggests we “follow the actors” (Latour 1987) and others suggest we follow the object or nonhuman (Bruni 2005), Gherardi (2020), building on ANT, opts for following the practices in what she terms “posthumanist practice theory” (Gherardi 2017). Similarly building on ANT, Czarniawska and others (Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006; Czarniawska 2011; Corvellec and Czarniawska 2015) talk of “actionnets”. The primary focus of action net thinking is on practices and on following the ‘knotting’ or connections between actors rather than on the actors themselves. However, the Author argues ANT was already designed to capture the intermediaries and mediators that pass between actors. This is more than just practices. Latour (2005, p. 39) says that intermediaries transport “meaning or force without transformation”. Whereas mediators, conversely, are much less, if at all, predictable as they “transform, translate, distort, and modify” other actors. This approach has resonance with what MacKay et al. (2020) term Strategy-in-Practices (SIP). The SIP perspective “empathizes how the multitude of coping actions taken at the ‘coal-­ face’ of an organization congeal inadvertently into an organizational modus operandi that provides a basis for strategizing”. Macro actors are effectively ‘temporary bundles’ of relations and practices. As such macro

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process is unstable, in flux and temporary whereas micro practices provide the means to construct social entities (MacKay et al. 2020).

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Lindberg, K., & Czarniawska, B. (2006). Knotting the action net, or organizing between organizations. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 22, 292–306. Lofland, J. (1971). Analysing social settings: A guide to qualitative research. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. MacKay, B., Chia, R., & Nair, A. K. (2020). Strategy-in-practices: A process philosophical approach to understanding strategy emergence and organizational outcomes. Human Relations, June first published online. McCall, G. J., & Simmons, J. L. (1969). Issues in participant observation: A text and reader. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Michael, M. (1996). Constructing identities. London: Sage. Michael, M. (2017). Actor-network theory: Trials, trails and translations. London: Sage. Nicolini, D. (2009). Zooming in and out: Studying practices by switching theoretical lenses and trailing connections. Organization Studies, 30(12), 1391–1418. Nicolini, D. (2012). Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nicolini, D. (2017). Is small the only beautiful? Making sense of ‘large phenomena’ from a practise-based perspective. In A.  Hui, T.  Schatzki, & E.  Shave (Eds.), The nexus of practices: Connections, constellations and practitioners (pp. 98–113). London: Routledge. Nicolini, D., Gherardi, S., & Yanow, D. (2003). Knowing in organizations: A practice-based approach. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe. Orlikowski, W. J. (1992). The duality of technology: Rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science, 3(3), 398–427. Orlikowski, W. J. (2000, July-August). Using technology and constituting structures; A practice lens for studying technology in organizations. Organization Science, 11(4), 404–428. Orlikowski, W. J. (2007, September). Sociomaterial practices: Exploring technology at work. Organization Studies, 28(9), 1435–1448. Orr, J. (1996). Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. New York: Cornell. Pack, S. (2011). Give-and-take: Reconceptualizing the life history as dialogue. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(5), 58–64. Pettigrew, A. M. (1985). The Awakening Giant. Oxford: Blackwell. Punch, M. (1986). The politics and ethics of fieldwork. Beverly Hills: Sage. Rabinow, P. (1997). Essential works of Foucault, 1954–1988. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Samra-Fredericks, D. (2003). Strategizing as lived experience and strategists’ everyday efforts to shape strategic direction. Journal of Management Studies, 40(1), 141–174.

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Samra-Fredericks, D. (2005, November). Strategic practice, ‘Discourse’ and the everyday interactional constitution of ‘power effects’. Organization, 12, 803–841. Samra-Fredericks, D. (2010). Ethnomethodology and the moral accountability of interaction: Navigating the conceptual terrain of ‘face’ and face-work. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(8), 2147–2157. Schatzki, T. R. (2002). The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Schatzki, T. R. (2005). Peripheral vision: The sites of organizations. Organization Studies, 26(3), 465–484. Schatzki, T. R., Knorr-Cetina, K., & von Savigny, E. (2001). The practice turn in contemporary theory. London: Routledge. Seidl, D., & Whittington, R. (2014). Enlarging the strategy-as-practice research agenda: Towards taller and flatter ontologies. Organization Studies, 35(10), 1407–1421. Suchman, L. (2000). Embodied practices of engineering work. Mind, Culture, and Activity., 7(1 & 2), 4–18. Tracy, S. J. (2010). Qualitative quality: Eight “big-tent” criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 16, 837–851. Vaara, E., & Whittington, R. (2012). Strategy-as-practice: Taking social practices seriously. Academy of Management Annals, 6(1), 285–336. Van Maanen, J. (1982). Varieties of qualitative research (Studying Organizations). London: Sage. Van Maanen, J. (2011, January). Ethnography as work: Some rules of engagement. Journal of Management Studies, 48(1), 218–234. Vickers, D. (2008). Beyond the hegemonic narrative—a study of managers. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 21(5), 560–573. Vickers, D. (2019). At-home ethnography: A method for practitioners. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 14(1), 10–26. Vickers, D., & Fox, S. (2010). Towards practice-based studies of HRM: An actor network and communities of practice informed approach. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21(6), 899–914. Vickers, D., & Fox, S. (2019). Powers in a factory. In B. Czarniawska & T. Hernes (Eds.), Actor-network theory and organising (pp.  137–154). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Vickers, D. A. (2005). A study of Burnsland: Strategic organisational change and power during an acquisition, Doctoral thesis, Lancaster University, Department of Management Learning and Leadership. Whittington, R. (1996). Strategy as practice. Long Range Planning, 29(5), 731–735. Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies, 27(5), 613–634.

CHAPTER 3

Strategy as Practice—Asset Optimisation Process

Abstract  The aim of this chapter will be to employ a Strategy as Practice (SasP) perspective to consider the organisation’s ‘Asset Optimisation Process’ (AOP). The AOP process was a rationalisation of products and production capacity that was conducted within the organisation. The rationalisation outcome was delayed, subverted and reconfigured by networks of middle managers, trade unions and other actors. The chapter will draw upon and inform SasP literature (e.g., Nicolini, Organization Studies, 30(12), 1391–1418, 2009, Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction, Oxford University Press; Whittington, Long Range Planning, 29(5), 731–735, 1996, Organization Studies, 27(5), 613–634, 2006) and combine Actor-Network Theory perspectives with SasP (see Nicolini 2012). By using ethnography in an insider account the chapter will demonstrate how practices are constructed and deployed as well as how a SasP perspective can be applied by researchers in other organisational settings. Keywords  Actor-Network Theory • Product rationalisation • Managerial behaviour

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Vickers, Inside Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61935-0_3

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Introduction This chapter adopts a Strategy as Practice (SasP) perspective to consider the organisation’s “Asset Optimisation Process” (AOP). The AOP process was a rationalisation of products and production capacity that was conducted within the organisation. The chapter draws upon and informs SasP literature (e.g., Whittington 1996, 2006) and combines Actor-Network Theory (ANT) perspectives with SasP (see Nicolini 2009, 2012). ANT informs SasP by following the flow of strategic practices, practitioners and praxis. It achieves this by rejecting several spatio-temporal dualisms and primarily by re-presenting an account in a holistic network analysis. The AOP process involved a series of meetings—formal and informal. These meetings are sometimes referred to in SasP as “episodes” (Jarzabkowski and Spee 2009). Episodes are micro-practices such as meetings, conversations or decision making.

Strategy as Practice In Chap. 2 SasP research was outlined as an interest in the detailed activities constituting strategising and the links to organisational and societal phenomena (Seidl and Whittington 2014). According to Nicolini (2009) SasP practice research draws upon a wide range of, sometimes competing, sociological approaches (e.g., Bourdieu 1990; Giddens 1984; Schatzki 2005) as well as employing an array of methodologies. Here the SasP approach adopted has a flat ontological view and is about studying: practitioners (those doing the work of strategy); practices (the social, symbolic and material tools through which strategy work is done); and praxis (the flow of activity in which strategy is accomplished) (Jarzabkowski 2005; Johnson et al. 2006; Whittington 2006). This approach differs markedly from ‘top-down’ classical approaches to strategy research. ANT has a “flat” ontological perspective (Seidl and Whittington 2014) and sees the world holistically, constructed of networks across space and time. ANT rejects key dualisms, includes nonhuman actors, and follows the flow of power over all terrain. Recent accounts of Strategy-in-practice (SIP) (Mackay et al. 2020) perhaps offer a closer alignment between strategy practice research and ANT? MacKay et  al. (2020) suggest that the macro is unstable or temporary and “practices enable us to create ‘islands’ of artificial stabilities (social entities) that provide the raw material for

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constructing and sustaining social reality”. In effect, all social entities are ‘temporary bundles’ of relationships and practices. Nicolini (2012) has highlighted the use of ANT in his methods toolkit or “pragmatic eclecticism” (p. 218) that draws upon three key streams of practice theory—learning and knowing situated practices (e.g., Lave and Wenger 1991; Brown and Duguid 1991); technology as practice (Orlikowski 1992, 2000; Suchman 2000); and SasP (e.g., Whittington 1996, 2006). Nicolini’s (2012) toolkit involves “zooming in” and “zooming out”. Zooming in involves what is said and done, what tools and artefacts are engaged, tensions between creativity and normativity and processes of legitimisation and stabilisation. Zooming in brings practices into the foreground and makes them visible. Zooming out considers how practices are associated and connected to contribute to the wider picture. Nicolini (2012) suggests ANT is useful for zooming out as it is adept at dealing with issues of space, time, materiality and power relations. However, it is argued here that there are benefits to employing ANT in both zooming in as well. ANT’s approach to spatiality means the rejection of scale (micro-macro) and inside-outside and this gives it resonance both in zooming in and zooming out. This view is consistent with Gherardi and Nicolini (2019). However, drawing upon Nicolini is still useful as his approach to SasP has strong resonance with ANT through “performance”; “materiality… or nonhumans”; “knowing, meaning and discourse… inscribed in objects and embodied in networks”; and “power, conflict and politics as constitutive elements of the social”.

Actor-Network Theory In Chap. 2 the key elements of ANT were introduced. We begin with a performance. Traditionally performance is portrayed as humans performing surrounded by material (nonhuman) props, whereas ANT’s approach to performativity attempts to encompass everything in a performance, human or nonhuman (Law and Singleton 2000). Callon (2007, p. 330) prefers the term performation emphasising performance as an outcome from nonhuman and human relations. Performation is “the process whereby sociotechnical arrangements are enacted [performed]”. In this exploration relationality between actors, and the rejection of the micro-­ macro distinction, ANT allows the “associations” (Latour 1986) between actors, of whatever size, to be followed wherever they may take us. Here

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ANT is employed primarily to re-present an account in a holistic version of events to reject dualisms and focus on the circulation of intermediaries, mediators and the actors (human and nonhuman) involved. In zooming in the analysis is interested in saying versus doing, human-­ nonhuman interactions and issues of space and time. In zooming out the analysis considers power relations and the processes of legitimisation and (de) stabilisation. Here we also explore inscription into materials and embodiment into networks to create stability. Overall, by combining SasP with ANT the chapter demonstrates how practices are constructed and deployed and how they inform and shape strategy.

The AOP Story The Asset Optimisation Process (AOP) was a plan driven by the Directors of Chemco to rationalise the production assets of the new business. AOP involved data gathering on production facilities (i.e., their outputs and future capabilities) and meetings to decide on the plan of the use or closure of those production facilities. AOP meetings themselves were held between Directors, senior managers from the commercial and scientific communities and representatives of the three key sites in Europe: Burnsland, Norzeburg and Mexulburg.

Episodes The AOP story has several distinct episodes—mostly formal and informal managerial meetings. These episodes are: (1) the arrival of the new Site Manager and establishing a Burnsland management team; (2) the announcement of redundancies and the official launch of AOP; (3) the first formal AOP meeting; (4) the journey home from the meeting and events that unfolded because of the meeting; (5) the formal announcements of the production line closures and redundancies; (6) problems with product transfers; (7) the involvement of the trade unions; (8) the informal meetings before the next formal meeting; (9) the second formal AOP meeting.

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Episode 1—New Site Manager and Management Team The HCI Site Manager at Burnsland did not transfer to Chemco on acquisition (1 February, Year 1) due to sudden and serious ill health. He was temporarily replaced by one of his two deputy Operations Managers (Max Hoddom). The new Site Manager (Ryan Cairn) came to Burnsland initially in March year 1 and then permanently in May year 1. Ryan was a Chemco employee with over 30 years’ experience, although he had never been a Site Manager before. Ryan was a close friend of the Films Production Director, Glen Wilson. From the date of the acquisition (1 February year 1), a data-gathering process was conducted to decide which facilities and production lines to close. The Burnsland Managers were confident in this process as Production line 9 was the biggest, widest and fastest film line of any film producer in the World. This data-gathering process was conducted on a regional basis (i.e., Europe and America) between production managers from the various sites and the Production Director. There were also a series of global telephone conferences between managers at all locations and Directors. The other Burnsland Operations Manager (Otto Dornock) who was involved in this process, did not accept that the process was fair. Otto expressed his frustrations to the HR Manager (Andy Dalton), Max Hoddom and to one of his junior managers. Otto Dornock said the Burnsland site was asked to outline its output capabilities for each of its nine production lines based on past performance. However, the Norzeburg site in Europe could submit figures, which were potential outputs that had never been achieved previously. All the Burnsland managers knew that Norzeburg, which was previously an HCI-owned site, had a track record of projecting and promising and then failing to deliver. This was clear from commercial and operational data that was communicated weekly. Otto said that he had challenged the process. In a telephone conference there had been ‘angry exchanges’ and his own view had failed to prevail. At the same time as this process was being challenged, Ryan Cairn told Otto Dornock, who was the most vocal of the managers, that he would be moved out of his role as one of the two Operations Managers. This was not to happen immediately as the other Operations Manager, Max Hoddom, was expected to be engaged heavily in ensuring that production line 9 would be brought up to maximum capacity. During this time, Otto would temporarily do the job of Max Hoddom and then move to another job away from Burnsland but at that stage not identified. Ryan Cairn

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chose to make this announcement in a meeting he had called of his senior managers at Burnsland. Ryan told the managers this meeting was to constitute the new management team for Burnsland and then he told Otto Dornock he would be moved. Within the HCI culture, to tell an employee in front of others that they would be moved out of their job would not have been regarded as acceptable. HCI managers were used to being given such news personally and in private, rather than in public. The anger and animosity felt by the whole of the senior management team towards Ryan Cairn was very strong. This was perhaps best demonstrated by the behaviour directed towards Andy Dalton (HR Manager). Andy was a former HCI employee who had volunteered to transfer both to Chemco and to Burnsland at the point of acquisition; therefore, he was a newcomer to both communities. By virtue of UK employment law, Andy was the only employee given the choice to transfer as he had been employed elsewhere in HCI. Andy Dalton had missed the new senior management team meeting due to a prior diary commitment at another site. Initially, Andy faced a strong challenge from Max Hoddom and Hazel Field (Finance Manager) about whether he had any awareness of Ryan Cairn’s decision. Andy had no idea of Ryan’s intentions nor did he know that the meeting constituted the new management team. The next Site Management Team meeting was a telephone conference between Ryan Cairn in the USA and the rest of the team at the other end of the telephone line at Burnsland. Max Hoddom pressed the mute button on the telephone and explained to the rest of the managers at the Burnsland end that Andy Dalton did not know about the events at the previous meeting. Andy expressed his anger and annoyance and said he “knew nothing about this beforehand and was as annoyed as everyone else”. Max then released the mute button and raised the concerns of the team over the data-gathering process with Ryan. In response, Ryan told the Burnsland Managers that they were supposed to “trust their leadership” and that there “were times when we just have to be good foot soldiers”. Following the telephone conference, the Burnsland managers agreed a strategy of general silence at the forthcoming AOP meetings. This was to ensure that they were not seen by Chemco Directors to be resisting the closure of production facilities. However, this silence was quite often filled with information from other Chemco Managers and Directors, which could be used, or logged by the Burnsland managers for later use, in resisting and diverting change plans.

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Episode 2—Announcement of Redundancies and AOP Launch Initially, the data-gathering process was used to decide that five of the Burnsland Site’s production facilities were not cost effective, that their capacity was limited and therefore they would need to be closed down in favour of other sites in Europe and the USA.  The Managers at the Burnsland Site disagreed with the findings of the data-gathering process on three fundamental grounds. First, the products made on these production facilities were not large volume products and the strength of these facilities lay in fast turnaround on a highly specialised, high margin product mix. Second, the cost data used to make the comparisons between facilities was based on actual data for Burnsland and on future projections for the Norzeburg Site. The Norzeburg site was also previously an HCI site, and had a history of high promises and low delivery. This was well known to all employees at Burnsland. While Managers at the Site were realistic that the five facilities did have a limited life, most of them believed this life span to be in the region of two to three years. Third, the data-­ gathering plan had not taken account of where new product development would be carried out and had assumed full utilisation of all remaining assets. Managers at Burnsland believed that the lower volume, quick turnaround ability of these assets made it an ideal location for new product development and were keen to secure the future of Burnsland with scientific development capability. These arguments were largely played out in private with commercial and scientific communities, used by the two Operations Managers, to make their case to Glen Wilson (Production Director). In May year 1, the debate culminated in the announcement of an Asset Optimisation Process (AOP), along with 100 job losses at Burnsland. These job losses were the result of the combination of the integration of HCI and Chemco activities and the rapid (and unexpected) market downturn due to the deterioration of the economies in the Far East. Episode 3—First AOP Meeting On 17 July year 1, the first AOP meeting was held in a hotel in northern England. There were 20 people in attendance, including Directors and senior managers from the three European production sites of Burnsland, Norzeberg (former HCI Site) and Mexulburg (Chemco Site). A similar meeting was held in America. The original aim of the meeting had been announced as a discussion to decide upon a team of managers to develop

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a working plan for asset optimisation. The agenda was subtly changed at the event itself. Rather than being the launch of the review process, it was the launch of the process for communicating the review. The review had already been completed and was presented as a fait accompli at the meeting. A plan had been drawn up to close three of the nine production facilities at Burnsland and to move some products from Burnsland to Norzeberg, as well as to communicate redundancies and carry them out within a month. Andy Dalton from Burnsland argued that it was not legally possible for Burnsland to make people redundant in any less than 90 days, as this was the law in the UK, and that there had to be a period of consultation with the trade unions. The Mexulburg Site Manager (Jim Bissen, a UK national) argued that it could be done more quickly. Andy Dalton said, however, that it could be done more quickly if Mexulburg wanted Burnsland to break the law. Ryan Cairn tried to placate Jim Bissen by arguing that every effort would be made at Burnsland to achieve the closure within the timescale, but again the HR Manager reiterated that it was not legally possible. The two exchanges were quite heated. Meantime, the Burnsland managers remained silent unless they were asked a specific factual question. Episode 4—Journey Home Following the meeting, the former HCI managers at Burnsland had a brief meeting (in the toilets and continuing in the car park). Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) said that overall this was good news because of two points. Firstly, the original plan just prior to the meeting had been to close five of Burnsland’s production facilities, and only three had been announced. The second point was that no products would be transferred until products from the new production facility were able to produce film that had passed customer qualification. With one customer, this could take at least a year, which was way outside the announced timescale of the plan. This ultimately gave Burnsland more time to work issues and, in addition, this would probably give Norzeberg time to fail in its promises as was usual. All this was time in which the commercial business managers could prove that the products could not be moved or made elsewhere, and that customers did not want them to move. On the return journey to Burnsland, Andy Dalton and Max Hoddom pressed Ryan Cairn to agree to accept that he had to comply with UK law and manage the redundancy situation over a 90-day period. Ryan agreed to this.

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Episode 5—Announcements In September year 1, the AOP results were announced to employees and Unions. The announcement called for the closure of three production facilities at Burnsland. Two of the production facilities were to be closed in October year 1, and the third production facility was to close at the end of March year 2. The Chemco company announcement said that two timescales would drive closures. The first of these timescales was to be determined by how quickly products could be transferred to other sites. The second timescale was to be determined by how quickly customers re-­ qualified and accepted products from these other Sites. The Unions at Burnsland demanded to know on what basis the closure of production facilities had been decided. The unions knew from the European monthly production figures issued by the managers that Burnsland was more productive and cost effective than Norzeburg, and wanted an explanation. The managers deferred this explanation at this stage. Episode 6—Product Transfers and Polymer Chips Burnsland Managers were sceptical that the other Sites would be able to make some of the products that were to transfer to them. Managers were also sceptical that customers would be able to qualify transferred products in time to close the facilities. This proved to be the case, with one of the facilities still running a year after its intended closure date and the other two having closed well behind the announced schedule. Much of the delay was caused by other sites not being able to produce at the levels they had promised, customers failing to accept products from other sites, inability of other sites to make the products and Business Managers loading brand new products onto these facilities for major key customers. The actions of polymer chips and the ‘feel’ of film highlighted two key examples of product transfer issues. So-called homogeneous polymer chips had a habit of sticking to film drums. This habit was random, and research staff and engineers could not always pinpoint the reasons. Maybe it was the heat or the speed of the drum. Maybe it was something to do with the ingredients mixed into the polymers (e.g., charcoal, china clay), or maybe it was the polymers themselves that chose to stick. In the case of product transfer, a batch of polymer was made and half used at Burnsland and half used at Norzeburg on film production lines, which were adapted to be the same. The film was made successfully at Burnsland and yet the polymers

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stuck on the drum at Norzeburg. Eventually, after lengthy delays and changes to the ingredients, and the mix of the polymer, the film could be made. There were so many changes made to variables it was never clear what caused the initial problem. In a separate process a customer was asked to take two samples of the ‘same’ film, one sample from Burnsland and one from Norzeburg. The customer said that the film from Norzeburg did not ‘feel’ the same to the touch and customer qualification of the product was delayed for a considerable period. Again, there was no human (or scientific) reason or explanation for this ‘feel’(natural). Episode 7 – Trade Unions Bertie Closeburn (Full Time Union Official for the General Union (GUFTUO)) submitted a grievance as soon as the announcement was made (see episode 5). The grievance procedure is covered in more depth in Chap. 6 in exploring HR practices. Here we are interested in how the unions and managers colluded and through this procedure Bertie was able to demand a Director attend a grievance meeting to address the Unions’ strategic concerns. In addition, by virtue of grievance procedure guidelines the Site Manager was excluded from the initial stage as he was expected to hear any subsequent appeal should the grievance be escalated to the next stage. Whilst the grievance was unresolved and still ongoing status quo had to be maintained which meant there could only be voluntary redundancies and not compulsory ones. This was in accordance with the Redundancy handling procedure originally agreed between the Unions and HCI 20 years previously and protected at the point of transfer into Chemco by employment law. As a former HCI employee, the Global Commercial Director (John Mossdale) agreed to meet with the Unions. John agreed with the actions being taken by Burnsland Managers and Senior Commercial Managers to keep as many facilities open as possible. Commercial Managers were trying to develop the idea of product development possibilities on the smaller lines at Burnsland. (This was known because senior commercial managers told Andy Dalton that John Mossdale was privately supportive of their plans.) The Unions met formally with the John Mossdale, Andy Dalton and Max Hoddom. Bertie Closeburn requested John to accept the processes of voluntary redundancy, established under HCI, should be applied in Chemco. Following an adjournment, John Mossdale and Andy Dalton

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met the Unions ‘off the record’ (in a private meeting). John said he had taken advice from Andy Dalton and he would recommend to Hope Mills (Chief Executive of Films) to agree to the continuation of the voluntary process. John later telephoned Hope Mills and got her agreement to continue the policy. It is unlikely Hope (a Chemco employee with no experience of HCI policies) understood what this entailed. This enabled the Burnsland Managers to legitimately delay line closures and slow down redundancies (this process is explored in more depth in Chap. 4). Episode 8 – Prior to Second AOP Meeting Ryan Cairn said, at a Site Management Team meeting on 15 January, Year 2, that the Burnsland Managers needed to “make sure we were not seen to be blocking things or being obstructive” at the AOP meetings. This comment was met with the usual silence at team meetings when there was no agreement. On 25 January, Year 2, prior to the second AOP meeting, the Burnsland contingent (Ryan Cairn, Max Hoddom and Andy Dalton) travelled together to a hotel in northern England. At the hotel, the three met up with many of the other attendees around the bar. Ryan went around various people having one-to-one conversations with each in turn. This included Stewart Ardwell (AOP Project Manager), Freddie Wilton (European Research Manager) and one of the Commercial Managers. Ryan could be overheard in these conversations saying that he and his team from Burnsland would not “rock the boat” and would “do what had to be done”. Ryan Cairn then had a conversation with Andy Dalton and Michael Parton (Burnsland Research Manager). Ryan said “we at Burnsland needed to be seen to be delivering and that we should not rock the boat at the meeting” the following day. Max Hoddom joined the conversation at that point and Ryan reiterated the message. Max Hoddom provocatively said that he would not speak at the meeting, as there “was no point”. Ryan said that there was no need for him to do that. Following this brief conversation Ryan went to bed. Many other managers, mostly former HCI Managers, stayed up until 2  am talking about the issues. Michael Parton (Burnsland Research Manager) told Andy Dalton and Max Hoddom the second stage of AOP was not possible within the timescales and with the resources available to the Research group. Michael Parton said that Freddie Wilton (European Research Manager) had told him that he was not happy and would raise the issue in the meeting the following day.

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Episode 9 – Second AOP Meeting The second AOP meeting was held in a hotel in northern England the following day on 26 January, Year 2. Just before the meeting began, Glen Wilson, the Production Director (who had now also assumed Directorial responsibility for Research) was seen to take Freddie Wilton (European Research Manager) out of the room for a quiet conversation (saying “have you got five minutes”). The meeting began with Stewart Ardwell (AOP Project Manager) giving a brief summary of where AOP ‘phase 1’ had got to. This title of ‘phase 1’ was the first time the phrase had been used. This suggested rather than an update of AOP that there would be additional closure plans. Stewart said that Burnsland Production Line 2 was 8–12  weeks late in closing because Norzeberg was not able to make the products transferred from Burnsland. The top five customers needed to be ‘kept on board’ as there was a difficult balancing act between AOP, price increases and revenue increases (prices had been increased by Chemco, as the new market leader to offset a decline in the Far East market). Hence, some of AOP phase 1 had been ‘slowed down’. Stewart Ardwell said February and March would be customer qualification periods where customers would be given samples of new products to trial and approve. This all meant that most of Burnsland’s production facilities were likely to remain open beyond the end of March, Year 2 and not close until the end of May or June, Year 2. Ryan Cairn then made a presentation regarding the situation at Burnsland. Ryan said that 121 employees out of 160 had signed up to leave the company under a voluntary process. There were further presentations from the Norzeberg Site Manager (Jan Hook) and Jim Bissen (Mexulburg Site Manager). Jim, who had said in the previous meeting that Burnsland could achieve redundancies by compulsory means much quicker than 90  days, described a much more drawn out process at Mexulburg. Jim said his national government had “bent its own rules around early retirement to allow people due to be 57 in the next eighteen months to be considered immediately for retirement” from the Mexulburg Site. This meant that 70 people all aged around 57 would leave the site on “garden leave”. This meant these employees would go home on full pay (and ‘sit in the garden’) but be written out of the business accounts until they retired. This practice was not allowed at Chemco because the Films Business Accountant in America had said it was not permissible. However,

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it was allowed in this case. Ultimately, the Mexulburg Site re-engaged some of these people during the garden leave period, and Financial Watchdogs on Wall Street investigated the Chemco Company for possible irregularities. (The Chemco Accountants in a conversation with two Burnsland Managers confirmed this.) Freddie Wilton (European Research Manager) made the next presentation at the meeting. Freddie mentioned a lack of resources in the Research team to deliver the AOP plan but appeared more subdued than he usually was. Several of the managers later put this down to the conversation Freddie had earlier with Glen Wilson (Production Director). Stewart Ardwell (AOP Project Manager) disagreed with Freddie Wilton’s concerns. Stewart said some of the figures which Freddie Wilton had said he needed for the project had already been budgeted for. (Later Michael Parton (Burnsland Research Manager) confirmed Stewart Ardwell had lied at the meeting and the figures were not budgeted for.) Stewart Ardwell (AOP Project Manager) then made a presentation on the AOP phase 2. Stewart said that Production Line 1 at Burnsland was dependent for its closure on technical modifications to Burnsland Line 7, which would take 12 to 15 months followed by a product transfer and a product qualification by a major customer. This meant a ‘stretch target’ of early in the first quarter of Year 3. Stewart added that Production Line 5 at Burnsland was dependent on the same modification being completed and that it would therefore remain open until the end of Year 2. The European Commercial Director (Craig Black) reiterated the completion of AOP ‘phase 2’ was not an ‘impossible target’ for completion at the end of Year 2. Yet the Power Points in the presentation from Stewart Ardwell said it was impossible, as modifications of Production Line 7 at Burnsland were not possible until at least January, Year 2 if not end of March, Year 3. Indeed, the Power Points being screened by Stewart during his presentation said the timescale for modifications to be completed on Production Line 7 was ‘now plus 15 months’ which was end of April, Year 3. The Power Point also said that transfers from Production Line 1 to Production Line 7 would take a further ‘2 to 3 months’. This meant completion was impossible before June or July, Year 3. The meeting then moved on to discuss communications. Stewart Ardwell said the process should be handled locally and because the announcement had a big impact on Burnsland, Ryan Cairn should lead the communication process. Stewart proposed that he and the Communications Manager (David Eldrick) would lead the process. Max

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Hoddom proposed Andy Dalton should also be involved. Then Patrick Corsewall (European HR Manager) raised the issue of National Union involvement. Andy Dalton (Burnsland HR Manager) interrupted Patrick and said the National Unions would not be involved because the “local Union guys had the situation in hand and that it was important that communication was only carried out when an exact date was known”. Ryan Cairn supported this and argued that “motivation was important” as an issue if we were to keep running production lines for some time. Jim Bissen (Mexulburg Site Manager) said the Burnsland Site needed to be much tougher and tell employees straight away. Andy Dalton said due to earlier commitments given by Hope Mills (Chief Executive of Films) and supported by John Mossdale (Global Commercial Director) Burnsland managers could not do that. Hope and John had already given assurances to the Unions, in the grievance procedure, that the historical HCI voluntary redundancy process would be used. The meeting ended abruptly at this point due to the need for several of the Senior Commercial and Site Managers and Directors to enter into a planned telephone conference with John Mossdale. On the 19 February, Year 2, Ryan Cairn announced an investment at Burnsland of circa six million pounds sterling. This investment was to increase the capacity and capabilities of Production Lines 7 and 8 so that some of the products could be moved from Production Lines 2 and 6. This also signalled that these products would not be moved to Norzeburg or American production sites.

‘Zooming in’ on Practices The AOP account above, predominantly focused on the human practitioners—those doing the work of strategy. There was some mention, in the account of the practices involved. This was mainly the social with some brief mentions of artefacts and tools through which this strategy work was done. In this section, by zooming in it enables practices and artefacts (nonhumans) to be made more visible and brought into the foreground. This is done with reference to ANT which facilitates a deeper reading. By zooming in it is possible to focus on the saying versus doing, human-­ nonhuman associations and issues of space and time.

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Saying Versus Doing Whilst the idea of saying and doing invariably draws upon discourse analysis that is not the intention here. Instead the ANT approach concerns itself with how power relations are inscribed in artefacts and embodied in networks. The focus is on what is said and then what is done or should that be what is done despite what is said? The espoused top–down strategic intent or “choice” (Chandler 1962) would appear to transfer products to Norzeburg at the expense of production line closures and redundancies at Burnsland. However, by exploring a series of episodes—informal and formal meeting practices—it becomes clear that the account is riddled with contradictions. The ‘data’ does not compare like (potential output) with like (actual output). When this is openly challenged the challengers are removed or gently threatened. Thus, the espoused strategy becomes inscribed in the data and embodied in the network which is stabilised, at least temporarily. In some of the formal meetings there are examples of managers appearing to agree with the espoused strategy and talking tough and making a public declaration about what others should do. This toughness is arguably used to deflect attention from the tough talking person’s own issues. For example, Jim Bissen of Mexulburg is keen to keep the light of the AOP process shining on Burnsland. However, the public declaration serves as an inscribed medium of support to add to the embodiment of the espoused strategy network. A further example is the AOP Project Manager, Stewart Ardwell, saying something different to the timescales on his Power Point slides. This is likely to ensure that he was able to say later that he had raised the issues of delays, even though he never said them, just did them on his Power Point! Stewart was also tough in his declaration on Freddie Wilton’s presentation on research resources and product transfers. Neither Bissen nor Ardwell delivered on the espoused strategy by the end of this series of episodes despite their public declarations directed at others. In many cases silence was the tactic employed by Burnsland Managers. Although this silence was probably perceived to be acceptance it was not. However, when Andy Dalton, Burnsland HR Manager, did break this silence in formal meetings it led to his being gently threatened about his career prospects. This kind of sanction and behaviour will be discussed in more depth in Chap. 6 when the focus is on HR. However, here the focus is on silence in formal meetings and plotting in informal meetings. There are several examples of this in relation to the use of the grievance

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procedure, the pressing of the mute button during a transatlantic telephone conference and attempts to persuade key stakeholders in informal settings. However, this tactic of informal persuasion is also used by the espoused strategic network with Ryan Cairn, Burnsland Site Manager, telling people to ‘be good foot soldiers’ and ‘not to rock the boat’ and Glen Wilson, Production Director, taking Freddie Wilton, European Research Manager, out of the room for a ‘chat’. In the two formal AOP meetings (episodes 3 and 9) there were changes in description made by the senior managers. In the first AOP meeting there was a subtle change in agenda which meant rather than being the start of the review process, the review was presented as a fait accompli at the meeting. This declaration (combined with translation) was an inscribed media device designed to further stabilise the espoused strategy network. In the second AOP meeting the AOP Project Manager introduced the terms ‘phase 1’ and ‘phase 2’ This title of ‘phase 1’ was the first time the phrase had been used. This suggested rather than an update of AOP that there would be additional closure plans. Again, an example of inscription through public declaration used to embody and embolden the network. Whilst the AOP account uncovered several nonhuman actors, it is useful when zooming in for us to explore them more deeply.

Human-Nonhuman Associations Nonhumans appear in the AOP account in many guises—data, plans, Power Points, polymer chips and procedures as well as ‘the feel of film’. The Feel of Film is a combination of a human (Customer) and a nonhuman (Film Sample) interaction. Together they are a human-nonhuman hybrid that delays product transfers and shapes strategy. Hybrids in ANT challenge the concept of what it means to be a subject (Callon and Law 1995). Data, Plans and Power Points Data from the original asset review telephone conferences was contested but at the same time it was taken as agreed fact to shape strategy. This unresolved contest underpins the ongoing issues in the shaping of strategy. Effectively Data has taken on the form of an actor yet at the same time data acts as an inscribed material and a boundary spanning object (Star 1991) which is employed by different networks to mean different

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things. As an actor, Data shapes the Asset Optimisation Plans, later Power Point overheads and Data shapes the future career of Otto Dornock (Operations Manager). However, as a boundary spanning object open to multiple interpretations (Latour 1987), data is interpreted as fact or truth in formal meetings and yet in informal meetings data is a driving force for counter networks attempting to divert the espoused strategy. Power Points used in the formal AOP meetings say different things to the words coming from the AOP Project Manager’s (Stewart Ardwell) mouth. The Power Points are the first indication that the espoused strategic network accepts the counter network’s targets. As such, the Power Points act as a medium that inscribes different timescales into the strategy. Polymer Chips and Hybrids Two nonhumans—Polymer Chips and Film Drums act together to cause a jam on the production line. Whilst it is not being suggested that this is a conscious nonhuman collusion to prevent or delay product transfers that was indeed the outcome it achieved. This played into the hands of those attempting to delay product transfers and redundancies and as such Polymer Chips and Film Drums are key actors within this network and help to shape strategic outcomes. As a hybrid actor combining human and nonhuman characteristics, the Feel of Film is also an actor. As an actor, it has a key impact of (i) significantly delaying product transfers; (ii) directing the work of many humans trying to work out why this happens; and (iii) shaping strategy. The Feel of Film does not exist without the interaction of the Customer (human) touching and scrunching the Film Sample (nonhuman). As a human-­ nonhuman hybrid the actor here is a combination of psychological, social and scientific elements. Without the film sample to scrunch between human (customer) fingers and without the fingers to scrunch the film sample there is no hybrid. Thus, a technical object shapes a human and a human shapes a technical object (Akrich 1992) to form a new hybrid actant. Documents There are numerous documents in the AOP account, for example, Redundancy Handling Procedure, Grievance Procedure as well as other HR processes (e.g., careers). These documents will be discussed in much

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more detail, in relation to HR, in Chap. 6. However, here we are interested in the properties of these nonhuman entities over time and space. The Redundancy Handling Procedure and Grievance Procedure transferred along with the humans into Chemco from HCI. This transfer was itself governed by a nonhuman actor Employment Law (Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employees (TUPE)). The Redundancy Handling Procedure had been agreed between Trade Unions and HCI several years previously to resolve a specific employee relations issue. The Procedure was subsequently used across HCI to deliver redundancies through voluntary means. The grievance procedure was also employed by a network of managers and trade unionist to delay progress in formal AOP meetings and ultimately to enable local managers to agree that the Redundancy Handling Procedure was honoured in full. This meant one procedure (Redundancy Handling Procedure) shaped strategy and another procedure (Grievance Procedure) enabled the Redundancy Handling Procedure to be employed in shaping strategy in formal AOP meetings.

Issues of Space and Time Spatio-Temporality By combining space and time, the ANT analysis of the AOP story shows most promise. Space in ANT is treated as wholly relational in nature where it can be both or neither local and global all at once. For example, Latour (1993, p. 117) describes a railroad that is local with points, stations, staff at various places, ticket machines but at the same time it is global and connects places across vast distances. Spatiality in ANT is explored by rejecting three spatial dualisms—Close/Far, Small Scale (Micro)/Large Scale (Macro) and Inside/Outside. When an actor-network has translated actors, they accept their interests are most likely to be delivered by the network. The network then attempts to make itself irreversible. In spatial terms, it does this through inscription and embodiment into material form (e.g., technology, data, texts, etc.) and this material is mobile so that it provides order over space. Such “immutable mobiles” (Latour 1987) can be moved and combined with other entities. This enables actors to “centralise and monopolise such meanings at centres of calculation” (e.g., Formal AOP meetings) (Michael 1996, p. 55). Law’s (1986) Portuguese

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navigational instruments or Latour’s (1990) hotel keys are excellent examples of such immutable mobiles in ANT. In ANT temporality is focused on networks attempting to become irreversible over time through durability. Durability is sometimes known as material embodiment. Material embodiment may make it more difficult to reverse a network (e.g., Latour’s (1988, 1996) studies of Pasteur and the Paris Metro respectively.). Durability is a concept that needs to be treated with care. For example, the walls of a prison appear to be durable at keeping prisoners in but they are no use without prison officers. They also form part of another network, namely, keeping aggrieved victims and relatives out! The best example of this ANT spatio-temporal combination identified in the AOP account was the Redundancy Handling Procedure which was highlighted above but is explored in more detail here. This procedure was developed 20 years before the AOP episodes by a group of HCI Managers in London in collaboration with regional and national trade union representatives. The procedure was designed to address a grievance over proposed compulsory redundancies which had been escalated to HCI’s head office. Under threat of industrial action, the document resolved the issue. Then at the point of transfer of the Burnsland Site from HCI to Chemco the document legally transferred under UK legislation. The document inscribed the needs and agreements of HCI Managers and Unions at the date of the original grievance and this was embedded in HCI practices over the subsequent 20 years. Thus making it both mobile (spatio-) and durable (temporality). This combination of mobility and durability (or space and time) made the new counter network irreversible. In the case of Burnsland the Redundancy Handling Procedure was also interpreted literally by the Managers and local Trade unions to mean no compulsory redundancies. However, the document said that compulsory redundancies could still be carried out once all other avenues had been explored and exhausted. This is consistent with Latour (1987) who argues that a medium may have different meanings inscribed into it by different actors but it is still able to circulate and create stability. Voluntary redundancies were therefore re-inscribed in this document which was re-embedded into the Chemco network on AOP when Hope Mills (Chief Executive Officer) agreed to honour it. This document from 20 years ago thus dictated behaviour, policy and delayed redundancies and product transfers in the present and probably into the future. The grievance procedure is a similar example of such spatio-temporal properties of mobility and durability.

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‘Zooming Out’ In zooming out ANT is employed to consider power relations and the processes of legitimisation and (de)stabilisation. This level of analysis clearly demonstrates how strategy is really accomplished (praxis) and how it is a much messier web of power relations than the classical descriptions of top–down process. In the AOP episodes we can see practices (meetings, decisions) being employed in a variety of ways by practitioners (actors—human and nonhuman). These micro practices show how strategy is shaped, informed and contested. ANT does not really accept the dualism of ‘in’ and ‘out’ and we are “not obliged to fill in the space in between the connections” (Latour 1996). However, if we accept Nicolini’s (2012) laudable attempts to pull together differing underpinning strands for the study of SasP, then ANT enables us to zoom in and zoom out as though the network were an online street map. We can zoom in to see how the streets are interconnected and what they are called. We can zoom out on the map and see which district of the City the streets are in. We can also ask for online directions from a completely different location and see how that district links elsewhere. In essence this is similar to Latour’s (1993) description of the railroad. So, by zooming out on the AOP account ANT enables us to do this by explore the micro-macro flow of power to consider where strategy is shaped. We can see the individual as well as the collective connections. We can consider where strategy is being done and how practices are associated and connected to contribute to the wider picture of strategy. Here we can identify praxis—that is, where strategy is accomplished. By considering power relations in this way it allows us to go beyond a top–down overarching strategy story and tell a different story of AOP. A story that is a much more complex and dynamic network of relations. Here the real work of strategy involves dis-enrolment and counter enrolments in pursuit of a re-shaping of espoused strategy. Actors see their identity and interests being better represented by a new network configuration and agree to be captured and yield. Far from being a stabilised network, the espoused strategy network, is slowly reversed and reconfigured. ANT’s “flat” ontological perspective (Seidl and Whittington 2014) allows us to re-present the world holistically. By rejecting the micro-macro dualism and employing ANT for both zooming in and zooming out we

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can follow strategy over all terrain. The ultimate outcome of this story was additional investment at Burnsland. This investment allowed the uprating of capacity and capabilities at Burnsland. This meant products due for transfer from two of the five production lines that had been earmarked for closure now continued to be produced on different production lines at Burnsland and were not transferred to Norzeburg. All redundancies were achieved by voluntary means under the Redundancy Handling Procedure. Thus, the outcome was different to the espoused strategy and several actors who had chosen to enrol into the new network saw their interests realised or partially realised. Customers still got their products from Burnsland, Trade Unions still managed to see job reductions by voluntary means, managers remained in their job roles and the remaining production lines were stabilised through this process combined with additional investment. In addition, the Redundancy Handling Procedure was further stabilised into future practice at Chemco Burnsland. The espoused strategic network in the AOP account is largely hierarchical and driven top-down by the Production Director. As a network there is an assumption of stability, agreed enrolment and translation. This is like much of the strategic literature which assumes those lower down the organisation and nonhuman actors are compliant, malleable or ‘resisting’. The desired outcome for this network was for production line closures at Burnsland and redundancies based on data accepted as fact. There are several attempts to maintain the stability of this network. A manager is removed from his role in public, other managers are advised that their career prospects are dependent upon their yielding and managers are told to be ‘good foot soldiers’ or do what their seniors tell them to do. However, in ANT the process of enrolment is mutual as those being enrolled need to see their interests and identities are achievable by yielding to the enroller. The silence of managers in formal AOP meetings was perhaps the nearest to compliance and enrolment that was achieved by this approach. As the initial data was contested and regarded by many as spurious and the Operations Manager (Otto Dornock) was publicly removed from his role this set a counter network in train. Informal meetings were used to counter enrol actors into a new network configuration that shaped strategy in a different way to the espoused strategy. This new network was able to enrol other actors (e.g., trade unions, commercial managers, scientists, customers), nonhumans (e.g., documents, polymer chips) and even enrolled the original network (e.g., Chief Executive Officer [Hope Mills]

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agreeing to accept voluntary rather than compulsory redundancies). Actors chose to enrol in the counter network as they could see it was aiming to offer continued employment and production at Burnsland. It was also seen as an alternative way to stave off the threats to their job tenure and career prospects. Legitimisation and increasing stability were achieved by this new counter network at various key points in the AOP story. The two most notable points being (1) the AOP Project Manager accepting the revised timescales in his Power Point presentation overheads and talking about phase 1 and phase 2 and (2) The Chief Executive Officer accepting that redundancies had to be arrived at by voluntary means. Certain events also aided and abetted in the stabilising processes. Most notably the issues around the feel of film and polymer chip collusion in delaying product transfers.

Conclusion ANT informs SasP by following the flow of strategic practices, practitioners and praxis. It achieves this by: rejecting several spatio-temporal dualisms and primarily by re-presenting an account in a holistic network analysis. This chapter employed SasP to consider the AOP account. The AOP process was a rationalisation of products and production capacity that was conducted within the organisation. An at-home ethnography methodology, or insider account, was employed which enabled detailed performation and analysis of how practices were constructed and deployed and how they informed and shaped strategy. By employing a SasP toolkit (Nicolini 2012) the chapter zoomed in and zoomed out on strategic practices and highlighted how ANT’s flat and holistic ontology has much to offer SasP. There are a range of human and nonhuman practitioners involved in doing the work of strategy. Some of these actors or practitioners are micro (e.g., individuals, polymer chips) and some are macro (e.g., production lines, whole networks). The AOP account unpacks some macro actors (e.g., Chemco, Senior Managers) and leaves some others untouched (e.g., Production lines) as well as considering micro actors (e.g., Polymer chips, documents specific managers). It is unhelpful for us to unpack every component in a production line and is likely to lead to a “banal” account (Akrich 1992, p. 205), instead, we look for associations. For example, in the AOP story this includes the drum from the production line and its association with polymer chips. The account follows the power relationships and attempts to understand associations regardless of their micro or

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macro ‘status’. This enables the exploration of a destabilised network and to get under the skin of practitioners (human and nonhuman) and practices in the doing of strategy. There are several practices such as meetings, socio-material interactions around procedures and data which are all part of how strategy work is done. Finally, there is praxis to which ANT follows the flow of activity across micro-macro, human-nonhuman, terrain to identify how strategy is accomplished. ANT’s interest in power relations is helpful in zooming in to highlight contested relations as well as identifying tools and artefacts. ANT is also useful in zooming out to consider how outcomes have been accomplished and whose interests and identities have been served in destabilising and re-stabilising networks. The next chapter focuses on a process at Burnsland called the ‘Engine Room’, for handling the coordination of redundancies and production line closures. The account is combined with SasP and the ANT idea of “netted networks” (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999). Practices tend to weave in and out of a variety of networks. Some of these networks might be dormant and invisible and come to life during episodes of crisis whereas other networks operate continually. There is a tension between these two competing types of networks.

References Akrich, M. (1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/ building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 205–224). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford University Press. Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation. In E. L. Lesser, M. A. Fontaine, & J. A. Slusher (Eds.), Knowledge and communities (pp. 99–121). Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. Callon, M. (2007). An essay on the growing contribution of economic markets to the proliferation of the social. Theory, Culture and Society, 24(7/8), 139–163. Callon, M., & Law, J. (1995). Agency and the hybrid collectif. South Atlantic Quarterly, 94, 481–507. Chandler, A. D. (1962). Strategy and structure: Chapters in the history of American enterprise. Boston: MIT Press. Gherardi, S., & Nicolini, D. (2019). Actor-networks: Ecology and entrepreneurs. In B.  Czarniawska & T.  Hernes (Eds.), Actor-network theory and organizing (pp. 295–320). Lund: Studentlitteratur.

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Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Outline of a theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hansen, A., & Mouritsen, J. (1999). Managerial technology and netted networks. ‘Competitiveness’ in action: The work of translating performance in a high-­ tech firm. Organization, 6(3), 451–471. Jarzabkowski, P. (2005). Strategy as practice: An activity-based approach. London: Sage. Jarzabkowski, P., & Spee, P. (2009). Strategy-as-practice: A review and future directions for the field. International Journal of Management Reviews, 11(1), 69–95. Johnson, G., Scholes, K., & Whittington, R. (2006). Exploring corporate strategy. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Latour, B. (1986). The power of association. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief (pp. 264–280). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow engineers and scientists through society. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Latour, B. (1988). The pasteurization of France. Cambridge Mass: Harvard. Latour, B. (1990). Technology is society made durable. In J. Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology and domination (pp. 103–131). 38, 1, Sociological Review. Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Latour, B. (1996). Aramis or the love of technology. Cambridge: Mass. Harvard University Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Law, J. (1986). Methods of long-distance control, Portuguese route to India. In J. Law (Ed.), Power action and belief (pp. 234–263). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Law, J., & Singleton, V. (2000). Performing technology’s stories: On social constructivism, performance and performativity. Technology and Culture, 41(4), 765–775. Mackay, B., Chia, R., & Nair, A. K. (2020, June). Strategy-in-practices: A process philosophical approach to understanding strategy emergence and organizational outcomes.” Human Relations, Early cite online. Michael, M. (1996). Constructing identities. London: Sage. Nicolini, D. (2009). Zooming in and out: Studying practices by switching theoretical lenses and trailing connections. Organization Studies, 30(12), 1391–1418. Nicolini, D. (2012). Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orlikowski, W. J. (1992). The duality of technology: Rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science, 3(3), 398–427.

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Orlikowski, W. J. (2000). Using technology and constituting structures; a practice lens for studying technology in organizations. Organization Science, 11(4), 404–428. Schatzki, T. R. (2005). Peripheral vision: The sites of organizations. Organization Studies, 26(3), 465–484. Seidl, D., & Whittington, R. (2014). Enlarging the strategy-as-practice research agenda: Towards taller and flatter ontologies. Organization Studies, 35(10), 1407–1421. Star, S.  L. (1991). Power, technology and phenomenology of conventions: On being allergic to onions. In J.  Law (Ed.), Sociology of monsters (pp.  26–56). London: Routledge. Suchman, L. (2000). Embodied practices of engineering work. Mind, Culture, and Activity., 7(1 & 2), 4–18. Whittington, R. (1996). Strategy as practice. Long Range Planning, 29(5), 731–735. Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies, 27(5), 613–634.

CHAPTER 4

‘Delivering’ the Strategy: The Engine Room

Abstract  The aim of this chapter will be to continue to develop the themes in Chap. 1 above. The ‘Engine Room’ was the name given to a group of middle managers at one production site who were given the task of managing redundancies and production line closures. The chapter will explore the practices used and the delays and subterfuge of everyday managerial practices to subvert and reconfigure the organisation’s strategic ‘choice’. Again ethnography in an insider account will demonstrate how practices are constructed and deployed as well as how a SasP perspective can be applied by researchers in other organisational settings. In addition, the theme of nonhuman actors will be developed drawing upon Actor-­ Network Theory themes (Callon, Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of Saint Brieuc bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief (pp.  196–233). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986). Keywords  Middle managers • Ethnography • Actor-Network Theory

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Introduction This chapter will continue to develop the themes from Chap. 3 on Strategy as Practice (SasP) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Employing an at-­ home ethnography (e.g., Vickers 2019), insider account, the chapter explores how practices are constructed and deployed as part of the subterfuge of everyday managerial practice to delay, subvert and reconfigure the organisation’s strategic ‘choice’. In particular, the chapter considers how the Engine Room practice (combined with AOP practice discussed in Chap. 3) shapes everyday practices and the product output strategy. The ‘Engine Room’ was the name given to a practice, as well as a group of managers, at the Burnsland production site relating to the task of managing redundancies to enable production line closures. Nicolini’s (2012) idea of “zooming in” and “zooming out” is adopted from SasP to explore the ethnographic account. Employing ANT at the zooming in stage enables the consideration of nonhuman actants as well as human ones and spatio-temporality. In zooming out Nicolini (2012) suggests ANT’s usefulness in general. Here, this chapter draws upon on Hansen and Mouritsen’s (1999) ANT concept of netted networks.

Zooming in and Zooming Out In the last chapter zooming in (Nicolini 2012) was combined with ANT and explored; saying versus doing; human-nonhuman interaction; and issues of space and time. In saying versus doing it was possible to highlight; variance in espoused statements and actual practices; inscription into artefacts; the use of silence; and talking tough to deflect attention onto others. Human-nonhuman interaction involved data, plans, Power Points, polymer chips and documents as well as ‘the feel of film’. Together these human-nonhuman interactions enabled delays in product transfers and re-­ shaped strategy. Space and time, or more specifically, spatio-temporality, used the ANT concepts of mobility and durability which enable the exploration of networks, actants and activities over space and time. This was especially useful in relation to the Redundancy Handling Procedure, which was a 20-year-old document resurrected and inscribed into current practices to delay redundancies and stabilise a newly configured network. In the current chapter this ANT-zooming in combination is employed again in saying versus doing; human-nonhuman interaction; and

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spatio-­temporality. This enables the telling of a more holistic account (Seidl and Whittington 2014). The ANT-zooming out combination in the last chapter was useful for considering power relations and the processes of legitimisation and (de)stabilisation. So, by zooming out ANT enabled the exploration of the individual and collective (micro-macro) flow of power to consider where strategy is shaped. Considering power relations in this way allowed the identification of a more complex and dynamic network of relations, destabilisation and stabilisation of a counter network that shaped strategy. As Seidl and Whittington (2014) rightly suggested ANT’s ‘flat’ ontological perspective is useful to SasP in re-presenting the world holistically. In the present chapter the ANT-zooming out combination is employed again to consider power relations and how they shape strategy. The idea of ‘netted networks’ is explored to consider how competing networks shape the strategy. The netted network concept enables exploration of how everyday continuous practices (i.e., production, commercial, research) are netted or corralled by fundamental adaptive practices (i.e., AOP, Engine Room). In turn through this account it is possible to demonstrate how this netting shapes strategy.

Netted Networks Netted networks (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999, p.  451) consider situations where networks “mobilize each other in situations where one network is impacting on other networks to condition and change them”. Each network makes claims to be able to deliver an outcome and to be able to translate it into organisational decision-making. The idea of netted networks stems from ANT and is useful here as it explores organising practices that are woven in and out of networks. The ‘netting’ process “is an activity located in a narrow span of time, where managerial technologies take priority over business technologies” (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999, p. 453). ‘Managerial technologies’ are usually dormant until a crisis arises and are associated with change and fragile states. In ANT terms this may be when a stable state becomes problematised. Whereas ‘business technologies’ operate in continuous time, are often routinised and are associated with continuity and stability. These are the practices associated with the organisation in its “black boxed” (Latour 1999) stabilised state. To draw on Czarniawska (2004, p. 775) here, it is a case of kairotic and chronological time. Managerial technologies appear

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to happen in kairotic time which “jumps and slows down, omits long periods and dwells on others”. Whereas chronological time is consistent with business technologies that are mechanical and organise the present and immediate future. The dormant managerial technologies “pop up” and become more important in a narrow span of space and time (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999, p. 457), they are not continuous (like business technologies) but episodic in nature. In ANT, the original thinking suggests that an actor-network aims to stabilise itself and become black boxed. It is when the network becomes problematised or destabilised that it starts to unravel or becomes reconstituted into a new network configuration. So, we tend to analyse one network and the power relations issues associated with the stabilisation, problematisation and re-stabilisation of that network. Be that network associated with scallop fishing (Callon 1986), famous scientists/engineers such as Pasteur (Latour 1988) or a large multinational such as EDF or Renault (Callon 1980). For example, in the last chapter, the story is essentially about the power struggles in the AOP network. However, Hansen and Mouritsen’s (1999) idea is helpful in more complex situations where one or several stable, steady state, networks (business technology) are “netted” temporarily by a (normally dormant) network (managerial technology) and organising is an ongoing process based on multiple acts of translation (Czarniawska 2004, p.  779). This is consistent with “action nets” (Czarniawska 2004; Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006), as a managerial technology does not speak for business technology, but for the connections between them and their resultant effects (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999, p.  467). Action nets are “close to the concept of” ANT but an actor-network “takes more time and effort than an action net [to establish and maintain]” (Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006, pp. 781–782). Action nets are an amalgamation of new institutional theory and actor-network theory. From institutional theory it takes the idea of a prevailing institutional order at any given time that dictates what actions are tied together. From ANT it takes the concept that connecting actions into nets requires translation of actions into others, and the stabilisation of actants (human and nonhuman) (Corvellec and Czarniawska 2014, p. 8). Action nets are “highly temporary” (Lindberg 2002) and their primary focus is on actions and the focus is on following the “knotting” or connections, not the actors (Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006; Czarniawska 2011; Corvellec and Czarniawska 2014, p. 8). It is here at the ‘knotting’ where the translations take place. This connecting or knotting is described as “cognitive,

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emotional and mimetic at one and same time” (Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006, p. 303). Cognitive knotting is schematic, inscribed in materials and aims to achieve stabilisation. Emotional knotting is all about shared understanding and experiences and loyalty between actants. Finally, mimetic knotting involves storytelling about practices, openness to transformation and the arrangement of loose connections which do not threaten business technologies in the longer term. Over reliance on cognitive knotting tends to maintain separation between organisations and their practices and causes obstacles to cooperation (Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006), much like it did in the AOP network in the previous chapter. At these knotting or connection points there are multiple translations at play—some contradictory, some cooperative—but in the continual struggle of all these translations we can see where organising happens (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999, p. 469) and this is where we should focus our studies (Czarniawska 2004). The Engine Room account unearths even more complexity to Hansen and Mouritsen’s netted networks idea. Here we have not one, but two dormant managerial technologies (Engine Room and AOP) that temporarily come into play in shaping the steady state strategy (or business technologies) associated with continuous production. It is argued here that there are two forms of managerial technologies: Everyday managerial technologies which are relatively normal disruptions to continuity, for example, new product developments; and Fundamental managerial technologies which have the capacity to cause largely irreversible changes to business technologies, for example, AOP. In addition, it is possible to understand how actants (human and nonhuman) operate in several networks (multi-connectivity) and the effect this has on power relations and strategy. As Czarniawska (2004, p. 779) notes, “what is important in practice: contemporary organizing moves quickly from one place to another and happens in several places at once”. These ideas of multi-connectivity and multi-locations will be explored later in this chapter.

Engine Room Story Introduction The Engine Room was both the name of a practice and the name given to a group of Burnsland managers established to handle the process of

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reducing staff numbers through a process of voluntary redundancies and transfers of undertakings. The Senior Management Team at Burnsland had finally agreed to this process for handling redundancies after the Site Manager (Ryan Cairn) was persuaded that a voluntary process could achieve this. Overview of the Engine Room Story The HR Manager (Andy Dalton) had shown that there were several employees aged 50 or more who could take early retirement and a severance payment (in truth, these employees were already receiving a pension from HCI at the point of transfer from HCI to Chemco. So, they would need to be persuaded that leaving with severance was better than receiving a pension and a salary). The Operations Manager (Max Hoddom) had said that there were several outsourcing activities currently under consideration and the temporary displacement of some contractors would buy more time, and that the remaining employees could be persuaded to volunteer through such an Engine Room approach. Andy Dalton (HR Manager), Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) and others knew, that at that point, the redundancies were not likely to be achieved within the Chemco timescale. However, by achieving much of the target this was likely to ease the pressure on timescales, and some production facilities were likely to remain open for longer, requiring more staff than predicted. The Burnsland Managers were helped in their argument by circumstances. HCI had also sold another chemical production business based on the Burnsland site to United Chemicals, a European chemical company. United Chemicals had decided to close this facility and had agreed, under considerable pressure from the local union officials in Burnsland, to improve the severance package open to employees. For Chemco, to take a compulsory redundancy route would also mean an increase in industrial relations pressure to improve the severance package. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) therefore agreed to the use of the Engine Room. The Engine Room practice was one that had been adopted previously at Burnsland and was similar to other groups’ set-up elsewhere in HCI. The Engine Room was chaired by Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) and facilitated by Andy Dalton (HR Manager) and his staff. The group consisted of one middle manager from each area, with line management responsibilities ranging from the Finance Manager (Hazel Field) and the Purchasing Manager (Keith Irongray) through to all production line

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managers. All these Managers were former HCI employees. If a manager was unable to attend, he or she was expected to send a deputy with full responsibility to make decisions for their area or department. If no deputy was present, the decision would be taken without input from the area, and the area would be bound by the decision. This meeting happened every Thursday for a period of 18 months. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) had an open invitation to attend the meeting, which he did on occasion. The standard format of the agenda was for an HR representative to begin by giving the current figure of employees ‘signed up’ for voluntary redundancy. Each Manager giving a quick review of progress in his or her area followed this. The Middle Managers were in control of the flow of whom they signed up for voluntary redundancy and when they were allowed to leave. Therefore, production lines could continue to operate as some ‘volunteers’ were not notified to the Engine Room officially. The meeting would also occasionally debate policy issues and make decisions. There would be feedback on discussions being held with trade unions, and from meetings that Senior Managers had attended off the Burnsland site. The Engine Room was a practice that had been adopted previously by managers at Burnsland in HCI. Therefore, a historical HCI practice was being conducted within Chemco. The process was also subjected to pressure from Senior Managers elsewhere (and discussion at AOP meetings outlined in Chap. 3) in Chemco who were accustomed, to either an American process of dealing with redundancies, or of dealing with UK issues through a compulsory redundancy process. Under American employment law, employees could be issued with a notice letter, usually of three months’ duration, immediately they were notified as being redundant. When the termination date was reached, these employees were dismissed with redundancy which was much less than the generous scheme embedded within HCI terms and conditions. All management and professional staff in HCI had a 12 months’ notice clause in their contractual terms, which ironically was an immutable mobile, planted there ten years earlier by HCI and which had been designed to ward off a previous potential acquirer for the whole of HCI. Different Meetings The Engine Room meetings were markedly different, depending on whether Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) attended or not. For example, when Ryan did not attend, there was open discussion, and conflict was clearly

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visible until compromise or resolution was reached. On 10 December, Year 1, for example, the Engine Room discussed how to categorise leavers and pending possible leavers on the HR database. The calculation of numbers of leavers had been worked and reworked several times to ‘fudge’ various issues and now the meeting needed to create an accurate record. This ‘fudging’ had been achieved by combining the numbers of employees who had signed up to leave on voluntary redundancy within the required timescale, those who had indicated a much longer date to fit their own aspirations to take early retirement, and those who had expressed a ‘strong interest’ in considering voluntary severance. This had the effect of boosting the numbers who appeared to be signed up to leave and reduced the pressure on the Site Manager (Ryan Cairn), and hence on the network. It was eventually decided, after much debate and argument, that in future meetings the employees who still had not committed whether or not to take voluntary redundancy would be openly discussed. Andy Dalton (HR Manager) said at the conclusion of the discussion that “it was still O.K. to go through the list of names at the meeting next week, as we would not have a problem, like we haven’t this week!” Everyone at the meeting laughed at this as it was thinly veiled language for the fact that Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) was not present and would not be there the following week either. However, if Ryan (Site Manager) attended the Engine Room, these debates were deferred to later meetings, handled prior to the meeting on the telephone, or more usually, the issues were discussed in a quickly reconvened meeting immediately after Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) had left the room. Ryan (Site Manager) was therefore presented with a ‘false’ meeting with largely harmonious relationships on view. Usually, a middle manager would find a ‘need’ to meet Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) and usher him away to his office down the corridor from the meeting room. This process continued throughout the 18-month period of the ethnographic study. Continuing to Convince Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) was not convinced that it was possible to achieve this process through voluntary means, and this was discussed and revisited on several occasions by the Senior Management Team and the Engine Room. An example of this occurred on 30 November, Year 1, when Ryan (Site Manager) called an impromptu meeting with Max

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Hoddom (Operations Manager), Andy Dalton (HR Manager) and Hazel Field (Finance Manager) along with one of the Production Managers. The meeting was to address Ryan’s (Site Manager) concerns that it was not possible to achieve the employee numbers reductions by a voluntary process. Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) said that the target was ‘half met’ as there were 80 employees ‘signed up’. Andy Dalton (HR Manager) added that there were nine more employees to go that very day in a transfer of undertakings, which took IT staff into a contractor organisation. At the end of the meeting, Ryan (Site Manager) said he felt reassured and could now go back to Glen Wilson (Production Director) and answer his question. Afterwards, on 2 December, Year 1, the European Commercial Director (Craig Black) told Andy Dalton (HR Manager) that Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) had telephoned him on 30 November at 9 p.m. “all in a panic and a state about not believing we could achieve the numbers targets”. Ultimately, the reduction of employee numbers was achieved through voluntary severance and transfers of undertakings. Procedures and Policies Chemco expected employees at Burnsland to adopt and follow many of the Chemco HR procedures and policies. However, because of UK legislation (TUPE—Transfer of Undertakings Regulations, Protection of Employees), a number of HCI HR policies and procedures were maintained. One particular policy was the ‘Redundancy Handling Procedure’ which had been drawn up by HCI 20 years earlier. The document described the way that such job reduction exercises should be carried out. Indeed, because all previous reductions had been done this way in HCI the document was, by custom and practice, virtually a term of employment. The wording of this policy called for a period of redeployment activity (both internal and external) followed by a period where prior warning of impending notice of termination was given, followed by a notice period which in some cases could be as much as 12 months. The policy stated that only as an absolute last resort would employees be made compulsorily redundant. This policy prevented the immediate implementation of compulsory redundancies and along with a 90-day UK legal consultation requirement enabled the former HCI managers to work redundancy and production facility utilisation issues over a much longer period of time and through a voluntary process, which was counter to the AOP strategy (see Chap. 3).

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The Senior Managers at Burnsland were able to place themselves between the Unions and Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) by use of the HCI grievance procedure, which precluded the most senior manager from the site (Site Manager) from being involved in discussions unless the Unions failed to agree at the lower level. During the longer period of time this generated, the former HCI Managers were able to subvert and delay AOP attempts to close production facilities. Relationships outside the meeting room were also important in maintaining the Engine Room network’s stability and keeping key actors enrolled. These relationships were between Burnsland Managers and others such as unions, the Press, politicians, commercial managers and research managers. Managers and Unions HCI had traditionally developed a cooperative approach to industrial relations with Unions at a national level. There was also cooperation locally, although this was dependant on the particular local officials of the Union. The Chemco approach was more confrontational and based on the US parent’s approach of non-consultation and driving through the eye of the conflict as the quickest way to make change occur. Examples of the Chemco behaviour were evident in stories such as the threatened strike at an Irish Site being overtaken by a lock out by Managers, and stories and e-mails of celebrations in America saying ‘the unions have been kept out at Squaretown site’. The history of the Burnsland site was one of pragmatic local industrial relationships with the General Union (GU) and slightly less pragmatic with the Main Craft and Technical Union (MCTU) and the Scientific and Technical Association (STA). The most notable example of this was the way an HCI wide agreement on multi-skilling had been applied at Burnsland compared with other HCI sites. In essence, multi-skilling had not been applied and both Managers and Unions did not communicate this outside of the Site. The GU was the dominant Union in size terms and this meant that the Full Time Officials from the MCTU and the STA gave Bertie Closeburn, the GU Full Time Official (GUFTUO), a lead role in the relationship. This situation was strengthened by the fact that the GU was the only trade union to have a main office within 50  miles of Burnsland. The managers leading much of the direct interaction with the Unions were formerly with HCI and were keen to maintain relationships

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with the Union to achieve what was regarded as a mutual goal of keeping as much of the productive capacity in place at Burnsland. The former HCI Managers had several meetings with the Unions where the conversations were not minuted and Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) was kept out of the discussions. An example of this was on 7 January, Year 2, when Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) and the two seniors on site shop stewards of the GU met with Andy Dalton (HR Manager) to ask what was likely to happen to the production lines under the Asset Optimisation Process. Andy said that “it was better if people did not ask those sorts of questions as there were all sorts of high level political games going on which might make such questions irrelevant, but if the questions were answered it might make those games difficult or impossible”. One of the onsite representatives said that “people wanted to be put out of their misery and have the questions answered”. Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) said that he “understood where you (HR Manager) are coming from”. Andy Dalton (HR manager) added that the idea was to leave the final phase of redundancies for as long as the Burnsland managers could possibly delay it, and that the final few would perhaps be “pushed out” as not having “tried very hard under the terms of the company’s redundancy handling procedure to find an alternative job”. Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) said, “this is normal practice and it won’t cause me a problem”. This was all achieved by the enrolment of one particular Union and the use of a written grievance procedure, which insisted that the next level of procedure was to default to the next most senior manager. Therefore, the grievance procedure was used to exclude Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) from the discussions, as the managers argued that he needed to be kept in reserve in case the dispute was escalated to the next level. The Management team, that conducted negotiations with the Union, explained to Ryan that this was in his best interests, as it would allow more flexibility later if there was a failure to agree at this level. The union and the managers had no intentions of failing to agree. Union to Union The GU, the MCTU and STA Unions operated to an unofficial agreement that the Union Official with the most members on a particular site would take the lead in discussions with the employer. This did not mean that meetings were at the exclusion of other Unions and it did not prevent one Union from asking for a single Union meeting with management on

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issues that affected their members. Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) had respect for his fellow full-time officers but his overriding issues were personal and local politics. The large membership of the GU at the Site was one of the reasons that the GU maintained an office in the region. Without a reasonable sized membership Bertie (GUFTUO) was likely to find himself working 50 miles away or worse still, redundant. Locally, the GUFTUO was well respected by local councillors, local council officials and by the Member of Parliament. He was the key focal point at times of media interest and the person to whom these elected officials turned to in private to seek guidance on what to say to the media and hence their electorate. The former HCI Managers were able to have many frank, off-the-­ record discussions with Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) in pre-meetings to arrange the direction an agenda would take at formal meetings with all three unions. The HCI Managers openly disclosed their plans to attempt to keep facilities open, counter to the wishes of the Chemco parent company in the USA, and in return, Bertie (GUFTUO) would chair the formal meetings in a way that allowed the plans to move ahead. Occasionally, one of the other Unions would have an issue, which he could not manage directly. Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) would therefore rebuke one of the former HCI Managers over the issue in formal meetings. The HCI Manager would accept the criticism and acknowledge the problem or apologise, so as to give Bertie (GUFTUO) credibility and to help him deliver on a topic he was having difficulty controlling, thus maintaining enrolment. Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) was also able to keep the National Union Official (Terry Millbank) from being involved in the discussions at Burnsland through employment of the grievance procedure. Terry Millbank (National Union Official) would not be involved until a final failure to agree was reached with the Company’s management at various levels. At the same time, the Managers were able to demonise (Michael 1996) Terry Millbank (National Union Official). Patrick Corsewall (European HR Manager) from Chemco had dealt with Terry (National Union Official) previously and the pair had always been antagonistic towards one another. Terry Millbank (National Union Official) had said publicly, in a meeting, to the HCI Managers from two sites he was glad that the European HR Manager (Patrick Corsewall) was not present and that progress could be made in discussions. The Americans in Chemco had a cultural and historic distrust of Unions. Both these relationships enabled the Burnsland Managers to present Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO)

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as the acceptable face of unionism. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) accepted this story and explained this to his American colleagues in a number of meetings and telephone conferences. Union, Press and Managers Chemco was one of the biggest, best paying, employers, in a largely rural area. As such, the coverage of redundancies undoubtedly made good headlines in the local newspaper. The local Journalist (George Town) assigned to cover the various announcements was known by others to be particularly aggressive at pursuing a story. HCI Managers worked with Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) prior to the announcement on what the two parties would say to the Press and therefore, although aggressive, George Town (Journalist) only had the material that it was agreed he should have to work with. However, in some ways George Town (Journalist) forced greater Management and Union enrolment by printing negative stories with or without any facts or comments, so both parties were obliged to battle with the Press. A good example of this process occurred on 3 February, Year 2, when George Town (Journalist) asked Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) how many employees had been on site when he arrived from America. Ryan was briefed before this session and was told to avoid answering such numbers type questions, by David Eldrick (European Communications Manager) and Andy Dalton (HR Manager), as this might generate a story. However, Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) told George Town (Journalist) that there had been 620 employees when he arrived. David Eldrick (European Communications Manager) coughed which was the pre-agreed signal he had given Ryan to stop this line of questioning. However, Ryan Cairn ignored the coughs. George Town (Journalist) then asked further questions about numbers: such as how many employees there were now, and how many there would be after facilities were closed. After George Town had left, Andy Dalton (HR Manager) said that the front-page headline would be 60 more jobs to go. On the 5 February the headline was “60 Jobs to go at Chemco” with a large half page picture of Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) on the front page. Andy Dalton (HR Manager) eventually calmed Ryan down, and wrote a note on his behalf to all employees. Then Andy Dalton (HR Manager) and Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) met off site with Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) and the two senior site shop stewards of the GU to recap events. The Managers and the Union

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Officials all found the situation to be humorous as it had put pressure on Ryan Cairn (Site Manager). Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) recounted his story of talking to George Town (Journalist). Bertie had phoned George Town and said, “you tell me what’s fucking going on, you’re supposed to be the Journalist!” George said, “I didn’t know that he’d (Ryan Cairn— Site Manager) answer my questions, but he just did then I asked another and he answered, I couldn’t believe it, so I asked another and he answered again”. Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) said to George Town (Journalist) that he should be aware that, as Chemco was an American company, it might consider litigation, which appeared to cause George to panic. Bertie then hung up the receiver. On returning to the Site, Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) and Andy Dalton (HR Manager) debriefed Ryan Cairn (Site Manager), at least partially. They told him that Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) was placated and that, at worst, he would write a strongly worded letter to Ryan. Max Hoddom (Operations Manager), Andy Dalton (HR Manager) and Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) had already agreed this as the best course of action. Following this series of events, Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) had bouts of sickness and dizziness and avoided some difficult meetings for a couple of weeks. Union, Politicians and Managers The local Politicians wanted to say the right thing, so they would contact Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) who would advise them of what line to take with the media. At one stage, the former HCI Managers and the Union agreed, that in order to keep Chemco on board with an amicable industrial relations process, one local Politician would need to be seen to be delivering the reactionary message to the Company through the media. The Politician, on the local television news, “demanded an urgent meeting with the Company”. The Company obliged and the meeting was perfectly amicable, unlike the public television performance. On this occasion, Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) actually said how constructive Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) was and that he did not like the way the Politician had conducted himself. From time to time, the former HCI Managers agreed with Bertie Closeburn to give the Company a hard time in order to protect his own standing in the community, and the former HCI Managers explained to Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) that Bertie had to appear to be like this in the media, but he was really continuing the relationship. This was a

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particularly difficult thing to convince Ryan of, because Bertie Closeburn would be particularly scathing of Chemco. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) had strong loyalty and a positive image of Chemco, built on a 30-year relationship, and a poor view of Unions, based on his American cultural understanding. Once or twice Ryan (Site Manager) tried to arrange to have private dinners with Bertie (GUFTUO) and with Patrick Corsewall (European HR Manager). However, the former HCI managers worked with Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) to find reasons why “this was not a good idea”. For example, Bertie might argue that he was precluded from meeting the Site Manager due to restrictions in the grievance procedure. Managers, Commercial and Research Managers Prior to transfer from HCI to Chemco, the HCI Films organisation had adopted a ‘business team’ structure. This meant the films business was subdivided into a number of business teams which were headed up by a Commercial Manager and included Production and Research Managers in the day-to-day and longer-term running of a business unit. At Burnsland, the two Operations Managers (Max Hoddom and Otto Dornock) and two of the Middle Managers sat on these business teams with Andy Dalton (HR Manager) and provided occasional HR support to all four of these teams. However, the Chemco structure was ‘functional’. This meant that a Site Manager who responded to the Global Production Director made joint decisions with the European Commercial Director or Global Commercial Director to manage production. HCI had arranged many of its businesses along the business team model, and many businesses had seen arguments about the ‘subservience’ of production and research to commercial. In HCI Films there had been much less resistance, and the model had worked very well. The Commercial Managers had seen the need to gain support from production, in some cases. In other cases, the Operations Managers were stronger characters and had ensured that the commercial and research functions had listened to their input on wider business issues. Customer relationships were also strong with direct links between production and customers. On transfer to Chemco, HCI Managers resisted the need to functionalise and maintained their offsite links with businesses, even if the formal business team idea was dropped. For example, the Operations Managers (Max Hoddom and Otto Dornock) insisted that their appraisal and performance rating involved their respective Senior Commercial Manager. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) agreed

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when the Senior Commercial Managers also insisted on this right. This was a key element to ensuring that the Unions remain enrolled as the Unions were aware that the Burnsland Managers needed to maintain their alignment to commercial and research managers to ensure they were able to attempt to ‘work’ issues elsewhere.

Zooming in An ANT-zooming in combination is employed here with the key areas being: saying versus doing; human-nonhuman interaction; and spatio-temporality. Saying Versus Doing The Engine Room account is one of multiple translations and these are managed and maintained by a series of conversations and resultant actions. Many of the conversations and communications involving Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) are stage managed. This includes Engine Room meetings being conducted differently when Ryan is or is not present; advice from managers being geared to maintaining the network; and communications from Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) also aimed at maintenance. Bertie sometimes behaved in ways that were contradictory and other times cooperative. For example, Bertie varies between being approachable, unavailable and objectionable to Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) to maintain his enrolment in the wider Engine Room network. Yet at the same time Bertie Closeburn was also behaving consistently with other managers at Burnsland. Rather than one translation at a fixed point in time as we see in many ANT accounts, the Engine Room story involves a dynamic rolling multi-­ translation process where actors are re-convinced that their interests and identity are likely to be met by sticking with the Engine Room network. Bertie Closeburn’s (GUFTUO) own job future (and even where he lives) is bound up with those of the managers and his members. Shop Stewards, other Unions, Politicians and the Media take their lead and advice from Bertie. The Engine Room Managers have to continue to deliver for Bertie to remain enrolled and also to keep Ryan Cairn enrolled. The key feature of Engine Room practice is one of managing and maintaining these translations. Without maintaining then enrolment is lost and with it the target

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entity of redundancies by voluntary means and production continuity at Burnsland. Hansen and Mouritsen (1999, p. 468) suggest that managerial technologies are in part defined by “variance”. This variance in the Engine Room account is around what is actually said in the Redundancy Handling Procedure and the Grievance procedure and how in practice the managers choose to interpret this for their own ends. This is a complex collusion of nonhumans (procedural documentation) and humans that stretches over time and space and is used to create some level of stability. Human-Nonhuman Interaction Inscription Devices Several translations achieved by the Engine Room network were inscribed in documents and made irreversible (at least temporarily). These documents included a self-protecting triangle of Grievance Procedure— Redundancy Handling Procedure—Transfer of Undertaking legislation (TUPE). The Grievance Procedure was used to prevent progress on redundancies, the Redundancy Handling Procedure ensured redundancies were voluntary and TUPE prevented Chemco from easily removing the other two Procedures. In addition, the Engine Room delaying tactics benefited from contracts of employment for managers with a 12-month notice period and a front page of a newspaper which drove the Site Manager closer towards seeking support, counsel and his identity from Engine Room Managers. Spatio-Temporality  ast History in the Present P Some of these inscription devices had been in existence for 10 years (12-­ month notice clauses in contracts), 20  years (Redundancy Handling Procedure) and more years than anyone could remember (Grievance Procedure). In ANT terms they were both durable and mobile across space and time. The original creators of these documents had different intentions when they were created but they proved useful in the present and foreseeable future. This collection of past and present actions and interpretations is shaping future actions around redundancies. Redundancies that are not yet a twinkle in the creator’s eye, but which will

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be shaped by actions from the present and past. The current human actors may well have departed the stage when this happens, but they leave behind durable and mobile inscription devices and collective memories in the next generation of managerial actors. The demonisation of the National Union Officer and of Unions due to American culture was from the more recent past but was a useful device to add emotional and mimetic knotting to the enrolment. For example, the European HR Manager was well aware of his past difficulties with the National Union Officer and advised the Site Manager accordingly to go along with the alternative of continuing to discuss matters locally. In the very recent past the former HCI employees who had transferred to United Chemicals at the Burnsland Site having been made redundant had secured enhanced severance to stave off strike action. This not only put pressure on the Chemco relationship with the local unions but added to the demonisation stories and mimetic knotting.

Zooming Out Netted Networks Using the concept of netted networks is useful in zooming out for us to consider how strategy is shaped in this story. Hansen and Mouritsen’s (1999) own study focused on the idea of competitiveness. They show how four separate business technologies (defining, assembling, producing and shipping) co-exist in the steady state around the drive for competitiveness. However, when the organisation starts to become less competitive a managerial technology (accounting network on order performance) is awoken from its dormancy to condition and change these business technologies. The term ‘technologies’ is used by Hanesn and Mouritsen to describe networks. Business technologies operate largely as black boxes (unproblematised) in continuous time. They are a series of steady state routinised practices in a distinct technology (network). Managerial technologies (networks) tend to be brought forth during a crisis and interweave between existing business technologies to deal with a crisis. Temporarily, these managerial technologies may enrol business technologies in their net. This idea resonates with the normal and crisis states associated with Burnsland. However, developing on from Hansen and Mouritsen’s idea there are three kinds of technologies (networks) evident in the Engine Room account. These are Business technologies, Every day Managerial

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ENGINE ROOM Production

Breakdowns

Research

Maintenance Acceptable Output For Customers

Commercial

New Product Development

AOP

FUNDAMENTAL MANAGERIAL TECHNOLOGY Everyday Managerial Technology Business Technology

Fig. 4.1  Managerial and Business Technologies

Technologies and Fundamental Managerial Technologies. There are three business technologies (or networks)—Production, Commercial and Research in a cooperative and contradictory co-existence all focused on producing acceptable output for customers (see Fig. 4.1 above). The everyday managerial technologies (networks) in play in this situation tend to be associated with breakdowns, schedule maintenance and new product trials and developments. These everyday managerial technologies are relatively normal, common place occurrences but still chaotic and at times of a specific crisis. These everyday managerial technologies tend not to happen at the same time, and as they operate in kairotic time, breakdowns can be translated into a maintenance managerial technology by bringing maintenance forward in the schedule and new product trials can be moved and delayed in the present and then speed up again. Breakdown is unusual, as arguably it is a wholly nonhuman technology

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(network) rather than a managerial one. For example, Polymer Chips choose to stick on a Drum (production machinery). However, this nonhuman technology does behave much like a managerial technology as it shapes continuous business technologies by delaying production, research and commercial practices. Of the three everyday managerial technologies it is breakdown that is more chaotic than planned maintenance and new product development. However, none of the three managerial technologies is fundamental. The Asset Optimisation Process and Engine Room are fundamental managerial technologies (networks) as they are likely to cause irreversible (or hard to reverse) change in production capacity and reduced human-nonhuman resource capabilities. These fundamental managerial technologies are also likely to affect the acceptable outputs for customers and cause changes to the steady state practices within business technologies. As well as introducing the idea of everyday and fundamental managerial technologies, the Engine Room account adds to Hansen and Mouritsen’s work in considering the dual co-existence, contradiction and cooperation of two fundamental managerial technologies AOP (Asset Optimisation Process) and the Engine Room. In Hansen and Mouritsen’s account there is only one managerial technology in play—here there are two fundamental ones. Both these fundamental managerial technologies have major implications for the three business technology goals of producing acceptable output for customers. The changes are also likely to be irreversible due to job losses, production line closures and loss of capabilities—human and nonhuman. In the AOP account in Chap. 3 it is a combination of customers, nonhumans and managers who re-shape the AOP managerial technology. In the Engine Room managerial technology, it is a network of humans and nonhumans at Burnsland and beyond the site boundary that delay and reshape the redundancy process. The AOP managerial technology originally starts out as a top-down process but ends up as something completely different. In other words, it is a largely cognitive knotting which aims to achieve stabilisation. With little emotional and mimetic knotting (beyond threats) AOP is unable to maintain separation between organisations and their practices and causes obstacles to cooperation (Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006). Hence AOP is finally shaped into something completely different. The Engine Room, however, was never intended as a top-down managerial technology—although in some guises it pretends and masquerades as such through managerial and union subterfuge. However, the Engine Room managerial technology has strong

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knotting and temporary stabilisation brought about by a combination of cognitive, emotional and mimetic knotting. Cognitive knotting here is inscribed in documents such as the Redundancy Handling Procedure and the Grievance Procedure which gives stabilisation. Emotional knotting is about loyalty between key actants such as Andy Dalton (HR Manager), Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) and Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO). Emotional knotting is also prevalent in the demons of the past that are conjured up to maintain stabilisation (e.g., National Union Officer, American cultural reaction to Unions, Front Page of the newspaper) Finally, mimetic knotting is woven through storytelling in Engine Room meetings and between managers and unions. The aim of these multiple translations or knottings is of preserving as much of the three business technologies (production, commercial and research) as possible into the longer term. Multi-connectivity and Multi-locations By following the connections or knottings the Engine Room account identifies multi-connectivity of actants. For example, Bertie Closeburn (GUFTUO) is connected to managers and shop stewards at Burnsland, to local politicians, the Press, to the National Union Official and to the Grievance and Redundancy Handling Procedure. This involves multiple and dynamic translations. Given Bertie is only one actant, the complexity of the Engine Room is obviously multiplied many times over if we explore all actants to uncover this multi-connectivity. However, it is not intended here to start drawing complicated network diagrams. Indeed, Latour (2011, p. 800) has said there is little point in trying to draw networks as our “impoverished visual vocabulary” struggles to portray spaces and imposes boundaries. Instead, what drives ANT and action nets is the ability to consider micro and macro in co-existence and using narratology to do so. We need to be mindful when zooming out in SasP that we do not lose the benefits of having zoomed in. The whole is not superior to its parts as “the whole is necessarily less complex than the individual who makes it possible, provided, that is, you…let them deploy the full range of their associates” (Latour 2011, p. 806). If we describe organising solely at a macro or zoomed out level we lose understanding practice and over simplify in the same way as we accuse classical strategists of so doing. Traditionally ANT regarded centres of calculation as a site where inscriptions are combined to make a type of calculation possible, for

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example, a laboratory (Latour 1999). However, translations or knottings do not happen in one centre of calculation but in many centres of calculation, that is, multiple locations (Czarniawska 2004, p.  777). This is because practically everybody calculates, defends those calculations, and calculations are dispersed across multiple locations. Calculations may give different results which are then contested but even where calculations give the same results they may be interpreted differently and employed in power relations struggles (Czarniawska 2004). In the Engine Room account there are centres of calculation in multiple locations, for example, union offices, meeting rooms, telephone lines and even unknown locations from the past. In the previous chapter these centres of calculations and subsequent translations happen, for example, in a hotel, on a production site, on other production sites, in cars between locations, in toilets in the hotel, on various production lines and laboratory environments. Not only are these calculations employed in cognitive or rational ways, but they may also be used at an emotional or memetic level. So, for example, the numbers of employees signed up to leave the organisation are not disputed and the calculation is readily transferred from one location to another and used rationally or cognitively in debates across the AOP and Engine Room terrain. However, there are also emotional calculations in managing the numbers of staff to release to ensure continued production and to allow managers to delay production line closures or to ensure production capacity is still available when intra-site product transfers fail or get delayed. There are even times when local shop stewards are asked not to pursue the calculations in order to allow managers more time to circumvent the espoused strategy. Better not to ask for the calculation as that way it becomes more likely it will have to be made. Mimetic calculations are more complicated as these tend to be woven into stories of demons and are offered as doomsday scenarios that are likely to have a serious cost but it is never actually calculated! So, the National Union Officer is probably going to cause further delays, possibly strike action and perhaps humiliation of the European HR Manager. But whether this is really the case no one knows and the calculation is not made but rather left hanging in the air between actants. In Chap. 3 the AOP network was considered in isolation, largely because of the complexity of overlaying the Engine Room network. However, In the current chapter there are also

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Conclusion There are three concepts to consider in concluding this chapter. First is netting, knotting and action nets; second is the contribution of ANT to SasP and third is consideration of the implications for SasP. Netting, Knotting and Action Nets Hansen and Mouritsen’s (1999) netted networks was a useful vehicle to consider the higher-level strategic map. The chapter adds to these ideas by following the story of two fundamental managerial technologies (networks) (AOP and Engine Room) which are in cooperation and contradiction. Drawing on the idea of netted networks the chapter also introduces the idea of everyday managerial technologies (human and nonhuman) which are perhaps half awake (as they occur more regularly) and fundamental managerial technologies that are mostly dormant and sometimes awoken by senior managers (e.g., AOP) but contested and reshaped by other actants (e.g., AOP). In addition, some fundamental managerial technologies are not awoken by senior managers but by others (e.g., Engine Room). Czarniawska and others (Czarniawska 2004, 2011; Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006; Corvellec and Czarniawska 2014, p. 8) have suggested the idea of action nets to combine elements of new institutional theory and ANT. Whilst this is a very useful addition, the idea appears to be partly fuelled by disillusionment with the contemporary interpretation and application of ANT. For example, Czarniawska (2011, p. 154) rightly argues, “ANT is narratology at the service of understanding how the social is assembled” and much of ANT’s usage in organisation studies loses this and has become a study of actors and their networks. Czarniawska (2011, p.154) goes on to argue that ANT’s purpose was to focus on how macro actors are assembled and “it does not focus on organizing that does not lead to the construction of actors or on the macro actors that disassemble”. However much that may be true of many ANT studies in organisation studies, it is not how ANT is employed in this book. Nor was it, as Czarniawska (2011) points out, the original intention of Latour, Callon and Law in their earlier musings on ANT. The insider at-home ethnography employed here had no a priori assumption of macro actors, whether the account may or may not disassemble them and the focus from the outset of the research process was

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following the practices of redundancy handling. So, using ANT in the way it was originally intended gets us much closer to action net thinking. That is, using narratology; no a priori idea of the end state; and no initial intention of dissembling or re-assembling a macro actant. This means commencing with the practices, then the actants and finally the networks (Corvellec and Czarniawska 2014, p. 8). So ultimately this was simply a study of redundancy practices which led to exploring translations and chasing the flow of power across networks. ANT and Its Contribution to SasP This return to ANT’s roots also helped with studying the strategic practices of Burnsland and Chemco. By adding elements of ANT to Nicolini’s zooming in we were able to explore multiple translations; inscription devices; spatio-temporality; and demonisation. Multiple translations have tended to be glossed over in contemporary ANT accounts. In part, this is due to the sanitisation process of writing for a limited word count and the need for simplification so complex organisation studies can be understood. By ensuring we focus on the knots or connections between actants we can illuminate the complexity and multiplicity of translations and the mechanisms employed to maintain these translations and enrolments. Much of the work of managers in the last two chapters is focused on these power relations practices. This suggests it is a feature of managerial work in specific and chaotic time periods before they can return to their continuous routines and practices—that is, doing the day job. Inscription devices are an important feature in helping to make these complex translations more irreversible (at least temporarily). In the Engine Room account these inscription devices included the self-protecting document triangle of Grievance Procedure—Redundancy Handling Procedure—Transfer of Undertaking legislation (TUPE). Czarniawska (2011, p. 156) drawing upon others (e.g., Law 1994) argues that “organizing cannot take place if no machines, objects and quasi-objects, cybermethods, and so on are added—those that enable humans and nonhumans to perform and to order”. So, to preserve knowledge without inscription devices we can only organise in  local, micro spaces where some of the human actors remain constant. We need inscription devices to capture agreement, memory and practices so that they have longevity (durability and time) and can transfer across multiple sites (mobility and space).

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Spatio-temporality in the Engine Room account clearly demonstrates that organisation studies need to consider organising as ongoing. The past, present and future are intertwined in practices and networks. So, in the Engine Room, inscription devices were developed 10, 20 and more years previously by actants who are no longer present. Yet this shapes present practice and doubtless future practice. The human actants may come and go but the nonhuman inscription devices they leave behind shape the practices of the next generation of managerial actors. Demonisation (Michael 1996) is a useful device to maintain translation and enrolments and is clearly employed in the Engine Room account. The demons include micro actors such as the National Union Officer and macro actors, for example, Unions, Chemco, United Chemicals. This demonisation appears to add to the process of stabilising networks on an emotional and mimetic (story-telling) level of connectedness (knotting). Rather than cognitive knotting, which is arguably based on rational thought processes, demonisation invokes the fear, emotion and irrationality associated with unleashing the demon. Rather than run into the arms of the demon it may appear preferable to enrol with the devil we know who will help us to achieve our target. In zooming out, the addition of the idea of Netted Networks (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999) enabled a reading of the story that had not been previously visualised and highlighted the ideas of multi-connections and multi-locations. Used effectively as a methodology ANT, and for that matter action nets have the benefit of rejecting boundaries. Whether we are following the flow of power (Michael 1996, p. 51), the knottings or connections of organising (Corvellec and Czarniawska 2014, p. 9), strategic practices (Jarzabkowski et al. 2007, p. 8) or combinations of the three, we must remember we are interested in organising not organisations. Organising is “rarely contained within [an organisation’s] borders” (Czarniawska 2011, p. 156). In the same way as some studies focus purely on macro- or micro-level analysis, by imposing such artificial frames around organisations we limit our studies. Implications for SasP The idea of employing netted networks in line with Nicolini’s zooming out has much to offer SasP. Bundles of practices or networks attempting to stabilise and maintain that stability overlaid with Hansen and Mouritsen’s idea of competing technologies (networks) allows us to uncover how

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networks net each other by destabilising network routines and possibly shaping practices themselves. We therefore need to consider if business technologies (routine bundles of practices in a network), which exist in continuous chronological time, can be temporarily destabilised or netted by kairotic managerial technologies and then re-stabilised into chronological routines again once the kairotic discontinuity becomes dormant again. This involves asking how do practices cooperate, contradict and co-exist with each other? This chapter has gone some way towards providing examples which in qualitative research can only be developed by further organisation studies in a variety of settings and contexts. In the next chapter a safety story is introduced with zooming into the micro and zooming out to the macro levels of safety strategy. Whilst the safety story can be viewed as a standalone series of episodes the events recounted happened in the same time and space as AOP and Engine Room Practices. The events in Chaps. 3 and 4 undoubtedly informed and shaped events in the safety account.

References Callon, M. (1980). Struggles and negotiations to define what is problematic and what is not; the socio-logic of translation. In K. D. Knorr & A. Cicourel (Eds.), The social process of scientific investigation. Sociology of the sciences yearbook, vol. 4 (pp. 197–219). Dordrecht: Springer. Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of Saint Brieuc bay. In J.  Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief (pp. 196–233). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Corvellec, H., & Czarniawska, B. (2014). Action nets for waste prevention. In K. Ekström (Ed.), Waste management and sustainable consumption: Reflections on consumer waste (Chapter 5, pp. 88–101). Oxford: Routledge. Czarniawska, B. (2004). On time, space and action nets. Organization, 11(6), 777–795. Czarniawska, B. (2011). Going back to go forward: On studying organizing in action nets. In T. Hernes & S. Maitlis (Eds.), Process, sensemaking, and organizing (Chapter 8, pp. 140–160). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hansen, A., & Mouritsen, J. (1999, August). Managerial technology and netted networks. ‘Competitiveness’ in action: The work of translating performance in a high-tech firm. Organization, 6(3), 451–471. Jarzabkowski, P., Balogun, J., & Seidl, D. (2007). Strategizing: The challenges of a practice perspective. Human Relations, 60(1), 5–27.

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Latour, B. (1988). The pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2011). Networks, societies, spheres: Reflections of an actor-network theorist. International Journal of Communication, 5, 796–810. Law, J. (1994). Organizing modernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Lindberg, K. (2002). Kopplandets kraft. Omorganisering mellan organisationer. Göteborg: BAS. https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/15693. Lindberg, K., & Czarniawska, B. (2006). Knotting the action net, or organizing between organizations. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 22, 292–306. Michael, M. (1996). Constructing identities. London: Sage. Nicolini, D. (2012). Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seidl, D., & Whittington, R. (2014). Enlarging the strategy-as-practice research agenda: Towards taller and flatter ontologies. Organization Studies, 35(10), 1407–1421. Vickers, D. (2019). At-home ethnography: A method for practitioners. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 14(1), 10–26.

CHAPTER 5

Safety Practices: Espoused Theory and Practice

Abstract  The aim of this chapter will be to consider how safety practices are learned and carried out in situ. The employees at the production site having been newly acquired are required to learn new ways of practising safety. The chapter explores the espoused safety narrative and culture of the organisation and the reality of the everyday practice of safety and how managers, in particular, re-learn to practise safety and reconcile the difference between espoused safety and practice. The chapter will draw upon Communities of Practice theory, especially the ideas of noncanonical communities (Brown and Duguid, Organizational learning and communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation. In E.  L. Lesser, M.  A. Fontaine, & J.  A. Slusher (Eds.), Knowledge and communities (pp. 99–121). Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 1991) and newcomers as legitimate peripheral participants (Lave and Wenger, Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and how this might inform SasP. Keywords  Safety practices • Communities of practice • Actor-Network Theory • Ethnography

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Introduction This chapter draws upon some of the SasP and ANT themes from Chaps. 3 and 4 but in ethnographic terms is a shift away from the asset optimisation and redundancies. Here we consider how safety practices are learned and conducted. Employees at Burnsland were newly acquired by Chemco and as such were required to learn new ways of practising safety. Chemco was renowned across the industry sector as being a leader on safety and was able to leverage an income of around $100 million from safety consultancy. This reputation was fiercely protected by keeping safety at the forefront of the thinking and practice of all Chemco employees and contractors. The chapter explores the espoused strategic safety account of the organisation and the reality of the everyday practice of safety. The account demonstrates how managers, who were already old-timers at Burnsland, re-learn to practise safety and reconcile the difference between espoused safety strategy and everyday practice. As this account is all about situated learning it draws upon Communities of Practice (COP) theory, especially the ideas of noncanonical communities (Brown and Duguid 1991), newcomers as legitimate peripheral participants (Lave and Wenger 1991) and the situated curriculum (Gherardi et al. 1998). However, as COP accounts are criticised for their lack of analysis of power relations, an ANT-COP hybrid approach is employed. The key connection between COP and ANT has been identified as “concrete practices” (Fox 2000). By employing ANT’s rejection of the macro-micro dualism, the chapter is also able to inform SasP thinking. Not only can we explore the localised everyday learning practices of a COP we are also able to follow the flows to macro safety strategy. In addition, ANT’s approach to spatio-temporality enables us to connect a century-old localised story to present-day performance of strategy.

Communities of Practice Communities of Practice (COP) theory gained popularity with Lave and Wenger’s (1991) seminal text and has its roots in organisational learning (Easterby-Smith 1997), and particularly, social construction and situated learning. Situated learning focuses on learning by communities of people from their social practices rather than through cognitive and individual processes. Lave and Wenger (1991) suggested newcomers (or

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apprentices) learn from old-timers (or masters) by contributing to the community’s work “by doing the simple, routine aspects of the practice” (Fox 2000, p.  855) before they are allowed onto tasks carried out by ‘journeymen’ and then eventually they evolve into old-timers themselves. This process of situated learning was called “legitimate peripheral participation” by Lave and Wenger (1991) whereby newcomers are allowed legitimate access to the periphery of a community. COPs are tightly knit groups that have been practising long enough to develop into cohesive communities, with a sense of belonging, commitment and shared identity (Lave and Wenger 1991; Brown and Duguid 1991; Orr 1996). Whilst COP theory is predominantly about socialisation of newcomers into a community there are some examples of how this situated learning has been sustained across generations. These include longitudinal, sustainable communities of practice such as flute makers (Cook and Yanow 1996) and violin makers (Fuhrer 1996). Cook and Yanow (1996, p. 438) describe situated learning as “the capacity of an organisation to learn how to do what it does, where what it learns is possessed not by individual members of the organisation but by the aggregate itself. That is, when a group acquires the know-how associated with its ability to carry out its collective activities, that constitutes organisational learning”. This community learning transcends the generations of flute makers to enable the quality of flutes to be produced over several decades and lifetimes. This longevity is noted by Brown and Duguid (1991, p. 117), in their discussion of noncanonical practices, who argue that the organisation should not overlook or disrupt noncanonical communities-of-practice as this may threaten the organisation’s own survival. This is because much of an organisation’s working and learning practices are noncanonical and provide “a major source of potential innovation that inevitably arises in the course of that working and learning”. COP theory has evolved considerably since 1991 and nowadays Wenger’s work is focused on creating learning systems across organisations (Wenger and Snyder 2000) and cultivating and leveraging communities of practice (Wenger et  al. 2002). The idea of COPs has become somewhat mainstream and the term is used (or abused) in many organisations. As such COP is now seen much more as a management toolkit to improve performance by harnessing informal communities of practice (Contu and Willmott 2000). Indeed, Wenger et  al. (2011) have even developed monitoring and evaluation tools for organisations to assess the value of COPs in their organisation.

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Some authors (Cox 2005; Roberts 2006) have observed changes between COP’s early conceptual works (Brown and Duguid 1991; Lave and Wenger 1991) and the later managerial sponsored COPs (Wenger et al. 2002) with some resentment that the notion of COP theory is now used as a managerial tool for improving organisation’s competitiveness. Thompson (2005), for example, has suggested managerial rigidity and normalisation processes of control can undermine a COP’s autonomy and creativity. This mainstreaming of COP may cause organisations to lose the ‘challenges’ and ‘changes’ generated by noncanonical COPs yet “large organisations too often regard these noncanonical practices (if they see them at all) as counterproductive” (Brown and Duguid 1991, p. 114). In this chapter, as well as drawing on legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) (Lave and Wenger 1991) from COP theory we return to the idea of noncanonical COPs (Brown and Duguid 1991). Rather than looking at how COPs may be formalised, leveraged or created by organisations and consultants we are concerned with the noncanonical practices that organisations may be unaware of, turn a blind eye to and/or secretly encourage (e.g., Peters and Waterman 1982). Brown and Duguid (1991) describe these noncanonical communities as less formalised, perhaps irreverent community, possibly existing within formal (canonical) settings. They argue that these noncanonical communities should not be eradicated, harnessed or enrolled lest the organisation loses the creativity. This is echoed by Fuhrer (1996) who says newcomers are more likely to be concerned with social goals rather than task goals. As such newcomers focus on concealment and dissimulation, which are a kind of non-learning activity. This prior interest at concealment is presumably related to a feeling of vulnerability generated from a lack of competence and, added to that, a desire to be part of the crowd. When newcomers become task focused then they become “engaged in task related information-­seeking activities, such as imitating others or asking questions of knowledgeable setting participants” (Fuhrer 1996, p. 200). The two ideas from COP theory—LPP and noncanonical COPs—lead us onto discussing power relations.

ANT, Power Relations and COP Easterby-Smith et al (1988, p. 264) argue that Lave and Wenger do not pay enough attention to power relations. Fox (2000, p. 854) goes on to argue that COP theory “has specific weaknesses in the way it addresses

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power in its analysis of the learning process”. However, COPs are riddled with issues of power relations. For example, Lave and Wenger (1991, p.  115) are largely writing about the double bind that newcomers find themselves in. Newcomers need to learn the way of doing and being, on the one hand to enable them to participate legitimately, but on the other hand, they have a stake in the development and change in the community because they are its future and they need to establish the future identity of the community. This conflict situation is largely left unexplored by Lave and Wenger yet “novices are subject to both the power and knowledge of their more experienced colleagues” (Fox 2000, p.  859). This idea is explored by others in longitudinal scenarios (e.g., Cook and Yanow 1996; Fuhrer 1996). Similarly, unexplored is Lave and Wenger’s (1991, p. 36) contention that “the legitimate periphery is a powerful and powerless place, powerful as a place of moving towards more intense participation. Powerless as a place where you are kept from participating more fully, often for legitimate reasons of broader society”. Wenger (2000), again alludes to power relations when arguing communities are “cradles” but can also be “cages” and, though they are born of learning, they can learn to prevent learning. This is building on Wenger’s (1998, 77) earlier suggestion that “a community of practice is neither a haven of togetherness nor an island of intimacy insulated from political and social relations. Disagreement, challenges and competition can all be forms of participation”. However, Wenger does little more to expand upon these themes and it is this stage in his writing where he starts to consider leveraging and harnessing COPs. Wenger (2010, p.  188) attempted to address these power relations criticisms directly by claiming COP “theory takes learning as its foundation and its focus, not power. It is a learning theory, not a political theory. Issues of power are part of that, however: they are inherent in a social perspective on learning. It is useful to review some of the concepts from the perspective of how they incorporate issues of power”. Again, this fails to address the power relations issues raised by Lave and Wenger (1991) themselves and how power relations have a fundamental effect on, and direct relationship with, learning. Newcomers are caught in the dilemma that “on the one hand, they need to engage in the existing practice, which has developed over time: to understand it, to participate in it, and to become full members of community in which it exists. On the other hand, they have a stake in its development as they begin to establish their own identity in future” (Lave and Wenger 1991, p. 5). The same dilemma gives

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rise to “cradles” and “cages” (Wenger 2000) and the whole idea of controlling or legitimating access to the periphery and the road to mastery. A stark example of this appears in Lave and Wenger (1991) and is a study of butchers in US supermarkets (Marshall 1972). Newcomer butchers are taught their trade at college and much of what they learn they do not need, such as wholesale butchery when they will only work in retail. The newcomers do not get to observe the journeymen or master butchers due to the layout of the premises. In addition, the newcomers only tend to pack the meat as cutting is too expensive a task for them to be entrusted with. Journeymen for similar reasons only get to perform the same cut repeatedly and the only way to progress to other cuts and mastery is through ‘dead man’s shoes’ progression. Learning was seen to be hampered by these processes because there is no access to the periphery from which to observe what others do and the classroom teaching failed to teach the appropriate skills or the masters’ ‘tricks of the trade’. By employing an ANT and Foucauldian perspective to COP learning, Fox (2000, p. 860) suggests that learning is “the outcome of a process of local struggle and that struggle is many-faceted involving the self-acting upon itself, as well as upon others and upon the material world” (Fox 2000, p. 860). Whilst COP theory tacitly accepts unequal triadic power relations between Masters, Journeymen and Apprentices it also largely “leaves these unanalysed” (Fox 2000, p. 864). However, ANT offers two ways of embellishing COP studies. First, ANT can explore the enrolment of newcomers (apprentices) by old-timers (masters). Second, ANT also enables us to explore how a COP may be an obligatory point of passage for others. Enrolment in ANT is about how actors become enlisted and agree to invest in or follow a programme, and obligatory points of passage are functionally indispensable. Obligatory points of passage cause actors to converge onto a specific cause or purpose and act as a conduit. As such they are the fundamental purpose of the programme. For example, in Callon’s (1986) classic study of scallop fishing a variety of actors agree to enrol as they see their own interests being best served by three scientists who posit that anchorage of scallops as the key to the future of scallop fishing. It is the idea of anchoring scallops, that is, the obligatory point of passage that (at least temporarily) stabilises the network and ensures it is not bypassed. Some authors such as Thomas (2017, pp.  466–467) have suggested that COPs have in recent times “been taken over by management in the form of sponsorship, goal congruency, etc.” and as such have lost their

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“inherent autonomy at the behest of more [organizational] control”. But this is a power relations issue or a “quest to establish a formal or canonical learning organization…as a utopian ideal is simply another bid, or attempt at enrolment” (Fox 2000, p. 865). Although Wenger’s (2000) and Wenger et al. (2002) later work is commercialising and managerialising COP theory, he himself previously identified the idea of “joint enterprise” (Wenger 1998). Joint enterprise in a community means COPs cannot come to life when mandated by an external party or prescribed by an individual. This is especially true for noncanonical COPs. Though such COPs are “rare” (Cox 2005) when a blind eye is turned to them or they are encouraged this can sometimes be an indication of managerial maturity. If COPs really are about learning and not power, as Wenger (2010) suggests, then why do managers need to control, leverage or evaluate them. Where such COPs are underground or invisible to management this may also indicate a need for spaces for plurality in a highly unitary organisation. Organisations are relatively poor at capturing knowledge of their employees. We may each have a training record but what do we know and how did we come to know it. Think about how you learned to use the photocopier, whether or not to attend ‘compulsory’ monthly management meetings, whether to report a minor accident, how to be a master of your job or profession. None of this is captured in your training record or known by the formal canonical organisation. This has resonance with the situated curriculum proposed by Gherardi et  al. (1998) which appears to unfold in an unplanned way in front of the newcomer but is slowly released as the skill and knowledge of the newcomer becomes more developed. In some cases, the old-timers decide not to release the learning to newcomers or journeymen. As Gherardi et al. (1998, p. 281) note people become so used to the situated curriculum in their community that it “renders itself invisible”, or at least is hard to describe as “the situated curriculum is embedded in general habits [practices] of traditions of the community and it is sustained and tacitly transmitted from one generation to the next”. Through this situated learning process managers can learn from stories and practices picked up from others and sharing of information across boundaries, sometimes learning what is not acceptable to the canonical view or is learned subversively (through practice or praxis). To maximise learning and for newcomers to eventually challenge and change the way things are done this process probably benefits from being a noncanonical process. There are still few organisational ethnographic studies to test COP theory (Bechky 2006) and similarly Fox (2000) suggests COP theory research

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has been limited in telling us about how members of a COP change concrete practices and/or innovate. At best we have Brown and Duguid’s (1991) idea of noncanonical COPs as sources of innovation but little by way of exploring how COP members learn or change concrete practices.

SasP—Concrete Practices Fox (2000, p. 854) argues COP studies tend to focus on localised small group arrangements; ANT bridges the micro-macro dualism and can extend to large organisations and Foucault’s work suggests regimes of discourse spanning decades and centuries. But what binds the three respective levels together is the “pivotal interest in concrete practices”. “Analytically, however, the different perspectives ask different questions about concrete practices” (Fox 2000, p. 858). For example, in COP Lave and Wenger (1991) argue that the learning process is tied to activities and practices. COP research appears to focus on local concrete practices and asks what and who questions. So, what is done, who does it and who decides who does it. At this point, however, COP studies tend to gloss over the how. How do practices become contested? How does change in practices occur? How do COPs deal with conflict between old-timers? How do COPs grow and maintain themselves? How do practices become transcribed into inscription devices? How do COPS become obligatory points of passage? How do COPs act as one? In ANT the focus is not on learning as it is in COP, but ANT’s interests lie in determining “how the social is assembled” (Czarniawska 2011, p.  154). ANT’s original purpose, as determined by the likes of Latour, Callon and Law, was on how macro actors came to be and perhaps how they became disassembled (Czarniawska 2011, p. 154). As such ANT not only looks at the localised practices in a COP but also at how these practices through network configurations and assemblage become macro actors with one voice. Nicolini (2012) has recognised ANT’s usefulness to SasP (see Chaps. 3 and 4) in following practices across the micro and macro terrain. But there are also those SasP theorists who suggest that COP also has uses. For example, Whittington (2006, p. 626) suggested that COP may be useful in studying strategic praxis and how it makes practitioners. “Praxis refers to actual activity, what people do in practice” (Whittington 2006, p.  619). This has resonance with Wenger’s (1998, p. 76) view that practice exists in a community because people engage in actions within that community. In other words, membership in a

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community is a matter of mutual engagement which “draws on what we do and what we know, as well as on our ability to connect meaningfully to what we don’t do and what we don’t know”. This has resonance with action-nets (Czarniawska 2004; Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006) which draw their inspiration for ANT and Institutional theory. The primary focus of action net thinking is on practices and on following the “knotting” or connections between actors rather than on the actors themselves (Lindberg and Czarniawska 2006; Czarniawska 2011; Corvellec and Czarniawska 2014, p. 8). So, in SasP this is about focusing on praxis and how it shapes practitioners—which in itself returns us full circle to learning in and from practice. Therefore, in studying SasP with a COP approach of newcomers (apprentices) and LPP “implies the need to track carefully the course of would-be strategy practitioners over time, following their praxis closely to observe how they master necessary strategy practices, relate to their peers and finally become accepted and influential members of their communities” (Whittington 2006, p. 627). Praxis involves following all the activities involved in the formulation and implementation of strategy and in getting strategy done. This may involve praxis as routine, non-routine, formal and informal (Whittington 2006, p. 619).

Safety Account Chemco enjoyed an enviable reputation across the petrochemicals industry sector for its safety record and has been recognised as a worldwide leader for many decades. The petrochemicals sector as a whole is consistently noted for the hazardous nature of its business. Not only are petrochemicals hazardous to human and all other forms of life, but any damage done by the industry to human life and the wider environment can be extremely hazardous to the image, finances and longevity of business. Such safety failings are also well covered in the media. For example, estimates of the costs of the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984 suggested the loss of 15,000 lives and a financial cost to the company of around $470 million (BBC 2010). The disaster also damaged Union Carbide’s reputation for decades and has been the focus of some well-known academic studies (Weick 1988, 2010). When Union Carbide took over a former ICI plant in Britain, for example, there were initial concerns from politicians and residents to the sale (Guardian 1994). In this context, safety management is not simply another concern amongst the company’s roster of policies and practices, it is a central feature of Chemco’s corporate strategy and

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potentially has a massive bottom line impact. Just as Toyota has made a separate business from providing a quality management consultancy service (lean manufacturing) worldwide on top of its car production and distribution businesses, Chemco provides safety management consultancy services to its industry sector. It is suggested in Chemco company documentation that this safety consultancy business could generate as much as $100 million profit. Therefore, should Chemco’s safety record become tarnished, this consultancy business could also be in jeopardy and more importantly given the sensitivity of national governments to health and safety matters, failures of health and safety might even jeopardise its licence to practise within particular nation states. Accordingly, for Chemco, its safety practices are viewed as strategic and necessary to the maintenance of its leading position as a dominant firm in its industry sector. Chemco and HCI had both been in existence for more than 100 years and like several chemical companies they began by making explosives. Both companies had experienced serious explosions in their early years resulting in the death of employees. This undoubtedly shaped their thinking as the owners of both organisations are thought to have moved their homes and family to within the blast zone. To this day these stories are recounted by employees of both organisations—even though, obviously, no employees from that time are still alive. Owners developed safer methods to reduce explosions and limit the numbers of employees killed by blasts. This was achieved through reducing combustion (e.g., employees not being allowed to carry matches or wearing metal on their foot wear) and through building management (e.g., blast walls and distance between units to reduce shock waves). Safety at Chemco is no simple tick-box managerial matter on the checklist of its practices but is treated as central to its entire business. Chemco head office captures and consolidates safety incidents into a weekly bulletin which is sent to the Safety Manager at every Chemco Business Unit every week. It lists the incidents that have arisen in the preceding week and highlights at least one incident which the Safety Manager is required to report to the weekly management meeting of the business unit for collective discussion. All members of this weekly meeting from the site manager down must consider the case and discuss the lessons to be drawn. This is then cascaded throughout employees at every site. Equally, whenever an incident arises locally, the Safety Manager must report it to Chemco Head Office. When, arising from local discussions of these weekly bulletins, some innovative idea, practice or design emerges, again this must be

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reported back to Head Office which assesses its value in terms of ‘best practice’ and highly regarded innovations are then disseminated internationally across the corporation and may be used to generate income in safety consultancy. This hub and spoke structure and operating system of safety knowledge management does several things: (i) it keeps safety matters central in the minds of local management teams in every single Chemco-owned business unit on a day-to-day basis; (ii) it provides a measure of international peer review and recognition for the contributions made to collective or corporate learning in the safety field, from all management teams and sometimes individuals participating in this hub and spoke system; and (iii) it provides a measure of punitive action in the cases where faults and mistakes arise, because they are publicly reported for all members of the professional community of Safety Managers, to recognise but also debate and discuss with other middle and senior managers. The above reporting system is not a key part of the architecture of the safety management system. This part of the safety management system has a panoptic structure, in which the Chemco Head Office acts as the central watch tower supervising a series of peripheral actors (Foucault 1979; Burrell 1988). In addition to this panoptical approach several HR policies and practices were linked to safety performance and acted as controls on behaviour. For example, appraisal and performance-related pay was directly linked to safety performance and career and succession planning process included senior managers’ perceptions on the safety performance of their more junior colleagues (these practices are discussed in more depth in the next chapter).

Corporate Circulation of Safety Knowledge On day one after the acquisition (Day 1, Year 1), Chemco’s Chief Executive Officer (Hope Mills) and Global Production Director (Glen Wilson) decided to visit Burnsland to launch their strategic communication process. This was instead of visiting the three other locations they had acquired around the world. This positive view was enhanced on day one when the Directors began by talking about safety. Glen Wilson (Production Director) said that all meetings from now on would “begin with safety on the agenda”. He explained that this was “standard practice in Chemco”. He then began with a presentation on Chemco’s safety record and his own review of the newly acquired HCI business units. Glen Wilson (Production Director) said that “all injuries are preventable” and that in terms of

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accidents the “the goal for injuries and illnesses [caused by work] is zero”. He also said that the safety culture and practice extended beyond the workplace—“safety at home as well as at work”. Thus, the canonical or formal corporate safety cultural—how we do things around here—was set. This was reinforced when the Directors explained how safety was “ingrained” in their culture and that they only employed people who worked safely. Glen Wilson (Production Director) said that “safe working is a condition of continuing employment”. This was seen as a thinly veiled inference that employees would be dismissed if they had accidents. This corporate circulation of safety knowledge was reinforced by corporate daily safety messages that were e-mailed to safety managers across the corporation for cascade to other managers and onward communication to employees. These included personal and home safety messages, for example, home fire safety (10 August, Year 2), wearing seat belts (5 October, Year 2), bicycle helmets and responsibilities (11 October, Year 2). This behaviour was also strengthened by other contacts with Chemco employees. These daily e-mails were supplemented by Monday morning meetings. These happened each week without fail and were attended by managers from each area of a site or their immediate deputy. Safety was always number one item on the agenda of these meetings. Then each manager around the meeting room table was expected to talk about safety in their own area. This was followed by business issues and announcements/updates from key functions (e.g., HR, Finance and Purchasing). Managers then went to their own team meetings and were responsible for cascading the messages. The site management team then checked that these messages had been cascaded when they carried out monthly safety inspections and audits. In addition to this corporate messaging, visitors to the site are expected to immediately don protective glasses. This was the case even if they were not entering high hazard petrochemical areas. So, a visitor or employee who was only walking from the car park to the main office block had to do this. This had the effect of making safety visible, important and ensuring it was ingrained in behaviours. Initially, as part of the socialisation process for the newcomer managers, a number of senior and middle managers from Burnsland went on a visit to Kilberry, another Chemco site. This site was recognised as an ‘outstanding example’ (Site Manager, Ryan Cairn) of safety practice with no accidents at the site for ten years. It gave Burnsland managers the opportunity to learn good practice a place of legitimate peripheral participation.

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Socialisation of New Members of the Firm into Its Safety Culture Newcomers to a community, even those with prior experience, need to learn how to find their own feet in the new community. The first real learning challenge presented to managers at Burnsland was a minor safety incident. Minor Safety Incident A Burnsland operator stuck his hand inside a machine to clear a blockage and bruised his left wrist (21 March, Year 1). This was a reportable injury case [and Burnsland’s last for the remainder of the research period]. Due to their limited understanding of Chemco safety culture at this point the newcomer managers at Burnsland decided that the operator had to be disciplined. At a meeting of the supervisor of the operator, an Operations Manager (Max Hoddom) and the HR manager (Andy Dalton) it was decided that a written warning had to be given under the disciplinary procedure. This was seen as a way to send a message to the old-timers such as Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) and Chemco Directors that Burnsland was on board with the safety message. According to the former HCI managers at Burnsland the previous practice in HCI would have been to give the employee the lesser penalty of a verbal warning which was not recorded on the employees’ personnel file. During the adjournment in the disciplinary hearing (28 March, Year 1) the Shop Steward representing the Operator was advised by the HR Manager that despite his disagreement with the issue of a formal warning he would be “wise not to appeal” the decision. The Shop Steward (Bill Annan) was told by Andy Dalton (HR Manager) that an appeal would be heard by Ryan Cairn (Site Manager), “this was not a good idea as it was unclear [to the newcomers] whether the [old-­ timers] Site Manager would sack (dismiss) the operator”. Subsequently, this incident was reported by Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) at the Monday morning meeting and by the Safety Manager (Jim Mabie) to Chemco Head Office and there was no comment or feedback from senior managers. This silence was a signal to newcomer managers that they had found their feet and knew the appropriate level of discipline required.

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Major Safety Incident A major safety incident then occurred at Burnsland and was uncovered by the Site manager. This marked a further development of the learning of newcomers. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) and Andy Dalton (HR Manager) were carrying out a scheduled monthly safety visit to one of the production areas (13 October, Year 1). They came across work being carried out on an electrical pump with electrical wires that had been ‘bagged off’ (put into polythene bags) and twisted together having been detached from the pump machinery for maintenance purposes. The work was not cordoned off with safety barriers. Ryan and Andy traced the wires back to the power supply and fuse box. They found the power was switched off but was not padlocked with a tagged padlock and the fuses were not removed as was required. The managers returned to the pump and found the electrician just having clipped the ends of the wires. The electrician said, “if the power had been switched on then the wires would have fused together”. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) asked the electrician if he knew “if the power was on or off” and “whether he had removed the fuses”. The electrician said he “did not know if the power was on or off”. The Site Manager said that “as the fuses were still in place a power surge would have made the cables live and this could have caused the electrician an electric shock”. Ryan Cairn viewed this as a “very serious incident” and asked Andy Dalton to follow the incident up through the disciplinary procedure. Dalton was unsure what ‘very serious’ equated to in terms of the disciplinary procedure. Other managers were equally unsure whether this equated to dismissal in Chemco. Four managers (Production Manager for the area, Max Hoddom (Operations Manager), Doug Castle (Site Electrical Engineer) and Andy Dalton (HR Manager)) agreed privately that the electrician should be dismissed as they surmised “the Union would appeal the decision as they always did if someone was dismissed”. They decided prior to the disciplinary process that the electrician could then be reinstated on appeal. The electrician was dismissed, then following the anticipated appeal by the union, the decision was downgraded to a final warning and five days’ suspension without pay. In HCI the electrician would have been given a final warning as he had a previous exemplary record over a long career. However, pulling back from dismissal on appeal enabled managers to appear ‘tough’ to the Directors and the Site Manager. This incident demonstrates that the newcomers had found their level, having learned to play the safety game and in turn they were perpetuating the safety practices.

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Gap Between Canonical and Noncanonical Culture of Safety Management Newcomers, and indeed organisations, have learning processes that are often invisible to participants (e.g., hidden curriculum, Gherardi et  al. 1998) or to senior managers (e.g., Orr 1996; Vickers and Fox 2019). These noncanonical community practices (Brown and Duguid 1991) also developed in relation to safety strategy at Burnsland and Castleton. At Burnsland, a Chemco commercial manager (old-timer) from America joked, on a visit to the site, that if you had a car accident whilst on business “it would probably be better to die than face the Chemco enquiry and to have to publicly explain what you had learned” from your mistakes (9 July, Year 1). This signalled to newcomers that old-timers covered up minor safety incursions. At the newly acquired research centre at Castleton (a major petrochemicals site shared by several international petrochemicals companies, including HCI), an employee cut himself above the eye in an accident and was treated by a HCI doctor and given stitches (sutures) and sent home. A Chemco senior manager, based in another of Chemco’s business at Castleton, (oldtimer) suggested to the European Research Manager (Freddie Wilton) (newcomer) that in order to avoid a lost work day case in the research centre the employee could be called in on the next day he was due to work and asked to see the Chemco doctor. The Chemco doctor then ruled that this was an “over treatment case” and in his medical opinion the employee was fit to work—albeit at a desk job. This prevented the need to report this to Chemco Head Office as a lost work day case. This ensured that Castleton’s site safety record of zero lost working day cases was maintained. In the weekly cascade a major incident was reported at the Kilberry site that had been held up as a beacon of safety excellence. Jim Mabie (Safety Manager) telephoned a contact he had made at Kilberry when on the earlier learning visit. Jim was told that an operator had caused a chemical spillage and received burns and a second operator had also received burns trying to recover the mistake. They were found by their supervisor attempting to clear up the spillage—presumably to hide the accident. The two operators were later dismissed by Chemco. This incident suggested to the managers from Burnsland who had visited Kilberry as part of their socialisation that cover-ups and under reporting of incidents was probably the norm in Chemco. It also represents a merging of canonical and noncanonical practice in that subterfuge and under reporting appears to perpetuate the safety culture and the low level of lost work days.

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Official Safety Statistics and the Standardisation of the Network At the point of takeover by Chemco, the Burnsland site had a recordable injury rate of 1.7 injuries per 200,000 working hours. This compared against a Chemco pan site average of 0.25 injuries per 200,000 working hours. As Fig. 5.1 (below) shows this is a marked difference in safety performance and enabled senior managers (old-timers) from Chemco to demonstrate the benefits of their safety culture. Burnsland had only achieved this Chemco rate for one quarter in the previous two years before takeover whereas Chemco had consistently maintained this rate for several years. Within a year of the takeover, however, the accident rate at Burnsland had dropped from 1.7 injuries to 0.2 injuries per 200,000 working hours which was better than the Chemco average (see Table 5.2). On 15 January (Year 2) the Burnsland site had operated for over 300 days without a 4 3 2

Burnsland

1

Chemco

0

Q1 Yr -2

2

Year -4

Year -3

Q3 Yr -2

Q2 Yr -2

Q4 Yr -2

Q3 Yr -1

Q2 Yr -1

Jan Yr 0

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Burnsland

1 0.5 0

Q1 Yr-1

Chemco

Jan Feb yr -1

Mar

Apr

May June July Aug Sept Oct

Rate; 12mth average injuries per 200000 hours

Nov Dec

Jan Feb yr 02 transfer

Fig. 5.1  Recordable injury rate performance for the four years prior to acquisition. (Rate; 12 month average injuries per 200,000 hours)

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‘recordable injury’. At this point the Site Manager (Ryan Cairn) announced “eleven months have passed since integration into the Chemco business. Since our performance over the past year is close to the average for any Chemco site [the directors] have decided to fully integrate our safety results into the corporate data for the business”. Therefore, due to this successful safety performance, after only 11 months, rather than the usual 2 years, Burnsland was included in the Chemco average figures. A month later Bilton was also included in the Chemco corporate safety figures as it too achieved a target of 0.2 injuries per 200,000 working hours. On 25 January (Year 2) it was 2 million working hours since the last “lost work day case”. On 1 February (Year 2) both the Burnsland and Bilton sites were each awarded a Chemco European Safety award. From that point on both sites became key for other Chemco managers to visit to learn about good safety practice. On 22 March (Year 2) the Burnsland site had gone one year without an injury and the Production Director (Glen Wilson) said that Burnsland had achieved “an outstanding accomplishment in a very short period of time and a great deal of learning”. This remarkable turnaround in Burnsland is shown in Fig. 5.2 (below) which is taken from official communications at the time. 2

1.5

Number of injuries per 200K hours

Burnsland

1

0.5

0 Jan yr 1 Mar May Feb Apr Jun

12 month moving average

Jul

Sep Aug

Nov Oct

Jan yr 2 Dec

Fig. 5.2  Burnsland recordable injury rate first year in Chemco. (Number of injuries per 200 K hours)

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The safety performance at both sites was now on a par with that across Chemco and the newcomers had learned how to deliver safety performance in the way that had become standardised practice across the network.

Zooming Out If we adopted a classical strategic process of analysis and looked from the top-down, we would clearly identify the espoused strategy is to drive hard at the safety target of zero accidents and incidents and that the data (Figs.  5.1 and 5.2 above) show considerable success. There are several localised episodes where this strategy is driven. Most notably by Glen Wilson, on day 1 after takeover, suggesting unsafe employees would not be tolerated in Chemco. This espoused strategy is also interwoven in the official canonical community safety story. For example, the poor taste joke that it is better to die in a car accident than face the consequences of dealing with the accident reporting afterwards. In addition, the espoused strategy is ingrained in a spacio-temporal community legend or myth around explosions and how much the owning family cared about its workforce. Whilst the accounts of flute (Cook and Yanow 1996) and violin makers (Fuhrer 1996) clearly demonstrate that this can be a positive experience where a largely hidden situated curriculum (Gherardi et  al. 1998) is maintained, adapted and maintained over generations, it can also be a negative experience or a “cage” (Wenger 1998) which hinders learning or even generates learning unhealthy practices. The fact that this espoused view of safety also allows Chemco to leverage safety consultancy income makes safety a valuable commodity for the organisation to protect and reinforce the cage. This is however, merely a protection of the image (or veneer) of safety so that negative safety stories do not damage the lucrative commercialisation of safety. It is only by zooming in that we can identify noncanonical activities, blind eyes being turned and data massaging all part of the praxis of doing safety strategy.

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Zooming in By exploring the episodes, it allows for actual activities (praxis) to be considered. These activities are those that bring about the deliberate formulation and implementation of safety strategy as well as the work involved in its execution. Whittington (2006) argues that praxis can be routine or non-routine and formal or informal. Here we see formal activities embedded in the routine and mechanistic reporting and communication practices and infrastructure which are designed to reinforce and even shame practitioners towards the espoused safety strategy. However, equally we see informal or noncanonical activities where learning to play the game is hidden (sometimes deliberately) from others. There are also lessons from Chemco old-timers in advising newcomers how to manipulate situations to ensure safety figures are not compromised and that the scales do not fall from the organisation’s eyes on safety matters. For example, at Castleton an old-timer from another Chemco business advises newcomers how to get an injury reclassified. We also see non-formal and noncanonical learning from the incident at Kilberry. By exploring actual activities or praxis we can question the top-down approach to espoused strategy and to expose the reality of safety practice and the underpinning story construction of the safety statistics.

COP and ANT Fox (2000) suggested that it was through concrete practices that COP and ANT connected, and here we note that this also connects ANT and COP to SasP through inscription and through change in practices. In essence the safety accounts are about communities learning Chemco’s safety strategy in both canonical and noncanonical ways. Whilst this series of safety episodes might be viewed simplistically as one of newcomers having access to the legitimate periphery and having increasing levels of learning and participation the story is much more complicated than that. Writing a primary account and being an at-home ethnographer clearly has benefits in uncovering hidden situated learning and noncanonical practices. This is counter to the secondary accounts used by Lave and Wenger (1991) and more akin to the work of others (Orr 1996). In pure COP theory terms, the account here demonstrates what happens when newcomers have an undoubted amount of experience and understand the artefacts and tools at Burnsland much better than the

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old-timers in Chemco. Not only do they have a high level of credibility for newcomers they are able to ask the right questions and analyse the new practices much more quickly than a virgin newcomer. As such they very quickly become old-timers. However, it is access to the noncanonical periphery that speeds up the learning of the realities of safety strategy rather than the espoused strategy that they were already aware of and somewhat in awe of looking from their vantage point in HCI across the industry. This noncanonical access served to teach the newcomers about the actual concrete practices of how that espoused strategy was constructed. There is also a canonical process running here in parallel with the noncanonical practices. Through legitimate peripheral participants managers must learn what to do. Sometimes they must guess based on the rhetoric of the espoused strategy. For example, in the first safety incident they must try to gauge what level of discipline will be acceptable in the Chemco and there is no master to ask. At Castleton the newcomers are given a lesson in how to massage the reporting of an incident after starting to go the wrong way. There are also planned situated curricular activities such as the visit to Kilberry. The combination of canonical learning and a teaching (formal) curriculum reflects the organisational learning espoused by Chemco with orientation visits to teach safety, the history of the organisation and what is important as knowledge to be transferred into newcomers. In addition, this style infers that newcomers are empty vessels and that previous learning and history is invalid and should be unlearned or erased. However, at the opposite end of this spectrum is noncanonical learning combined with a situated learning curriculum. Here we find Managers learning stories, sharing of information across site boundaries and learning that is not acceptable to the canonical view or is learned subversively. An example of the two processes in action is the constant canonical Chemco doctrine of ‘safety is paramount’ versus the stories of cover-ups (e.g., salesmen getting company cars resprayed so as not to report accidents). The reason this point is important is that noncanonical practices allow for maximisation of learning and enable more experienced newcomers to challenge and eventually change praxis. In the case of Chemco, for such a process to be canonical would result in a maximisation of teaching (not necessarily the same thing as learning) and from a limited prescribed curriculum. It is likely this would have a long-term negative impact on organisational development. For example, Cox (2005) noted the demise of Orr’s noncanonical COP once the practices were made visible and

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mainstreamed. Wenger (1998) notes that COP learning is not always positive but teaching from the dominant discourse would appear to be. However, this is also true of adopting a teaching curriculum based on the dominant discourse as Wenger’s later work is practically advocating (Wenger and Snyder 2000; Wenger et al. 2002, 2011). However, the learning in this COP is also riddled with power relations issues. People have livelihoods and careers to protect and maintain. They must learn as legitimate participants, yet they are sometimes a good deal further into the activity than sitting at the periphery. However, what ANT enables is for a series of how questions to be posed. Here we will explore four of these how questions: How do COPs become obligatory points of passage; How do practices become transcribed into inscription devices; How do COPs grow and maintain themselves; and How does change in practices occur? How Do COPs Become Obligatory Points of Passage? If we view safety as an actor-network, then the critical obligatory point of passage would appear to be ‘all accidents and incidents are preventable’. It is through this conduit that Chemco makes itself reversible as a macro safety actor. Who will challenge this view to unravel or reverse the network but at the same time risk their identity, career, livelihood? Through this combination of enrolment and noncanonical practice the safety network is maintained. Without noncanonical situated learning this whole edifice may become reversible and were the organisation to make the invisible visible and mainstream noncanonical practice it may result in issues it is not willing to address. How Do Practices Become Transcribed into Inscription Devices? Practices are clearly inscribed in the weekly cascade which reinforce the strategic safety mantra. Practices are also then perpetuated through new safety stories that circulate canonically as well as noncanonically. However, the practices are also inscribed in the safety data (Figs. 5.1 and 5.2 a case in point). But what do these graphs do as inscription devices? They tell us of safety success and reputation at a macro level and then reinforce the canonical and strategic top-down view that Chemco is the best at what it does. They also generate income for Chemco through safety consultancy

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in other organisations. Yet what we can also see in this account is that the figures (or people who calculate them) do lie and the top-down canonical story is not quite as it might seem. How Do COPs Grow and Maintain Themselves? In the Chemco case canonical COPs grow in the same way as the business, through acquisition. The newcomers are then socialised through planned visits to see safety practices at other sites as legitimate peripheral participants. This is supplemented by weekly cascade communications focused predominantly on safety. With the messages contained within those communications designed to reinforce safety learning. This hammers home the idea that ‘all accidents and incidents are preventable’ and ‘the goal is zero’. Within this socialisation is the story telling. Or more likely the saga, of historical safety incidents such as explosions and the paternal nature of previous business owners. This is coupled with enrolment practices designed to cause the newcomers to “yield” (Michael 2017, p.  57) in ANT terms. The practices include career prospects, performance systems and maintaining one’s identity as a well-paid manager or employee of a large multinational chemical company. Perhaps unwittingly the noncanonical learning processes reinforce the “cage” (Wenger 1998) through war stories, unvarnished reports from incidents (e.g., Kilberry) and learning how to manipulate safety data. Given the newcomers learn these practices from old-timers and journeymen, who come from other sites with many years of Chemco experience, it can only be presumed that these noncanonical practices are what supports such incredibly good safety statistics. So, for whatever personal reasons of enrolment managers and employees largely choose to stay in Chemco and the whole series of COPs is largely irreversible. How Does Change in Practices Occur? To maintain their identity as managers, and to keep their career prospects, the newcomers must accept their enrolment into canonical and noncanonical practices. Initially this enrolment is a relatively easy acceptance as the former HCI managers were in awe of Chemco’s renowned safety performance and history. However, as they started to see the story was false beyond the surface deep veneer, they had to balance real safety practice that they already knew how to deliver and the noncanonical practices of

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cover-ups and manipulation to continue to operate and to maintain their identity as managers with career prospects. These canonical and noncanonical practices and their performance by enrolled practitioners are stabilised by the obligatory point of passage in this account. The obligatory point of passage is achieving and maintaining zero accidents and safety incidents so that the Burnsland site remains in operation. However, like the scallop fishermen losing patience and starting to fish again against the idea of anchoring scallops (Callon 1986) this obligatory point of passage may not be irreversible. Burnsland is but one major accident or incident away from the network unravelling and managers losing their livelihoods and career prospects. Whilst the obligatory point of passage might be reversed the managers have also become adept at massaging incidents and data as well as covering them up. As such the obligatory point of passage probably causes the COP “cage” (Wenger 1998) mentality to perpetuate itself over generations. One might think that a major incident would bring about change. However, since the account was written the Kilberry incident has been expunged from official records and the site has gone on the celebrate 25 years ‘accident and incident free’. Whilst ANT would contend that networks, however stable, can always be reversed where is the momentum for that to happen. Managers who continue with Chemco may take charge and change things but is that likely? The safety network is becoming more of a continuation of a Foucauldian regime or discourse or dynasty that has self-perpetuated over 100 years. This arguably has achieved layer upon layer of translation and near permanent irreversibility. But no regime has ever lasted forever.

Conclusion By zooming out it becomes clear that the espoused safety strategy story is to repeat the mantra of zero accidents and incidents. This in part is to protect the corporate image, continued licence to operate and the safety consultancy income stream. This mantra is underpinned by a historical saga of explosions, paternalism and safety. It is combined with threats and promises related to careers and livelihoods or identity. The everyday reality of safety practice identified by zooming into noncanonical COP practices is a completely different story. But in combination the micro-macro and formal-informal arrangements perpetuate.

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In the safety account relatively, seasoned newcomers quickly realise that to learn the knowledge they need, they must appear to conform and to be allowed to remain on the periphery. This is consistent with Gherardi et al. (1998, p. 285) who argue that the important issues for newcomers in the situated curriculum are such issues as “gaining recognition, knowing the company, its history and who the relevant actors are”. By accepting a peripheral position, the Burnsland Managers gained this knowledge and could determine how to behave, and who was important. A simple reading of this story from a COP angle is to show newcomers learning on the periphery. However, what COP theory has not considered to any great extent is the issue of old-timers being plunged, with their community, into another community in which they become newcomers overnight. Whilst the newcomers have to re-learn safety practice as well as reconcile differences between espoused safety strategy and everyday practice, they already have an identity as managers with substantial safety old-timer learning experience under their belts. By virtue of this at-home ethnographic account, delving into the concrete practices we can see the complexities of COP theory. This also allowed the analysis of noncanonical practice, legitimate peripheral participation and the ideas of the situated curriculum. The ANT-COP combination foregrounded the ideas of “concrete practices” (Fox 2000), asking how questions and spatio-temporality. Through this approach we were able to explore issues such as how COPS come to be and how they maintain themselves through processes such as enrolment-­ identity capture, transcription into inscription devices and longitudinal regime style irreversibility. In this account the situated curriculum is ironically made more visible by the at-home ethnographer attempting to explore it and use ANT to dissect the macro actor into a series of enrolments to understand how it came to be. It feels sadly, like a negative ‘cage’ which if opened would damage noncanonical activities and micro actors just as much as it would damage the macro actor, Chemco. But in the end, this is safety—serious stuff—so let us hope that nobody gets killed or seriously injured in these practices!

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Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lindberg, K., & Czarniawska, B. (2006). Knotting the action net, or organizing between organizations. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 22, 292–306. Marshall, H (1972). ‘Structural Constraints’ on Learning. In B. Geer (Ed.) Learning to work (pp. 39–48). London: Sage Publications. Michael, M. (2017). Actor-network theory: Trials, trails and translations. London: Sage. Nicolini, D. (2012). Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orr, J. (1996). Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. New York: Cornell. Peters, T., & Waterman, R. (1982). In search of excellence. New  York: Harper and Row. Roberts, J. (2006, May). Limits to communities of practice. Journal of Management Studies, 43(3), 623–639. Thomas, N. (2017). Control and autonomy irony in communities of practice from a power-based perspective. Journal of Management Development, 36(4), 466–477. Thompson, M. (2005, March–April). Structural and epistemic parameters in communities of practice. Organization Science, 16(2), 101–202. Vickers, D., & Fox, S. (2019). Powers in a factory. In B. Czarniawska & T. Hernes (Eds.), Actor-network theory and organising. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Weick, K. (1988). Enacted sensemaking in crisis situations. Journal of Management Studies, 25(4), 305–317. Weick, K. (2010, May). Reflections on enacted sensemaking in the Bhopal ­disaster. Journal of Management Studies, 47(3), 537–550. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization, 7(2), 225–246. Wenger, E. (2010). Communities of practice and social learning systems: The career concept. In C. Blackmore (Ed.), Social learning systems and communities of practice (Chapter 11, pp.  179–198). Milton Keynes: Springer & Open University. Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice a guide to managing knowledge. Harvard: Harvard Business School Press. Wenger, E., & Snyder, W. M. (2000, January–February). Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. Harvard Business Review, 78(1), 139–145. Wenger, E., Trayner, B., & de Laat, M. (2011). Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and networks: A conceptual framework. Rapport 18, Ruud de Moor Centrum, Open University of the Netherlands. Whittington, R. (2006). Completing the practice turn in strategy research. Organization Studies, 27(5), 613–634.

CHAPTER 6

Nonhuman Resource Practices: Control, Conformity and Contestation

Abstract  The aim of this chapter will be to consider how human resource procedures, policies, systems and documentation are deployed to control others and achieve conformity to organisational goals. As an insider ethnographic account it is also possible to demonstrate how the interpretation of these policies, practices, systems and documents are contested. This will involve the exploration of counter networks and the idea of hegemonic and ante-narrative (see Vickers, Beyond the hegemonic narrative – A study of managers. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 21, 560–573, 2008) This chapter will draw upon and inform Actor-Network Theory (Latour, The pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1988; Latour, Reassembling the social – An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; Callon, Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of Saint Brieuc Bay. In Law, J. (Ed.) Power, action and belief (pp. 196–233). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986; Law, On the methods of long‐ distance control: Vessels, navigation and the Portuguese route to India. In Law, J. (Ed.) Power, action and belief (pp. 234–263). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984) in relation to HR and critical HR literature (Watson, HRM and critical social science analysis. Journal of Management Studies, 41 (3), 447–467, 2004; Delbridge and Keenoy, Beyond managerialism? International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21 (6), 799–817, 2010; Vickers and Fox, Towards practice-based studies of HRM: An actor © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Vickers, Inside Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61935-0_6

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network and communities of practice informed approach. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21 (6), 899–914, 2010). Keywords  Nonhumans • Ethnography • Human Resources • Critical HRM

Introduction Whilst the Author was also the HR Manager in these accounts, HR was a constant theme throughout the study of Burnsland. The issue of nonhumans in HR only really came to light during the analysis phase and was not immediately evident to the Author or other humans at the time of events. The aim of this chapter is therefore to explore the space between the two strands of human resource management (HRM) literature—scientific-­ techno and critical HRM by ‘a turn’ to HR practice. The chapter will consider how HR procedures, policies and documentation are deployed to control others and used to achieve conformity to organisational goals. By using an at-home ethnographic account it is also possible to demonstrate how the interpretation of these procedures, policies and documents are contested. The account will be analysed through a combined Actor-­ Network Theory (ANT) and Strategy as Practice (SasP) lens. From ANT the ideas of nonhumans (documents, etc.) and power relations are deployed and from SasP the processes of zooming in and zooming out (Nicolini 2012) are taken. Whittington (1996, p. 734) talked of teaching “how strategy is performed” and it is by considering how strategy is practised that inspires this performative study of HRM as Practice.

HRM Literature This is a deliberately partial account of HRM literature as it is traditional to set the scene and position research in relation to existing literature. However, it is partial as the intention is to write a constructively critical account and to disassociate this chapter from typical normative or critical HRM accounts. Equally, the approach used here aims to break out from the usual dichotomies in HRM literature—welfare/administration (Tyson 1987) hard/soft (Storey 1989). These dichotomies are as much a part of Welfare and Personnel as they are of HRM although in some definitions of HRM we might be hard pushed to find the dichotomy such is the dominance of the normative hegemony. However, it is underpinned by the fact that HR,

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Personnel and Welfare officers and managers have all been expected to smooth the relations or oil the wheels between the greater dichotomy of capital and labour. With the adoption of HRM there was a new dichotomy in the literature between Critical HRM and a more “normative” (Legge 1995) and nowadays hegemonic version of HRM.  Critical HRM has described HRM in a dichotic way too—be that rhetoric versus reality (Legge 1995) or wolf in sheep’s clothing (Keenoy 1999). Within this normative or hegemonic literature there is also another dichotomy—Best-Practice (Pfeffer 1998)—Best Fit (Baird and Meshoulam 1988), although there are some later attempts at contextualisation (Wright and Snell 1998; Purcell 1999). Harley and Hardy (2004) suggest that critical HRM scholars react to normative HRM rather than set the agenda. This is because critical HRM “offer[s] no alternative for theory development and constructive reflection” (Steyaert and Janssens 1999, p. 185). In part this is right but we will return to constructive critique later in this chapter. However, normative approaches to HRM dominate the literature and have become hegemonic supported by an “explicit strategy by journals to publish in a way that support[s] the dominant discourse in HRM (i.e. prescriptive, positivist, managerial, functionalist and strategic)” (Keegan and Boselie 2006, p. 1506). Steyaert and Janssens’ (1999) review of HRM literature suggested three strands of thinking. First is the design of HRM practices from a theoretical perspective often driven by employing psychological frameworks. This involves concepts such as performance-related pay based on expectancy (Vroom 1964) and reinforcement theory (Lawler 1971), and competency modelling (Boyatzis 1982). Second is recommending HRM practices from a positivistic practice perspective such as “best practice” bundles (MacDuffie 1995). This involves empirical evidence and linking practices to outputs such as performance (e.g., Purcell et al. 2003). Such research dominates professional HR thinking and therefore HR teaching. With big data, human capital metrics and analytics (CIPD 2017) and human capital evaluation techniques. However, some research from mainstream HR researchers has started to cast doubt on HR’s effectiveness at impacting performance. For example, Guest and Conway (2007), using the UK Workplace Employment Relations Survey data, found no clear association between HRM, HR practices or bundles of practices with performance. They also found a negative association with well-being. Much of this tranche of research uses questionnaires or interviews with single or dual respondents such as senior managers and HR professionals and arguably this fails to get behind how policies are practised in situ.

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Third is critical HRM (e.g., Legge 1995; Storey 1989; Watson 2004). This largely identifies co-existence of contradictions and ambiguities such as teamwork and individualism. The first two strands of literature are what Gowler and Legge (1983) would have termed ‘scientific-techno’ in nature and critical HRM probably suggests an ‘ethical humanist’ perspective. Karen Legge’s (1978) earlier work identified another dichotic—conformity and deviancy as two kinds of personnel management. Conformist Personnel Managers were accepting the organisational unitarist position with strategy as given and their focus on demonstrating and justifying the value of practices. Whereas Deviant Personnel Managers “attempt to change the means/ends relationship by gaining acceptance for a different set of criteria for evaluation of organizational success” (Legge 1978, p. 85). So rather than just efficiency and compliance the deviant personnel manager also focuses on effectiveness. Whilst Legge’s work offered a constructive critique, perhaps rare in critical accounts, she also offered, a middle-­ground approach through her methodology. Namely, to explore the practices of practitioners in situ. This approach has since been adopted by others, although it is by no means a collective body of works (e.g., Watson 1977; Townley 1990a, b, 1993, 1996, 1999; Vickers and Fox 2010). However, this chapter is suggesting that more of this re-turn to practice (Schatzki et  al. 2001), or more importantly, a turn to HR as Practice is what is required. As Karen Legge herself aptly noted (1978, p. ix), Rather than offering generalized prescriptions as do the majority of texts, [she] seeks to show why, in practice, such prescriptions may prove at worst irrelevant and at best of disappointing applicability to the student once [s]he has left the classroom for the real world of practical management. For, it is argued, not only does much of the reputed ‘best practice’ rest on ‘special case’ models and, hence, may be inappropriate to those organizational circumstances that do not directly correspond to them but ‘best practice’ tends to ignore the constraints arising from the political realities of organizational behaviour that circumscribe any manager’s freedom and ability to pursue a given course of action.

Keenoy’s (1999) holographic HRM is useful here too as it is a metaphor that moves us beyond the impasse of critical and normative models and allows them to exist in the same holographic space. Keenoy’s (1999, p. 9) unification of HRM in a hologram “permits us to reconcile the inherent confusions and contradictions associated with the conceptual-­ theoretical identity(ies) and the empirical facticity(ies) of the phenomenon”.

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Thus, allowing these contradictions, ambiguities and contested struggles to exist in the same space and not to ignore them as an inconvenience. The dominant scientific-techno HRM research tends to create normative and idealised outputs and either maintains and supports the dominant group (managerialist, unitarist, positivistic) or purports an attainable utopia and therefore “a lot is left out” (Steyaert and Janssens 1999, p. 194) because it does not fit. Instead “future research into HRM needs to recognize and embrace the micro-political aspects of HR work and seek to illuminate it” (Vickers and Fox 2010, p.  912). In order to move away from HRM research that has increasing irrelevance to the lived work experiences of most of us (Delbridge and Keenoy 2010, p. 813) we need to leave behind “simplistic realist” research and study HR differently to challenge the “HRM project” (Mueller and Carter 2005, p. 370). To do so we need to recognise that “HR practices can be much more complicated, nuanced” (Vickers and Fox 2010, p. 899) and move beyond considering organisations and managers as rational and by allowing room for the irrational and dysfunctional (Schneider 1999, p. 283). This can be achieved by a turn to HR practice. Whittington (2011) noted this turn to HRM practice by Vickers and Fox (2010) but it is still “rather embryonic” (Antonacopoulou 2016, p. 266) with very few examples (see Björkman et al. 2014; Sydow et al. 2020). However, the roots of this approach can be seen in the work of others, particularly Barbara Townley. Barratt (2002, p.  190) drawing on Townley argues that HRM is “a series of techniques and practices that order and regulate subjects, that is unobtrusive and in unnoticed ways quietly ‘order us about’ in the employment relationship”. The individual is “reconstituted” (Townley 1990b, p.  23) through personnel policies and normalisation processes. Steyaert and Janssens (1999, p. 187) suggest such HRM practices are “disciplinary technologies that allow individuals to be classified, measured and ordered in a particular sequence. They are devices that observe and assess employees”. For example, appraisal and competency frameworks work in this way. Appraisals have different meanings and interpretations based on a variety of interests and are designed to impose control (Townley 1993, p. 232) through “a technology of control” (Townley 1990a, p. 42). This practice has been described as both a “confessional” (Townley 1996) and a panopticon of “continuous surveillance” (Townley 1993, p.  232). Similarly, Townley (1999, p. 291) argues “competencies constitute another kind of relationship to the self that has distinguished modern disciplinary power”.

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This is because managers create the “dimensions of what it is to be ‘human’” and then reflect our ‘self’ back to us. As such a study of HR as Practice would appear to be a useful way forward.

Performation Performation and ANT The At-home ethnographic account throughout this book is a performative and an exploration of how practices are performed (praxis). ANT is a way of developing the performative analysis methodology as ANT adds its interpretation of sociomateriality, relationality, hybridity (Hitchin 2014, p. 70) and power relations (Vickers et al. 2018). ANT’s approach to power relations and examining events from “the bottom upwards and outwards” (Fox 2000, p. 858) also provides an alternative analytical lens. In performativity ANT shows “how macropictures are drawn, [and] micro studies problematize the taken for granted” (Czarniawska 1998, p. 49). This also has resonance with Nicolini’s (2012) SasP idea of zooming in and zooming out. Traditionally performance is portrayed as humans performing surrounded by material (nonhuman) props. However, ANT approaches this differently by attempting to encompass everything in a performance, human and nonhuman (Law and Singleton 2000). Callon (2007, p. 330) prefers the term performation to emphasis the human-nonhuman interrelations and see this as a “process whereby sociotechnical arrangements are enacted [performed]”. ANT does not see stories as innocent descriptions, but instead they might allow for the introduction of change through problematisation or stabilising existing performances (Law and Singleton 2000). This allows us to question and move beyond hegemony to explore new strategies, future directions, resistance to existing ones and mobilisation (Vaara and Tienari 2011). However, by zooming out, we can also explore alternatives to nominalist HRM accounts.

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The HR Account In this account the start point for analysis of the at-home ethnography was to focus on nonhumans, namely human resource procedures and policies being practice at Chemco. There are two groupings of these procedures and policies—Employee Relations and Performance Management. The cluster of employee relations procedures and policies includes disciplinary and grievance procedures along with the redundancy handling process. Whereas, the cluster of performance management procedures and policies includes appraisal, competencies (behaviours), performance-related pay and careers. Employee Relations Practices (1) Disciplinary The disciplinary procedure used at Burnsland transferred from HCI to Chemco as part of employee terms and conditions. As such, former HCI managers and employees were well versed in its contents and operation. In the previous chapter two safety incidents involved the use of the disciplinary procedure above the usual informal stage and these were the only two incidences of such use of the procedure during the 18 months of the at-home ethnographic period. These events are briefly recapped here. A. Minor Incident A Burnsland operator stuck his hand inside a machine to clear a blockage and bruised his wrist (21 March, Year 1). The supervisor of the operator, an Operations Manager (Max Hoddom) and the HR manager (Andy Dalton) decided that a written disciplinary warning had to be given under the disciplinary procedure due to their limited understanding at that time of Chemco safety culture. As such the disciplinary procedure and the practice of discipline was used to send a message of apparent compliance to long-standing Chemco senior managers such as the Site Manager, Ryan Cairn. Under HCI’s previous practice of discipline the former HCI managers would most likely have dealt with this event informally. At the disciplinary hearing on 28 March, Year 1 during the adjournment the HR Manager advised the Shop Steward, Bill Annan, representing the Operator

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that despite his disagreement with the issue of a formal warning he would be “wise not to appeal” the decision as any appeal under the disciplinary procedure would be heard by Ryan Cairn (Site Manager), “this was not a good idea as it was unclear whether the Site Manager would sack (dismiss) the Operator”. Effectively, the disciplinary procedure was being used here to reinforce regulation and control both the operator and the union. However, the Shop Steward was complicit in the HR Manager’s attempts at appearing to conform whilst at the same time protecting the employee from further sanction. B. Major incident The major safety incident recounted in the last chapter involved an electrician undertaking work on an electrical pump with electrical wires that had been ‘bagged off’ (put into polythene bags) and twisted together having been detached from the pump machinery for maintenance purposes. The work was not cordoned off with safety barriers. The power had been switched off at the fuse box but was not padlocked with a tagged padlock and the fuses were not removed as was required. The electrician having just clipped the ends of the wires could potentially have been electrocute and/or killed had there been a power surge. The Site Manager, Ryan Cairn, and the HR Manager, Andy Dalton, had caught the electrician in the act and the Site Manager described this as a “very serious incident” and asked Andy Dalton to invoke the disciplinary procedure. In HCI the electrician would have been given a final warning as he had a previous exemplary record over a long career. However, in Chemco Dalton was unsure (as were other managers) what ‘very serious’ equated to in terms of the disciplinary procedure. Four managers (Production Manager for the area, Max Hoddom (Operations Manager), Doug Castle (Site Electrical Engineer) and Andy Dalton (HR Manager)) agreed privately that the electrician should be dismissed as they surmised “the Union would appeal the decision as they always did if someone was dismissed”. They decided prior to the disciplinary process that the electrician could then be reinstated on appeal. The electrician was dismissed under the disciplinary procedure for gross misconduct, then following the anticipated appeal by the union, the decision was downgraded to a final warning and five days’ suspension without pay. However, pulling back from dismissal on appeal enabled managers to appear ‘tough’ to the Directors and the Site Manager. As such the managers appeared to conform again to the new

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organisation’s requirements but also imparted some level of control over the electrician and the union. However, this control was eventually tantamount to the level of discipline that the managers would have used in their previous organisation. (2) Grievance procedures redundancy management policy The grievance procedure used at Burnsland transferred from HCI to Chemco as part of employee terms and conditions. As such it was a long-­ standing procedure dating back to the 1970’s and well understood by all parties to the employment relationship. On joining the Burnsland Site as HR Manager Andy Dalton had inherited five live collective grievances from his predecessor and he quickly set about resolving them or closing them down. However, during the 18 months of the at-home ethnographic period there was only one collective grievance raised by the unions and one individual grievance in response to the disciplinary events in the major incident story above. This was predominantly due to the fact the managers and unions were focused on redundancies and production line closures. In the Chaps. 3 and 4 the grievance procedure and redundancy handling procedure were discussed at length. The grievance procedure was a staged process with a grievance being heard by the lowest level of manager and if there was no resolution, that is, “a failure to agree” the grievance could be progressed through to the next stage. A grievance could be progressed right through to the final stage which would involve the European HR Manager, a Director and a National Union Officer. Managers from a higher level were not involved in the process lower down to maintain some level of impartiality. The redundancy handling process is detailed in Chap. 4 but briefly describing it here, this was a process agreed many years previously in HCI because of a grievance at that time on compulsory redundancies. This grievance was designed to try to avoid compulsory redundancies in future and to achieve employee numbers reductions through voluntary means and resulted in a jointly (management-union) agreed policy (the Redundancy Handling Policy). Bertie Closeburn (Full Time Union Official for the General Union (GUFTUO)) submitted a ‘failure to agree’ in the grievance procedure requesting that the Unions did not accept redundancies unless they could speak with a Director and under no circumstances would they allow compulsory redundancies. This ‘failure to agree’ in the grievance procedure meant that Burnsland Managers had to meet with the Unions and provide

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a Director to discuss the issues. John Mossdale (Global Commercial Director) agreed to meet with the Unions. Mossdale was a former HCI employee and agreed with the actions being taken by Burnsland Managers and Senior Commercial Managers to keep as many production lines open as possible. Commercial Managers were trying to develop the idea of product development possibilities on the smaller lines at Burnsland and they had confirmed that John Mossdale (Global Commercial Director) was privately supportive of their plans. The Unions met formally with Max Hoddom (Operations Manager), Andy Dalton (HR Manager), a junior production manager and John Mossdale to put their demands forward. John Mossdale explained why the closures were planned and said that the timescales were fluid and could not be achieved without cooperation. The Unions requested that Mossdale accept that the processes of voluntary redundancy established under HCI should be applied in Chemco. The Unions also demanded to know on what basis the decision had been made to close production facilities at Burnsland in favour of Norzeburg. Following an adjournment, John Mossdale (Global Commercial Director) and Andy Dalton (HR Manager) met the Unions ‘off the record’ (in a private meeting). Mossdale said that he had taken advice from Dalton (HR Manager) and he would recommend to Hope Mills (Chief Executive) the continuation of the voluntary process. John Mossdale later telephoned Hope Mills and got her agreement to continue the policy. It is unlikely that the Chief Executive (a Chemco employee with no experience of HCI policies) understood what this entailed. John Mossdale also told the Unions that Norzeburg had made promises to the Chemco Board on production output levels, which exceeded the capacity of the Burnsland assets. The Director understood that Norzeburg had made such promises in the past and had failed to deliver but the Board would hold them to account this time. Grievance procedures are designed (as are disciplinary procedures) in a structured way that regulates behaviour, emotion and who has the right to speak and at which point in proceedings. Such procedures also exclude various parties. In this case the Global Production Director (Glen Wilson) and the Site Manager (Ryan Cairn) were not allowed to be present unless the union submitted a further ‘failure to agree’. However, as the unions were in collusion with Burnsland managers they had no intention of doing this. Thus, practising grievance in this way enabled contestation of Chemco’s strategic intention to quickly make compulsory redundancies

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and close production lines. Managers were able to blame the grievance procedure and to use it to shield themselves. Performance Management Practices (1) Appraisals, 360-degree appraisal and competencies (behaviours) The appraisal process followed a conventional pattern of talking about objectives over the past year, objectives for the coming year and then about development needs. It also drew upon the Chemco competency model. The 360-degree appraisal was a questionnaire sent out to the line manager, peers and subordinates and was based on the competency model and three areas of strength and three areas for further development also identified by respondents. The competency model was based on 23 competencies which were arranged in five clusters—Business Focus, Results Orientation, Networking & Teambuilding, People Development and Personal Leadership. In Andy Dalton’s (HR Manager) appraisal he was told by his line manager Ryan Cairn (4 September, Year (1) that he needed to “focus his development on Networking and Team-building”. When Dalton asked for examples Ryan Cairn said that “you need to work more closely with me”. Given Dalton’s own HR professional expertise in competencies he knew that this was a thinly veiled attempt at pulling him into line with the hegemony of the organisation. The competency being referred to had as part of its description “working with others and a common commitment to objectives”. However, in subsequent 360-degree feedback from peers and subordinates, chosen by Dalton, he was rated more highly on all competencies by his peers and subordinates than by Ryan Cairn. This enabled him to push back against Ryan’s judgement with ‘evidence’ from the 360-degree appraisal process. In subsequent discussions with Max Hoddom (Operations Manager), Andy Dalton asked how his appraisal had gone with Ryan Cairn. Hoddom said, “I bet he has marked you down on team-building”. In response Dalton laughed and said in a sarcastic tone, “how did you guess!” This contestation fed through to performance-related pay where Ryan Cairn attempted to assert control and is discussed below. Here it is clear that behaviour which does not fit the pattern required by the dominant grouping, that is, Senior Managers, is highlighted as a competency

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deficiency and the competency model is deployed with relatively neutral but official language to redefine the self and to ‘correct’ deviant (non-­ normalised) behaviour. This fits with the identification of competency models by Townley (1999, p.  291) as modern-day disciplinary power. However, the 360-degree feedback process is perhaps a way to contest such tyranny? (2) Performance-related pay The managers at Burnsland and the other acquired sites had the HCI performance-related pay (PRP) scheme enshrined in their contracts. However, by interacting with Chemco managers from other sites they found out that the PRP scheme Chemco was more lucrative and it was possible at the top of the pay scale to be paid at 130% of the salary band for a job. The HCI PRP system had been collectively agreed with an HCI Management Association (a type of organisational trade union for managers). In order for managers to move to the Chemco PRP scheme they needed to negotiate with HR to change their contracts. With very little information on the scheme a group of managers and two HR professionals (Andy Dalton being one of them) hastily established a management committee to represent members’ interests and after a quick ballot the Chemco terms and conditions were accepted. However, within the PRP scheme there was a claw-back mechanism for ‘excessive salary’. For example, a manager with a (level 1 ‘greatly exceeds expectations’) performance rating would have been able to progress to 130% of the salary band. However, should their performance drop a level to level 2 (‘exceeds expectations’) their salary ceiling would be reduced to 110% of the salary band. So, managers whose salary had exceeded 110% would not be awarded a pay rise until the ‘excessive salary’ clawed back through inflationary erosion. There were eight employees at Burnsland who stood to lose money if their performance ratings dropped as they were at the top of their salary band. Five of these employees were rated as top performers ‘greatly exceeds expectation’ and as their salaries were above 110% of the salary band this had to be clawed back through awarding no pay rise until either the performance rating went up or the salary had dropped back to the new percentage ceiling. Therefore, if these five employees were deemed not to be at the top performance level they would not receive an increase in pay.

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On 15 July, Year 1 Andy Dalton (HR Manager) pointed this out to Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) and said that this was “not common knowledge amongst the managers at Burnsland” and “may well be demotivational for employees who were still relatively speaking high performers”. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) said that there was nothing he could or would do about it. Andy Dalton forcefully pointed out that some of these staff were “critical to the business” and it would not be helpful. Ryan Cairn (HR Manager) said that he did “not know how Andy could go out of his office and support the policy given his attitude”. Dalton explained that he was an HR professional and that there “were times when he did not agree with something but had to sell it to people” and he reminded Ryan that he (Ryan) “ had told him (Dalton) that if he did not agree with anything he was doing that he could raise it openly in private”. Ryan Cairn was then called away to a meeting in his own office. Andy Dalton immediately contacted Max Hoddom and explained what had happened. Two of the people this was going to affect worked for Hoddom. One of the two was critical to the production ramp-up and Dalton did not think it advisable to demotivate him at such a critical time. The two managers agreed to change this manager’s performance rating upwards to ensure he did not lose any money through this process. Regardless of the debates on PRP being positively linked to performance or not, common sense would suggest that taking money off relatively high performing staff is not likely to help the business. On 22 September, Year 1 managers at Burnsland held a meeting to discuss the performance ratings of managerial employees. These ratings were set by the immediate line manager and then discussed by managers who were of a higher grade than the employee being discussed. So, for example, the Operations Managers were discussed by the Site Manager and the facilitator of PRP the HR Manager. The only exception to this process was where the HR Manager’s rating was being discussed. Here the HR Manager asked his subordinate to facilitate the discussion between the Site Manager and the two Operations Managers who were all a grade or higher than the HR Manager. The HR Manager had agreed with his HR subordinate that he would not discuss the matter with her or ask for any feedback. However, Max Hoddom (Operations Manager) unprompted, told Dalton that his line manager Ryan Cairn had given Dalton a rating of 2 and not the top rating. As Dalton was at 110% of his salary band he would thus not receive an increase. However, the two Operations Managers said that they supported a 1 rating as without Dalton they would not have been able to manage redundancies and changes to terms

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and conditions. Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) raised the development issue related to the team-building competency and again the Operations Managers contested this and finally it was agreed that Dalton should be given a rating of 1 and a pay rise. In discussing Max Hoddom’s (Operations Manager) performance rating Ryan Cairn (Site Manager) said that he rated Hoddom at level 2. Andy Dalton queried this as he felt “Hoddom was running the site for a large part of the year before you (Cairn) were appointed”. However, Cairn stood firm. So, Dalton asked Cairn to talk to Robert Eston (Senior Commercial Manager) that Max Hoddom had worked for in those first few months about what he thought the rating should be. After the meeting Andy Dalton telephoned Robert Eston (Senior Commercial Manager) to let him know what had happened. Later that week Ryan Cairn asked Andy Dalton to change Max Hoddom’s rating to a 1 as Robert Eston (Senior Commercial Manager) had convinced him of Max’s contribution to the business. Careers Within HCI all managerial and professional roles were managed as part of a succession planning process and staff were used to moving nationally to other roles as part of this process. However, immediately upon transfer to Chemco it was apparent that these processes were managed within business units for most roles and the chances of career moves to other locations were likely to be limited to occasional international moves. For example, Andy Dalton, HR Manager attended an annual meeting for this process as opposed to a month meeting in HCI. During the 18-month period of this story a Site Manager arrived from America and a Purchasing Manager moved to Mexulburg. There were middle managers and professionals who would have been moved by HCI during this period for development and succession planning purposes, but this stopped overnight. The staff handbook was the only official documentation that discussed the career process. This was limited to three relatively short paragraphs. The focus of careers was described as ‘personal development’ and ‘educational assistance’ (funding external courses) and the focus of career moves was on ‘application for job vacancies’, ‘maximising capabilities in your current role’ and ‘discussing matters with your line manager’. This language largely suggests a vacancy filling process especially when it was compared to the more sophisticated system that had been used in HCI. HCI gave a

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career potential rating to all managerial and professional staff and this was arrived at by the senior manager of an employee’s line manager, that is, one removed from day-to-day activities. Where employees were highly rated for their potential they were invited to meet with other senior managers from other business units to test this and to ensure that their capabilities were widely known about across the whole of the organisation. Vacancies were then filled using a list of those currently available for a ‘career move’. However, in Chemco senior managers attempted to use their limited career process as a control mechanism. For example, Andy Dalton was involved in two impromptu meetings, one with the Site Manager, Ryan Cairn, and the other with the Global HR Director (Peter Wallace). In both these meetings it was inferred that Andy’s ‘excellent career’ prospects within Chemco meant that he would ‘go far’ if he complied with their wishes on compulsory redundancies and production line closures. Similarly, a senior commercial manager told Andy Dalton, the HR Manager, off the record, that a Chemco Director had been heard to say Andy Dalton’s attitude in production line closure discussions had been ‘obstructive’ and ‘unhelpful’ and that he was behaving ‘emotionally’. At the annual career succession planning meeting for European Senior Managers Andy Dalton saw the future potential ratings of the two Burnsland Operations Managers (Max Hoddom and Otto Dornock) reduced which would have the effect of limiting their careers. Both were criticised at the meeting for being ‘too involved in wider business issues’ and needing to ‘concentrate their focus on production’. Following this meeting Andy Dalton (HR Manager) raised the career potential rating with Robert Eston (Senior Commercial Manager) voiced his concerns. Dalton said he had “not told Max Hoddom of the outcome of the discussions but Max had asked how the meeting had gone so he was not stupid and probably realised it hadn’t gone well”. Eston (Senior Commercial Manager) said he would raise the matter with the European Commercial Manager (Craig Black). Later Dalton found out that Craig Black (European Commercial Manager) had agreed to review the potential rating at the next annual meeting and as there was no career move planned for Hoddom this would have no effect on his circumstances.

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ANT: Power Relations and Nonhuman Resources Power Relations In ANT terms, as we also saw in Chaps. 3 and 4, there were attempts by Senior Managers at enrolment of junior managerial colleagues into the hegemony. In ANT, power is not possessed by these Senior Managers, but involves enrolment, a mutual process of “capturing” and “yielding” (Latour 1986, p. 173) to form an “arrangement of assent” (Michael 1996, p. 53). Finally, translation is the means whereby one actor gives roles and voice to others and sets itself up as spokesperson for the newly enrolled network. This fits with the classical normative and unitarist view of HR where an organisation is seen to be all pulling in a single direction towards a common goal. It is underpinned by bundles of ‘best practices’ or a ‘best fit’ of practices. So, we might see appraisals, PRP, disciplinary procedures, career and succession structures all maintaining, rewarding, correcting, disciplining and punishing. However, this is a neatly packaged, normative and idealised attempt to sustain a senior managerial elite or offer an unattainable utopia and what this account highlights is that lots can be ‘left out’. Instead, by embracing the micro-political aspects of HR work this account forms part of the process of illuminating it (Vickers and Fox 2010, p. 912). So, what happens when managers do not yield or appear to yield but they don’t really? How do multiple voices, sometimes dissenting, sometimes with a different strategic outlook seek accommodation within the network of power relations? Nonhuman Resources (1) Employee relations practices In the United Kingdom disciplinary and grievance procedures are effectively a legal requirement given the admissibility of the ACAS Code of Practice on Discipline and Grievance Procedures (2007) in legal proceedings. They are also generally seen as good employment practice because, along with contracts, they regulate the employment relationship, establish the requirements of the contracted parties and provide processes designed to deal with any disputes or breaches. As such a group of

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nonhuman resources provide the infrastructure for regulation of behaviour within and control of the relationship. Ultimately, the essence of discipline is the ultimate sanction on employees which is either dismissal and loss of identity as an employee or conformity to managerial power and reinforcement of management’s interpretation of behaviour and regulation. Given that individual grievances are between 3.6 and 4.6 times less likely to occur than disciplinaries (Wood et al. 2014) it appears that collective use of the grievance procedure is perhaps a more effective form of employment regulation. During the period of this study there was only one individual grievance raised (prompted by a trade union) and that related to the safety incident where the employee was initially dismissed under the disciplinary procedure and then reinstated as part of the grievance procedure. The Burnsland Managers suspected the Unions would encourage this grievance and wanted to re-instate the employee but at the same time send a message to more senior Chemco managers that they were acting tough on safety. Given this set of circumstances the managers were employing the grievance procedure to regulate their own practice and using it as a mechanism to shield themselves from more senior colleagues. This being a form of conformity to procedure but also contestation. Where the grievance procedure was used collectively the unions were able to put off calling a ‘failure to agree’ which enabled them to continue legitimate and open discussions with the Operations Manager (Max Hoddom) and the HR Manager, Andy Dalton but at the same time excluding the Site Manager, Ryan Cairn from those discussions. The Grievance Procedure effectively allowed some communications to happen and precluded others and it allowed some individuals access and excluded others. Effectively, the Grievance Procedure operated as what ANT might call a “boundary spanning object” (Star and Griesemar 1989). As such a boundary spanning object is “both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (Star and Griesemar 1989, p. 393). So as with all HR procedures it is possible to practise them in a multitude of ways. In addition, through practising a collective grievance the Union were able to help middle managers and commercial managers to secure a slower voluntary rather than compulsory redundancy process which in turn delayed production line closures and product transfers. Effectively the Grievance Procedure was used as something to blame for the impasse and

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the concessions granted to the Unions and it allowed managers to contest the redundancy and production line closure strategy of their more senior colleagues. This grievance procedure caused senior managers to conform to the wishes of unions and more junior managers. Doubtless a statistical analysis might suggest negative correlation between the grievance procedure and organisational efficiency but ultimately that depends on whose definition of efficiency is adopted in this power relations contestation. (2) Performance management practices Townley’s (1996) suggestions that appraisal is merely a confessional and along with competency modelling is a way for organisations to control the self and even for the individual to accept a need for self-correction to conform and comply with a ‘developmental’ judgement based on an ‘independent’ measure. In the account presented here the Site Manager is clearly invoking the words of the competency model in shaping his version of events and to affect the performance pay rating of some of his subordinates. This is designed as a control mechanism and with the aim of causing conformity or in ANT terms to re-enrol subordinates. Whilst the effectiveness of performance-related pay as a motivational device is much debated and disputed it would appear to be the last thing on anyone’s mind during these episodes. Here performance management praxis consists of PRP employed alongside appraisal and competency models in a clear attempt at control and conformity by dominant groups such as senior managers. However, there is also contestation of this use (or abuse) of the performance management processes as is clearly seen in how performance management is practised. Managers disagree with the Site Manager’s interpretation of the competency model; they overturn his performance ratings and limit the effects of pay reduction on their more junior colleagues. Managers are also able to draw upon another nonhuman, that is, the 360-degree appraisal process that provides ‘evidence’ which is legitimated as it comes from an official source—namely the feedback from other sources on official paperwork. In essence, there is a refusal to accept the Site Manager’s reinterpretation of the self of the HR Manager and the Operations Manager and an alternative self is proposed. Similarly, whilst much of the performance of career practices is conducted behind closed doors by more senior managers there is still contestation. The career practices are used, in Foucauldian terms to discipline and punish, by senior managers who have been unable to gain conformity from their

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subordinate managers by limiting their career prospects. However, through pressure and contestation from other senior colleagues some of these affects are mitigated.

Zooming in Zooming in this context the engagement of and with artefacts, the tensions around normalising and processes of legitimisation and stabilisation. By zooming in this analysis brings practices into the foreground and makes them visible. By zooming in we have highlighted what Karen Legge (1978) suggested, how out-of-touch generalised prescriptions are in understanding HR as Practice. In the everyday practice of HR in this account there is little, if any, consideration of efficiency, effectiveness or business performance and such prescriptions appear to be irrelevant or at least badly applied. Instead an HR as Practice study reveals the messiness of practice and highlights the political realities of organisational behaviour. It may be easier for most employees to be compliant, controlled and conformist but this should not be taken as agreement or ‘employee engagement’ as it may equally be borne out of necessity to remain in employment. Where contestation does happen, however, it can often be legitimised through nonhuman HR practices. Rather than openly contesting the hegemony, these procedures can be invoked and used as shields. For example, in this account the grievance procedure and the 360-degree appraisal process. Keenoy’s hologram metaphor is useful here as it is possible for multiple meanings, however, quiet or silenced they may be, to exist in the same space. These may be macro or normative meanings or more localised and nuanced ways of practising HR.  Equally, the procedure, like the hologram, can be viewed from many different perspectives. These nonhumans are for some about control and conformity and for others they are about contestation.

Zooming Out By zooming out it is possible to consider how practices are associated and connected to contribute to the wider picture. Normative accounts tend to focus top-down and operate solely at the zoomed out or macro level. Critical HRM accounts generally focus on the problems with these normative accounts. In the account presented here zooming in allowed us to

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recognise the way HR is practised in situ. Rather than seeking correlations between the presence of practices and performance or pointing out why this method fails to deal with ambiguities this zooming in demonstrates what happens in a specific workplace. By zooming into the micro level, the implications for challenging the normative hegemony are abundantly clear. In zooming out it is also clear that Senior Managers do not employ HR practices with efficiencies and performance as their primary motive and nor do they think in terms of bundles or portfolios of practices. Instead the practice of HR is about managers leveraging their own agenda and seeking control and conformity. As best managers employ HR practices to “muddle through” (Lindblom 1959) or as a “post-hoc rationalisation” (March and Olsen 1976) for something they “intended all along”. At worst managers may nod to a HR practice-performance rationale or bundles is an attempt to privilege their deployment of these HR practices. However, an HR as practice approach clearly demonstrates that HR, like strategy, is a stream of actions and decisions rather than a totalising extant logic engulfing the whole firm (Mintzberg 1987). Nonhuman boundary spanning documents (HR policies) have their uses in stabilising a network but they are also open to local interpretation and contestation and in turn this can generate new possibilities and power relations configurations. Through performation of practice—the doing or praxis—we can see how HR practices are malleable or ‘plastic’ in their application and interpretation by practitioners. Rather than seeing HR practices as documents or things applied to humans, they are part of a contested socio-technical arrangements of power relations. As such a top-­ down approach fails to grasp the significance of how a practice is deployed in situ in a local context. Whilst a normative approach may be able to prove a correlation between having a certain practice with performance it cannot fathom how the practice is actually carried out. Therefore, practices at the macro level and practising them at a micro level are equally important in determining their effectiveness. However, HR in Practice studies can also highlight the space between practice and performance. As Keenoy’s holographic metaphor suggests contradictions exist in the same space and may also be contradictory.

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Conclusion The chapter set out to explore the space between the two strands of human resource management (HRM) literature—scientific-techno and critical HRM through a turn to HR as practice. This was achieved by recourse to ANT (nonhumans and power relations and SasP (zooming in and out). Keegan and Boselie (2006, p. 1509) suggest that limiting critical HRM accounts limits how HR might be shaped and how it might be taught to HR practitioners and line managers. They argue that we need to highlight the “tensions, conflict, suppression, power, politics and the importance of language in shaping our understanding of these processes”. As a constructive criticism this chapter is not aimed at dismissing normative accounts, as arguably they do provide a useful framework and context from which to explain HR and what it is seeking to achieve. However, to teach HR purely from this perspective is functional and prescriptive. Whilst Critical HRM points out the inherent contradictions and ambiguities it lacks substance for the everyday HR practitioner and offers little in the way of an alternative perspective in their pragmatic world. However, a turn to studies of HR as practice offers much more in understanding a complex and nuanced organisational world. This account is about how HR is done and how practices and procedures are performed. Managers at all levels of the hierarchy are rarely if ever thinking about HR’s relationship with the bottom line when they are in situ. For senior managers or academics to do so in the cold light of day is merely to attempt to demonstrate that a particular practice or a set of practices is good in supporting their ontological outlook. As Karen Legge (1978, p. ix) constructively pointed out we should not ignore the “political realities of organizational behaviour”. To advance this idea of HR as Practice as a legitimate we need further such studies to enhance teaching and the understanding of the practice of HR.

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CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

Abstract  The aim of this chapter is obviously to draw together the key themes of the preceding chapters. The key themes are: • Theoretical contributions to SasP, Actor-Network Theory, Communities of Practice theory and ethnography. • Practical contributions to understanding everyday managerial and organisational practices and how nonhuman actors are involved in those practices. • Power relations issues are rife within the account and these will be explored in relation to the wider context of managerialist literature. • The consequences of this research to ongoing research and for researchers will be explored. Keywords  Actor-network theory • Strategy-as-practice • HR • Safety strategy • Reflexivity

Introduction This conclusion draws together the key themes of the preceding chapters and considers the theoretical contributions. The key themes were: ANT; SasP; HR as Practice: COP theory; and AHE. The overarching theme of the book was to make a practical contribution to understanding everyday © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Vickers, Inside Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61935-0_7

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managerial and organisational practices through a series of AHE accounts in a similar vein to Dalton (1959) and Watson (1994).

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) The key tenets of ANT were employed and focus on two key elements— the rejection of dualisms and power relations. Power relations issues were rife across all the accounts and in employing ANT’s focus on the flow of power over a network and the rejection of dualisms it was possible to provide fuller accounts of situations. Rejecting the dualisms of human-­ nonhuman and macro-micro enabled accounts to follow the flow of power over whatever terrain it went. Macro actors (e.g., Chemco, Burnsland) are often presented as a given and their stability is taken for granted. However, such human-nonhuman (socio-material) hybrid arrangements need to be unpacked and investigated. When network arrangements become problematised and contested, there is considerable scope for managerial and organisational studies. Similarly, we need to explore how such macro actors attempt to stabilise themselves and maintain their stability over time and space. This is also where ANT has much to offer to SasP studies. The key tenets of ANT were explored in relation to how actors (human and nonhuman) come to be enrolled into a network and the network is stabilised, and attempts are made to maintain this irreversibility. Some of this irreversibility is achieved through inscription devices (e.g., the self-­ protecting document triangle of Grievance Procedure—Redundancy Handling Procedure—Transfer of Undertaking legislation (TUPE) outlined in Chap. 4). Networks also employ demonisation (Michael 1996) in maintaining translation and enrolments. These demons may be individual actors or even macro actors. Demonisation invokes fear, emotion and irrationality. It is perhaps better to remain enrolled with the network you are in than expect the demon to deliver your interests. Inscription devices enable humans and nonhumans to perform and to become ordered into socio-material arrangements or networks. Without inscription devices it is hard to organise beyond the local, micro spaces where it might be possible to stabilise arrangements. Thus, inscription devices capture agreement, memory and practices so they have longevity (durability and time) and allow the network to transfer stability (irreversibility) across multiple sites (mobility and space). This spatio-temporality

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needs to be considered in studies of managers and organisations as organising is ongoing and never ending. In studies of practices, we find that the past, present and future are woven together over time and space in practices and networks. So, in Chap. 4, for example, inscription devices developed many years ago shaped present practice and doubtless future practice. Theoretical contributions to ANT included a development of Hansen and Mouritsen’s (1999) thinking on netted networks and multiple translation. Netted Networks Hansen and Mouritsen’s (1999) idea of netted networks was employed in Chap. 4 to consider the strategic map and bring together Chaps. 3 and 4. Original thinking on netted networks was introduced through the idea of everyday managerial technologies (human and nonhuman), which occur more regularly than fundamental managerial technologies that are mostly dormant and sometimes awoken by senior managers but contested and reshaped by other actants. In addition, some fundamental managerial technologies are not awoken by senior managers but by others it is important to understand this complexity as it is key to practice studies and is also a feature of managerial work and organisational life. There are specific (everyday managerial technologies) and chaotic (fundamental managerial technologies) time periods that the organisation and its managers go through before they can return to their continuous routines and practices (business technologies). Multiple Translation Multiple translations have tended to be glossed over in contemporary ANT accounts. In part, this is due to the sanitisation process of writing for a limited word count and the need for simplification so complex organisation studies can be understood. By ensuring we focus on connections between actants we can illuminate the complexity and multiplicity of translations and the mechanisms employed to maintain these translations and enrolments. Much of the work of managers in Chaps. 3 and 4 focused on these complex power relations practices.

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Strategy as Practice (SasP) Chapter 3 employed SasP by employing a SasP toolkit (Nicolini 2012) to explore the rationalisation of products and production capacity that was conducted within the organisation. This toolkit was employed in the other chapters. Zooming in brings practices into the foreground and makes them more visible and then zooming out enables us to explore associations and connections between practices and how this relates to the wider picture of strategy. However, where this book differs from Nicolini is by employing ANT in zooming in as well as in zooming out.

ANT’s Contribution to SasP ANT’s flat and holistic ontology has much to offer SasP. There are several contributions this book makes through the deployment of ANT, most notably: the consideration of socio-material relations; in zooming in; and to zooming out. Socio-Material Relations There are a range of human and nonhuman practitioners involved in doing the work of strategy. Some of these actors or practitioners are micro (e.g., individuals, polymer chips) and some are macro (e.g., production lines, whole networks). ANT unpacks some macro actors (e.g., Chemco, Senior Managers) and leaves some others untouched (e.g., Production lines) as well as considering micro actors (e.g., Polymer chips, documents specific managers). This enables the exploration of a destabilised network and to get under the skin of practitioners (human and nonhuman) and practices in the doing of strategy. There are several practices such as meetings, socio-material interactions around procedures and data which are all part of how strategy work is done. Finally, there is praxis to which ANT follows the flow of activity across micro-macro, human-nonhuman, terrain to identify how strategy is accomplished. Zooming In Nicolini (2012) suggests that ANT is useful for zooming out, but the book demonstrates how ANT also has uses in zooming in. ANT’s interest

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in power relations is helpful for zooming in as it can highlight contested relations as well as identifying tools and artefacts at a micro level. ANT helps us to unpack macro actors and it does so by ignoring the micro-­ macro dualism. By adding elements of ANT to Nicolini’s zooming in allowed for the exploration of multiple translations; inscription devices; spatio-temporality; and demonisation. Zooming Out ANT is also useful in zooming out as it enables us to consider how outcomes have been reached and whose interests and identities have been served in destabilising and re-stabilising networks. In zooming out, the addition of the idea of Netted Networks (Hansen and Mouritsen 1999) enabled a reading of the story that had not been previously visualised and highlighted the ideas of multi-connections and multi-locations.

COP Two contributions are made to COP theory by this book through the deployment of ANT. First, ANT highlights the issue of power relations which is neglected or side-lined in many COP studies—with notable exceptions (Brown and Duguid 1991; Orr 1996). Second an ANT—AHE combination allows us to explore the complexities of newcomers with extensive old-timer learning and experience. Power Relations Communities of Practice accounts are often riddled with power relations issues. For a community of practice to sustain itself newcomers have to be admitted and come into contact with old-timers. One only has to consider the tensions in a typical family between younger generations who want to try ‘new’ things that old-timers may have seen before. In Lave and Wenger’s (1991) original work there is considerable scope for exploring power relations. This ranges from the peripheral exclusion of new meat cutters to the gradual development and increasing responsibility to cut cloth amongst a community of tailors. To suggest, as Wenger (2010) does later on, that COP is about learning is to miss the point that power relations and learning are actually very closely intertwined.

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Newcomers with Old-Timer Learning and Experience In the safety account in Chap. 5, relatively seasoned newcomers realise that in order to learn and acquire knowledge they needed to appear to conform so they had access to the periphery. A COP reading of this story from an angle focused entirely on learning, would show newcomers learning on the periphery. However, the safety account involves old-timers being plunged, with their community, into another community in which they immediately become newcomers. They must re-learn safety practice and reconcile differences between their existing identity as managers with substantial safety old-timer learning experience and their new organisation. Employing this ANT-COP combination allowed exploration of how COPs come to be and how they maintained themselves through processes such as enrolment-identity capture, transcription into inscription devices and longitudinal regime style irreversibility. At a corporate level, espoused safety strategy is to repeat the mantra of zero accidents and incidents, underpinned by the historical saga of explosions, paternalism and safety. However, the corporate network also employed threats related to livelihoods and identities. At the micro level of safety practices, the everyday reality of noncanonical COP practices is a completely different story. But in combination the rejection of the micro-­ macro dualism by ANT and the canonical-noncanonical identification from COP adds a level to our understanding of the complexities associated with newcomers with old-timer experience and power relations associated with learning.

HR as Practice Chapter 6 explored the space between scientific-techno and critical HRM through a turn to HR as practice. Like SasP literature this turn to HR practice allows us to consider how HR practices are shaped by those practitioners involved in HR.  Rather than seeking to dismiss normative (scientific-­techno) accounts which provide macro frameworks, this turn to practice aims to get into the how’s of practice in situ. This approach takes us beyond critical HRM accounts that focus purely on the inherent contradictions and ambiguities of nominalist HR studies. The turn to HR as Practice provides an alternative perspective as it offers much more depth of understanding of complex situations. Chapter 6 is about how HR is done and how practices are performed. This account questions the

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assumptions managers think about HR’s relationship with the bottom line and how practices might be connected. To make such linkages after the event is merely proving evidence for an ontological view that seeks to prove a particular practice or a ‘bundle’ of practices is ‘good’ for the bottom line. To advance this argument we need further HR as Practice studies. As well as enhancing our understanding of the practice of HR, this would also develop the linkage between theory and practice in teaching HR practitioners.

AHE An AHE methodology, or insider account, enabled detailed performation and analysis of how practices were constructed and deployed and how they informed and shaped strategy. The AHE methodology employed is detailed thoroughly in the introduction and hopefully provides a useful example of how to conduct such insider research and thoroughly explored some of the issues and benefits of the approach. The complexity of the fine-grained accounts demonstrated the strengths of this method in getting under the skin of organisational and managerial practices. By applying an overlay of ANT and SasP it was possible to connect the localised nature of the accounts (micro) through to the macro picture in ways that are not possible with nominalist methodologies. There are difficulties with insider accounts but using pseudonyms and decentring in a third-person writing style creates some distance between insider-HR Manager and outside-Researcher. By sticking to notes written at the time and documentation from various events as the only source of data also ensures some distance is created. If events happened but are not recorded in the field notes, then they ‘did not happen’ when it came to analysis.

Reflexivity At the outset the reader was asked to suspend judgement on the Author as researcher until the end. Reflexivity is important in AHE as it is through the process and practice of reflexivity the researcher can create distance between insider and outsider. I will now dispense with the third-person writing style. In reflecting I draw upon the 4 P’s (Pack 2011)—product, producer, process and practice.

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Product Product in this case is this book which has allowed me to bring my at-­ home ethnographic account into the public spotlight in its sometimes “messy, irrational, [and] complex” (Samra-Fredericks 2005, p. 833) form. Producer As the producer I have explained my role as HR Manager and identified my own character (Andy Dalton), work experience and credibility in the accounts. I have also addressed my access to key events and how this was overcome on the rare occasions I did not have primary access. However, I did not, and still do not, see AHE as being about me and so I have decentred myself as best as possible from the telling of the account. At the same time, I explained my “acceptable presence in the field” (Lichterman 2017, p. 39) and here I will declare my biases. Personally and professionally this was a very difficult time, but the biggest challenges were not to my professional ability or ethics but to my personal value system. I was threatened and cajoled by senior managers to do what they wanted for their own ends with attempts at trying to guess my interests and show how they could be met so I was enrolled if I complied. However, the enticements of promotion, more money and a career in Chemco were not worth compromising my values for. I have a strong need for people to be treated as fairly as circumstances allow and although I had not lived in Burnsland for long I quickly understood the tight community and what damage Chemco was going to do to it. I have been able to explore why, as Andy Dalton, I did the things I did. Making people redundant, closing production lines based on a senior management lie and hitting a low-paid rural community happened on my watch. But when I drive past Burnsland, I know that the remaining employees are largely there because of the managers like me who were prepared to do what we did. I can still look at myself in the mirror. Afterwards I came to realise my identity had nothing to do with Chemco but with my abilities as an HR professional. For a while after exiting Chemco (which was after exiting the research field) I wondered if my behaviours as an HR professional were ethical? However, I no longer have that feeling as HR Manager as I attempted to overtly challenge the organisations’ unethical behaviour over its process for production line closures and subsequent redundancies. However,

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when the Operations Manager (Otto Dornock) was told he would be transferred, due to openly challenging the organisation, it was apparent that covert challenge was the only available option. I conducted my AHE research overtly and made managers aware of the research. By writing with pseudonym and in the third-person style means that, apart from me, nobody is adversely affected by the publication of these accounts. In addition, by bringing my research to light, managers and scholars may benefit in some ways from my accounts. Process and Practice Process in this sense is the overarching AHE framework or structure I outlined in Chap. 2. The AHE practices exist within this framework but are not constrained by it as they offer an opportunity to explore the messiness and spontaneity of practice. I have tried to achieve this through reflexivity and transparency, honesty and openness (Punch 1986). In Chap. 2, I explored the dilemmas and choices of my AHE practices. As someone who uses AHE and other qualitative methods I am used to the criticisms from pseudo-scientific researchers and processes of evaluation and that defence is largely mounted in the introduction to this book and in the section above. When I recounted these stories to managers who were there in Chemco at the time they are corroborated but that holds little value for me as I know the events happened and I have copious notes and documents to support me. However, it does add weight to the defence of these accounts. However, what is important to me is when I use these stories to teach practitioners. There is something that happens which for me validates and makes the accounts reliable. Practitioners may not agree with my actions as HR Manager or my methods as a Researcher but what they do recognise is that the accounts resonate with their own experiences of organising and managing. They can relate to the nitty gritty of practice studies in ways they cannot with high-level models that do not seem to have any applicability or do not fit what they call the ‘real world’ of work. Many practitioners have given me their own examples of such behaviours in their own organisational settings, thus demonstrating the transferability (if not generalisability) of AHE accounts. I see the accounts that emerge from my field notes as something that made it worthwhile as this was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity and an “undoubtedly superior” form of organisational research (Czarniawska 2012, p. 132). After all, this method of saga, storytelling and meaning making predates science.

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References Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities of practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning and innovation. In E. L. Lesser, M. A. Fontaine, & J. A. Slusher (Eds.), Knowledge and communities (pp. 99–121). Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. Czarniawska, B. (2012). Organisation theory meets anthropology: A story of an encounter. Journal of Business Anthropology, 1(1), 118–140. Dalton, M. (1959). Men who manage: Fusion of feeling and theory in administration. New York: Wiley. Hansen, A., & Mouritsen, J. (1999, August). Managerial technology and netted networks. ‘Competitiveness’ in action: The work of translating performance in a high-tech firm. Organization, 6(3), 451–471. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lichterman, P. (2017). Interpretive reflexivity in ethnography. Ethnography, 18(1), 35–45. Michael, M. (1996). Constructing identities. London: Sage. Nicolini, D. (2012). Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orr, J. (1996). Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. New York: Cornell. Pack, S. (2011). Give-and-take: Reconceptualizing the life history as dialogue. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(5), 58–64. Punch, M. (1986). The politics and ethics of fieldwork. Beverly Hills: Sage. Samra-Fredericks, D. (2005, November). Strategic practice, ‘Discourse’ and the everyday interactional constitution of ‘power effects. Organization, 12, 803–841. Watson, T. J. (1994). In search of management. Culture, chaos and control in managerial work. London: International Thomson Business Press. Wenger, E. (2010). Communities of practice and social learning systems: The career concept (chapter 11). In C. Blackmore (Ed.), Social learning systems and communities of practice (pp.  179–198). Milton Keynes: Springer & Open University.

Appendix A

Characters in the accounts Job Title

First Name

Family Name

AOP Project Manager Mexulburg Site Manager European Commercial Manager Site Manager Burnsland Site Electrical Manager GU Full Time Union Officer European HR Manager HR Manager Operations Manager Communications Manager Finance Manager Operations Manager Norzeburg Site Manager Purchasing Manager Burnsland Safety Manager National Union Official Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Global Commercial Director Burnsland Research Manager Journalist Global HR Director Global Production Director European Research Manager Senior Commercial Manager

Stewart Jim Craig Ryan Doug Bertie Patrick Andy Otto David Hazel Max Jan Keith Jim Terry Hope John Michael George Peter Glen Freddie Robert

Ardwell Bissen Black Cairn Castle Closeburn Corsewall Dalton Dornock Eldrick Field Hoddom Hook Irongray Mabie Millbank Mills Mossdale Parton Town Wallace Wilson Wilton Eston

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Vickers, Inside Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61935-0

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Index Terms

1. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in its simplest form is concerned with material-semiotics and maps material (between things) and semiotics (concepts) and assumes that many relations are sociomaterial networks. (a) Nonhumans—ANT adopts the principle of ‘generalized symmetry’ which involves human and nonhuman actors being treated equally and configured in networks. It is the relations between these actors that are important rather than the actors themselves. (b) Problematisation, Interessement and Translation— Problematisation happens when a stable network becomes destabilised and allows other actors to make themselves indispensable to others. Interessement is where this actor then offers a different re-­ stabilisation and identity by interposing itself between the target entity and the other actors. This is achieved through a process of enrolment. Translation is where the actor then gives roles and voices to other actors and establishes itself as spokesperson for the re-stabilised network. (c) Irreversibility—is the state where a network attempts to maintain stabilisation be it through material embodiment, devices, documents, through demonisation of others or through the anticipation and heading off of problems. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. Vickers, Inside Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61935-0

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INDEX TERMS

(d) Performation—is a term used by ANT to emphasise performance as an outcome from nonhuman and human relations. Performation is the process by which sociotechnical arrangements are performed. (e) Business technologies and Managerial Technologies—these terms were developed by Hansen and Mouritsen (1999). Technologies are bundles of practices in a network. Business technologies tend to signify those steady state networks that get the regular work done. Whereas Managerial technologies may lie dormant until a particular crisis or chaos occurs and then these networks are brought to bear and shape or ‘net’ business technologies. A simple example of a Business technology (network) might be production and getting the product made and a Managerial technology might be a network focused on cost reduction at times of crisis. (f) Netted Networks—involve a network (temporarily at least) taking precedence over another network (see e above). This is more likely in crisis situations, change and fragile network situations. It also allows for work practices to weave into, out of and between networks. 2. Asset Optimisation Process (AOP)—this was the name given to the rationalisation of products and production capacity that was conducted within the Burnsland organisation. 3. At-Home Ethnography (AHE)—uses the researcher’s position and home setting for research purposes and is based on the idea that insiders are potentially better able than outsiders to investigate and interpret events. AHE builds on ethnographic traditions in investigating everyday work practices but there are two key differences between ethnography and AHE. First there is difference relating to insider-participation and second, to outsider-observation. The latter requires reflexivity, a creation of distance and a critical self-conscious awareness. 4. Communities of Practice (COP)—is a theory with its roots situated in learning and social construction. Situated learning focuses us on communities learning from social practices rather than through cognitive and individual processes. COP theory is predominantly about socialisation into a community but there are also examples of how situated learning has been sustained across generations.

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(a) Canonical communities—are those that are formalised parts of an organisation (b) Noncanonical communities—might be informal or under the radar. 5. Engine Room—is the name given to a group of Burnsland managers with the task of managing redundancies. 6. Strategy as Practice (SasP)—involves studying the underlying everyday practices of strategy in situ. Recent research (e.g., MacKay et al., 2020) has suggested the idea of Strategy-in-Practice is still embryonic and developing as a concept. Nicolini (2012) took three key strands of practice theory—situated practice studies; technology practice studies; and strategy as practice studies and pulled them together to offer a toolkit for conducting practice studies. In particular, he suggested the ideas of Zooming In and Zooming Out. (a) Zooming In—brings everyday practices into the foreground and makes them visible. In strategy the tendency is to focus on the macro and these details can be assumed, ignored or may not even be obvious. (b) Zooming Out—enables exploration of how these practices are associated and connected to contribute to the wider picture of strategy.

Index

A Action nets, 60, 77, 79, 81 Actor-Network Theory (ANT), 3–5, 14, 16, 19–21, 23, 24, 32–34, 44–46, 48–53, 58–60, 72, 73, 77, 79–81, 86, 88–92, 103–108, 112, 116, 126–129, 131, 135–141 Alvesson, M., 3, 8, 9, 58 Anticipation of Reactions, 20 Asset Optimisation Process (AOP), 16, 31–53, 58–61, 63, 65, 67, 76, 78, 79, 82, 145 At-home ethnography (AHE), 2, 3, 5, 8–11, 13–15, 17, 18, 52, 58, 79, 117, 135, 136, 139, 141–143 B Brown, J. S., 18, 22, 23, 33, 86–88, 92, 99, 139 Business technologies, 59, 61, 74, 76, 77, 82, 137

C Callon, M., 19, 20, 33, 46, 60, 79, 90, 92, 107, 116 Coffey, A., 9, 18, 142 Communities of Practice (COP) theory, 3–5, 16, 86–93, 103–108, 135, 139–140 Critical HRM, 113 Czarniawska, B., 1, 2, 59–61, 76, 78–81, 92, 116, 143 D Dalton, M., 1, 2, 136 Demonization, 81 Duguid, P., 18, 22, 23, 33, 86–88, 92, 99, 139 Durability, 20, 49 E Engine Room, 4, 14–16, 53, 57–82 Enrolment, 19, 21, 50, 51, 67–69, 72, 74, 90, 91, 105, 106, 108, 126, 140

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INDEX

F Fox, S., 13, 86–88, 90–92, 99, 103, 108, 114–116, 126 G Gherardi, S., 20, 22, 23, 33, 86, 91, 99, 102, 108 H Hansen, A., 3, 4, 53, 58–61, 73, 74, 76, 79, 137 HR as Practice, 114, 140 HR practice, 112, 130, 140 Human resource management (HRM), 2, 112–116, 129, 131, 140 I Inscription devices, 80, 136 Interressement, 19 Irreversibility/irreversible, 20 J Jarzabkowski, P., 22, 23, 32, 81 K Knotting, 24, 60, 61, 74, 76, 79, 81, 93 L Latour, B., 19–21, 33, 47–50, 59, 60, 77–80, 92, 126 Lave, J., 23, 33, 86, 88, 89, 92, 103, 139 Law, 19–21, 33, 46, 48, 79, 80, 92, 116 Legge, K., 113, 114, 129, 131

M Managerial technologies, 59, 61, 73, 75, 76, 79, 82, 137 Mobility, 20, 21 Mouritsen, J., 3, 4, 53, 58–61, 73, 74, 76, 79, 137 N Narrative Analysis, 16 Netted Networks, 59–61, 74–77, 81, 137, 139 Nicolini, D., 3, 4, 20, 22–24, 32, 33, 50, 52, 58, 80, 81, 92, 112, 116, 138 Non-canonical, 99 Nonhuman, 73, 111–131 P Performation, 33, 52, 116, 130, 141 Power Relations, 88–92, 126–129, 139 Practices, 4, 5, 9, 12, 14–18, 22, 23, 32–34, 40, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52, 53, 58, 59, 61, 76, 80–82, 86–88, 91–95, 98, 99, 102–108, 113–116, 126, 128–131, 136–138, 140, 141, 143 Problematization, 19, 20, 60, 116 Process and Practice, 143 R Reflexivity, 17–18, 141–143 S Safety, 15, 16, 85–108, 145 Samra-Fredericks, D., 9, 13, 17, 22, 142 Schatzki, T. R., 22, 23, 32, 114 Socio-Material Relations, 138

 INDEX 

Spatio-temporality, 20, 48–49, 58, 72, 80, 81, 86, 108, 136, 139 Strategy as Practice (SasP), 4, 5, 22–24, 32–34, 50, 52, 53, 58, 59, 77, 79–82, 86, 92–93, 103, 112, 116, 131, 135, 136, 138–140 Strategy as Practice theory, 3 Synder, W. M., 87 T Translation, 19–21, 46, 51, 60, 72, 81, 107, 126, 136, 137 V Vickers, D., 3, 13, 16, 17, 58, 81, 89, 99, 113–116, 126, 141

153

W Watson, T. J., 1, 2, 136 Wenger, E., 23, 33, 86–89, 91, 92, 103, 105, 139 Whittington, R., 22, 23, 32, 33, 50, 59, 92, 103, 112 Z Zooming in, 3, 4, 23, 33, 34, 44, 46, 50, 53, 58–59, 72–74, 80, 102, 103, 112, 116, 129, 131, 138–139 Zooming out, 23, 33, 34, 50–53, 58–59, 74–78, 81, 82, 102, 107, 112, 116, 129–130, 138, 139