Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations [19, 1 ed.] 9781780526621

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RETHINKING MISBEHAVIOR AND RESISTANCE IN ORGANIZATIONS

ADVANCES IN INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS Series Editors: David Lewin and Paul J. Gollan Recent Volumes: Volumes 1–16: Series Editors: David Lewin and Bruce E. Kaufman Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations Volumes 17–18: Series Editors: David Lewin, Bruce E. Kaufman, Paul J. Gollan Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations

ADVANCES IN INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS VOLUME 19

RETHINKING MISBEHAVIOR AND RESISTANCE IN ORGANIZATIONS EDITED BY

ALISON BARNES Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

LUCY TAKSA Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2012 Copyright r 2012 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78052-662-1 ISSN: 0742-6186 (Series)

CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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INTRODUCTION – MISBEHAVIOR IN THE AIR

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EVEN MORE MISBEHAVIOR: WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS? Stephen Ackroyd

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STILL ‘‘STAYING LOOSE IN A TIGHTENING WORLD’’? REVISITING GERALD MARS’ CHEATS AT WORK Louise Thornthwaite and Peter McGraw

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NAMING, CONDONING, AND SHAMING: INTERPRETING EMPLOYEE ASSESSMENTS OF BEHAVIOR AND MISBEHAVIOR IN THE WORKPLACE Lucy Taksa

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MR TAYLOR GOES TO HOLLYWOOD: MISBEHAVIOR IN FILM AND TV George Lafferty

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ON THE COLD WAR FRONT: DISSENT, MISBEHAVIOR, AND DISCURSIVE RELATIONS AT PAN AMERICAN AIRWAYS’ GUIDED MISSILES DIVISION Christopher M. Hartt, Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms Mills

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INCORPORATING INSTITUTIONALISM: RECONCEPTUALIZING THE RESISTANCE AND MISBEHAVIOR BINARIES Tony Dundon and Diane van den Broek

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CUSTOMER SERVICE WORK AND THE AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE Alison Barnes

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CUSTOMERS BEHAVING BADLY! Lawrence Ang and Scott Koslow

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EXPLORING ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS MISBEHAVIOR Erik Lundmark and Alf Westelius

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MISBEHAVIOR, ITS DIMENSIONS, AND RELATIONSHIP TO COMMITMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS Gordon Brooks

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Stephen Ackroyd

Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University School of Management, Lancaster, UK

Lawrence Ang

Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Alison Barnes

Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, NSW, Sydney, Australia

Gordon Brooks

Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Tony Dundon

Department of Management, J. E. Cairnes Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland

Christopher M. Hartt

Department of Business and Social Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada

Scott Koslow

Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

George Lafferty

School of Business, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Erik Lundmark

Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Peter McGraw

Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Jean Helms Mills

Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Albert J. Mills

Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Lucy Taksa

Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Louise Thornthwaite

Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Diane van den Broek

Work and Organizational Studies, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Alf Westelius

Department of Management and Engineering, Linko¨ping University, Linko¨ping, Sweden

INTRODUCTION – MISBEHAVIOR IN THE AIR Misbehavior is ubiquitous. Its occurrence stretches back in time and shows little sign of abating. According to Richards (2008, pp. 653–654), organizational misbehavior ‘‘has been a prominent feature of organizational studies throughout the twentieth century and continues to command similar attention in the first decade of the twenty-first century.’’ Early interest has been traced back to F. W. Taylor’s criticisms of workers’ restriction of output (Taylor, 2003) in the first two decades of the twentieth century, a phenomenon also considered by Donald Roy (1952, 1959) after World War Two, and subsequently extended by Jason Ditton (1977) and Gerald Mars (1982) to include workplace crimes such as ‘‘fiddles and theft.’’ In more recent times, such fiddles have been extended to the study of ‘‘cyberslacking’’ (Block, 2001), ‘‘cyberloafing’’ (Lim, 2002), and general workplace internet misuse (Lara, Tacoronte, Ding, & Ting, 2006). Yet, despite such interest in ‘‘organizational misbehavior,’’ the scholarship in this field is relatively recent and generally traced back to the work of Vardi and Wiener (1996) and Ackroyd and Thompson (1999). In mapping this scholarship, both Richards (2008) and Shamsudin (2006) have stressed the divergence between those who approach the phenomenon from an organizational behavior perspective and those who do so from the perspective of industrial sociology. The former was originally popularized by Vardi and Wiener (1996, p. 151), who sought to address the ‘‘ample evidence that members of organizations’’ engage in ‘‘sabotage processes, steal company property, harass others, cheat the government or mislead customers’’ and whose focus on ‘‘work related misconduct’’ sought to identify the ‘‘personal and organizational factors,’’ and particularly the ‘‘motivational forces’’ that influence ‘‘acts of intentional misbehavior.’’ For these scholars ‘‘this ‘darker’ side of organizational life’’ was defined ‘‘as any intentional action by members of organizations that defies and violates (a) shared organizational norms and expectations, and/or (b) core societal values, mores, and standards of proper conduct’’ (Vardi & Wiener, 1996, p. 153). For scholars adopting this disciplinary orientation, organizational ix

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misbehavior can include a ‘‘large variety of behaviors, ranging from employee theft to white collar-crime, whistle-blowing, professional deviance, concealment of important information, substance abuse, sexual harassment and vandalism’’ (Vardi & Wiener, 1996, p. 152). The sociological perspective presents a stark contrast to the organizational behavior/management perspective, which has traditionally construed misbehavior negatively (Shamsudin, 2006, p. 67) and focused on various forms of deviance (Vardi & Wiener, 1996, p. 153). Popularized by Ackroyd and Thompson (1999), who defined misbehavior broadly as ‘‘anything you do at work you are not supposed to do’’ (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, p. 2; Sprouse, 1992), the sociological perspective emphasizes actions rather than motivations (Shamsudin, 2006, p. 71) in relation to ‘‘employeeemployer contestation over matters related to time, work, product and identity’’ (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, p. 25 cited in Richards, 2008, p. 655). Characteristics central to this perspective include informal action and self-organization on the part of employees (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, pp. 70–71, 164) and their non-cooperation, which ‘‘fits in between resistance – overt, principled, and perhaps formally organised – and dissent, which is equated with linguistic or normative disagreement’’ (Richards, 2008, p. 655). For Ackroyd and Thompson (1999, p. 164) ‘‘designating misbehavior is a matter of perspective and definition’’; as they see it ‘‘the identification and prosecution of misbehavior’’ has ‘‘to be understood in terms of structural imbalances of power.’’ This point is particularly well illustrated by the type of misbehavior that has been labelled ‘‘time theft,’’ a form of employee recalcitrance, which was initially linked to what F. W. Taylor (2003, pp. 20, 39, 118) depicted as the great evil of output restriction or ‘‘systematic soldiering,’’ and which has, since the 1980s, been equated with the theft of goods and therefore also workplace deviance. Such theft has been associated with behaviors that include avoidance of work, ‘‘calling in pretending to be sick and other forms of truancy, walking out,’’ and engaging in union activities (Stevens & Lavin, 2007, p. 47) and ‘‘taking an extra minute on’’ breaks ‘‘or two minutes on lunch’’ (Stevens & Lavin, 2007, p. 49). In more recent decades, this form of ‘‘unproductive’’ behavior has provided the rationale for the introduction of a range of surveillance techniques and/or management efforts to win ‘‘the active and passive consent’’ of those allegedly guilty of this form of pilfering (Stevens & Lavin, 2007, pp. 45–46), as well as the vilification of employees who resist either formally or informally (Stevens & Lavin, 2007, p. 47). Yet, despite the long history of negative portrayals of such mis/behaviors, according to Stevens and Lavin (2007, p. 43) ‘‘the emphasis on the worker as

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a criminal as opposed to just slacking off or being lazy is relatively new’’ and associated with the rise of neoliberalism. By contrast, what nineteenth century factory inspectors referred to as the ‘‘petty pilfering of minutes’’ and what laborers referred to as ‘‘nibbling and cribbling at meal times’’ by employers, also has a long history. Indeed, such ‘‘‘small thefts’ of capital from the labourer’s meal and recreation time’’ (Marx & Engels, 2007, p. 267), and even greater ones, such as when managers expect employees ‘‘to do extra work for no pay’’ (Stevens & Lavin, 2007, p. 53) are ‘‘never disciplined nor criminalized’’ (Snider, 2002, p. 109 cited in Stevens & Lavin, 2007, p. 53). Such competing representations of misbehavior highlight the need to consider the phenomenon in a broader context. As Richards (2008, p. 668) pointed out, attention to misbehavior should not be restricted to work organizations given that various scholars (Collinson & Ackroyd, 2005; Spicer & Bohm, 2007) have ‘‘put forward the view that misbehavior is a phenomenon that spills out of organizations,’’ as occurs in cases involving unauthorized absenteeism or ‘‘defiant acts that are readily pursued through global mediums, such as the internet, cyberspace, and other forms of mobile, wireless technology.’’ Similarly, it is important to acknowledge that misbehavior ‘‘can also result from forces that spill in from broader society’’ (Richards, 2008, p. 668), as these touch on: ‘‘broader socio-political conflicts, related to multiculturalism and political allegiance’’ (Richards, 2008, p. 667); ‘‘conflicting societal values, which form the basis for identity formation, such as notions of social equality, social freedom, multiculturalism, and gender equity’’ (Richards, 2008, p. 665); and sexuality, gender identity, and relations (Gutek, 1989; Richards, 2008, p. 662). As Richards (2008, p. 668) pointed out: it is becoming more evident that future researchers of misbehaviour must seriously question where the boundaries lie in researching this phenomenon. For certain, misbehaviour should not be researched or theorised as a phenomenon that only occurs in the physical locality that is broadly referred to as the work organisation. Neither should employee misbehaviour be studied using the strict and problematic notions of corporate, professional or any other formal identity.

For Richards the challenge is to broaden the parameters for research on misbehavior beyond ‘‘the main theoretical frameworks of industrial sociology – labor process theory, and organizational behavior – organizational psychology’’ (Richards, 2008, p. 671) to include attention to ‘‘people and their wider affiliations and interests’’ (Richards, 2008, p. 668). The collection presented here responds to these points and proposals by reexamining existing scholarship and previously identified forms of

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misbehavior, as well as newer forms that have emerged in recent decades. In addition, it draws together papers from a number of different disciplines, which adopt sometimes complementary and sometimes competing perspectives on misbehavior. The Volume focuses in those who are implicated in misbehavior and also how it has been perceived and represented. The collection starts from the premise that the phenomenon is complex and the term is commonly employed to depict a wide spectrum of ‘‘dirty deeds’’ perpetrated by the young, the old, and the restless regardless of gender, class, cultural background, and any other affiliation. Definitions and synonyms are broad and include such terms as ‘‘improper,’’ ‘‘uncivil,’’ ‘‘rude,’’ ‘‘derelict,’’ ‘‘bad behavior,’’ ‘‘insolence,’’ ‘‘insubordination,’’ ‘‘misconduct,’’ ‘‘mischief,’’ and ‘‘naughtiness.’’ Some more humorous synonyms include ‘‘shenanigans’’ and ‘‘monkey business’’ (Bernard, 1992, pp. 125.1, 634.1; Collins, 2011; Delbridge et al., 2001, p. 1219; Johnson, Walker, & Jameson, 1828, p. 468; Webster, 1844, p. 533). Taken together, these terms illustrate that misbehavior encompasses a wide range of behaviors from sexual indiscretion, humor, or insensitivity, to aggression, sexism, harassment, racism, vilification, and ‘‘acting up.’’ However, when the term ‘‘workplace’’ is combined with ‘‘misbehavior,’’ the focus narrows to organizational contexts and normative perspectives that seek to provide employers and managers with insights into the causes of unethical, sometimes violent, resistant, and generally ‘‘dysfunctional or deviant’’ behaviors by employees that have the potential to undermine effective performance and efficiency (Sagie, Stashevsky, & Koslowsky, 2003; Yew & Gregory, 2011). Some sources even provide helpful tips on how to prevent misbehavior in the workplace in 10 easy steps or how organizations can turn their employees’ misbehavior to business advantage (Lewis, 2010; Luka?cs, Negoescu, & David, 2009). More often than not the self-help treatises designed to help employers and managers prevent workplace misbehavior ignore the stressors, insecurities, and declining union density that may foster misbehavior by employees and choose instead to focus on the individual employee’s lack of personal integrity, greed, and general allround ‘‘rottenness.’’ While this perspective may be an adequate explanation for the behavior of News of the World management in encouraging and condoning unethical and illegal activities by journalists and news editors (Adam & Farhi, 2011; Hill, 2011), it does little to shed light on the reasons for or manifestations of misbehavior in organizations more generally. It is important to acknowledge that what may be misbehavior for an employer or a manager, might also be viewed by an employee as action taken to right a perceived wrong. A good case in point is raised by Ackroyd

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in this volume in relation to presumptions that equate problems at work with sabotage and that fail to recognize that misbehavior is not always bad for organizations, a theme also addressed in the contribution from Lundmark and Westelius that focuses on entrepreneurship as misbehavior. An alternative reading might present misbehavior as a manifestation of inadequate mechanisms for employees to voice concerns and grievances. The complexities surrounding different perspectives on misbehavior are particularly evident in relation to whistle-blowing, a phenomenon that has generally been defined as ‘‘the disclosure by organization members (former or current) of illegal, immoral, or illegitimate practices under the control of their employers, to persons or organizations that may be able to effect action’’ (Near & Miceli, 1985, p. 4 cited in Hassink, de Vries, & Bollen, 2007, p. 25). This broad definition privileges the perspective of the whistle-blower engaged in exposing the misbehavior of others. At the same time, however, whistle-blowing often gives rise to a range of perspectives on the nature and source of misbehavior. For some, the ‘‘deliberate non-obligatory act of disclosure’’ by ‘‘a person who has privileged access to data or information of an organization, about non-trivial illegality or other wrongdoing whether actual, suspected or anticipated which implicates and is under the control of that organization’’ and which gets onto public record (Jubb, 1999, p. 83 cited in Hassink et al., 2007, pp. 25–26) amounts to misbehavior. For others, the ostracism experienced by whistle-blowers can be construed as involving misbehavior (Lustenberger & Williams, 2009, p. 262). Public interest and concern surrounding whistle-blowing and the protection, celebration, and/or vilification of whistle-blowers has not been limited to employees but has also been directly linked to various types of misbehavior on the part of corporations, as was made clear by the Enron scandal (Pellegrini, 2002). According to Sagie et al. (2003, pp. 2–3) this case involved a wide range of misbehaviors enacted by the company’s managers and highest echelons and was ‘‘driven by egotism and greed’’ that extended to a wide range of abuses, such as defrauding investors, ‘‘internal spying,’’ and the creation of a culture in which ‘‘superiors and subordinates used wanted and unwanted sex relationships to achieve instrumental advantages.’’ Nor have governments been immune from exposure of misbehavior by whistle-blowers, as the case of ‘‘Deep Throat’’ and the Watergate scandal clearly shows (Gobert & Punch, 2003, p. 4; Near & Miceli, 1985). Most obviously, the current controversy surrounding Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange highlights the ambiguities around the nexus between whistle-blowing and misbehavior, particularly since this ‘‘champion of whistle-blowers’’ (Watts, 2012) has been haunted by ‘‘allegations of sexual

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misbehavior.’’ At the same time, Bradley Manning, the American Army intelligence analyst who transferred ‘‘hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks’’ (Anon., 2012a) has been charged with ‘‘aiding the enemy’’ and ‘‘mishandling and leaking classified information, as well as putting national security at risk’’ by ‘‘using unauthorized software on government computers to extract classified information, illegally downloading it, and transmitting the data for public release’’ (Mann, 2011). For these actions, which Manning describes as whistle-blowing, he now ‘‘faces up to 52 years in jail.’’ Not surprisingly, from the balcony of the Ecuadorean embassy, which had given him refuge from extradition to Sweden to face charges of sexual misbehavior, Julian Assange called for the release of Bradley Manning and urged the United States to end its ‘‘war on whistleblowers’’ (Anon., 2012b; Kissane, 2012). In addition, he appealed to President Obama ‘‘to make his country ‘do the right thing’ and ‘renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks’’’ by not seeking to prosecute its ‘‘staff or our supporters’’ and by pledging ‘‘before the world’’ that it would ‘‘not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful’’ (Kissane, 2012). While attention to whistle-blowing on this scale in the introduction to a book on misbehavior in organizations may be questioned, we see the Wikileaks case as a pertinent example of mis/behaviors that challenge authority by seeking to make governments and corporations accountable. As the study of corporate misconduct by Punch (1996) and Gobert and Punch, (2003) effectively showed, attention to and study of misbehavior in and by businesses, employers, and managers have been relatively rare. This, despite the continuous attention given to the area since 1939, ‘‘when Edwin Sutherland coined the term ‘white-collar crime’ in his address to the American Sociological Society in order to challenge conventional stereotypes and theories,’’ which construed criminality in relation to young men from disadvantaged backgrounds (Weisburd, Waring, & Chayet, 2001, p. 1). Certainly circumstances changed after the global financial crisis exposed the extent of ‘‘financial misbehavior’’ by leading banks in the United States. But as the publicity surrounding the Libor (London Inter Bank Offered Rate) rate-fixing scandal that has enmeshed Barclays Bank and other British banking institutions indicates, ‘‘misbehavior in banking’’ continues (Anon., 2012c). Representations by Lord Adair Turner, the head of the Financial Services Authority in England and others in the media and in scholarly articles, highlight the continuing importance of whistle-blowers in relation to misdeeds in the financial and corporate sectors (Bigoni et al., 2012; Spagnolo, 2012).

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More widespread among the scholarly sources on misbehavior are works influenced by Ackroyd and Thompson (1999), which adopted the more skeptical approach grounded in the sociological tradition and which focus attention on employees and the employment situation. A common thread that emerges from these studies is that misbehavior in the past, as much as in the present, is often linked to resistance, a good example of which is provided by Karlsson (2011). Yet throughout history there are ample examples that illustrate that resistance against oppressive conditions allegedly involving misbehavior is not always directly related to work and employment. In some cases the link is related in some way to government actions, as the trial in 1745 of Archibald Stewart, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, for neglect of duty and ‘‘misbehavior’’ in the execution of his office during the Jacobite uprising cogently demonstrates. Played out against the backdrop of this Scottish rebellion, Stewart ‘‘misbehaved’’ by refusing to arm Edinburgh, thus making it possible for the Jacobite Highland army to occupy the city (Stewart, 1747). Another more contemporary example occurred on June 21, 2012 when New South Wales (NSW) firefighters took industrial action to oppose the conservative NSW Government’s proposed changes to legal protection and compensation provided to injured workers and their families. This strike, the first on such a scale by firefighters since 1956, was accompanied by a mass demonstration in front of the NSW Parliament House. Having arrived with 70 fire trucks, with horns and sirens blaring, the demonstrators turned their hoses upon the House itself. Conservative politicians described this instance of resistance and dissent in terms of improper dereliction of duty. In the words of the NSW Premier, it was ‘‘the most irresponsible action taken by a union in NSW history’’; action which led the NSW Police Force to flag that it might pursue legal action against those individuals who had displayed ‘‘poor behavior during the protest’’ (Godfrey, Bennett, & Samandar, 2012). Police interventions have not, however, been limited to ‘‘poor behavior’’ by employees engaged in traditional forms of industrial resistance, and misbehavior itself has not been limited to downtrodden workers. The ‘‘misbehavior in the air’’ of two employees of the BlackBerry manufacturer, Research in Motion (RIM), during a flight from Toronto to Beijing on November 29, 2011 (Gulliver, 2011) provides a case in point. The middleaged senior executives were arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after their drunken, disorderly, and unruly behavior and manhandling of cabin crew resulted in their being restrained with plastic handcuffs and packing tape and the flight being diverted to Vancouver (Anon., 2011; Humphries, 2011). Both subsequently pleaded guilty to a charge of mischief.

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Besides being ordered to pay C$71,757 in restitution and given suspended sentences and probation for a year, the two were sacked from their jobs. As their employer stressed to the media, RIM did ‘‘not condone behavior that conflicts with applicable laws’’ and it expected its employees ‘‘to act, at all times, with integrity and respect’’ (Lu, 2011) – a stark contrast to what passengers described as ‘‘one of the craziest scenes’’ ever witnessed after a flight attendant officially reprimanded the men for being ‘‘loud and obnoxious’’ by issuing them a yellow card in accordance with Air Canada’s disciplinary policy (Beer, 2011). This case illustrates the centrality of public conduct and bearing or deportment to understandings of the term ‘‘behave,’’ a word that Raymond Williams (1977, p. 35) described as ‘‘very curious’’ and one that has presented difficulties since its emergence in the fifteenth century. As Williams commented, ‘‘to behave is still colloquially to behave well, although to behave badly’’ in his view ‘‘is also immediately understood.’’ This blurring of the boundaries between behavior and misbehavior is immensely significant and one that will be addressed in different ways by a number of the contributors to this volume. Another important point raised by the ‘‘misbehavior in the air’’ case is that of indistinct boundaries between different agents engaged in misbehavior. In short, misbehavior involves not only employees and employers but also customers and thereby blurs the boundaries between the fields of work and non-work, a theme taken up in several chapters. In recognition of the broad scope of misbehavior, this volume seeks to expand on existing treatments. Chapters by Ackroyd, Barnes, Dundon and Van Den Broek, Hartt, Mills and Helms Mills all focus on the relationship between misbehavior and organized resistance, albeit in different ways and in different contexts. Other chapters also consider employee misbehavior albeit somewhat differently. Lafferty examines representations of workplace misbehavior in film and TV, many of which reflect on the way employees challenge the rules and norms that spill into organizations, while Taksa demonstrates that misbehavior and resistance are not just about rule breaking but also about rule making. The inclusion of papers from fields such as employment relations, entrepreneurship, history, management studies, marketing, organizational behavior, and sociology, allows the volume to explore misbehavior not only from the perspective of employees but also of management, entrepreneurs, and customers across a range of contexts that traverse different time periods and different places, industries, and sectors. In this way, the chapters extend analysis to actors who have largely fallen outside of the focus of existing studies.

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The volume is therefore eclectic. In different ways, all of the chapters seek to shed new light on manifestations of misbehavior. Some engage with existing approaches to and debates about misbehavior and are influenced by ‘‘labor process’’ scholarship. Others focus on behaviors that have not traditionally been incorporated in the study of misbehavior and, in doing so, seek to expand prevailing disciplinary orientations. As a result, the volume is intentionally controversial; it seeks to add to the emerging body of evidence that disturbs assumptions of consensus and conformity in organizations. The book covers many themes well known in the resistance and misbehavior literature but provides new examples and contexts. The collection begins with an overview by Stephen Ackroyd, co-author with Paul Thompson of Organisational Misbehaviour (1999), which sparked much of the interest and debate on this subject. Ackroyd reviews the study of the phenomenon and presents a conceptual reconsideration of the relationship between misbehavior and resistance in a changing industrial landscape. Ackroyd returns to some of the critical questions about the phenomenon, such as: what is misbehavior and why should it be studied? In answering these questions, he not only reexamines the scholarship but also considers what has occurred over the past 20 years against the backdrop of shifts that have resulted in the decline of manufacturing in Western industrial nations, the growing dominance of the service sector, increased reliance on new information technologies, new organization forms, jobs, and ‘‘new kinds of control of work performance.’’ In this context Ackroyd illustrates that ‘‘the impulse to misbehave’’ has not diminished. On the contrary, he highlights its continued vitality and ‘‘much innovation’’ in the manifestations of misbehavior. A similar finding is made by Thornthwaite and McGraw, who examine the ongoing relevance of the typology developed by Gerald Mars in his Cheats at Work (1982), in order to explore developments in the forms, patterns, and implications of cheating at work since its publication. In this context they review Mars’s influential study of workplace crime, ranging from pilferage of goods to time theft. In so doing, they illustrate that, while technology may have decreased opportunities for theft of goods and cash, at the same time it has opened up new forms of pilferage that can be used by employees and customers. Their treatment refers to cases heard before Australia’s industrial court, Fair Work Australia, and the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption as well as to the more unusual anonymous blogging about the workplace, which in itself has been seen as an expression of misbehavior and resistance. In different ways, Hartt, Mills and Helms Mills, Taksa and Lafferty consider misbehavior over time, different forms of dissent, resistance, and

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accommodation and also the co-production of misbehavior. In analyzing a series of events that occurred at Pan American Airways Guided Missile’s Range Division (GMRD) during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and early 1960s, Hartt, Mills, and Helms Mills consider how labor unrest was curtailed by appeals to patriotism and ‘‘Americanism.’’ In this chapter attention is given to the conflict between discourses of labor solidarity and unfair management practices and discourses of patriotism and anticommunism and in this regard historical context is shown to be critical to the socio-political construction of misbehavior. Using elements of Actor Network Theory, the authors explore the constitution of the ‘‘parties’’ in coproduction and the limitations of the idea of co-production of misbehavior. Taksa also considers aspects of accommodation and resistance in her paper on workplace nicknaming practices, which are used to provide insight into the way workers in different places and at different times deploy humor and identity construction in their assessments of each other’s behavior and work performance, as well as the mis/behavior of managers and others who have an impact on their work and/or workplaces. Looking closely at nicknames, this chapter aims to show that nicknaming practises have meaning at a local level and also involve sensemaking of broader social relations and cultural ideals. By considering workplace nicknaming as sensemaking and extending the field beyond the local, this chapter illustrates that the use of certain vocabularies reflect the existence of co-produced behavioral norms, expectations, and rules and also influence their enactment. In a departure from more conventional studies of organizational misbehavior, Lafferty examines well-known films and television series, such as Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times; I’m All Right Jack; Spotswood; Made in Dagenham; and Nurse Jackie. These, he argues, ‘‘provide plausible workplace scenarios,’’ which allow us to analyze ‘‘ideal’’ types of misbehavior in the context of ‘‘conflict between two forms of rationality: formal and substantive.’’ Interpreting misbehavior in terms of competing rationalities, in Lafferty’s view, provides a way to question the often implicit assumption that rationality is the preserve of ‘‘the organization’’ and in turn to achieve a more nuanced view of the co-production of workplace misbehavior practices by managers, workers, and/or unions. Dundon and van den Broek, like Ackroyd, are interested in innovative forms of misbehavior. They maintain that employee misbehavior and resistance are ‘‘mutually reinforcing’’ although they are often explored separately. They argue the connections between mischief, misbehavior, and resistance are shaped by and related to ‘‘changing workplace regimes and structural antagonism endemic in capitalism.’’ Further, they show that

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although existing research points to a decrease in conflict and action on the part of unionized workers, informal manifestations of mischief, resistance and misbehavior are emerging. Their chapter analyzes the inter-connections between misbehavior and mischief that result in unorganized resistance in nonunion settings and suggests that, for a better understanding of this behavior, researchers should examine the role of institutional and structural regulation in delineating formal and informal instances of mischief and misbehavior. In a similar vein, Barnes explores the relationship between misbehavior and resistance in three Australian call centers by focusing on the way the delivery of customer service shapes the development and expression of resistance, misbehavior, and accommodation. Her treatment considers why employees at three call centers enjoyed customer service and endeavored to enhance its importance even though they found the work to be emotionally taxing and occasionally morally questionable. In particular, Barnes discusses how workers used the aesthetic skills that underpin ‘‘good’’ customer service to subvert management’s goals and objectives and give voice to their frustrations. The relationship between customers and misbehavior is also the focus of Ang and Koslow’s chapter. Their approach is, however, undertaken from a marketing rather than a sociological perspective. Nevertheless, they question the paradigm of customer misbehavior as deviance, which has dominated the approach taken to the subject in this discipline, and in doing so, they suggest that it is ‘‘an unremarkable consequence of normal conditions.’’ By exploring a range of consumer misbehaviors, such as rudeness, theft, or disruption of service delivery, they challenge the marketing cliche´ that ‘‘the customer is always right.’’ In addition, they develop a framework to provide insights into customer misbehavior and ways to manage it. Lundmark and Westelius also challenge accepted wisdom that prevails in the scholarship on entrepreneurship by drawing parallels between it and misbehavior. As they see it, entrepreneurship ‘‘involves the breaking of habits, norms, or rules’’ and what constitutes one person’s misbehavior is another’s enterprise. They conclude that the way certain forms of behavior are perceived ‘‘rests on people’s emotional and moral assessment of the venture.’’ Working within the organizational behavior tradition, Brooks considers the relationship between commitment and misbehavior. Using a fourdimensional typology of counterproductive workplace behaviors, Brooks supports the view that there is a negative correlation between the two phenomena. Like Ang and Koslow, Brooks seeks to provide a better

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understanding of workplace misbehavior with a view to producing more appropriate managerial interventions. What is apparent from this diverse collection of essays is that misbehavior is still prevalent in organizations and that new forms of the phenomenon are constantly evolving in response to workplace and societal change. Traditionally the examination of workplace misbehavior has focused on workers rather than on their employers. This volume attempts in part to redress the balance by looking further afield at the actions of managers, customers, and others. Needless to say, specific forms of behavior such as bullying, sexual harassment, time theft by employers and employees, whitecollar, management, employer, corporate, and government misbehavior, as well as whistle-blowing are deserving of a more thorough analysis than this book is able to provide, but we hope that the ideas outlined here will give rise to fruitful avenues for research and discussion. Alison Barnes Lucy Taksa Editors

REFERENCES Ackroyd, S., & Thompson, P. (1999). Organisational misbehaviour. London: Sage. Adam, K., & Farhi, P. (2011, July 8). News of the world to close amid phone-hacking scandal. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/phone-hacking-scandalcloses-news-of-the-world/2011/07/07/gIQAy5RA2H_story.html. Accessed on August 24, 2012. Anon. (2011, December 12). RIM employees George Campbell, Paul Alexander Wilson Suspended for drunk, rowdy flight disruption. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http:// www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/12/01/rim–drunk-employees-flight-air-canada_n_1123845. html. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Anon. (2012a, August 16). WikiLeaks. Retrieved from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/ timestopics/organizations/w/wikileaks/index.html. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Anon. (2012b, August 19). Julian Assange urges US to end ‘‘war on whistleblowers’’. Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/19/julian-assange-us-warwhistleblowers. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Anon. (2012c, July 1). FSA calls for tighter laws against failing bankers. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18663470. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Beer, J. (2011). Drunk ex-RIM execs went ‘‘totally off the deep end’’ on flight, says eyewitness. Retrieved from http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blog/tech/61566–drunk-ex-rim-execswent-totally-off-the-deep-end-on-flight-says-eyewitness. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Bernard, J. R. L. (1992). The Macquarie Thesaurus. Macquarie University, Sydney: The Macquarie Library.

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Bigoni, M., Fridolfsson, S. O., Le Coq, C., & Spagnolo, G. (2012). Fines, leniency, and rewards in antitrust. The RAND Journal of Economics, 439(2), 368–390. Block, W. (2001). Cyberslacking, business ethics and managerial economic. Journal of Business Ethics, 33(3), 225–231. Collins (2011). Collins English Thesaurus. Retrieved from http://www.collinsdictionary.com/ dictionary/english-thesaurus/misbehavior. Accessed on June 21, 2012. Collinson, D. L., & Ackroyd, S. (2005). Resistance, misbehavior and dissent. In S. Ackroyd, R. Batt, P. Thompson & P. S. Tolbert (Eds), The Oxford handbook of work and organisation (pp. 305–326). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Delbridge, A., Bernard, J. R. L., Blair, D., Butler, S., Peters, P., & Yallup, C. (2001). The macquarie dictionary. Federation Edition, Macquarie University, Sydney: The Macquarie Library. Ditton, J. (1977). Part-time crime: An ethnography of fiddling and pilferage. London: Macmillan. Godfrey, M., Bennett, A., & Samandar, L. (2012). Firefighters strike as compo fight erupts. Retrieved from http://au.news.yahoo.com/nsw/latest/a/-/latest/13999792/firefightersstrike-as-compo-fight-erupts/. Accessed on June 21, 2012. Gutek, B. A. (1989). Sexuality in the workplace: Key issues in social research and organizational practice. In J. Hearn, D.L. Sheppard, P. Tancred-Sheriff & G. Burrell (Eds), The sexuality of organization (pp. 56–70). London: Sage. Gobert, J., & Punch, M. (2003). Rethinking corporate crime. Law in Context Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gulliver, A. B. (2011, December 6). Misbehaviour in the air: Drunk, fined, fired. Economist. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/12/misbehavior-air. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Hassink, H., de Vries, M., & Bollen, L. (2007). A content analysis of whistleblowing policies of leading European companies. Journal of Business Ethics, 75, 25–44. Hill, A. (2011, April 14). Phone hacking: Senior news of the world journalist arrested. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/apr/14/news-of-theworld-journalist-arrested. Accessed on August 24, 2012. Humphries, M. (2011, December 12). Two drunk RIM execs subdued with packing tape aboard Air Canada flight. Retrieved from http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/two-drunk-rimexecutives-subdued-with-packing-tape-aboard-air-canada-flight-20111212/. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Johnson, S., Walker, J., & Jameson, R. S. (1828). A dictionary of the English language. London: William Pickering. Jubb, P. B. (1999). Whistleblowing: A restrictive definition and interpretation. Journal of Business Ethics, 21, 77–94. Karlsson, J. (2011). Organizational misbehaviour in the workplace: Narratives of dignity and resistance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kissane, K. (2012, August 19). Assange condemns WikiLeaks witch-hunt – Assange calls for an end to the ‘‘witch-hunt’’. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com. au/opinion/political-news/assange-condemns-wikileaks-witchhunt-20120819-24gys.html. Accessed on August 20, 2012. Lara, P., Tacoronte, D., Ding, J., & Ting, J. (2006). Do current anti-cyberloafing disciplinary practices have a replica in research findings? A study of the effects of coercive strategies on workplace internet misuse. Internet Research, 16(4), 450–467.

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Lewis, R. (2010). 7 rules you were born to break: How intelligent misbehavior can help you and your organization thrive. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/ 0986673005/ref ¼ dp_image_0?ie ¼ UTF8&n ¼ 283155&s ¼ books. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Lim, V. (2002). The IT way of loafing on the job: Cyberloafing, neutralizing and organizational justice. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23(5), 675–694. Lu, V. (2011, December 5). RIM drops drunk executives from diverted Air Canada flight. Retreived from http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1097185–rim-drops-drunkexecutives-from-diverted-air-canada-flight. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Luka´cs, E., Negoescu, G., & David, S. (2009). Employees misbehavior: Forms, causes and what management should do to handle. The Annals of ‘‘Dunarea de Jos’’, University of Galati Fascicle Economics and Applied Informatics, Years XV – no 2, 315–22. Lustenberger, D. E., & Williams, K. D. (2009). Ostracism in organizations. In J. Greenberg & M.S. Edwards (Eds), Voice and silence in organizations (pp. 245–274). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. Mann, C. (2011, March 3). Pvt. Bradley E. Manning facing new charges including ‘‘aiding the enemy. CBS News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-2003 8779-504083.html Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2007). Capital: A critique of political economy – Vol. 1 – Part 1., The process of capitalist production. , New York: Cosimo Inc. Mars, G. (1982). Cheats at work: An anthropology of workplace crime. London: Allen & Unwin. Near, J. P., & Miceli, M. P. (1985). Organizational dissidence: The case of whistleblowing. Journal of Business Ethics, 4, 1–16. Pellegrini, F. (2002, January 18). Person of the week: ‘‘Enron Whistleblower’’ Sherron Watkins. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,194927,00.htm. Accessed on August 29, 2012. Punch, M. (1996). Dirty business: Exploring corporate misconduct; analysis and cases. London: Sage Publications. Richards, J. (2008). The many approaches to organizational misbehavior: A review, map and research agenda. Employee Relations, 30(6), 653–678. Roy, D. (1952). Quota restriction and goldbrick-ing in a machine shop. American Journal of Sociology, 57, 427–442. Roy, D. F. (1959). ‘‘Banana time’’: Job satisfaction and informal interaction. Human Organisation, 18(1), 158–161. Sagie, A., Stashevsky, S., & Koslowsky, M. (2003). Misbehavior and dysfunctional attitudes in organizations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Shamsudin, F. M. (2006). Organizational misbehavior. Akademika, 69, 57–82. Spagnolo, G. (2012, August 13). Saving the banks, but not reckless bankers. Centre for Economic Policy Research. Retrieved from http://new.voxeu.org/article/criminalsanctions-how-save-banks-without-rewarding-bankers. Accessed on August 29, 2012. Spicer, A., & Bohm, S. (2007). Moving management: Theorizing struggles against the hegemony of management. Organization Studies, 28(4), 1677–1698. Sprouse, M. (1992). Sabotage in the American workplace. San Francisco, CA: Pressure Drop Press. Stevens, A., & Lavin, D. O. (2007). Stealing Time: The temporal regulation of labor in neoliberal and post-Fordist work regime. Democratic Communique, 21(2), 40–60.

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Stewart, A. (1747). The trial of Archibald Stewart Efq.; Late Lord Provoft of Edinburgh before the High Court of Judiciary in Scotland for neglect of duty, and misbehavior in the execution of his office, as Lord Provost of Edinburgh before and at the time the rebels got Poffeffion of that City in the month of September 1745. Edinburgh: Gideon Crawfurd. Taylor, F. W. (2003). Scientific management: Early sociology of management and organizations. Abingdon: Routledge. Vardi, Y., & Wiener, Y. (1996). Misbehavior in organizations: A motivational framework. Organization Science, 7(2), 151–165. Watts, J. (2012, August 22). Julian Assange sex claims not a crime in Latin America – Ecuador president. Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/22/ ecuador-president-assange-sweden-sex. Accessed on June 22, 2012. Webster, N. (1844). An American Dictionary of the English Language: Exhibiting the origin, orthography, pronunciation, and definitions of words. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Weisburd, D., Waring, E., & Chayet, E. F. (2001). White-collar crime and criminal careers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, R. (1977). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. Glasgow: William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd. Yew, L. T., & Gregory, G. (2011). Organizational misbehavior: Should management intervene?. Borneo Post. Retrieved from http://www.theborneopost.com/2011/07/26/organizationalmisbehavior-should-management-intervene/#ixzz1zC0wn8qK. Accessed on July 26, 2012.

EVEN MORE MISBEHAVIOR: WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS? Stephen Ackroyd ABSTRACT Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to offer a general review of the field of organizational misbehavior and to pose the question: what has happened in this field in the last twenty years? Method – The chapter uses the theoretical framework developed in the book Organizational Misbehavior (1999) as a template and considers a range of developments in organizations and their context together with the findings of much new research into organizational misbehavior. Findings – Classic forms of misbehavior identified in earlier work (absenteeism, effort limitation, utilitarian sabotage, etc.) are not as significant as they once were because the conditions necessary for the coproduction of these forms of misbehavior often no longer apply. It is also proposed, however, that the findings from a great deal of the more recent literature – that there has been a proliferation in the range and types of organizational misbehavior and increase in its subtlety – are not indicative of a decline in the impulse to misbehave nor of the significance of misbehavior more generally. On the contrary, what we see is indicative

Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 1–27 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019004

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of a period of widespread behavioral innovation, in which new outlets for the impulse to misbehave are finding expression even against a background of a general shift in the balance of power in favor of the employer. In the longer term there is every reason to expect that new areas of significant contestation will re-emerge, and with this the crystallization of some new and distinctive forms of misbehavior. Social implications – A clear implication of the analysis is that there is little reason for complacency on the part of managers and management academics that the problem of misbehavior has disappeared. Value of chapter – Updating the findings in the book Organizational Misbehavior (1999) in light of a range of recent developments in organizations and their context, together with recent research into organizational misbehavior. Keywords: Organizational misbehavior; classic forms of misbehavior; impulse to misbehave; behavioral innovation

INTRODUCTION In this introductory chapter four tasks will be undertaken in sections of unequal length. Firstly, in Section ‘‘Introduction,’’ some general questions, such as what misbehavior is and why we should examine it, will be considered. Secondly, in the first substantive part of the chapter, some of the research that established the field of misbehavior as an area of study will become the center of attention. Here we consider the period following World War II, especially in Britain and the United States, where much anthropological research was undertaken in industry. It was established that there were some recurrent patterns of misbehavior that could be quite well understood. Thirdly, in the longest section of the chapter, attention is turned to considering what has happened in the last twenty years. It is argued that in some Western economies manufacture is no longer predominant and there is the availability of new information technology that makes possible new types of organization and different kinds of jobs and allows new kinds of control of work performance. Information technology and advanced information systems have certainly produced new possibilities for work organization and the managerial surveillance of work. Some observers consider these developments to be of revolutionary significance and likely to eliminate resistance

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and misbehavior in the workplace. It is argued here, however, that there is much evidence of the continued vitality of the impulse to misbehave and much innovation of new types of misbehavior in contemporary workplaces. Misbehavior is in a process of evolution and is far from being eliminated. In a recent collection of extracts from research reports of misbehavior, 70% were from studies published in the last twenty years (Karlsson, 2012). New forms of misbehavior are being innovated even as control systems are being adapted. Fourthly and finally, in Section ‘‘Conclusions,’’ it is argued there are no highly developed and institutionalized forms of misbehavior – the counterparts to the classic forms seen in the postwar period. On the other hand, in the past, institutionalization weakened the impact of misbehavior. In the new context there is widespread innovation in which a wide variety of nonconforming behavior is evident and, in addition, there is much fertile ground from which new and concerted forms of misbehavior may spring.

WHY MISBEHAVIOR AT WORK? Why consider misbehavior at work? The best answers are: there is a lot of it about and it would be helpful to understand why it occurs. If you define misbehavior as ‘‘anything you do at work you are not supposed to do,’’ as Paul Thompson and I did at the outset of our book Organisational Misbehaviour (1999, p. 2), it is perhaps obvious that this field covers lot of territory and examples of misbehavior in the workplace will not be very difficult to find. By this definition some workplace misbehavior may be trivial, but, as we shall see, much is not. Research into work, especially the kind of research that is based on close observation of people working, has shown again and again that there is often serious misbehavior present (such as work limitation, time-wasting, absenteeism and pilferage) in all kinds of workplaces and accompanying all kinds of work. The more carefully the behavior of people at work is examined, the more we find there are deviations from the expectations built into contracts of employment, company rules, and employment law. But what is perhaps most surprising, especially to people approaching this field for the first time, is that there appears to be more misbehavior developing today, at least in terms of the range and variety of types, rather than less.1 In addition to it usually being present in some shape or form, there are some other things about misbehavior of which we can be sure. Firstly, although it is widespread, it is not always easy to observe. You should be

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concerned if, in the workplaces you know well, there is apparently no misbehavior. If you are a casual observer of a particular workplace, then to see no misbehavior is perhaps excusable, as employees do not usually make a show of what they are doing. On the other hand, if you are a researcher or a manager, the inability to see anything is more serious. If you cannot see any misbehavior, then beware: this does not mean that it is not there, it is much more likely that your perception is faulty. Secondly, much misbehavior and certainly most that is of central interest here have a collective dimension. Even if not everyone is an active participant in misbehavior, most of the members of the organization are aware of what is happening and act either collusively or complicity. Thus, for example, in some workplaces there are unofficial but widely known limits concerning how much work is done in normal times and how much casual absence from work is readily excusable. Thirdly, the norms of conduct supporting misbehavior of the kind just described tend to become institutionalized and to persist as part of what employees expect from their work. It is suggested here that it is best to know what is there, even if the decision is then made to feign ignorance. It is often assumed that misbehavior is purely an individual matter. Some people – it is usual to assume the less disciplined or less well brought up – do it, while most do not. There is this aspect of individual variation in all behavior, of course. Some people go much further in exploring boundaries and breaking rules than others; but they are usually not alone, and the paths they reconnoitre are often followed. True, management usually deals with misbehavior as if it were an individual matter. Thus managers will often proceed by ‘‘making an example’’ of somebody. However, in this very expression there is an implicit recognition of the social aspect, in that the hapless target for discipline is ‘‘an example’’ – presumably one among many. The French have a saying about exemplary punishment that it is given ‘‘pour encourager les autres’’ – that is, to (dis)encourage the others. This points out that there are others, there will be others; that what has happened is indicative that someone is seeking to curb a trend of behavior. However, the key point to note here is that the impulse to misbehave seldom comes simply from a desire to break rules, but from something more positive. What appears as misbehavior arises from an impulse to take control rather than to be always subject of control. What we should see in misbehavior is not simply deviation from rules of conduct for the sake of it, but usually behavioral innovation aimed at securing individual and group autonomy. Thus, in the most important forms of misbehavior we consider here, there is this positive impulse to seek and secure autonomy from control, and not simply the intention to avoid work.

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Another important preliminary point to make is that organizational misbehavior is related to more serious and more thoroughly organized conflict in industry. In its origins, there is no doubt of a connection here. The impulse to misbehave came before more serious and institutionalized forms of conflict in industry and gave impetus to it. In days gone by, when hours of work were very long and industrial discipline was harsh, the impulse from employees to mitigate the impact of work discipline – through complicity with each other (i.e., informal organization) and whatever other means there were – was pervasive. Then as now, the impulse found a few effective outlets – if only the pretence of working as hard as possible combined with work avoidance (what Fredrick Taylor labeled ‘‘soldiering’’ (1911) and See also Braverman, 1974). On the other hand, in the past particularly, the effects of harsh discipline and work at high intensity could not be dealt with in the work context, and dissatisfaction and resentment built up as resistance to management. This eventually became politicized and led to the formation of effective trade unions. Conflict also spilled over from work into civil life and politics. It took a long time for the developments we now see, such as trade unions and left of centre parties to take place; but they eventually occurred in many industries and countries (Ackroyd, 2009; Cronin, 1979; Edwards, 1986; Tilly & Tilly, 1981). The tendency to develop autonomy in the workplace remains even now, though very much has changed in the institutional sphere (Karlsson, 2012; Prasad & Prasad, 2000). Although the impulse to mitigate the effects of work at work (to come up against management rules and controls and so necessarily to misbehave) was the initial one, later history has turned the tables. As industrial relations were institutionalized and industrial relations systems developed, for many misbehavior at work largely disappeared from view. Misbehavior is still well below the horizon for many – perhaps most – students of industrial conflict. Many trade union officials have a similar view. They do not like misbehavior and tend to see it as a problem for them as much as management does. This is because, to be effective, a union has to be able to claim that it can deliver reliable labor. If a union cannot credibly claim this, there is less reason why employers should recognize a union and work with it. Accordingly, the extent of misbehavior is sometimes hidden from trade union officials as well as others. Typically then, although the existence of misbehavior was well known, its consequences were often taken to be less than what was seen to follow from organized industrial relations. This is despite the fact that there are economic sectors in which there is little in the way of active trade unionism and which are not much implicated in

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the industrial relations system, but, as has been said, there is misbehavior almost everywhere. We can infer from this that the connections between misbehavior, practical resistance to, and rejection of management and organized industrial relations are not straightforward. If we wish to understand the relationship between such things as strikes, workplace resistance to management, and misbehavior, it is helpful to think in terms of a continuum with severe conflict at one end and very mild at the other. The scale of the continuum is severity and formality of organization. All this behavior is in some sense organized, with severe conflict usually being formally organized (through the agency of trade unions and, where they exist, institutions of conflict resolution such as Fair Work Australia). At the other end of the scale, by contrast, we have misbehavior which is very informally organized. The term we used to describe the organization underpinning misbehavior in Organisational Misbehaviour was ‘‘self-organized.’’ In between organized industrial relations and misbehavior there are semi-organized forms such as workplace resistance as exemplified by unofficial industrial actions and such practices as working to rule, where activities may not be formally recognized but they depend on more extensive organization than typically lies behind misbehavior. Misbehavior is in some obvious ways effective for employees – it limits the effects of work and allows people to feel to some extent in control of their situation. All forms of conflictual behavior – formal industrial relations, resistance, and misbehavior – remain related to each other of course: they are overlapping domains and the boundary between them is indistinct. However, they are not alternatives to each other. True, there is a tendency that if a particular traditional form of resistance is made costly temporarily, misbehavior is likely to rise. Now that trade unions are under pressure and, in many jurisdictions, there is legislation that makes it more difficult for them to take strike action, this does mean that misbehavior will be more widespread and, other things equal, new types of misbehavior will very likely be innovated. Misbehavior may be mild by comparison with other forms of conflict, such as strike action, but it is often very difficult and costly to deal with it.

MISBEHAVIOR IN THE POST-WAR INDUSTRIAL WORLD Until about twenty years ago, our knowledge of workplace misbehavior in the developed world could be seen as a considerable success story. Although there was accumulating evidence of widespread misbehavior, we could

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understand what was happening quite well. Events over the last twenty years or so, however, have made that conclusion far less certain. Hence, in this chapter, the plan is to consider two broad periods. Firstly, in this section, conclusions arrived at after a long period of accumulating results, down to 1990 or so, will be considered. Secondly, in the next section, more recent developments and findings from research will be examined. What we know about misbehavior is primarily the results of research conducted in the period following the World War II, and this continues to dominate our thinking today. This is not entirely a bad thing, but we do need to place existing research in an appropriate context and recognize its limitations. The main focus for research at that time was industrial work in factories and plants (see, e.g., such seminal studies as those by Dalton (1948), Roy (1952), Burawoy (1979), and Edwards and Scullion (1982)). Factories and plants were thought of as representative of manual employment to an extent that is not so realistic today. Such research into work was also mainly concentrated in particular sorts of economies, such those in Britain and the United States and places with a similar industrial heritage such as Australia. Be that as it may, many research studies in this early period had revealed widespread misbehavior in industry, much of it concerning a few highly distinctive kinds of activities. These were brought together and considered as related phenomena in a number of research studies produced in several countries, but most notably Britain and the United States (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999; Buchanan & Badham, 1999; Vardi & Weiner, 1996). Although in some ways notable, the developing knowledge in this new field must now be seen to be more limited than it was assumed to be. Fig. 1 summarizes a great deal of the findings from postwar studies of misbehavior. It presents a developed version of a table from Chapter 1 of Organisational Misbehaviour (1999, p. 25). In Fig. 1, three areas are recognized over which employers and employees may contend in the employment relationship – represented here in the vertical columns in the diagram. The central one of these concerns the amount of work done, the second (to the left) concerns the amount of time spent in work performance, while the third (to the right) concerns the use made of the products of work, and whether employees should have any access to them. All together they map out three key areas of potential misbehavior: work performance itself, the time spent working, and access to the products of work. The classic forms of misbehavior associated with these three are highlighted in the figure: work limitation (or soldiering as Frederick Taylor called it) and utilitarian sabotage, absenteeism and forms of time-wasting at work, and systematic

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Appropriation | Appropriation | Appropriation of Time | of Work | of Product -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Commitment Time Perks | Trust | Perks Engagement | | (payment in kind) | | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Collaboration High Attention to work | High working effort | High concern | | output and | | quality | | Compliance Conventional levels of | Conventional levels of | Conventional attention to work | working effort | Concern for | | prod quality | | Lack of attention | Effort reduction | lack of concern | | for prod quality | | Systematic | Systematic | Systematic time-wasting, | work limitation, | fiddling and chronic | utilitarian | pilferage absenteeism | sabotage | | | Withdrawal Chronic Absence | work refusal / | sabotage of | downing tools | products | | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | extreme Denial / Turnover | Destructiveness | sabotage and Hostility | | theft | |

Fig. 1. Dimensions and Forms of Misbehavior. (Classic Forms of Misbehavior Highlighted)

pilferage (and fiddling where employees handle money). The diagram recognizes the possibility of different degrees of compliance with expectations and rules at work, from collaboration through compliance to withdrawal or even out and out hostility. What is interesting is that the classic forms of misbehavior – absenteeism, soldiering, fiddling, etc. – are located between compliance and withdrawal. Thus, at the opposite end to dutiful attendance is not occasional absence from work but the permanent withdrawal of the worker from the workplace – called ‘‘turnover’’ in management language or unemployment or redeployment in the vernacular.

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At the opposite end of the work activity scale there is the possibility of employees stopping the work process and preventing the appropriation of the products of work by temporarily disabling machinery, for example. This last practice is sometimes known as ‘‘utilitarian sabotage.’’2 At the heart of Fig. 1 is the proposition that employers and employees will contend over the amount of work done. This is called the ‘‘effort bargain’’ or ‘‘wage-work bargain’’ in the industrial relations literature and in some industrial sociology (Baldamus, 1961; Behrend, 1957; Edwards, 1986). It is interesting that this issue is often seen to be central to formal industrial relations as well as misbehavior studies. Clearly the two parties to the employment relationship are likely to have different assumptions about this. The employer typically wishes to maximize the amount of productive work, while the employee is also interested in the effects of fatigue and the demands of attention in working. Few employees work to the limit of their physical and mental endurance. Most seek to limit their effort to some degree, thus probably limiting their productivity as well. English law and legal codes originally derived from this – such as those of the United States and Australia – do not specify the amount of work done as a requirement of a work contract. An employee sells his/her obedience to instructions or willingness to work only in employment; that is all. The amount of work is typically not specified in employment contacts, simply hours of attendance or hours of work. The actual amount of work accomplished is thus indeterminate and how much is actually done is often a matter of day-to-day negotiation. Broadly this explains why there has been so much managerial effort put into management systems, and working out in practical terms how to increase the amount of working effort put forward by employees. Broadly there are two policies to utilize – close and intense control of work activity and the more relaxed supervision and the assumption that employees will be responsible.3 In industrial employment particularly, the amount of work done is a matter of central contention. Time-wasting and lack of effort have a direct link with low levels of productivity. This helps to explain why policies aiming at the ‘‘direct control’’ of work (Friedman, 1977), which combined close supervision and precise measurements of output, have been much used in industry; and why indeed this type of approach to the control of work was prevalent for the late nineteenth century and much of twentieth century. The contribution of the early management analyst, Fredrick Taylor, especially the procedures he specified in his book Scientific Management (1911), is so important because it is one of the first attempts to systematize direct control in the early twentieth century. Similar emphases were also present in much

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of the later work of management consultants and theorists, who developed Taylor’s ideas. However, the consequences of the widespread adoption of direct control measures by managers were fateful; they provoked an extended cycle of innovation in employee (mis)behavior, as those subjected to direct control attempted to evade the discipline it imposed. These responses provoked further refinements in the imposition of the direct control of work, to produce a recognizable sequence of control attempts followed by evasions. The development of machine-paced work – the production line especially – in which work is brought to workers mechanically at a predetermined pace – also gave a boost to the effective control of worker output. In addition to making the amounts of product produced highly calculable, such technology also takes out of the hands of employees much of their ability to influence the pace of work. Given their extent, it is hardly surprising that responses to direct control measures were a central feature of books such as our Organisational Misbehaviour (1999, see in particular Chapter 2). However, Fig. 1 maps what we can call the core territory of workplace misbehavior, and this does not simply comprise how much effort is put into work and the amount of production achieved. These are not the only matters in contention. Work performance is calculated as the amount of production accomplished over time, and both components – the use of the product of work itself and the time spent working to produce it – can become separate areas of bargaining between managers and employees. Thus, on either side of the column labeled ‘‘Appropriation of Work’’ in Fig. 1, there are columns relating to time and to product, as each can be the site of negotiation separate from contention over the amount of production. Thus contending over the time spent at work and the appropriation of the product of work by employees are also component features of the core territory of misbehavior. Indeed, in some places of work, contention over the time absent from work or over access to the product of work may become much more important than simply contending over the amount of production achieved. Work on a production line, for example, means that production of a specified amount will be the likely outcome, despite any attempts to limit the work by individual operatives, because the machinery dictates the pace of production. In this context, ways of evading attendance become more salient, as does the desirability of getting some access to the product. We should note that in all three areas of the core territory, there is a similar pattern. There is usually a degree of laxity in control – and some toleration of the associated form of misbehavior, whether it be effort

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limitation, non-attendance and time-wasting, and/or access to the products of work. Absence from work, soldiering, and even access to company products are usually to some extent permitted. Thus, there are often schemes that allow employees to acquire products at preferential rates; and this may be preferable to managements than widespread destructiveness or pilferage. We can say that there is negotiation about these things. Often, where misbehavior is officially not allowed but there is some degree of toleration, special language is developed – absenteeism for unauthorized absence, pilferage for theft. Just as clearly overstepping the predefined limits takes finely balanced relationships into new territory, and can jeopardize a relationship that most would rather leave undisturbed. The recognition that there is usually complicity over the definition of events leads to the conclusion that organizational misbehavior is in key respects a co-production between the parties to the employment relationship. Most forms of misbehavior are recognizably the joint product of the relationship between management and the other employees. In this there is usually, however, some continuing ambivalence on the part of managers toward misbehavior and a recurrent tendency to reconsider customary levels of tolerance. Limited toleration is usually a product of expediency in the first place, such that the allowance of misbehavior is perceived to have some benefits – such as setting up the expectation of flexibility and toleration from employees in return. Once established as an informal allowance, however, there could be much disruption following from a crack-down and the reassertion of zero tolerance. Thus lateness, sickness absence, and turnover are typical reactions to the introduction of strong penalties for casual absences, as employees react to the curtailment of what they consider to be a customary benefit. Sacking employees for relatively minor infringements – pour encourager les autres – is not itself without considerable direct costs, especially in full and over-full labor markets. New workers have to be recruited and trained, and they may not have the qualities of workers let go. In the circumstances, the classic forms of misbehavior developed as a range of distinctive things with distinctive processes producing them. Such behavior as absenteeism and pilferage, for example, becomes something distinctive when it is undertaken by employees, but attempts at control well short of complete extermination are brought to bear by managers. This behavior appears as innovation, but if we take a broader perspective, it must be seen as innovation in response to industrial discipline. The kinds of misbehavior described here were supported by a developed degree of work-group self-organization, and the character of this is important to notice. Casual absence from work would be tolerated but

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only within well-recognized and quite limited quotas. Taking too much absence without good excuse could threaten the continuation of the practice for everyone. Thus, self-organization would typically entail a willingness to regulate the behavior of a work team, so as to put pressure on a member taking too much time off. Although, clearly, misbehavior was to some extent in the control of workgroups – and so could help to make work tolerable and even enjoyable – it by no means implied complete freedom to work as when employees would choose. Usually what was allowed and not allowed was an unambiguous rule, rooted in what has been called the ‘‘industrial subculture’’ (Collinson, 1992; Turner, 1971). In many workplaces this subculture was highly developed. A subculture, of course, can be defined as a distinctive set of values and norms imposing some degree of conformity on its members. It has to be said that, although this subculture was, in distinctive ways, oppositional to the values and beliefs officially sanctioned, it was not egalitarian. Thus, a clear feature of the industrial subculture was an informal hierarchy in which norms of conduct would be imposed on subordinate members and especially juniors and newcomers. The primary means of enforcement would be group pressure, but sometimes more direct means, such as individual abuse and harassment. The phenomenon of industrial rites de passage in which new members of workgroups are subject to degrading rites is a feature of developed unofficial group hierarchies (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, pp. 63–67). Surprisingly perhaps, such things are not often interpreted or experienced as degradations. The points to note here are that these arrangements – including customary forms of allowed misbehavior – provide each group member with a location and identity. In this and other ways these practices are clearly functional for people at work. Nor are they without value to managers, at least those managing shops and departments. They soften the hard edge of industrial discipline and give employees some sense of controlling their circumstances.

MISBEHAVIOR IN MORE RECENT TIMES Quite a lot has changed in the last few decades. What we knew – or thought we knew – about misbehavior turns out to be in relation to a particular time and type of location. Many of the research reports that were available related to work in relatively large organizations where bureaucracy was quite highly developed. Clearly too, there was a broader set of socioeconomic conditions that allowed organizations of the requisite type to

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flourish. Viewed in retrospect, these conditions had been remarkably enduring and stable: emerging, spreading, and becoming prevalent in Westernized economies during the long boom following the World War II. In the types of organizational structure prevalent at the time, there was a certain distance between supervision and the higher ranks of management, giving supervisors quite a lot of discretion concerning day-to-day management. These were the conditions allowing autonomy to be granted to supervisors and for extensive self-organization to develop among work groups. It is in this context the standard forms of misbehavior we have considered already – absenteeism, work limitation, fiddling, and pilferage – emerged and became crystallized. Thus it was that, although there were many local variations in incidence, some distinctive forms of misbehavior were to be found in many places of work. In a way this was a remarkable development because these particular patterns of action and interaction contain conflicting intentions and interests. In the types of organizational misbehavior we have been discussing so far, differences between contending parties were obvious, but these were nonetheless somehow accommodated. All the classic forms of misbehavior at work we have so far mentioned were based on a mutual recognition of the differences between the parties to work contracts; and they were in that sense a co-production. Thus they contributed to a modus Vivendi, that is, a way of living, within which people worked. In the process, much potential conflict was absorbed and did not spill over from the work context into the political arena. For some employees, pushing the boundaries of misbehavior took the form of a game and allowed some diversion, even though it could threaten their security. This is because, if pushed beyond its conventional limits, misbehavior might at any time be redefined from being acceptable to unacceptable and perhaps even criminal. From the point of view of management, misbehavior delivered quiescence if not more fundamental adjustment, though it also appeared as an unsanctioned cost – not to mention apparent evidence of slackness and inefficiency. Despite these problems, to a surprising extent misbehavior was accepted even though the basic conflict in the employment relationship remained unresolved. These standard types of misbehavior we have considered so far were so recurrent that they became to a considerable degree institutionalized. Institutionalization depends on sequences of action and interaction being widely recognized and accepted as normal by those involved, and the process blunts any radical impact a particular act might have. The traditional forms of misbehavior that preoccupied managers in the postwar period– work limitation, absenteeism, and pilferage – and that

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finally became recognized by academics in the 1980s and 1990s have not gone away. However, they are no longer the center of attention. Of course in some workplaces, especially factories, they exist pretty much as they have always done (Collinson, 1992; Ezzamel, Willmott, & Worthington, 2001). However, among managers in general there seems no longer to be a preoccupation with absence levels or even a concern for re-imposing strong work discipline as there used to be. Such topics no longer feature centrally in operational management discourses. Thus, there are abundant indications that the classic forms of misbehavior are no longer of prime concern for the managers in plants and offices; and we have now to consider why this is. However, in general, if the analysis of the rise of classic misbehavior is correct, then it seems likely that key conditions for their institutionalization are no longer present. In support of this, the mutual recognition of the contending parties about these practices is certainly very difficult to see today. There is no longer widespread agreement about what is allowable and what is not. As we shall see, two key things have happened: there has been much innovation in managerial control regimes and, if the findings of more recent research into work are accepted, there is much innovation of new kinds of misbehavior as well. Certainly, there have been some important changes in organizational structures and the dominant types of connections between organizations, as well as in managerial control arrangements. Thus, there has been:  A shift away from manufacture in countries such as Britain and Australia. Such organizations are no longer predominant in numbers; nor are they, perhaps more to the point, important symbolically. Manufacturing jobs, which in Britain accounted for around 40% of total employment as recently as 1970, had dwindled to around 10% by 2000 (Ackroyd, 2002; Ackroyd & Whitaker,1989), and of course work in manufacture – typically in large plants – was the main focus for the research we discussed in the last section. Where manufacturing continues, however, it is not undertaken on the same basis as it used to be. Today, manufacturing plants are relatively small-scale and widely distributed. The emergence of supply chains for the components required to make complex products such as cars has meant that even final assembly plants can be quite small by historical standards. Small structures do not have extended hierarchies. In short, in manufacture, the space between supervision and higher management has been cut down where it has not been entirely removed.  New organizations and new types of work. Jobs in commerce and services have become much more prevalent and typical than those in manufacture

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in Britain and Australia.4 In Britain the only areas of growth in employment during the period 1980–1999 were financial, property, and business services. By the end of this period, organizations providing these services had become nearly a quarter of all organizations (Ackroyd, 2002). However, it would be a mistake to assume that a high proportion of this employment growth has been in professional work in boutique finance houses or business consultancies. The huge growth of call centers and call center jobs – which are in the business services sector – make the point. Such organizations tend to employ large numbers of people undertaking highly predictable and monotonous work, which is not well paid and has few prospects. Thus, in some service organizations, although the work is less physically demanding, working conditions are otherwise comparable with factory work (Taylor & Bain, 1999).5 Finally we should also note that more established and secure white collar and professional workers are not exempt from misbehavior at work, where identification with the employer is often problematic today. Professional work in the public and private sectors is also becoming increasingly subject to routinization and subject to financial control, leading to the possibility of more misbehavior there too (Bolton, 2005; Hodgson, 2005; Karreman & Alvesson, 2009; McCabe, 2011).  Loss of traditional labor markets and labor market re-structuring. Secure jobs in traditional areas of the economy, and especially manufacturing, have become scarce and the competition for them is relatively great. The demand for employees with traditional skills has fallen away dramatically. The rise of new types of jobs has not led to an increase in the numbers of jobs with varied content, good pay, and promotion prospects. The loss of what are sometimes referred to as ‘‘good jobs’’(Constable, Coates, Bevan, & Mahdon, 2009; Sennett, 1998) is to some extent masked because there are at least some jobs available. However, many of these are inferior jobs – sometimes disparagingly labeled McJobs (Etzioni, 1986; Lindsay & McQuaid, 2004). They are unskilled, often part-time and/or temporary positions and poorly paid (Constable et al., 2009). Access to the remaining pool of good jobs increases only after applicants have achieved relevant qualifications and through unpaid internships. In these circumstances the threat of job loss tends to mean that work discipline is selfimposed as much as it is externally imposed. These changes in the labor market have in some ways reduced the disciplinary requirements that full employment placed on managements. The changes in the labor market are one indicator of a substantial shift in the balance of power in favor of the employer. The implications of this for misbehavior are far-reaching, as we shall see.

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 Availability of new and powerful information technology and integrated business information systems. Information technology is of course capable of many applications in the area of individual work performance. For some analysts (Knights, 1990; Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992), the possibility of electronic monitoring of work performance has made the old distinction between direct control and responsible autonomy largely irrelevant. There is no need for employees to be under direct observation today, and there is often no supervisor observing their work performance. Sophisticated information technology and programming provides the ability to collect and store detailed records of work activity and performance because the majority of work today is system-mediated. Even in factories production equipment and machine tools are connected and coordinated by information systems. Where work is administrative and/or involved in the transfer of goods or money, there are also many opportunities for data collection relating to work performance. Thus IT puts into management hands powerful tools for work measurement and control. However, there is accumulating evidence of subversion of surveillance systems (Button, Mason, & Sharrock, 2003; McKinlay & Taylor, 1996; Taylor & Bain, 1999)  Changed managerial policies. These are, in intention at least, widely thought to be more controlling of work behavior than in the past. One such proposal concerns managerial attempts to utilize culture as a tool of control. Realizing the importance of culture in shaping behavior led managers to attempt to manipulate employee behavior through control of culture. Such ideas are now widely discredited6 and doubts have been cast on their efficacy (Badham, Gerrety, Morrigan, Zanko, & Dawson, 2003; Grugulis, Dundon, & Wilkinson, 2000). On the other hand, there are other attempts to manipulate employee behavior more fully, which have to be taken seriously. This is probably true of some sectors more than others such as the provision of personal services. There has been much discussion, for example, of what has been called ‘‘emotion management,’’ in which there have been attempts to control the behavior of key service providers. Here the most popular arguments concern the development of emotion management and are associated with the work of Hochschild (1985/2003), in which she looked at attempts to manage the deportment of aircraft cabin staff. However, some more recent research has shown that there can be effective resistance to such developments (Bolton, 2005). Another area of significant development has been increasing reliance on self-managing teams, which are expected to meet stipulated production targets without detailed supervision (Barker, 1993)

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So what are the consequences of these changes for misbehavior? There are of course different ideas about this. One view is that the balance of power has shifted so firmly in the direction of employers that the possibility of misbehavior has effectively been closed down. Most of the points listed above suggest a comprehensive shift in the direction of greater power in the hands of managers. To those that object that such data have to be collected and interpreted for it to be useful as a disciplinary resource – which uses up managerial time and costs money – the rejoinder is that it is not necessary that work is constantly under scrutiny. The key point is that employees cannot be sure they are not under surveillance. They are obliged to assume that they may be under scrutiny at any time, leading, so the argument runs, to the internalization of work discipline (Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994; Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992). Given such possibilities, for some authors, the end of organizational misbehavior is in sight. However, this sort of reaction greatly underestimates the strength of the impulse to innovate and to escape from control. Also it underestimates the ingenuity of employees in devising effective schemes to evade effective surveillance and refuse control. There is no IT system so technically sophisticated that it cannot be traduced and subverted. It is more than plausible to think that the scarcity of employment has shifted the basic location of effective work discipline from the need for external control to reliance on internal self-control. There is certainly some evidence that this trend is particularly marked in some areas. If you have what is judged a good job, for example, there is usually no need to be reminded that keeping it is important. Also, the introduction of new types of work and organization has disrupted traditional patterns of self-organization, which will have to be rediscovered if workplace dissent is to return in similar forms to before. In the meantime, there has been a rise of scholarly interest in such new types of workplace behavior such as presenteeism, workaholism, and burnout, all of which may be attributed to the effects of over-zealous self-discipline. Presenteeism is largely studied as a limited phenomenon – the opposite of sickness absenteeism, in which employees attend work when they are actually sick. The motivation behind this is not extensively analyzed. Presenteeism is seen as a problem by human resource specialists primarily because it reduces the efficiency of an employing organization. The extent of such behavior is difficult to assess if only because (sometimes severe) self-discipline has long been a feature of professional engagement with work. There can be no doubt that the shift in favor of the employer, which we have described, does encourage excessive hours of work and indeed abuse and exploitation of employees in some

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organizations. On the other hand, there is very little reason to think that presentism and over-zealous work performance have become widespread. The empirical record – as seen in the empirical studies of work that continue to become available – shows the opposite, that misbehavior is actually still with us. Among white collar and professional employees there is much evidence of the cynicism and detachment of employees (Casey, 1995; Fleming & Spicer, 2003; Kunda, 1995). Though often well hidden, misbehavior among professional employees is not unknown. Indeed, there is evidence of managerial misbehavior, in such things as failing to disclose risks to employees and placing loyalty to bosses above honesty (Jackall, 2010), not to mention insider dealing and demands for excessive pay increases (Sayles & Smith, 2005). In more mundane types of employment, especially service work and routine administration, there is much evidence of the proliferation of low-level misbehavior such as overt cynicism, dissent, and other noncompliant behavior. Contu (2008) has memorably referred to this as ‘‘decaf resistance’’ suggesting that it is not really serious, and cannot be considered, as analysts tend to assume, that it is somehow a proxy for rebellion. On the other hand, it is clearly not evidence of excessive compliance. Fleming and Spicer in their recent book Contesting the Corporation (2007) are among the most eclectic collectors of evidence from a range of contemporary sources of examples of misbehavior and dissent. They argue that there are in many work situations numerous cross-cutting lines of cleavage and difference in the workplace around which differences can and do find expression in the contemporary workplace. Thus it is claimed that misbehavior has been completely transformed in that there are no standard forms of misconduct anymore and that misbehavior has become highly diverse (and much of it is inconsequential in terms of lasting effects). It should perhaps be underlined that although much of this behavior is apparently trivial and seemingly inconsequential, the ethnographic record does not suggest that misbehavior has gone away; anything but. There are, in fact, reasons to think that the available evidence equally supports another reading. The argument here is that the current period is one of the transitions inaugurated by changes in the structure of the economy as outlined above, and the shift in the relative powers of employers and managers over employees. Managerial regimes of control have changed and are continuing to change in ways that are imagined to be more effective control procedures, but far from proven to be so. True, there has been the introduction of a range of new manipulative devices and control expedients (team-working, surveillance, remote monitoring, counseling) that now coexist alongside the residue of increasingly irrelevant control devices

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formerly used (close supervision, piecework). Thus, generally, the emphasis of control strategies has shifted away from both direct control and the extension of responsible autonomy to more indirect observation through technology and the use of new and often much more manipulative indirect control devices. These include performance indicators and performance review: codes of dress and comportment, scripting, and other behavioral demands in client interactions. At present, however, managerial control systems and employee responses are in many places out of alignment. What we see is employees being creative in their behavior and not simply capitulating to the new forms of control. What observers such as Fleming and Spicer have spotted is the proliferation of behavior not before seen; that is all. Current corporate changes and their new (and sometimes contradictory) policies (Thompson, 2003) add up to the possibility of many new opportunities for behavioral innovation on the part of employees, which we must expect to occur. However, it is not necessarily the case that innovations will continue or that change per se becomes the new norm. Given the view developed in the early sections when the origins of misbehavior were considered, we should actually envisage the opposite to these tendencies. In the circumstances it seems likely that, when the shape of preferred managerial regimes settles into consistent patterns, their focus will be on particular behavioral innovations that are found particularly problematic and which can be expected to acquire much more importance for managers. These may eventually become co-defined forms of misbehavior. Key forms of misbehavior, which are seen to cause excessive problems, may be expected to become much more sharply defined. They may become semi-institutionalized as before; but they may also remain a continuing and greater challenge to managers than anything seen previously. Since institutionalization blunts the impact of misbehavior, there is only a limited welcome for it. In sum, although we can point to many examples of new dissent and evasion today, in the medium term, we must expect the emergence of new focal points of conflict. The evidence of misbehavior we now see is of variety consistent with the idea that new things are being tried, and old types are also changing. Pilferage and issues concerning access to products, for example, are not now seen to be a problem in the way that they once were. To some extent this is related to the relative lack of productive institutions in developed economies such as Britain and Australia. Apart from taking home supplies of stationery, or perhaps fiddling travel expenses, there is relatively little appropriation of product for the average administrative worker to do. In retailing, the widespread adoption of electronic surveillance has not come close to reducing stock shrinkage, which continues to be a problem.

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Industry analysts think surveillance has reduced theft from shops by customers, and also think that pilferage by employees – who are aware of any security measures and their limitations – has filled in the gap. Working out how product is escaping from shops and production plants can consume huge amounts of management time, and here as elsewhere, there is a tendency to accept ‘‘shrinkage’’ that is within normal levels. As has been said before, there is no technology of work control so sophisticated that it cannot be (and will not be) subverted by employees. Given that it will occur, does the cost of finding out just how it is done and closing it down justify any cost recovery? The difference between what is happening in this area today and what went before is not very great, except that the problems are not given so much exposure. Casual absenteeism has also disappeared and for a similar reason. It is not measured so much. Piecework has gone in favor of measured work and indirect measures of performance. In response to any new constraints however, there is epidemic innovation of ‘‘time misbehavior,’’ which is less easy to quantify and can be very difficult to manage. Classic absenteeism was casual, a matter of a few hours or, at worst, days, and typically unpaid. Thus, except in the lost work, it was not otherwise a great cost. Today, absence is excused by sickness and tends to be longer term. Indeed sickness absence is legally allowed in the UK and paid for by the employer and/or the state. This is the main problem of absence from work. Given the ease of access to sanctioned time off through feigned sickness, the problem of absence has become that of preventing employees from including a quota of sickness days as an addition to their leave entitlement instead of attempting to prevent it. The adoption of flexitime arrangements and home-working has also greatly complicated the problems of controlling of ‘‘time abuse,’’ as it is sometimes now called. The difficulties of effectively policing subtle timewasting are also very great. Business systems are designed to close down the spaces for time abuse, but are not always effective. Though many employers now limit the access of administrative workers to the Internet and/or monitor their access to social networking sites, it is clear that there is much of this in many workplaces. In many circumstances it is suspected that group monitoring of time use is often present, as it was in the case of casual absenteeism, though it is now more subtle than it used to be. But there is no reason to think it is less effective than before. Similarly, there are new subtleties in work limitation. Though employers try to monitor the active working time of employees, practices sustained below the radar of surveillance systems are clearly growing in importance. There is, for example, the widespread invention of ‘‘busyness,’’ in which

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there is the appearance of work activity, in which the appearance of work is sustained. Even in work that is highly constrained by work-flow programs something of the sort is often possible. Often it is sufficient for an employee to pay attention to the right screens in the right sequence, but not necessarily to produce an effective result. Electronic work assessment systems are relatively poor at checking links between individual work sequences and eventual outcomes. There are now many examples in which employees dealing with customers do so in the allowed period, but, deliberately or not, do not actually clear up their problem. The outcome is often that they return to the company with a more complex problem at a later date. From the point of view of the assessment of employee performance, a requisite number of cases have been dealt with; but from the point of view of the company, attempts to control the amount of work done in a given time is actually counter-productive. Much of this illustrates the point that when individualized controls are introduced and group output limitation controls are undermined, the result is not necessarily enhanced control for managers. Evidence of effective policies of output control is clearly lacking in the ethnographic record.

CONCLUSION Whether or not concerted and challenging forms of misbehavior will reemerge, as it has suggested here they might, is of course an empirical matter as well as a problem for social scientists. However, this chapter will be concluded by the suggestion that the impulse to misbehave is still widely present, and is even appearing in the most unlikely workplaces. While there is little evidence of new forms of misbehavior comparable with the absenteeism, work limitation, and so on seen in the past, the potentiality for it is clearly present. Certainly the preconditions for misbehavior are present. For example, psychological disengagement and distancing from the employing organization is basic to all kinds of organizational misbehavior and there is abundant evidence that this is a reality for many employees today. Without such engagement, a sympathetic understanding of the nature of a business in which one works, and/or appreciation the importance of the contribution made, misbehavior is likely. But, much of recurrent managerial policy today in some obvious ways actively discourages trust and the identification of the employee with the concerns and interests of the business. When wages are low, work is repetitive and/or routine; if there is no prospect of career advancement, and even the likelihood of long-term

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employment is wanting, the commitment of employees is likely to be chronically weak also. Fragmented work processes, in which it is difficult to see the contribution that any one employee makes, also inhibit identification. These are conditions that are becoming more and more widespread. Evidence of dissent and beyond this the possibility of more serious acts of rebellion is springing up in the most unlikely places. Darren McCabe, for example, has recently written with some poignancy about the situation of the employees of British banks, whose work performance is routinely measured, who are routinely appraised, and who also have memories of a recent threat of redundancy while experiencing salary stagnation (McCabe, 2011). All this is against the background of burgeoning profits for the bank and hugely increased benefits for top executives. In his study, however, McCabe finds a marked disinclination to unionize or to contemplate strike action among the employees he interviewed. On the other hand he finds some indications of resistance to management among this workforce – such as voicing criticism of some aspects of managerial policies – among otherwise much evidence of consent by employees to increasing work demands. McCabe concludes by being unable to persuade himself that there is actually any effective resistance among the clerks in the bank. On the other hand, his evidence is interesting because banking has never been an industry noted for rebellious employees.7 High levels of work discipline in traditional banking were encouraged by stable career hierarchies in which relatively low starting wages were traded, by a predominantly male workforce, for career security and prospects of advancement in the longer term. Much of this has now gone. The banking workforce at the lower levels is de-professionalized and predominately female, wages are low, and promotion prospects are limited; but, clearly too, the highly conservative culture of banking is showing distinct signs of change. In the circumstances any expressions of dissent given in formal interviews could be regarded as impressive new evidence of willingness to dissent. Dissent is a kind of behavior now proposed as one possible new area for significant misbehavior. Dissent, the spoken or written failure to approve official views and to propose alternatives, might be thought not very serious as a measure of misbehavior (Collinson & Ackroyd, 2005). In Western thinking, there is a tendency to distinguish sharply between thought and action, and to allocate dissent (as mere words) to the realm of thought. And yet, spoken and written words are not simply the embodiment of thoughts; they are themselves a special kind of demonstrative act (as the law relating to libel and slander clearly recognizes). Dictators do not tolerate dissent

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because it is the first step toward, and an essential starting point for, more concerted actions, which have an ineluctable tendency to follow. Dissenters in the Anglican Church did not draw a line between preaching their particular version of Protestantism, creating a mass movement from the enthusiasm preaching and proselytizing generated, and building the churches that physically embodied their ideas. Dissenting ideas are necessary for self-organization, which is in turn the foundation for assertive action. Contemporary management actually does not readily tolerate criticism from below, nor is it disposed to listen to alternatives to current policies; but management also finds the expressions of such ideas troublesome. These ideas are very difficult for them overtly to discourage. In democratic society, authority ought to allow criticism – always – and there is the obvious possibility that it might well benefit from it. It is surely paradoxical that a company invites suggestions, enjoins the participation of workgroups in exchanges of ideas, and yet imposes very clear limits on what can be discussed and in what manner it can be said. Failure to listen does not, of course, reduce criticism, but it is likely to encourage cynicism and other responses as well. Cynicism is one of the most widespread findings from the qualitative study of organizations today (Fleming & Spicer, 2007, pp. 69–88). Again it has been argued that cynicism is a dead end for effective dissent; that it is a form of complacency, in which the cynic congratulates himself/herself on taking the right view, adopts the moral high ground, but sees no point in actually doing anything (Fleming & Spicer, 2007; Zizek, 1989). On the other hand, cynicism is not necessarily a permanent condition and resignation is not necessarily an accompaniment of it. Cynicism is at the root of – and is a stimulus to – satire, which can be a particularly virulent form of dissent. In satire, the attitudes and values of the powerful are lampooned, parodied, and held up to unflattering public scrutiny (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, pp. 111–113). The emergence of satirical responses to authority is an event of singular importance: it marks the point at which criticism becomes implacable and probably also unforgivable and thus potentially marks a permanent rupture. Also, inevitably, it marks the point at which anything done by authority is regarded in the same unflattering way: as, inevitably, part of an ongoing sequence of ill-advised, self-serving, if not worse action. The point to make is surely that the development of cynicism and satire, which follow from ignored dissent, cannot be good for engendering behavior that automatically acts to support and develop the employing organization and its objectives. Thus, the existence of dissent suggests there is an immovable bedrock of independent thought, which could at any time be the starting point for actions. In itself

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informed dissent qualifies as a distinctive new form of misbehavior because it is a standing challenge to the managerial viewpoint, and it is for this reason likely to be a recurrent target for managerial action.

NOTES 1. If we take the idea that misbehavior at work is widespread seriously, it is only a short step or two to the erroneous conclusion that another good reason for studying misbehavior – which, after all, includes such things as time-wasting, absenteeism and pilferage – is that it costs a great deal of money and management time. However, putting this forward as a reason for studying misbehavior is problematic because it implies that there are ready and effective solutions to misbehavior, which is actually not true. In fact, it has often been found in practice that the costs of attempting to control misbehavior – monetary and other – add up to much more than the effects of the original problem. In addition, there is also the possibility that some misbehavior at work is not actually dysfunctional for organizations, and may in some circumstances contribute to their effectiveness. If this can be claimed, our best motive for studying misbehavior is that it is better to know what is happening than to remain in ignorance. 2. At this point we have to recognize how much the forms of behavior identified in this diagram are conventional, and to a large extent defined by mutual agreement. Without noting this, there is the possibility that similar things may be given different labels, with very different results. When chatting to a manager in a plant not many years ago, I asked: ‘‘what do you do about sabotage?’’ He answered: ‘‘Instant dismissal and referral to the police.’’ The point here was I had in mind the widespread practice of temporary machine breakdown, which is not always identified as sabotage, while he identified the term with destructiveness on a larger scale – comparable with blowing up railways to impede an invading army. The problem, of course, is one of definition. It is not always possible to distinguish whether a machine tool that suddenly does not work has been tampered with (i.e., it has been temporarily sabotaged) or whether it has stopped because of a legitimate fault or through accumulating wear and tear. Also, a supervisor who suspects the former may yet not be willing to make the accusation in the absence of proof and when the company policy specifies instant dismissal. In such circumstances there will be a tendency to assume wear and tear and call in the maintenance engineer. Similar points can be made about the other area here to which the criminal law readily applies – employee theft. Here again, Company policy in relation to product acquired by employees without permission is usually regarded as theft, treated as ground for dismissal and prosecution. On the other hand, it is interesting to note how much unusual language appears in these examples. ‘‘Pilferage’’ and ‘‘stock shrinkage’’ do not have the criminal meaning that is almost unavoidably attributed to theft. They are terms that have been invented so that the loss of product they refer to can be discussed without pointing to the relevance of criminal proceedings. To be caught red handed is one thing, not to be strongly suspected is another thing. Supervisors have to live with the consequences of their draconian actions in a way that more senior managers do not.

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3. This is of course a version of the distinction Friedman draws between responsible autonomy and direct control. 4. Mining and extraction is a key growth area for the Australian economy in contrast to Britain, of course. However, the sector still employs rather few people in proportion to its economic importance. 5. It is no accident that the types of call centers in which these things have been noted are much the same from a structural point of view, as large industrial plants, with broad spans of control and several levels of management. Indeed developed worker self-organization is noted in some research reports into call centers, as well misbehavior and resistance (Taylor & Bain, 1999). 6. It was widely mooted, for example, following the work of Peters and Waterman (1982) that it was possible to develop systems of cultural incorporation in which employees would not just pay lip-service to but would believe and espouse company policies. To achieve this would be to completely reverse the situation described earlier, in which the traditional ‘‘industrial subculture’’ belonged to employees and indeed was, in an important sense, their creation. Again there is no denying that in some places managers have tried to develop distinctive company cultures and a whole industry has grown up to try to package and sell culture change programs (Bate, 1998). However, this has proved to be much less easy than it might at first appear. Culture change requires substantial proportion of employees in an organization to change their values, a process that will at best take a good deal of time, and is very sensitive to quite small setbacks. In practice, the trickle-down methods widely used for dissemination of new values give too little exposure to employees – especially those at the lowest levels in the organization – to be effective. In addition the values of loyalty and inclusiveness, which are typically emphasized in managerial rhetoric in change culture initiatives, can so easily be contradicted and undermined by other managerial actions and priorities. Pursuit of profitability, for example, may lead to the closure of the unprofitable parts of an organization, a decision likely to be taken independently of any consideration of the performance of employees. Such actions constitute fundamental challenges to culture-change initiatives that typically emphasize long-term mutual commitment. 7. Traditionally unions in British banking were divided by company affiliation and highly conservative, tending to behave more like a professional associations than as trade unions. They typically adopted defensive postures against such things as extended opening hours and were preoccupied with defending working conditions. After a series of mergers in the 1990s and a brief period of relative militancy, banking unionism went into steep decline. Banking employees are now principally served by Amicus, which is a general union, and union density is very low.

REFERENCES Ackroyd, S. (2002). The organization of business. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ackroyd, S. (2009). Organizational conflict. In S. Clegg & C. Cooper (Eds.), The sage handbook of organisational behaviour: Macro approaches (pp. 192–208). London: Sage. [Chapter 11]. Ackroyd, S., & Thompson, P. (1999). Organisational misbehaviour. London: Sage.

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Ackroyd, S., & Whitaker, A. (1989). Manufacturing decline and the organisation of manufacture in Britain. In P. Stewart, et al. (Eds.), Restructuring for economic flexibility (pp. 9–32). Aldershot: Avebury. [Chapter 2]. Badham, R., Gerrety, K., Morrigan, V., Zanko, M., & Dawson, P. (2003). Designer deviance: Enterprise and deviance in culture change programs. Organization, 10(4), 707–730. Baldamus, W. (1961). Efficiency and effort. London: Tavistock. Barker, J. (1993). Tightening the iron cage: Concertative control in self-managing teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(2), 408–437. Bate, P. (1998). Strategies for cultural change. London: Butterworth Hyman. Behrend, H. (1957). The effort bargain. Industrial and Labour Relations Review, 10(4), 503–515. Bolton, S. (2005). Emotion management in the workplace. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Braverman, H. (1974). Labour and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press. Buchanan, D., & Badham, R. (1999). Power, politics and organizational change: Winning the turf game. London: Sage. Burawoy, M. (1979). Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labor process under monopoly capitalism. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Button, G., Mason, D., & Sharrock, W. W. (2003). Disempowerment and resistance in the print industry? Reactions to surveillance-capable technology. New Technology, Work and Employment, 18(1), 50–61. Casey, C. (1995). Work, self and society: After industrialism. London: Routledge. Collinson, D. L. (1992). Managing the shopfloor: Subjectivity, masculinity and workplace culture. Berlin: de Gruyter. Collinson, D. L., & Ackroyd, S. (2005). Resistance, misbehavior and dissent. In S. Ackroyd, R. Batt, P. Thompson & P. Tolbert (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of work and organisation (pp. 305–326). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Constable, S., Coates, D., Bevan, S., & Mahdon, M. (2009). Good jobs. London: The Work Foundation. Contu, A. (2008). Decaf resistance. Management Communication Quarterly, 21(3), 364–379. Cronin, J. E. (1979). Industrial conflict in modern Britain. London: Croom Helm. Dalton, H. (1948). The industrial rate buster. Applied Anthropology, 7(1), 5–23. Edwards, P. K. (1986). Conflict at work. Oxford: Blackwell. Edwards, P. K., & Scullion, H. (1982). The social organization of industrial conflict. Oxford: Blackwell. Etzioni, A. (1986). McJobs are bad for kids. The Washington Post, August 24, p. 14. Ezzamel, M., Willmott, H., & Worthington, F. (2001). Power, control and resistance in the factory that time forgot. Journal of management Studies, 38(8), 1054–1079. Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2003). Working at a cynical distance: Implications for power, subjectivity and resistance. Organization, 10(1), 157–179. Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2007). Contesting the corporation: Struggle, power and resistance in organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Friedman, A. (1977). Industry and labour: Class struggle at work in monopoly capitalism. London: Macmillan. Grugulis, I., Dundon, T., & Wilkinson, A. (2000). Cultural control and the ‘Culture Manager’: Employment practices in a consultancy. Work, Employment and Society, 14(1), 97–116.

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Hochschild, A. R. (1985/2003). The managed heart: The commercialization of human feeling. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California Press. Hodgson, D. (2005). Putting on professional performance: Performativity, subversion and project management. Organization, 12, 51–68. Jackall, R. (2010). Moral mazes: The world of corporate managers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jermier, J. M., Knights, D., & Nord, W. R. (1994). Resistance and power in organisations. London: Routledge. Karlsson, J. Ch. (2012). Organisational misbehaviour in the workplace: Narratives of dignity and resistance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Karreman, D., & Alvesson, M. (2009). Resisting resistance: Counter-resistance, consent and compliance in a consultancy firm. Human Relations, 62(8), 1115–1144. Knights, D. (1990). Subjectivity, power and the labour process. In D. Knights & H. Willmott (Eds.), Labour process theory (pp. 5–25). London: Macmillan. Kunda, G. (1995). Engineering culture: Control and commitment in a high-tech corporation. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Lindsay, C., & McQuaid, R. W. (2004). Avoiding the McJobs: Unemployed job seekers and attitudes to service work. Work, Employment and Society, 18(2), 297–319. McCabe, D. (2011). Accounting for consent: Exploring the reproduction of the labour process. Sociology, 45(3), 430–446. McKinlay, A., & Taylor, P. (1996). Power, surveillance and resistance: Inside the factory of the future. In P. Ackers, C. Smith & P. Smith (Eds.), The new workplace and trade unionism: Critical perspectives on work and organisation (pp. 127–145). London: Routledge. Peters, T., & Waterman, R. H. (1982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America’s best run companies. New York, NY: Harper Business. Prasad, P., & Prasad, A. (2000). Stretching the Iron cage: The constitution and implications of routine workplace resistance. Organization Science, 11(4), 387–403. Roy, D. (1952). Quota restriction and goldbricking in a machine shop. American Journal of Sociology, 57(5), 427–442. Sayles, L., & Smith, C. (2005). The rise of the rogue executive. New York, NY: Pearson Education. Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York, NY: Norton. Sewell, G., & Wilkinson, B. (1992). Someone to watch over me surveillance, discipline and the just in time labour process. Sociology, 26(2), 271–289. Taylor, F. (1947). Scientific management. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Taylor, P., & Bain, P. (1999). An assembly line in the head: Work and employee relations in the call centre. Industrial Relations Journal, 30(2), 101–117. Thompson, P. (2003). Disconnected capitalism: Or why employers can’t keep their side of the bargain. Work, Employment and Society, 17(2), 359–378. Tilly, A., & Tilly, C. (1981). Class conflict and collective action. London: Sage Publications. Turner, B. (1971). Exploring the industrial sub-culture. London: Macmillan. Vardi, Y., & Weiner, Y. (1996). Misbehaviour in organisations: A motivational framework. Organization Science, 7(2), 151–165. Zizek, S. (1989). The sublime object of ideology. London: Verso.

STILL ‘‘STAYING LOOSE IN A TIGHTENING WORLD’’? REVISITING GERALD MARS’ CHEATS AT WORK Louise Thornthwaite and Peter McGraw ABSTRACT Purpose – To examine Gerald Mars’ contribution to scholarly understanding of workplace crime by revisiting his seminal work, Cheats at Work, and to explore developments in the forms, patterns, and implications of cheating at work since its publication. Methodology/approach – This chapter critically reviews Cheats at Work and explores the changing nature of fiddling over time using the analytical framework and four associated occupational categories of workplace crime identified by Mars. The review is based on three main sources: recent scholarly literature on misbehavior, deviance, and employee misconduct; cases from industrial law reports, newspapers, and social media; and the views of informants conveyed directly to the authors. Findings – The analytical framework that Mars contributed remains useful even if the boundaries of the occupational categories of workplace

Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 29–55 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019005

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crime are now more blurred, with some jobs and fiddles spanning categories. Although, technology has changed the nature of fiddling, new forms have emerged as old ones have disappeared. Social implications – Three decades after publication of Mars’s study, it is evident that fiddling remains a normal, albeit covert, activity in many jobs and occupations. His typology continues to be valuable for explaining patterns, forms, and implications of cheating at work. Originality/value of chapter – Given the growing interest in the forms and implications of misbehavior and workplace resistance, this chapter provides an opportunity for reflection on the enduring salience of Cheats at Work, thirty years after its publication. Keywords: Misbehavior; theft; fiddling; employee resistance; workplace crime

INTRODUCTION In August 2006, the Australian airline, Qantas terminated the employment of a long-haul flight attendant, employed with the company for 32 years, for serious misconduct on the grounds of theft. After disembarking from a plane in Japan, after the third of a four-leg international flight, the crew were subjected to a security inspection. The security team discovered that the attendant had a number of items from company stores in his pockets and in the snack pack in his luggage. These items included 16 individually wrapped chocolates, 3 individually wrapped biscuits, 1 sachet of sugar, 1 coffee stirrer and 2 Qantas branded pens. The attendant was stood down immediately, and subsequently dismissed. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission found the dismissal unfair on the basis that there had been no dishonest intent. Rather, the attendant was inadvertently in possession of spoiled items at the time of the security check.1 In 2009, German courts confirmed a number of dismissals for theft at work. One concerned the dismissal of a kitchen assistant who had taken two bread rolls from a hospital. Another case, widely reported in the German media, involved a 50 year old supermarket cashier who could not account for a deficit of 1.30 euros in her cash till. The cashier, who had been employed in the supermarket for 31 years, allegedly pocketed two coupons amounting to a cash credit of 1.30 euros which the store gave out to customers for returning empty bottles. A third case concerned a worker in Oberhausen who was dismissed on the spot for stealing electricity. In charging his mobile phone at work, the employee had allegedly stolen electricity to the estimated value of 0.014 cent or less than one-seven thousandth of a euro. (Casagrande, 2009; Euronews, 2009)

There are probably few employees who could honestly say they have never left the workplace without something that is the property of their

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employer in their pockets or bag, be it pens, biscuits from the tearoom, office stationery, or some item past its prime. Although technically stealing, employees rarely view such pilfering as either serious misconduct or criminal activity. On the contrary, such activity is in many cases largely unthinking and the employees concerned would be offended if it were to be described as stealing. However, the same employees might consider, for example, stealing small amounts of cash from work to be both illegal and immoral. Equally many employers turn a blind eye to the minor appropriation of company property accepting it as either normal or of no consequence but might be stirred into action should they discover cash being stolen. Yet, as the cases quoted above suggest, when company rules or the laws against minor breaches of behavior are enacted and the full spotlight of legal scrutiny applied, minor indiscretions against company property become breaches of the law equivalent to theft or at least grounds for dismissal in the same way as if cash had been taken. Such is the nature of pilfering or illegal behavior at work. This is an area replete with ambiguous, and shifting boundaries, contrasting behavioral norms and implicit assumptions which is situated at the intersection of personal morality and values, formal organizational rules, informal organizational norms, wider cultural codes and black letter law. In 1982 Gerald Mars helped to develop our understanding of the ‘‘pilfering’’ phenomena with the publication of his ground-breaking and popular book Cheats at Work-An Anthropology of Workplace Crime (1982). In documenting and attempting to explain the usually hidden, but critical shadow world of fiddling at work, Mars’ book made an important contribution toward deepening general understanding of a range of important workplace behaviors that are central to disciplines such as industrial relations, industrial sociology, organizational behavior, and human resource management. In addition the book advanced our understanding of motives, occupational opportunities, and the functional outcomes of different forms of illegality at work. In this chapter, we revisit Mars’ seminal study and review it in the light of developments at work in the three decades since its publication. Our particular focus is on how the forms and patterns of workplace fiddling which he described, and on which his analysis rested, might have changed in the past thirty years and whether this has affected the usefulness of his typology and associated explanation of cheating at work. For Mars, cheating or ‘‘fiddling’’ is often a normal everyday aspect of jobs, rather than symptomatic of deviant behavior. While acknowledging that some fiddling can clearly be classified as criminal behavior or stealing,

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Mars shows at length through his analysis that fiddling often serves constructive purposes for the employment relationship: the movement of resources derived from the job to individual workers is commonly an aspect of the informal working of occupations that provides a form of invisible wages that are a fundamental element of the complete reward system (Mars, 1982, pp. 6–11). Fiddling provides rewards from the ‘‘hidden economy,’’ through covert arrangements, in which supervisors are often complicit because, perhaps paradoxically, these operate in the interests of the organization as a whole (Mars, 1982, p. 195). More recent research in industrial sociology has adopted a similar approach, explaining various forms of worker misbehavior as the result of embedded conflicts and contradictions in the workplace, with misbehavior viewed as something normal within organizations signifying dissent or resistance to employer control (Shamsudin, 2006, pp. 65–68). Underpinning Mars’ analysis of cheating as essentially positive behavior within organizations is the distinction he draws between fiddling, as a legitimate activity, albeit ‘‘crime at work,’’ and stealing and larceny, with their manifestly criminal overtones (Mars, 1982, pp. 163–166). In revisiting Cheats at Work, one of the questions we address is how technology has altered fiddling opportunities for some of those groups of workers that Mars examined. We also consider the implications of this both for patterns of cheating within occupations and how these are explained. Another issue we canvass is whether changes in forms of cheating affect the meaning and significance that fiddling has for participants. To address these questions, we focus in particular on four occupations, which also feature in Mars’ work: supermarket cashiers, bartenders, waiters, and garbage collectors. This review is based on three main sets of sources. First, there is a growing scholarly literature on misbehavior, deviance, and counter-productivity at work in which fiddling and theft are examined, among a variety of forms of employee conduct, in particular occupational contexts. We have drawn on this body of work to inform our analysis of the roles that fiddling plays in workplace relations and the forms it takes. In addition to these sources, our discussion of methods of fiddling in the four occupations we examine is based partly on information from informants and our own observations as customers and clients over many years as well as on industrial law reports, social media postings, and Internet websites. In doing so, our illustrations are drawn from a broader territory than those of Mars who focused exclusively on workers’ fiddles in Britain. However, and while not intending to underestimate cultural influences, which may pertain to fiddling

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patterns, our focus is on occupations that have experienced generally similar changes in technology and the nature of work across countries in the past thirty years. A fertile source of information on contemporary pilfering techniques is provided by published decisions of courts, such as Fair Work Australia and its predecessor, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, in unfair dismissal cases involving allegations of workplace theft. In terms of social media and other Internet sources, we have used blogs and twitter discussions, in which anonymous contributors write about the nature of work in specific occupations, including forms of misbehavior, and a variety of websites, including those of industry bodies and security firms that advise the relevant industries. For Richards (2008), work blogging is a practice through which workers express workplace conflict and resist the labor process. However, the blogosphere is also a primary source of information on behavior at work and attitudes toward work, ‘‘an unmediated glimpse into the world of work’’ (Schoneboom, 2011, p. 133), which can provide lively and crucial insights not documented by traditional sources (Valenza, 2007). While at present the use of blogs is an emerging research method, particularly in ethnographic research, and raises ethical issues where researchers create blogs in order to attract contributors, our use was limited to reading publicly accessible blogs and twitter postings in which participants cannot be identified personally (Murthy, 2008). We begin with an overview of Mars’ approach in Cheats at Work and developments since its publication. This is followed by a comparative analysis of traditional and contemporary forms and patterns of fiddling in four occupations to which Mars extensively refers, along with an evaluative commentary. In Section ‘‘Conclusion’’ we offer some conclusions about the state of fiddling in workplaces today and the continuing relevance of Mars’ contribution.

THE THESES IN CHEATS AT WORK A Typology of Fiddles While a number of scholars have unearthed the practice of fiddling in various occupations, as Noon and Blyton have observed, it is Gerald Mars ‘‘who has perhaps gone furthest in analyzing the practice and significance of workplace fiddles’’ (1997, p. 152). In Cheats at Work – An Anthropology of Workplace Crime, Mars (1982, pp. 23–39) proposed a general framework for

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classifying types of workplace ‘‘fiddles’’ and linked them to different types of occupations and occupational groups. In support of the classification structure Mars (pp. 17–20) used material from his primary research including interviews and colorful anecdotes with over 100 informants as well as his sustained observations of and reflections on the phenomena over the course of his career up to the point of publication. Mars (p. 1) began by stating ‘‘This book is about crime at work. It is not, however, about crime in the normal sense.’’ In starting the book with such a sentence Mars immediately introduces the theme of moral relativity and ambiguity that pervades the practice of ‘‘cheating,’’ ‘‘fiddling,’’ ‘‘pilfering,’’ ‘‘skimming,’’ and many other interestingly named activities that constitute technically illegal but often tacitly condoned, or at least tolerated, practices at work. According to Mars most people who steal or ‘‘fiddle’’ at work do not regard what they do as wrong or worthy of blame, nor do they see themselves as any different to other people. In part this lack of self-blame is indicative of the widespread nature of ‘‘fiddling’’ as a form of workplace behavior and its often tacit acceptance as part of a covert, informal reward system, which runs alongside the formal one. The important contribution of workplace crime researchers such as Henry (1978a), Henry and Mars (1978b), Ditton (1977), and Ditton and Brown (1981) was to refocus the attention of researchers on the critical but often neglected role of covert behaviors and actions in supporting and maintaining normal behaviors and formal social institutions. From this perspective, fiddling is not only parasitic on the formal system but in some circumstances might also ‘‘subsidize’’ the formal reward system, which in part explains its acceptance by certain employers. In arguing the importance of researching illegality at work, Mars (p. 7) quotes Henry who argued that trying to understand the formal economy without acknowledging the role of the informal economy is like trying to understand the social institutions of marriage and family life without recognizing the role and impact of extra-marital affairs. In documenting and attempting to explain this, usually hidden, but critical shadow world Cheats at Work made an important contribution toward deepening general understanding of a range of important workplace behaviors and greatly advanced our understanding of motives, occupational opportunities and the functional outcomes of different forms of illegality at work. The subtitle of the book – An Anthology of Workplace Crime – explicitly reveals the methodological and theoretical perspectives taken by Mars in Cheats at Work. Mars looked at fiddling in the same way that anthropologists attempt to understand cultures – from the inside. According to Mars

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(pp. 23–29), forms and patterns of fiddling, including the extent to which they occur as an isolated individual activity or a collective one, vary according to both the formal and informal characteristics of particular jobs. Crucially though, Mars provides a more universal basis for comparison of different types of fiddles and their occurrence in different occupational categories by applying the concepts of GRID and GROUP, which he based on the work of the anthropologist, Mary Douglas. In his classification of workplace fiddling, Mars (pp. 24–29) develops taxonomy to describe the four types of broad occupational categories: Hawks, Donkeys, Wolfpacks, and Vultures. Jobs within these categories share broadly common characteristics within the GRID and group structuring dimensions. GRID refers to the extent to which a system of work, culture, or subculture imposes social categories and structure on people and therefore mandates how it is appropriate for them to behave as well as how others should behave toward them. Essentially, GRID is the degree to which a person is controlled by the impersonal forces of the organizational structure, working system, or hierarchy. Strong GRID jobs limit the autonomy of job holders, and strictly define not only the tasks of the job but also the expectations other people have of job holders. Conversely, weak GRID jobs allow a degree of autonomy to job holders whereby they can carry out their tasks, to a degree, in ways which they define for themselves and where there are less clear expectations from others about the behavior of the job holder. There are four subdimensions of GRID: autonomy, insulation, reciprocity, and competition. Low levels of autonomy are found in jobs where rules specify conduct of the work to a high degree. Here Mars gives the example of security patrol staff and notes the ancillary dimensions of strict hierarchy. Insulation from others is also a characteristic of high GRID jobs. Not only are these types of jobs performed in isolation from others but the responses to superiors are also often predetermined and reinforced by symbols of rank such as different uniforms. Reciprocity refers to the amount to which a job holder has the means to offer and accepts things from others. High GRID job holders typically have few resources to offer in relations with others. Mars (p. 26) does not elaborate directly on the dimension of competition but it can be inferred from the discussion of this dimension in combination with the other GRID dimensions that this refers to the degree to which job holders have the freedom to respond resourcefully to competing demands for their attention. Very strong GRID jobs, Mars (p. 27) notes, are ‘‘ y jobs that fix people to a defined place, time and mode of work where they cannot effectively relate to others.’’ Supermarket cashiers are given as examples of such high GRID jobs because typically

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they are insulated socially by the constraints of their job, lack autonomy, and scope to respond to competition for their time or attention. In contrast, weak GRID jobs exhibit an absence of constraints, the freedom to transact with others, considerable autonomy, and competition. According to Mars, an example of weak GRID jobs that have relatively high degrees of freedom are those of independent, highly qualified, medical staff who have autonomy, freedom to interpret rules for themselves, and the ability to control how they allocate their time at work. The dimension of GROUP, or collectiveness and the influence that it exerts on the individual, also comprises four subdimensions: frequency, mutuality, scope, and boundary. Frequency refers to the degree to which job holders interact with others in the same task or in complementary work. The more co-workers interact, the more likely there will be a strong group influence on behavior. However, high-frequency interaction alone does not guarantee this – interaction must be supplemented by mutuality within a network. To illustrate this, Mars gives the example of a shop assistant who has high-frequency interactions with the same customers but creates no group. On the other hand, dockers (who at the time of publication worked in gangs) not only had high-frequency interactions but also had mutually shared goals in relation to work outcomes. The subdimension of scope relates the degree to which co-workers interact and socialize with one another outside work. Work groups that share common living arrangements such as hotel workers are more likely to reinforce job-related group codes and norms beyond the boundaries of the work itself. Finally, boundary relates to the extent to which a group of workers define themselves as belonging to the group. Often this is a latent dimension and only surfaces when a group perceives itself to be threatened. Mars gives the example of work groups becoming aware of a common identity, when management makes a decision which workers perceive is detrimental to their shared interests which until then were not obvious. Overall, GROUP is at its weakest when job holders are free from collective influences on how they do their jobs and behave more generally, and at its strongest when internally imposed group norms specify job conduct and wider socially acceptable behavior. By combining the dimensions of GRID and GROUP, Mars presents his fourfold classification. The occupational groups in each quadrant are identified as a particular type of animal: Hawks, Donkeys, Wolves, and Vultures. Hawk jobs display both weak GRID and GROUP dimensions. These are jobs that allow for individuality, autonomy, opportunities to respond to

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competition, and a degree of control by job holders that is greater than the controls imposed upon them by either GRID or GROUP. This type of job emphasizes entrepeneuriality, where the individual’s freedom to transact on his own terms is highly valued; where individual flair is at a premium, individual differences make for disproportionate returns and success is indicated by the number of followers a person controls. Rewards here go to those who find new and better ways of doing things and where the drive for innovation is paramount. (Mars, p. 28)

Hawks are more likely to be found in higher level occupations such as independent professionals, business owners, high-performing sales staff, and successful academics with strong reputations. However, Hawk jobs also exist in lower occupation levels where the requirement for entrepreneurial flair is high. Mars gives the example of fairground workers, owner taxi drivers, and independent agents or ‘‘fixers’’ who can circumvent complex bureaucracies but at the same time bend the rules to suit themselves. Opportunism and self-advancement typically go hand-in-hand with Hawk jobs. Occupying the second quadrant, Donkey jobs are characterized by weak GROUP and high GRID dimensions and are typically associated with subordination. Here job holders are often constrained, isolated, and typically lacking in power. A crucial caveat concerning Donkey jobs though is the extent to which the job holders accept or resist the constraints imposed upon them and/or find loopholes in the rules to behave more freely. According to Mars, resentment and resistance are a common response from workers who are subjected to these kinds of imposition. Resistance can be passive in the form of quitting – hence high turnover rates in Donkey jobs – or more active in other forms of resistance such as sabotage, absenteeism, or ‘‘resentment fiddling.’’ In Donkey jobs where there is a degree of control; getting even with the boss is part of the psychological self-justification for fiddling. The classic example of Donkey fiddling given by Mars is supermarket checkout cashier who fiddles cash from the shop owner by underrecording the sale price and pocketing the difference from the customer who has paid the marked price for the goods. A key challenge of this type of fiddle and one of its attractions is keeping track of the amount underrecorded so that the till balances at the end of the shift. In the third category, Wolfpack jobs display both high GRID and GROUP dimensions. For Mars, these jobs are typically associated with working-class jobs such as mining, garbage collection, and dock work but also often include other jobs typically conducted in teams, including oil rig

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and maritime workers as well as airline crews, hospital, ambulance, and other emergency service workers. Often there is a high level of overlap between work and nonwork activities for these types of workers alongside nontraditional work patterns, characterized by unsocial working hours and shift work, and correspondingly strongly defined boundaries, as well as internal group hierarchies and behavioral controls. In relation to fiddling, these jobs require a high degree of group cooperation and coordination and the rewards for fiddles are more likely to be shared among the group according to internally defined but often tacit norms so as to reinforce solidarity. Thus, for instance, with a team of building laborers, the foreman and senior members might deliver scrap metal to a scrap yard, and use some of the proceeds to purchase the beer that the entire team consumes together at the end of each shift. This builds not only mutuality and team bonds but also complicity.2 The final quadrant, Vultures, are characterized by weak GRID but a strong, though often latent, GROUP dimension. Workers in these jobs tend to have relatively high levels of autonomy within an overarching system of bureaucratic control. Here an individual simultaneously competes with other members of the work group for rewards but relies on overall cooperation from the group to maintain autonomy and protection. Vulture jobs are most typically in sales environments with multiple group members. Individual interpretation of rules allows the individual to fiddle within limits but these are often subject to arbitrary reinforcement and require tacit approval of others in the group. For Mars, the classic example of this type of job is the driver/deliverer who is part of a larger group but works alone most of the time. An important distinction between Vultures and Wolves is that Vultures are more vulnerable to managerial sanction for misbehavior. Where such sanctions are applied against all in a vulture group there is likely to be group resistance but where it is only against one member this is much less likely and such scapegoating is more likely to be accepted by the group as a whole.

Why Fiddle? As well as classifying fiddles, Cheats at Work attempts to explain this behavior. Mars starts by acknowledging the structural predictors of fiddling such as social class and occupational structure. However, in contrast to more explicit structurally oriented explanations that attempt to explain fiddling purely in terms of social class, such as that proposed by Ditton,

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Mars (p. 34) suggested that fiddles at work highlight the link between ‘‘the social environment of jobs and what can be called their cosmology y that is the ideas, values, attitudes and beliefs that are appropriate to them.’’ Mars also highlighted the prevalence of fiddling among those, who according to the class explanation have the least reason to fiddle – the middle and upper classes. In fact, implicitly Mars seems to suggest an essentialist explanation as the cause of fiddling. That is, people generally fiddle because it is human nature to want the freedom to do so, thereby exerting some degree of individual control over economic activity, and at the same time determine moral boundaries around this at either individual or group level. While the inclination and opportunity may vary according to factors already discussed, historical evidence suggests that widespread fiddling has always occurred and will always occur. Leaving aside obvious, absolutist explanations such as greed or criminality, Mars (pp. 170–172) suggests that fiddling has a functional purpose and outcome at a number of levels. For instance, fiddling can be seen at the macro-economic level as an informal way of achieving economic equilibrium and even efficiency (by, e.g., providing secondary markets for the distribution of goods). At the work group level, fiddling may be a means of reinforcing work group solidarity, may form part of the informal reward system, and may be tolerated by management. At the individual level, fiddling can be explained by a lack of fit between the demands of a job and a person’s cosmology. This leads to an internal tension that, if the individual cannot adapt and does not quit, must be reconciled via other means and will often lead to behavior such as pilfering. Often individual gain is only a small part of the motivation for fiddling. Other motivations may be provided by other sources such as group norms, resentment against management, self-justification because formal rewards are poor, or the intrinsic challenge and thrill provided by the execution of the fiddle. In this context, Mars (p. 169) argues that people are divided into ‘‘split selves’’ whereby they play multiple societal roles, at some of which they are likely to fail. For Mars, someone who fiddles (as opposed to a thief or a criminal) is someone who indulges in ‘‘part-time crime’’ but this is unlikely to be a definition embraced by the fiddler. Rather, individuals will justify the small part of their (split self) being that fiddles as somehow morally justifiable and/or excusable and certainly not definitive of their overall personal morality. In the case of strong groups (Wolves and Vultures) this is achieved by fitting in with group norms and customs. In the case of weak groups this is achieved by justifying their conduct on the basis that either management are untrustworthy and deserves such a response

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(Donkeys), or what they fiddle is a justifiable part of the informal reward system (Hawks). In most cases, Mars argues, fiddles remain undetected because they are kept within acceptable limits either through control from the group, because of individual self-restraint, or because they are tolerated by management collusion. Moreover, individual-level fiddling can produce psychological equilibrium for individuals in reconciling job demands with their cosmology. At a collective level fiddling provides a channel for dissatisfaction, which might be expressed elsewhere and by different means and an outlet for workers to ‘‘stay loose in a tightening world’’ (Mars, p. 182). The possibilities of staying loose in a world that, many argue, has become considerably tighter since the publication of Cheats at Work is the theme we explore in the next section.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO FIDDLING SINCE CHEATS AT WORK? In the last thirty years, scholarly interest in fiddling has continued as part of the growing interest in what is variously called misbehavior, deviance, or counterproductive behavior at work. While different intellectual traditions construct and explain unauthorized behavior by workers in different ways, theorists have divided existing views into two groups: the organizational behavior and industrial sociology perspectives. The industrial sociology perspective, mainly associated with British and European academics, generally appears to celebrate worker misbehavior as expressions of dissent and resistance or actions, which challenge workplace relations and organizational control mechanisms. Thus, while workplace pilfering might result in costs to the organization, it also has positive implications, and it is for this reason that management often tolerate and are complicit in the behavior (Richards, 2008; Shamsudin, 2006). In contrast, the organizational behavior perspective championed largely by North American scholars views such behavior as negative and destructive, as conduct in which individual workers engage to benefit themselves and to harm the organization. Deviance is linked partly to individual personality variables and partly to the operational environment, which predisposes some employees to misbehavior (Richards, 2008; Shamsudin, 2006). Within the organizational behavior field there is an emerging critical discourse which argues that some deviant workplace behaviors are positive, but writers here typically characterize conduct such as employee theft as a fundamentally negative

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type of deviance (Appelbaum, Iaconi, & Matousek, 2007; Richards, 2008). Nonetheless, scholars in both traditions are in general agreement that misbehavior is ‘‘pervasive across and at all levels of organizations’’ (Richards, 2008, p. 656) and that the small-scale theft on which Mars focused continues to feature prominently, albeit covertly. However, as Mars and other researchers have noted, fiddling patterns do not remain static. Changes in technology, management control mechanisms, and other factors cause changes to both the forms and the incidence of fiddling. Indeed, from the 1980s, many organizational theorists concluded that the more ‘‘employee-friendly’’ management practices such as human resource management and total quality management had removed the need or space for employee misbehavior, while sophisticated monitoring and control strategies based on the tenets of Taylorism and Foucauldian analysis had all but eliminated such opportunities (Richards, 2008, pp. 658–659). Some scholars argue that new forms of visual and electronic monitoring, for instance, are ‘‘akin to those systems of dominance which existed in Jeremy Bentham’s prison Panopticon’’ (Fernie & Metcalf, 1998). However, others have observed that workers continue to find gaps they can exploit. While in particular occupations, fiddling opportunities may shift from being prevalent to entirely absent at particular times, the ingenuity of workers and their inclinations, it seems, ensure that such behaviors remain prevalent in organizations over time (Bain & Taylor, 2000; Mars, 1982, pp. 158–159; Richards, 2008, p. 656). In the thirty years since publication of Mars’ work, technological change has transformed the nature of many occupations. One consequence is that fiddling methods common to particular jobs closely examined in Cheats at Work may no longer be possible. Increasing sophistication of visual and electronic monitoring and surveillance, the decrease in cash handling in many occupations, and growing capital intensiveness in others have affected opportunities for fiddling. Whereas in former times, most garbage collectors operated in closely knit hierarchical teams, which could sort, organize, and disperse the proceeds of looted domestic and industrial rubbish, now many work alone, driving a truck with a mechanical arm and have almost no contact with the garbage itself. Supermarket cashiers, who once fiddled the till by under-ringing purchases and pocketing the difference, are now minded by computerized registers that record transactions precisely through point-of-sale software and bar code scanning technology, as well as by the increasing prevalence of cash and credit card transactions. Overall, the literature on misbehavior, deviance, and counter-productive behavior repeatedly asserts that forms of employee theft adapt to changing

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circumstances. Industrial law reports and case study research are replete with examples of the ways in which workers subvert sophisticated forms of monitoring and surveillance technology. For instance, in the recent case of Zoumas v TNT Express,3 Fair Work Australia, upheld the dismissal of an employee who had falsely claimed wages for overtime hours not worked. The employer had fitted his car with an electronic tracking device to monitor his work. To override this, the employee had used an electronic device to block the tracker’s signal. The employer’s evidence against the employee was based on a second location tracking device inserted into the vehicle without the employee’s knowledge to counter the employee’s ingenious blocking device. In her study of an Irish call center, Mulholland reports that workers, who were required to make calls every three to four minutes, with management anticipating that 80% of calls would be realized into sales, devised a process called ‘‘slammin,’’ whereby whenever they reached an answering machine, they talked on as usual and recorded it as a sale (Mulholland, 2004). New technologies in the workplace also create new opportunities for fiddles. One example is that with the proliferation in money-holding machines in various industries, workers may pilfer cash when re-filling them. Two recent unfair dismissal cases in Australia involved this sort of fiddle. In another case, an assistant in a paper shop who was responsible for filling the bank ATM machine during each shift skimmed several 20 and 50 dollar notes from the top of the cassette each time. In still another case, the hotel cashiers who prepared the cups of coins for the poker machines, which floor staff then used to refill the machines, were skimming money from the cups in the belief that the shortfall could never be traced to them.4 In order to examine in more detail how fiddling techniques may have changed in particular occupations, we explore below the contemporary forms and patterns of pilfering in several key jobs on which Mars focused and which are representative of the four categories. However, in comparing the methods used thirty years ago, when Mars undertook his microethnographic study and now, caution is needed because of omissions in Mars’ analysis itself. In examining supermarket cashiers, for instance, Mars accepts the supermarket checkout girl’s story that ‘‘you don’t fiddle the customer.’’ When identifying the range of cashiers’ fiddles, he fails to mention the short-changing of customers, which has always been a key way in which cashiers extract additional income. This omission may be due to Mars’ perspective that cheating of customers is largely confined to certain occupations, in particular those he defines as triadic occupations. In these jobs, which involve an employer, employee, and customer or client, the

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occurrence of fiddling is dependent upon alliances between the employer and employees. Mars cites as an example the triadic occupation of driver salesmen. However, in retail occupations, while customers and employees may form alliances against the employer, Mars argues, no such alliances form between employers and employees to cheat customers. Yet the shortchanging of customers by cashiers is an entirely appropriate form of Donkey fiddle, given that the cashier is isolated, has minimal autonomy, and is confined to the till.

Supermarket Cashiers and Retail Assistants (Donkeys) For supermarket cashiers, the hierarchical GRID and group characteristics of work have not changed; they remain the Donkeys that Mars depicted. Typically, cashiers work in isolation from co-workers, are heavily constrained by rules, lack any control over space or the way in which tasks are conducted, and are engaged in extremely repetitive, low-trust, machine-tied work. However, with the decline in cash transactions, some of the traditional opportunities for cheating at work have all but disappeared. When Mars described the fiddles perpetrated by supermarket cashiers, most retail transactions were conducted with cash or cheques. Given the constraints of their job, cashiers were limited in the types of fiddling largely to extracting cash either from the customer or from the employer. The methods varied in degree of complexity. Some of the simpler methods included removing money from the till, avoiding ringing the sale, under-ringing sales, and short-changing customers. With under-ringing, for instance, the cashier would ring an item at less than its price, collect the full amount and pocket the extra cash the customer had paid. To avoid discovery, cashiers would block customers’ views of the cash register window and withhold their receipts (Philp, 1995). Such cash pilfering techniques were often part of an ongoing strategy of creaming, which involved the regular removal of small quantities of money over a period of time. To succeed, cashiers generally used an abacus accounting system, using a counting tool such as pins or matches to record the amount accumulated, so that when they removed the cash at the end of their shift the till balanced (Wiseman, 2011). More complicated fiddles included ringing up false refunds and the fraudulent voiding of transactions. With both refunds and voids, the cashier effectively canceled the sale and took the money, with the theft appearing ultimately on the retailer’s records as an inventory shortage. Where the refund document made it appear as if the customer had returned the

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product, voided sales looked like the money had been returned to the customer without the transaction having been concluded. Other fiddles involved collusion with customers, typically friends and relatives. Traditionally, the two main collusive methods were sweethearting, which refers to giving free merchandise or unauthorized discounts to family or friends, and cashing their fraudulent cheques. Since the early 1980s, the supermarket cashier job has altered in significant ways largely due to technological change. First, while many cashiers still deal commonly with cash, the growing use of cash cards and credit cards by customers has reduced the opportunities for under-ringing of sales and short-changing. Second, point-of-sale and video analytic software provide managers with a constant record of each cashier’s processing of goods. When the technology is synchronized, supervisors can track whether merchandise that passes over the counter matches what cashiers ring up at the register. Bar code scanning using radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, together with video technology, has also made it more difficult to give goods away to family and friends at the checkout because all items must be seen to have passed the scanner. Other forms of security such as antitheft tags and the stacking of empty CD and Movie covers on shelves, with disks to be inserted at the checkout, inhibit sweetheart deals. The introduction of self-checkouts also removes fiddling opportunities from cashiers, particularly as in the early stages of this technology, these sales represent a disproportionate volume of small sales, which would otherwise be purchased with cash. Paradoxically, and as a side note, while self-checkouts may have limited employee fiddles they have greatly increased the opportunities for customer fiddles. A notable example of this occurred in Australia during 2011 when the price of bananas increased for a six-month period from approximately $2 to $15 per kilo, following a cyclone in Queensland that destroyed most of the seasonal crop. At self-checkouts customers from all economic groups were widely reported to be checking out bananas as carrots or other lowcost vegetables to avoid paying the high prices. Notably, when interviewed by journalists, pilfering customers were quick to justify their actions on the basis that either the high price was due to opportunistic profiteering and/or supermarkets were very profitable in any case and therefore ‘‘fair game’’ for such a fiddle. Such a customer mentality parallels the typical justifications of employee fiddlers as they balance (using Mars’ term) their cosmology. Despite the impact of the technological changes described, however, many of the traditional cashier fiddles remain. With cash transactions, cashiers continue to short-change customers, under-ring prices, void transactions,

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and create false refund dockets, and give friends and relatives goods either for free or at a discount. The growth in online marketplaces such as ebay may have encouraged the latter collusive activities, given the expansion in opportunities to sell stolen and discounted goods. As well, in relation to bar code scanning, cashiers have proved as adaptable as customers using selfcheckouts and may still fiddle the bill for friends and relatives. Methods at their disposal include sliding, which involves passing goods across the scanner without scanning them, misrepresenting the weight of items, and scanning a different lower priced item or entering in codes for cheaper items. When customers purchase multiples of particular items, cashiers can underrecord the sale, by scanning the item once and entering a smaller number of items (The GinBlog, 2007; Wiseman, 2011). The prevalence of cash card and credit card sales, however, has changed the nature of some fiddles and limited the possibility of others. When falsely voiding a sale or refunding a customer, for instance, a cashier pockets the money from a sale, and the assumption is that the goods remain in the store. If the cashier frequently refunds or voids sales, routine electronic monitoring of transactions is likely to alert managers. If the customer has used a plastic card, however, it is an even more risky strategy for a cashier to take cash from the till when voiding or refunding the sale because there is the alternative of refunding or canceling the sale on the card itself. However, the presence of different payment methods also creates fiddling opportunities. In a recent judgment of Fair Work Australia, Khammaneechan v Nanakhon,5 concerning an unfair dismissal application, the tribunal described at length the means by which money was stolen from the cafe concerned. In the cafe, credit card and cash card transactions were processed through separate electronic point-of-sale machines not linked to the cash register. The tribunal explained that: ‘‘a cash transaction would take place, but instead of the cash taken from the customer being keyed into the register, the EFTPOS button was pressed. This caused the till to automatically open and any change owing would be given to the customer, together with a receipt if one was requested.’’ The employee pocketed the cash, the till balanced each day, and the fiddle failed to trigger any examination of discrepancies between the number of electronic funds transfer at point of sale (EFTPOS) transactions and receipts. Supermarket cashiers and other shop assistants have also developed new fiddles that exploit innovations in retailers’ marketing strategies. Gift cards, for instance, have proved a fertile new source for fiddles in the last two decades because ‘‘to employees, this is like currency’’ (Greenhouse, 2009). When customers purchase a gift card of a particular value, shop assistants

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might charge the shopper’s credit card, but instead of loading the monetary value onto the gift card, divert the money to cards for themselves. The fiddle is not discovered until the recipient tries to use their gift card and finds it blank. Another way in which cashiers fiddle gift cards is by faking refunds of merchandise and then with the amount ‘‘refunded,’’ using the register to fill gift cards for themselves. In another fiddle, cashiers process a gift card correctly using the customer’s credit card, secretly record the credit card details, and later charge the card again, loading an equal amount onto a second card that the shop assistant or an associate then uses in another store. Gift cards are harder to track than stolen credit cards because the purchaser does not need to show proof of identity. Gift cards can also be converted to cash through online auctions on ebay and other Internet retail sites (Schneir, 2010). While the prevalence of plastic cards has led also to credit card fraud and theft more broadly by cashiers and shop assistants, as this generally is consciously criminal behavior, it falls outside the scope of this review. With changes in the forms and patterns of fiddling, several significant issues emerge. First, the target of the fiddle may have changed substantially. Checkout operators increasingly may be cheating customers rather than employers, particularly given the emergence of fiddles involving credit cards. Second, given that proportionally more fiddles involve refunds, voids, and other fraud relating to entire transactions, fiddles may now tend to involve larger amounts of money than when creaming and short-changing of customers were more common. Third, fiddling is more likely to be based on consciously fraudulent activity. These changes threaten the underlying notion of fiddles as morally excusable because they are little crimes directed primarily against the employer.

Bartenders and Waiters (Vultures) The characteristics of bartending and waiting work can vary considerably depending on such factors as the size and nature of the organization. While Mars examines waiter and bartender fiddles when discussing both Vulture and Donkey jobs, his examples suggest, and we would agree, that these occupations are more likely to fall within the Vulture classification. The principal characteristics of Vulture jobs are their instability and the lack of established and stabilizing hierarchies (Mars, 1982, pp. 134–135). Workers in Vulture occupations are members of a group of co-workers for some purposes, but act individualistically and competitively for others. They are

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not as constrained as Donkeys, but nonetheless are subject to substantial controls. While workers do similar jobs, ‘‘competition hinges around good routes and bad routes’’ and better fiddling opportunities are attached to some work stations and not others. New or unpopular waiters, for instance, will be assigned to the stations that deliver the smallest tips, which are those with the largest tables, fewest tables of couples, and least chance of casual custom (Mars, p. 124). Thus, according to Mars, Vultures not only need group support but also compete for favored job allocations, and ultimately, they execute fiddles largely alone. Because they are dodging the rules for individual gain, they seldom cooperate, and the most they may expect from each other generally is collusion and nondisclosure to management. Writing in the 1980s, Mars described a range of fiddles that bartenders and waiters used. As with cashiers, he argued, under-ringing was a classic bartender fiddle: for instance, the employee charged the customer $25, but rang up $15, and pocketed the 10 dollars remaining either immediately or later in the shift. As well, bartenders commonly short-changed and overcharged customers. Like cashiers, bartenders used an abacus method to keep count of the proceeds, accumulating a collection of swizzle sticks or another object either in or near the register. Ambiguity and customer ignorance about the quality and quantity of drinks also enabled substantial fiddling through, for instance, selling cheap wine as though it is a finer product, and under-pouring the spirits in mixed drinks (Mars, pp. 110–111, 156). For their part, waiters might suggest that a customer orders meals from the carvery trolley in the dining room itself, because unlike dishes plated in the kitchen, these are prepared by the waiter and are not counted and hence provide an opportunity for the waiter to pocket the payment for some plates during the shift (Mars, p. 82). A common fiddle in hotels and restaurants was for the waiter to request fewer coffees from the kitchen than customers had ordered, then add the required number of cups, hidden for the purpose, to his tray, repour the coffee, top up the cups with hot water and pocket the price difference between the requested and ordered number of cups (Mars, p. 123). These examples clearly distinguished food and drink service workers from those in Donkey occupations such as supermarket cashiers. While the cashier’s fiddles derived exclusively from the financial transaction, waiters and bar workers could extract extra income by manipulating their service of the goods. Many of the opportunities and practices described above endure to this day and fiddling remains a major issue in these two occupations. For instance, there is still a heavy reliance in restaurants and bars on the inability of customers to distinguish different brands of the same alcoholic drink.

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Typical practices include serving cheaper wines or spirits while charging for more expensive ones and refilling customers’ glasses from unfinished bottles left by other customers. Stealing inventory is also common to these two occupations. Ghiselli and Ismael’s (1998) study found that aside from eating company food, the most prevalent form of employee theft in restaurants is providing food and beverage items free of charge to friends. The next most common method is the removal of food and beverage items from the inventory for personal use. Common strategies for pilfering goods include storing them outside in the garbage receptacles until the shift ends, as well as producing surplus food and taking it home as nominally leftover or spoiled food (Allfoodbusiness.com blog). The pilfering of supplies such as detergent, linens, paper towels, and toilet paper also remains among the most common form of employee theft from restaurants. However, in these Vulture jobs, employees continue to engage heavily also in direct fiddling of financial transactions. As alcohol purchases in bars are still commonly paid in cash, the more simple forms of fiddling that involve creaming of money have arguably declined less for bartenders than for supermarket cashiers. Some of the continuing ways in which restaurant and bar employees pilfer include:  taking money from the register (and ringing up ‘‘no sale’’ to open the register)  under-ringing sales  over-ringing – where the cashier records an ‘‘over-ring’’ to reverse an actual sale  over-charging and short-changing customers  starting a tab for the customer, pouring drinks all night, receiving payment for all drinks but only ringing up a portion of them  tearing up order tickets/not reporting all sales on the register and pocketing the cash  faking voided sales  issuing refunds for items not purchased  ringing up returned drinks – the bartender claims the drink was returned and the money reimbursed  taking tips belonging to other employees  providing food and beverages free or at discounted prices to friends (Ghiselli & Ismail, 1998; Johnson, 2011; Nightclubpros.com blog (2010); Nowak, 1997) As with supermarket cashiers, cash card and credit card transactions and new business marketing strategies have both curtailed traditional fiddles and

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opened up new options in the food and beverage service occupations. For instance, the spread of credit cards has opened up the possibility for waiters to engage in new forms of fiddling, adding and increasing tips on customer bills. Also, if a restaurant uses discount and two-for-one coupons to attract new customers, waiters may charge the customer the full amount, later attach a coupon to their bill, and remove the equivalent in cash from the register (Allfoodbusiness.com blog). In sum, new technologies have had a differential impact on employees’ fiddling opportunities among food and beverage service occupations. For the most part, opportunities for stealing money have declined dramatically for waiters, given the growth in cash and credit card transactions, whereas bartenders have not been nearly as affected because a greater proportion of bar purchases remain cash based. In contrast to supermarket cashiers, food and beverage service workers have experienced less change in the target of their fiddles, with most pilfering continuing largely to be at the employer’s expense, and the size of fiddles does not appear to have grown significantly.

Garbage Collectors According to Mars (p. 96), dustmen or garbage collectors were the archetypal Wolfpack, for whom ‘‘survival of the fiddle is dependent on survival of the group.’’ However, the place of these workers on Mars’ grid has become more mixed. As a result of technological change, many in this occupation no longer work in groups and their opportunities for fiddling have dwindled dramatically. Nonetheless, a growing segmentation in the industry has meant that for others, the Wolfpack remains active. With the growing emphasis on recycling since the early 1990s, the garbage collection function has become increasingly segmented (Waste Management Association, 2010, pp. 4–6). Thus, in urban areas for instance, typically it now includes not only weekly domestic and commercial waste collections, but also periodic separate collections for white goods and metal recycling, furniture and other household items, general clean-up services, and bulk vegetation recycling. In addition, targeted state and local government schemes provide for other specific recycling collections, such as electronic waste, which may include computers, monitors, televisions, printers, scanners, and video players. Then there are also special energy savings programs such as council fridge buy-back schemes, which involve regular fridge collection runs.

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The work involved in routine weekly collections differs substantially from that involved in the various recycling services. Development of the mechanical arm that picks up garbage bins from the sides and rear of trucks has changed the nature of work for this segment of the occupation. For many of these workers garbage collection is a one-person job, the truck driver operates the mechanical arm with a series of controls in the cabin, and rarely leaves the truck or has any contact with the garbage. The arm deposits the rubbish in the truck’s hold, where it is immediately compacted. For the drivers, work is often characterized by long hours in complete isolation, requiring intense concentration both to avoid driving accidents and damaging garbage bins. These workers are no longer Wolves working in packs, but rather Donkeys, isolated and lacking in autonomy. Members of the occupation ruefully describe these collectors as ‘‘just glorified truck drivers now’’ (Warner, 2005). However, the virtual elimination of opportunities for fiddling by one-man garbage trucks contrasts with the growth in opportunities to divert goods in other segments of the waste removal industry where teams continue to operate, much like the Wolfpacks, which Mars identified, although typically smaller. These waste collectors can either remove goods at or near the collection point, or at the landfill where the truck is emptied. Removing goods at the landfill usually requires collusion with weighbridge officials, who assign fees to the waste collection company according to the weight of trucks on entry, collusion taking the form of bribes or a share of the proceeds. Not only can weighbridge staff allow a vehicle to bypass the weighbridge altogether, they can also change the tare or true weight of vehicles, for instance, by weighing a truck with its wheels off the bridge, so that only part of its weight is recorded (ICAC, 2002, pp. 46–51).6 Growing commercial interest in goods made from recycled materials has also created new prospects for garbage collectors to fiddle. One illustration is provided by an unfair dismissal case concerning a garbage truck driver working at a large urban wholesale market who allegedly stole the waxed cardboard boxes that fruit and vegetable stores discarded at the end of each day. The driver had a side-business selling the compressed boxes to a business that used them to manufacture barbecue fuel pellets.7 While fiddled goods were traditionally distributed among Wolves according to hierarchy, and flea markets and antique fairs provided valuable avenues for selling goods not acquired for personal use, the Internet has become a new avenue for garbage collectors to profit from the sale of fiddled goods. Not only do ebay and other Internet retail sites enable

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the targeting of goods to particular customer segments, but they also provide a degree of anonymity not available in community markets (Marc, 2007; Straightdope.com blog, 2007). Thus, while the changing nature of the industry has protected some fiddling opportunities, new technology has destroyed some but facilitated others.

Highly Qualified Professional Workers (Hawks) In the Hawk category Mars discusses the ‘‘informal economy’’ activities of business owners and managers, particularly those in small business; the fiddles of independent and semi-independent skilled professional workers such as doctors, lawyers, and academics; and the activities of agents or ‘‘middle-men’’ who position themselves at the center of triadic or multilateral economic transactions and use their superior access to information to enrich themselves by exploiting information asymmetries and playing the ends against the middle. If any of Mars’ categories has remained largely untouched by work organization and technological developments over the last thirty years or so it is this one. Any casual perusal of the business press continues to provide a torrent of examples of dubious business practices where perpetrators use countless methods to overcharge customers, defraud governments, evade taxes, and so forth to enrich themselves. Moreover, the ‘‘informal economy’’ is estimated still to constitute a significant proportion of GDP in even the most developed and highly regulated economies. Small business appears to be particularly fertile ground for a range of illegal but widely practiced fiddles including minor tax avoidance, unreported cash transactions, false reporting of business turnover, personal use of business resources, and the ‘‘rorting’’ (abuse) of various, well-intentioned, government funding initiatives connected with, for example, asset purchases and small business development. For employed Hawks, Mars reported that a key determinant of opportunities to fiddle was the ability to operate across boundaries between either the formal and informal economies or official and unofficial activity. Also critical was the ability to ‘‘slip the organization’s yoke’’ and run unofficial business unnoticed alongside official activity. Of particular importance for Hawks is the capacity to manage time at work without regular official oversight or monitoring. This allows Hawks to use ‘‘spare’’ time to pursue independent and covert economic activities. Such activities are often considered part of the informal reward system and typically

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tolerated so long as official job goals are being achieved. Thus full-time academics who engage private paid consulting activity are usually left alone provided other work outcomes such as research productivity are satisfactory. Successful academics in ‘‘in demand’’ professions such as accountancy often make as much income from their personal consultancies as from the formal jobs for which, nominally, they are employed on a full-time basis. In some professions, the generation of ‘‘spare time’’ necessitates an overstating of the number of hours required to perform an ‘‘official’’ job. Mars (p. 50) gives the example of lawyers ‘‘taking two weeks to do what can be done in two days.’’ Similarly, business consultants might use common research work as the basis for two projects but bill each client as if the work were done solely for them. A recent case investigated by the New South Wales Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) highlights a classic Hawk fiddle perpetrated by an employed professional of running a business within a business. In its judgment concerning a senior public service lawyer employed by NSW Maritime, ICAC found that the perpetrator had run a successful conveyancing business for over seven years at the same time as discharging her official duties. Moreover, she did so by making extensive use of New South Wales Maritime resources and office infrastructure. The conveyancing business generated consistent revenues of over $100,000 per year, listed the person’s work phone number in its advertising, and employed another New South Wales Maritime employee, and friend of the perpetrator, to conduct a large amount of the work during business hours. In a damning report ICAC also found that the perpetrator was involved in tax evasion and found her guilty of corrupt conduct. Notably, ICAC heavily criticized the senior management of New South Wales Maritime for failing to properly monitor their employee’s work and other activity (Moore, 2010).

CONCLUSION The ethnographic research documented in Cheats at Work laid the foundations for a deeper understanding of workplace theft and misbehavior more generally in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Along with the work of Henry and Ditton, Mars’ study sought to explain the widespread involvement of workers in small-scale crime and the apparent complicity of supervisors and employers in this conduct. Since then organizational

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behavior theorists and industrial sociologists have explored a diverse range of employee behaviors, variously characterized as misbehavior, deviance, and counter-productivity. In revisiting Cheats at Work, what remains clear is that people appear to be fiddling as much if not more than thirty years ago. Technology has changed the nature of fiddling in some categories but new forms have emerged as old ones have disappeared. Perhaps the biggest impact has been on traditional Wolfpack jobs, which have been redesigned to reduce reliance on the pack, a somewhat ironic restructuring of work given the increasing emphasis on teamwork in human resource management discourse. Among Donkeys, Vultures, and above all Hawks, however, fiddling is thriving. The analytical framework that Mars contributed remains useful even if the edges are blurred in some cases, with some jobs and fiddles spanning the boundaries between categories. Three decades after publication of Mars’ study, fiddling remains a normal, albeit covert, activity in many jobs and occupations. While forms and patterns of fiddles in particular occupations may change over time, like the shape-shifting of mythology and folklore, they continue to exist in some form or other.

NOTES 1. Woodward Brown and Qantas Airways Limited (U2006/6925)[2007] AIRC 360, PR976989 (25 July, 2007) 2. This was the case in the following unfair dismissal case decided in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in 2006: Sawyers and Settree and Abigroup Leighton Joint Venture, AIRC (U2005/5189 and U2005/5191), PR9707943 April 2006. 3. Zoumas v TNT Australia Pty Ltd t/as TNT Express [2011] FWA 3065 (June 2, 2011). 4. Saul and Goonellabah Newsagency [2005] NSWIRComm 1165; Australian Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Union, NSW Branch v Westport Bowling Club Ltd [2001] NSWIRComm 205 5. Khammaneechan v Nanakhon Pty Ltd ATF Nanakhon Trading Trust T/A Banana Tree Cafe [2010] FWA 7891 (October 14, 2010) at 17–21. 6. Employees with scavenging rights in the landfills take part in similar fiddles. See for instance: New South Wales Local Government, Clerical, Administrative, Energy, Airlines & Utilities Union (on behalf of Grose) and Griffith City Council (2006) NSWIRComm [2006] NSWIRComm 1137 [case no. 38 on the record]. 7. Henry Troncoso and J.E.D. Cleaning and Rubbish Management Pty Ltd (U2001/ 7184) AIRC 20 May 2002, PR917103.

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REFERENCES Allfoodbusiness. (2012). Restaurant resources – employee theft. Retrieved from http:// allfoodbusiness.com Applebaum, S., Iaconi, G., & Matousek, A. (2007). Positive and negative deviant workplace behaviour: Causes, impacts and solutions. Corporate Governance, 7(5), 568–598. Bain, P., & Taylor, P. (2000). Entrapped by the ‘electronic panopticon’? Worker resistance in the call centre. New Technology, Work and Employment, 15(1), 1–24. Casagrande, S. (2009). German court upholds cashier’s dismissal for petty theft. Deutsch Welle. Retrieved from http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4055009,00.html Ditton, J. (1977). Part-time crime: An ethnography of fiddling and pilferage. London: Macmillan. Ditton, J., & Brown, R. (1981). Why don’t they revolt?’Invisible income’ as a neglected dimension of runciman’s deprivation thesis. British Journal of Sociology, 32(4), 521–530. Euronews. (2009). German cashier fired for 1.30 euro theft. Retrieved from http://www. euronews.net/2009/02/25/german-cashier-fired-for-130-euro-theft/ Fernie, S., & Metcalf, D. (1998). (Not) hanging on the telephone: Payment systems in the new sweatshops. In D. Lewin & B. Kaufman (Eds.), Advances in industrial and labour relations. Paper No. 390. Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics. Ghiselli, R., & Ismail, J. (1998). Employee theft and efficacy of certain control procedures in commercial food service operations. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 22(2), 174–187. Greenhouse, S. (2009). Shoplifters’ studies say keep an eye on workers. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/business/30theft.html Henry, S. (1978). The hidden economy: The context and control of borderline crime. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Henry, S., & Mars, G. (1978). Crime at work: The social construction of amateur property theft. Sociology, 12, 245–263. Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC). (2002, October). Risk and waste treatment and disposal. Taking the whiff out of waste: Guidelines for controlling corruption in the waste sector (pp. 46–51). Sydney: ICAC, NSW Government. Johnson, B. (2011). Blog, Bob Johnson’s School of Bar Management. Retrieved from www. bobthebarguy.com/bmc.html Marc, M. (2007). A garbage man the greatest job I ever had. Marc and Angel hack life blog. Retrieved from www.marcandangel.com/2007/05/25. Posted May 25. Mars, G. (1982). Cheats at work: An anthropology of workplace crime. London: George Allen and Unwin. Moore, M. (2010). ICAC finds senior lawyer engaged in corrupt conduct. Sydney Morning Herald, September 2. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/icac-finds-seniorlawyer-engaged-in-corrupt-conduct-20100901-14nne.html Mulholland, K. (2004). Workplace resistance in an Irish call centre. Work Employment and Society, 18(4), 709–724. Murthy, D. (2008). Digital ethnography: An examination of the use of new technologies for social research. Sociology, 42(5), 837–838. Nightclubpros.com. (2010). Blog. Retrieved from nightclubpros.com/bartender-theft. Posted July 9. Noon, M., & Blyton, P. (1997). The realities of work. London: Macmillan Press.

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Nowak, M. (1997). CNN money. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com. Accessed on November 12, 1997. Philp, K. (1995). Theft and fraud in supermarkets. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, Commonwealth Government. Retrieved from http://www.aic.gov.au/ events Richards, J. (2008). ‘Because I need somewhere to vent’: The expression of conflict through work blogs. New Technology, Work and Employment, 23(1), 95–110. Schneir on Security. (2010). Blog. Retrieved from www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/0 Schoneboom, A. (2011). Workblogging in a Facebook age. Work, Employment and Society, 25(1), 132–140. Shamsudin, F. (2006). Organisational misbehaviour. Akademika, 69, 57–82. Straightdope. (2007). Blog. Retrieved from boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive. Posted July 27, 2007. The GinBlog. (2007). Hacking the grocery store self-checkout-3 ways thieves are making YOU pay for what they don’t. Retrieved from www.theginblog.com/2007/12 Valenza, J. (2007). Web 2.0 meets information fluency: Evaluating blogs. 21st Century Information Fluency. Retrieved from http://21cif.com/rkitp/assessment/v1n5/valenza1.5_ blogeval.html Warner, M. (2005). Ode-to-garbage-recycling-haulers. The Woo-Woo-Teacup Journal Retrieved from http://woowooteacup.wordpress.com/writing Waste Management Association of NSW. (2010, January–December). Annual Report, Waste Management Association of Australia, Sydney. Wiseman, P. (2011). Retail theft. Retrieved from http://wisemaninvestigations.wordpress.com/ 2011/04/28/retailtheft

NAMING, CONDONING, AND SHAMING: INTERPRETING EMPLOYEE ASSESSMENTS OF BEHAVIOR AND MISBEHAVIOR IN THE WORKPLACE Lucy Taksa ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter aims to show that attention to nicknaming as a form of language-making and sensemaking can provide a valuable avenue for exploring employees’ assessments of (mis)behavior. It highlights the connection between gender and language-making as central to the way workers assess and respond to (mis)behavior in different workplaces. Methodology – The chapter uses an historical perspective and concepts drawn from sociology and organizational theory. It identifies nicknames and nicknaming practices from a wide range of documentary sources and oral sources. Findings – In considering nicknaming in terms of sensemaking and language-making rather than simply as a form of humor, the chapter shows that derogatory names enable employees to address the tensions and conflicts arising from formal organizational practices, rules, and Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 57–83 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019006

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managerial imperatives and workplace relations. It emphasizes commonalities in nicknaming practices that extend beyond the micro-level of specific workplaces and in doing so illustrates that nicknaming is not simply a manifestation of humor but as importantly of inter-subjective processes through which workers construct group identities to enforce coproduced informal rules of behavior. Social implications – The chapter illustrates the importance of workplace nicknaming and its implications for the way employees try to influence the behavior of others by condoning and/or shaming those who conform to or defy informal rules. Originality – The chapter’s originality lies in its focus on employees’ own assessments of misbehavior and on commonalities in nicknaming practices in different times and in different places. Keywords: Misbehavior; nicknaming; sensemaking

INTRODUCTION For most of the twentieth century, assessments of workers’ behavior and misbehavior were produced by management consultants, writers and innovators (Drucker, 1998, 2001; Taylor, 1911) or their detractors (Braverman, 1974; Roy, 1952, 1959). Over time, these were augmented by labor and social historians and scholars of industrial relations and industrial sociology who were concerned to document the lives, struggles, and protests of working people (Collinson & Ackroyd, 2005; Taksa, 2006). Not surprisingly, the focus of such assessments rested squarely on work performance as well as on workers’ resistance to management efforts to increase and control output. Such resistance was mainly associated with industrial action undertaken by groups of workers, ranging from what F.W. Taylor referred to as soldiering (Taylor, 1911, p. 13) to strike activity. The more nuanced and broader approach to workers’ misbehavior that emerged in the mid1990s (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999; Thompson & Ackroyd. 1995; Vardi & Wiener, 1996) built on this foundation, although the range of behaviors and themes investigated has been extended in recent years by scholars from different disciplines (Richards, 2008: p. 656). Among these, two ‘‘emergent themes of misbehavior’’ – humor and identity – (Richards, 2008: p. 663) are singled out here for closer attention.

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This chapter considers misbehavior not from the perspective of the manager or the employer, but rather from the perspective of employees. More specifically it focuses on the way employees in different places and at different times assess each other’s behavior and work performance, as well as the (mis)behavior of managers and others who have an impact on their work and/or workplaces. In this regard, it argues that attention to industrial language-making generally and nicknaming practices more specifically can provide a valuable avenue for exploring how workers convey personal and collective impressions to each other, about each other, and also about others, while also visualizing and symbolizing broader social relations. Humor and identity are both implicated in nicknaming practices. However, in a number of ways, this treatment departs from studies of humor in specific organizational contexts that have referred to workplace nicknames as manifestations of humor or joking (Collinson, 1988, 2002; Linstead, 1988; Martin, 2004; Rodrigues & Collinson, 1995; Stro¨mberg & Karlsson, 2009; Taylor & Bain, 2003). First, because its aim is to explore ‘‘how nicknames work at work’’ (Fortado, 1998, p 13), it places nicknaming, rather than humor on center stage and on this basis it examines how workers deploy humor and identity construction to express their views about appropriate and inappropriate (mis)behaviors through nicknaming practices. Second, it aims to show that nicknaming practices not only have meaning at a local level. Of course, I acknowledge that the highly contextual and often parochial nature of nicknames can provide ‘‘insight into many of the micropolitical components of negotiated social orders’’ (Fortado 1998, p. 13) when ‘‘interpreted in terms of the overall social setting’’ or situation in which they are used (Fortado, 1998: pp. 15, 31), as has been shown by anthropologists who have studied nicknaming in its own right (Barrett, 1980; Gilmore, 1982; Glazier, 1987). However, as this chapter argues, notwithstanding the idiosyncratic nature of nicknames in specific organizations, commonalities in nicknaming processes and patterns can be identified across time and place. Such commonalities can be discerned by broadening the field of study so that attention can be given to macro-level structures and processes and the nexus between language-making and sensemaking. In short, I argue that extending the field beyond the microlevel makes it possible to discern the role nicknaming and nicknames play in the framing of identity(ies) and behavior and (verbal) action and interaction (Czarniawska, 2006, pp. 1668–1669; Eisenberg, 2006, pp. 1699; Weber & Glynn, 2006, p. 1645). While nicknaming may well provide a medium for localized humor, or a safety valve in particular political and industrial

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contexts (‘t Hart, 2007, p. 7; Rodrigues & Collinson, 1995, pp. 743–746), it is important to appreciate that What is ‘‘local’’ is influenced by seemingly remote factors. The locality of local interactions does not come about by chance, but stems from historical and institutional legacies. Local interaction may still be the arena where sensemaking primarily plays out, but institutions and social structures influence what counts as local (Weber & Glynn, 2006, p. 1652).

This point is pertinent to nicknaming because, as Davey and MacKinnon (2001, p. 72) put it, nicknames are ‘‘a storehouse of a culture’s identity and values.’’ As will be seen, nicknames are not only underpinned by ‘‘a web of personal and working relationships’’ at the local level but also by ‘‘cultural aspirations’’ and ‘‘the socially inherited assemblages of beliefs, practices and taboos which create the texture of life’’ (McKenna, 1980, pp. 230–231). By considering workplace nicknaming as sensemaking and extending the field beyond the local, this chapter will show how nicknaming provides a useful avenue for investigating workers’ own views about (mis)behavior and how their use of certain vocabularies not only reflects the existence of behavioral norms, expectations, and rules, but also influences the enactment of such norms (Czarniawska, 2006, p. 1670). In this way, the chapter highlights ‘‘the link between meaning and action’’ (Weber & Glynn, 2006, p. 1655). According to Schindler (2002, p. 56), ‘‘[n]ames express and encourage appropriate role behavior’’ (sic) and ‘‘[d]erogatory nicknames may be used to exert social control’’ and ‘‘contribute to or express social solidarity.’’ As he noted, nicknames go ‘‘to the heart of what people think of someone.’’ By expressing ‘‘closeness and distance, affection and displeasure’’ or ‘‘admiring acknowledgment,’’ they send signals that set ‘‘the tone of social intercourse’’ and ‘‘everyday manners.’’ Schindler concurred with the linguist Wierzbicka (1992, p. 302) who argued that ‘‘[n]ames y carry important pragmatic meanings which colour, and even shape, the character of human interaction.’’ In the context of the negotiated social order of the workplace, as Fortado (1998, p. 13) points out, nicknames reflect ‘‘potent meanings.’’ Explicitly and implicitly, they convey impressions, expectations, and assessments about the performance of fellow workers and managers and in doing so they provide ‘‘one among numerous social tools’’ that can be ‘‘used to sanction deviants’’ (Fortado, 1998, p. 15). In environments ‘‘of mutual watchfulness and interdependence, the development and use of nicknames provide a major source of amusement’’ that can ‘‘reinforce in-group solidarity’’ and ‘‘encourage circumspect behavior’’ (Parman, 1976,

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p. 102). As Brandes (1975, p. 146) put it, (derogatory) nicknames are ‘‘powerful regulators of behavior’’ and ‘‘one of the most effective community mechanisms y of social control’’ because they demand conformity to the cultural ideals that define the community in which they are uttered. Moreover, nicknames can be seen as ‘‘a verbal representation of a collective identity’’ (Gilmore, 1982, p. 697) and an effort to ‘‘achieve a symbolic mastery over ‘the group’’ (Gilmore, 1982, p. 698) in order ‘‘to gain dominance over others by attacking their sense of self identity’’ (Gilmore, 1982, p. 687). Building on these insights, this chapter construes nicknaming as a form of language-making that ‘‘reflects the social group’s own world’’ (McKenna, 1980, p. 232), provides a marker of ‘‘shared cultural meanings’’ (‘t Hart, 2007, p. 11), and offers a means of framing a situation (Collinson, 1988, pp. 184–187; Fortado, 1998, p. 29; ‘t Hart, 2007, p. 8). Of course, a vast literature exists on the question of framing. For the purposes of this chapter, I draw on Weick who combined the notion of frames with cues, and who explained this linkage by suggesting that Frames and cues can be thought of as vocabularies in which words that are more abstract (frames) include and point to other less abstract words (cues) that become sensible in the context created by the more inconclusive words. Meaning within vocabularies is relational. A cue in a frame is what makes sense, not the cue alone or the frame alone. Said differently, the substance of sensemaking starts with three elements; a frame, a cue, and a connection (Weick, 1995, p. 110, cited in Czarniawska, 2006, p. 1669).

Sensemaking occurs across multiple levels: in the context of broader national and international ‘‘systems of employment’’ (Jacoby, 2004, 2005) and in the more localized context of the employment contract. Whereas the former encompasses ‘‘historical legacies’’ that surface in local events and shape ‘‘the local interactions between employees and employer,’’ the latter can be seen ‘‘as a ‘mental model’ that gets shaped by contextual cues that enable the parties to make sense of communications from each other’’ (Weber & Glynn, 2006, p. 1650) In the workplace context, I argue, language-making in the form of nicknaming provides the cues or mechanisms for members to draw on available social and cultural resources, such as localized and more generalized oral traditions, to convey their responses to work conditions and relations (Davey & MacKinnon, 2001, p. 71) and reinforce expectations about workplace behavior and identity through self-organization and co-production of informal rules. In this sense, nicknames can be said to perform what Sturdy and Fleming (2003, p. 760) refer to as ‘‘verbal labor’’

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insofar as they provide a medium through which workers take actions designed to influence the behavior of their fellows and enforce conformity to co-produced informal behavioral rules. In order to identify the concepts that frame the treatment of nicknaming presented here, the chapter begins with a sketch of the key issues raised by the study of humor and identity in relation to misbehavior. It then explains the nature of industrial language-making and indicates its links to workers’ self-organization. On this basis, it locates workplace nicknaming in historical context by presenting an overview of work-related nicknaming over the past couple of centuries. A closer examination of specific workplace nicknames follows, highlighting how nicknames shape relations and interactions and mark out group boundaries. Here attention is given to the processes by which nicknaming reinforces the informal behavioral rules that generate and maintain a sense of unity by identifying (and controlling) deviant behaviors in language that defines identity and excludes outsiders (Green, 1991, p. 126). As will be seen, nicknaming, whether designed to tease or insult, condone, or shame, draws on a ‘‘verbal arsenal of types of conflict talk’’ that informs ‘‘interactional practices’’ (Reynolds, 2007, p. 437) and gender identities. It not only seeks to subvert ‘‘inherent power asymmetries’’ between workers and their managers but also among groups of workers. In other words, nicknaming involves actions taken by individuals and groups to develop a language that constructs identities and relationships by drawing ‘‘on metaphoric invention and imagination.’’ This language-making can be said to contain ‘‘the possibility of negation, resistance, [and] reinterpretation’’ of prevailing power structures and relations (Scott, 1996, p. 167). Numerous scholars have found gender to be a critically important dimension of identity construction through name calling (Bachelor, 2001; Collinson, 1988; Fortado, 1998; Glazier, 1987; Green, 1991). As Weatherall (2002, p. 23) has pointed out, research has identified ‘‘sex bias in patterns of nicknaming,’’ and according to Phillips (1990, p. 286) nicknames ‘‘reflect beliefs about the sexes.’’ For this reason de Klerk and Bosch (1996, p. 539) argued that nicknaming practices can ‘‘be regarded as an accurate barometer of societal attitudes to gender groups.’’ However, as they also note: Another important aspect of nicknames is their role in influencing the perceptions of users y because of the semantic value evident in some nicknames (e.g., Sexy Ankles, Bunnikins). Such names have the consequence of reinforcing the character of certain relationships and social attitudes, reminding everyone of the attributes of the bearer and creating expectations which affect perceptions y and this can be particularly influential

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with regard to the perpetuation of gender-related stereotypes (De Klerk and Bosch, 1996, p. 539).

If, as Scott (1996, p. 170) put it, gender can enhance understanding of ‘‘the complex connections among various forms of human interaction,’’ then from a gendered perspective, nicknaming practices can be read as part of broader ‘‘gender displays’’ manifested through language and rituals ‘‘so characteristic of one sex that they’’ mark ‘‘the workplace as belonging to that sex’’ (Reskin & Padavic, 1994, p. 11). This connection between gender and language-making, I argue, is central to the way workers assess and respond to (mis)behavior in different workplaces. The nicknames relied on this chapter come from different sources. A large proportion are drawn from documented examples referred to in studies of a wide range of different industries and workplaces at different time periods, many of which have been obtained using qualitative research methods. A number are drawn from oral history interviews conducted in Australia as part of history projects relating to work and workers. The research outcomes of these projects provide the background and inspiration for the approach to sources and analysis presented here.1 According to Dahl and Thor (2009, p. 21), the purpose of oral history ‘‘is often to ‘give voice’ to marginalized or forgotten individuals or groups’’ through the analysis of the narratives embedded in oral testimonies. Such analysis can enhance understanding of how they ‘‘negotiate their own and other identities’’ because, like other qualitative research methods, oral history provides a ‘‘powerful tool’’ for uncovering ‘‘how people y interpret their lives and the world around them’’ (Frisch, 1990, p. 188). For the purposes of this chapter, the narrative form of nicknames is used to identify ‘‘patterns of talk and interaction’’ through which people construct shared meanings (Devault, 1990, pp. 96, 97, 101) and identities in their places of work. And for this purpose it construes narratives as ‘‘social actions that embody adaptation, resistance, and appropriation of cultural norms through the dialogues within which the narratives happen’’ and also as ‘‘identity performances’’ (Stalker & Lynda, 2009, p. 594).

HUMOR, IDENTITY, SELF-ORGANIZATION, AND CO-PRODUCTION Humor and identity were identified as being important to misbehavior by Ackroyd and Thompson (1999), whose path-breaking work on the subject

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was undertaken from an industrial sociology perspective. Yet, making sense of how these two phenomena relate to misbehavior is no easy matter. On the one hand, both have been studied by scholars from a broad range of disciplines, which has produced a plethora of different frameworks, and also valuable insights. On the other hand, both phenomena traverse a broad range of behaviors that are not limited to asymmetrical transactions between workers and their managers, nor by the workplace. On the contrary, misbehavior involving humor and identity spills across relationships among workers and between them and a range of ‘‘outsiders’’ who are implicated in the lives and labor of workers. Humor at work, whether it is friendly or opprobrious, is not necessarily limited to contestation between employees and employers or managers ‘‘over matters related to time, work, product and identity.’’ Nor is it necessarily ‘‘restricted to being an alternative form of subverting figures of authority’’ (Richards, 2008, pp. 664, 665). Similarly, identity issues and relations at work, particularly when related to gender, confound traditional definitions of misbehavior, extending beyond rule-breaking in specific organizational contexts or even the very broad idea that it includes ‘‘anything you do at work you are not supposed to do’’ (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, p. 2; Sprouse, 1992). In short, both themes of humor and identity expand the analytical framework beyond the control-resistance dialectic by highlighting the ambiguities and incongruities of social interaction and relations in the work context. Both direct the gaze at microprocesses in the workplace and also broader social assumptions and norms that involve cooperation and accommodation as much as conflict and protest. Most importantly, both also highlight the role of what Ackroyd and Thompson (1999, p. 54) refer to as ‘‘self-organization’’ since behaviors that display humor and identity invariably center on informal individual and group interactions that involve shared understandings and interests, which inform struggles for autonomy and/or for survival (Noon & Blyton, 2007; Richards, 2008, pp. 664, 666). In other words, various behaviors, including those that can be construed as misbehavior, throw light on the agency of organizational actors and their efforts to shape workplace relations through their accommodation of or challenges to ‘‘the imbalances of power relations in the workplace’’ (Shamsudin, 2006, p. 73) across and within organizational hierarchies. Growing recognition of behaviors that occur in the gray areas between resistance, accommodation, and consent on the part of a range of actors has focused attention on what Ackroyd in this volume refers to as ‘‘co-production’’ (also see Collinson & Ackroyd, 2005, p. 315). As Ackroyd and Thompson (1999) pointed out, managers are sometimes complicit in

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defining and shaping some forms of misbehavior. This concept of co-production provides a useful tool to examine how workers, together, not only engage humor and identity in their misbehavior, but also invoke and convey their individual and collective assessments of the behavior and misbehavior of fellow workers and others to each other. Focus on this form of employee co-production provides a way of exploring the operation of ‘‘informal rules’’ or group ‘‘norms of behavior that arise within the context of workplace associations.’’ These informal rules ‘‘develop out of social interactions’’ and ‘‘alongside the formal rules’’ that ‘‘provide guidelines for desired behavior in organizations.’’ Informal rules traverse the gray areas between resistance and accommodation/consent because they create opportunities for individual and collective enactment of and resistance to formal rules, depending on the ‘‘meaning that is bestowed on them by the organizational members’’ (Helms Mills, 2002, p. 119). For this reason their investigation can help to throw light on the complex, and at times contradictory nature of self-organization. However, as Helms Mills (2002, p. 121) points out, the rules approach alone ‘‘does not explain how people come to construct social realities’’ or ‘‘to enact rules differently.’’ To address this omission, Helms Mills and Mills (2000) related this approach to Weick’s model of sensemaking, a synthesis that provides a useful way to consider the connections between nicknaming, (mis)behavior, and identity construction. This approach, coupled with Weick’s argument that ‘‘organizational members take their identity from the conduct of others’’ (1995: 23, cited in Helms Mills, 2002, p. 121), provides a useful framework for exploring how nicknaming processes not only reflect shared assumptions about behavior and identity but also how nicknames are used to promote ‘‘group conformity’’ (Collinson, 1988, p. 187), at times to ensure the enactment of informal rules, at others to support the maintenance of prevailing formal organizational rules, managerial expectations and requirements and at others still to resist them, and to shame those who digress from informal rules by conforming to ‘the pursuit of organisational activities or goals that are perceived as legitimate or normal’ (Helms Mills, 2002, pp. 119, 121).

NICKNAMING, HUMOR, AND THE WORKPLACE As scholars of humor point out, even ‘‘in the most formal of organizations,’’ humor ‘‘is symptomatic of the most profound intersubjective needs of group members who employ’’ it ‘‘to make sense of and to control the tensions in

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their social relationships,’’ as well as to address conflict situations through resistance (Powell & Paton, 1988, p. xvii). From this perspective, humor is used ‘‘to reinforce the social control of deviance from shared standards, both between groups and within groups.’’ It is in effect ‘‘an internal regulating mechanism of social control used to pointedly ridicule or embarrass/shame the norm breaker’’ (Powell & Paton, 1988, pp. xviii–xix). Jokes, nicknames, and stories in the workplace are, according to Gabriel (1995, pp. 478, 479), landmarks of fantasy in the ‘‘uncolonized terrain.’’ In this terrain, which he refers to as ‘‘the unmanaged organization’’ (Gabriel, 1995, p. 478), individuals and groups can participate ‘‘in all kinds of unsupervised, spontaneous activity,’’ occasionally engaging ‘‘with the practices of power, principally through the subjective realm of fantasy.’’ For Gabriel, this realm enables them to symbolically refashion official organizational practices ‘‘in the interests of pleasure, allowing a temporary supremacy of emotion over rationality and of uncontrol over control’’ (Gabriel, 1995, p. 479). There is some value in this approach for an analysis of the subjective dimensions of nicknaming particularly as it draws attention to the potential subversiveness of jokes (and nicknames) and their capacity to tilt ‘‘uncontrol against control,’’ to project images that challenge hierarchies, and promote ‘‘intimacy over formality’’ and ‘‘unofficial values over fixed ones’’ (Douglas, 1975, p. 98, cited in Gabriel, 1995, p. 486) through caricatures of ‘‘the official organization’’ and through self-mockery that makes ‘‘light of hardships’’ (Gabriel, 1995, p. 486). However, Gabriel’s focus on the micro, organizational level of subjectivity limits the usefulness of his approach because, as noted earlier, the aim here is not to focus attention exclusively on the ‘‘micropolitics of organization’’ (Fortado, 1998, p. 29) but rather to consider nicknaming patterns more broadly. For this reason, Weick’s approach to inter-subjectivity is more helpful because he distinguishes between ‘‘levels of social analysis as ranging from the inter-subjective to the generic subjective to the extra-subjective’’ (Weber & Glynn, 2006, p. 164). In this framework, the inter-subjective encompasses the micro-level where individuals make sense of their ‘‘work environment, tasks and activities, and also more broadly of organizational processes and events.’’ At this level, according to Cecez-Kecmanovic (2005, p. 59), they ‘‘interact informally and formally, to explore problematic situations, share their assumptions and experiences, and co-create inter-subjective meanings. In this collective sensemaking process problematic situations are named and framed’’ and ‘‘the boundaries of intervention are set.’’ The critical ‘‘components of this process – knowledge sharing, achieving mutual

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understanding, inter-subjective meaning making and knowledge co-creation, as well as taking action – are all entangled in social interaction.’’ By contrast, the generic subjective operates at the level of the organization where ‘‘meanings are ascribed to organizational roles (normative expectations), organizational processes and structures.’’ Finally, the extra-subjective level, which Weick calls ‘‘culture,’’ encompasses the broader reservoir of knowledge. According to Weber and Glynn (2006, p. 1643), the generic subjective level is where ‘‘institutionally defined roles and scripts connect the structures at the field level to the subjective meaning that arises from individuals enacting these structures in local practice.’’ These three levels of subjectivity are helpful for interpreting nicknaming practices and patterns in the ‘‘uncolonized terrain’’ of the workplace where self-organization and co-production of informal rules is played out. They broaden the context and make it possible to consider:  how macro-level attitudes, norms, and language forms pervade such terrains and overlap with and reinforce micro-level attitudes about and norms of behavior and  how this confluence enables people to respond to and enforce formal and informal roles and rules in ways that identify insiders and outsiders and facilitate the maintenance of (i) ‘‘collective self-identity’’ (Collinson, 1988, p. 185) and ‘‘group conformity’’ to local expectations and rules (Collinson, 1988, pp. 187, 188) that may sustain solidarity, protest, and resistance to management and (ii) gendered stereotypes and social norms of behavior (Collinson, 1988; de Klerk & Bosch, 1996; Helms Mills, 2002, p. 124; Phillips, 1990, p. 286).

SENSEMAKING, LANGUAGE-MAKING, AND (MIS)BEHAVIOR As noted earlier, Weick (1995, p. 110) construed the frames and cues that contribute to sensemaking ‘‘as vocabularies’’ and according to Czarniawska (2006, p. 1670) he listed six types of frames: ideologies (vocabularies of society), premises that give structure to non-routine work (vocabularies of organization), paradigms (vocabularies of work), theories of action (vocabularies of coping), tradition (vocabularies of predecessors), and stories (vocabularies of sequence and experience).

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While all of these vocabularies are pertinent to nicknaming, those of society, organization, and work are directly applicable to nicknaming practices: the vocabularies of work focus on ‘‘self-contained systems, capable of serving alternate realities, or as a subjective reality’’ that can determine what people perceive, conceive, and enact (Weick, 1995, p. 118), in other words, the informal terrain of informal co-produced rules. The vocabularies of organization focus on control through supervision, programs, and routines or ‘‘assumptions and definitions that are taken as given’’ (Weick, 1995, p. 113), in other words, the formal terrain of management rules. And finally, the vocabularies of society focus on shared and ‘‘emotionally charged beliefs, values and norms that bind some people together, and help them make sense of their worlds’’ (Trice & Beyer, 1993, p. 33, cited in Weick, 1995, p. 111), the content of which originates in ‘‘extraorganizational sources,’’ such as transnational, national, regional, and community cultures, ‘‘industry ideologies,’’ ‘‘organization sets,’’ and ‘‘occupational ideologies’’ (Weick, 1995, p. 112). The concept of industrial language-making, elaborated by McKenna (1980), makes it possible to approach these vocabularies in a synthetic way. Distinguishing between ‘‘the language of the orderer and the language of the ordered,’’ in his study of English railway workers between 1840 and 1970, McKenna (1980, pp. 231–233) argued that the latter’s ‘‘railway talk’’ provided them with the means to ‘‘analyse and reinterpret their view of social reality’’ and also a ‘‘transformational technique’’ for relabeling and neutering the ‘‘horrific aspects of daily life’’ and the hostile and negative aspects of authority and change. Although he thought that all trades and professions possessed ‘‘a unique linguistic form,’’ he stressed that ‘‘heavy and dangerous work’’ in particular demanded ‘‘close companionship and a condensed, vivid terminology’’ (McKenna, 1980, p. 231). This view has been echoed in many studies of male-dominated occupational groups and work contexts (Collinson, 1988; Davey and MacKinnon, 2001; Green, 1991; Huber, 1994; Joseph, Rubinstein, Zolov, & Poniatowska, 2001; Kernan, 1945; Long, 1992). In their study of an underground coal mine, Vaught and Smith (2003, p. 102) found that ‘‘rich occupational argot’’ enabled ‘‘the incorporation of the individual into the group.’’ Similarly, Thompson (2003, p. 321) argued that ‘‘special argot’’ or language emerged as one of the most important and ‘‘meaningful symbols’’ that united workers at the beef plant that he studied. According to Trujillo and Dionisopoulos (1987, p. 201), ‘‘[o]ne important indicator of any cultural group is the vocabulary used by its members to label their experiences.’’ Such ‘‘argot or vernacular is considered a symbolic code that helps organize the central meanings’’

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endorsed by the group and provides ‘‘important markers used by members and by outsiders to identify who in fact is, and is not, a member.’’ In policing, this sort of vocabulary can emerge ‘‘in response to some occupational and personal concerns shared by’’ many if not most police, which can be ‘‘largely unrelated to the institutional mandate of the police’’ as this includes the protection ‘‘of life and property,’’ the preservation of order and the arrest of those who violate the law (Van Maanen, 1978, p. 221, cited in Trujillo & Dionisopoulos, 1987, p. 201). For McKenna, such language-making represents a strategy adopted ‘‘by those further from the source of power.’’ It enables ‘‘the language of the technocrat’’ to be replaced by ‘‘a blacker, spicier’’ (McKenna, 1980, p. 231) ‘‘working organic language which crackles with wit and social criticism’’ (McKenna, 1980, p. 233), one that stems from real workplace situations and allows members of work groups to combine ‘‘immediate reaction with aptness of description and comments’’ using ‘‘humour, wit, satire, metaphor, simile and allusion’ (McKenna, 1980, pp. 230, 231). However, as noted earlier, such language-making is fundamentally linked to broader ‘‘cultural aspirations’’ and ‘‘inherited beliefs, practices and taboos’’ and it is constantly refreshed from ‘‘internal and external sources y other industries and other activities.’’ Referring specifically to the context of technological change that British rail workers faced in the 1950s, McKenna concluded that their railway talk could be likened to both a hammer/anvil or ‘‘a shield, behind which the group was cemented and the area defended so that all things hostile and strange could be rejected’’ (McKenna, 1980, p. 234). Derogatory, ugly, and insulting nicknames provide a particularly good example of this sort of duality but before these are examined, it is important to first locate this form of language-making in historical context to highlight commonalities in nicknaming practices across time and place.

WORK-RELATED NICKNAMING IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT Although nicknaming among workers stretches back in time to the preindustrial European artisanal milieu (Schindler, 2002), nicknames such as ‘‘scab,’’ ‘‘rat,’’ or ‘‘blackleg,’’ which emerged in England during the industrial revolution, provide a clear indication of the links between workers’ attitudes about the behavior of their fellows, self-organization, resistance, misbehavior, and language-making (Beaud & Pialoux, 2001;

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Doyle, 1998; Dyrenfurth, 2007). These generalized nicknames provide some indication of how workers have generally communicated their assessments of workers who fail to conform to group norms. Besides such generalized nicknames, localized naming practices have been identified by scholars in a wide range of workplaces in mining, forestry, transportation, electricity, food processing, and textile industries (Davey & MacKinnon, 2001; Green, 1991; Huber, 1994; Joseph, et al., 2001; Kernan, 1945; Long, 1992; McKenna, 1980; Messinger, 1975; Pilcher, 1972; Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939; Stro¨mberg & Karlsson, 2009) and in engineering work (Collinson, 1988; Roy, 1959). More recent cases have been identified in call centers (Taylor & Bain, 2003) and in the more dangerous occupations of policing, firefighting, and correctional and emergency work (Moran & Massam, 1997; Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1983; Tracy & Scott, 2006). In these contexts, scholars have found that the nicknames workers give each other, and also supervisors, managers, and employers, provide a means for them to share views about the behaviors of co-workers and individual managers, while also reinforcing the distinction between ‘‘us and them.’’ We see this clearly in the recent case of three American civil rights workers who were ‘‘fired for sending hundreds of catty emails, in which workmates were called derisory nicknames such as ‘Psycho’ and ‘Monster’, ‘Roid Rage’, ‘Rainman’, ‘Extreme Makeover,’ ‘Homeless McGree’, while the supervisor was called ‘Teen Wolf’ and the [Civil Rights] commission’s executive director was labeled ‘Night Ranger’’’ (Gardner, 2011). In the case of a Swedish food production company, the women meatpackers captured the way managers observed production work from ‘‘the glazed balconies above the shop floor’’ by referring to managers as ‘‘monkey keepers’’ who watch ‘‘the monkeys.’’ At times they also called themselves ‘‘monkeys in cages’’ to emphasize ‘‘the obligatory restrictions of their work and the distance between management and workforce.’’ Other nicknames given by these women to individual managers included ‘‘The Shadow’’ and ‘‘The Helium Balloon,’’ which depicted their experience of ‘‘only seeing his shadow passing by’’ or ‘‘one minute he’s here, the next he flies away and disappears with a whoooosh’’ (Stro¨mberg & Karlsson, 2009, p. 642). It is precisely through the articulation of negative assessments of the behavior of supervisors and managers that workers highlight informal co-produced norms of acceptable (and fair) behavior and it is through this inter-subjective process that they differentiate themselves from managers and reinforce group solidarity among themselves (Collinson, 1988, p. 185; Taylor & Bain, 2003, p. 1502). A good example is provided by a study of a call center where disliked managers were referred to as ‘‘total company

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men,’’ and given personalized nicknames such as ‘‘Crafty Christian’’ or ‘‘Tricky Dicky’’ (Taylor & Bain, 2003, p. 1496). Similarly, in the factory setting studied by Collinson (1988, p. 186), workers nicknamed managers they perceived to be ‘‘conformist’’ and unable to make decisions as ‘‘the yes men,’’ which led Collinson to conclude that ‘‘[s]hop-floor humour directed at managers was usually concerned to negate and distance them.’’ In other cases, derogatory nicknames have been given to ‘‘outsiders’’ to the work group/workplace who nonetheless have an impact on its work. A good case in point is the naming of a man who was thought to be an efficiency expert in the piecework machine shop studied by Donald Roy as ‘‘The Snooper’’ (1959, p. 158). Another is the derogatory naming of the thousands of new workers who moved to Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood to take up jobs with Amazon as ‘‘Amazoids or Amazonians,’’ by the long-standing workers and residents of the district who posted leaflets on local light poles, which included references to ‘‘Am-holes’’ and which captured the perception of the newcomers as ‘‘uppity snobs’’ (Brill, 2012). Nicknames from what can be called ‘‘emergency’’ services also provide some good examples. In a study of police work, ‘‘civilians’’ who ‘‘misbehave’’ were labeled ‘‘assholes, dirtbags, creeps, and maggots’’ (Pacanowsky & O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1983, p. 139), correctional officers ‘‘referred to inmates as ‘scum of the earth’’’(Tracy & Scott, 2006, p. 27) and paramedics used ‘‘crispy critter’’ to refer to those ‘‘severely and fatally burned, or ‘greenie’ to describe someone who was severely decomposed’’ (Moran & Massam, 1997, p. 4). These cases illustrate how nicknaming operates as a tool of insider communication and emotional bonding by providing a ‘‘vocabulary of coping’’ that relies on what has been referred to as ‘‘gallows’’ humor. According to Moran and Massam (1997, pp. 4, 5), this sort of humor provides a ‘‘mechanism for coping with life in harsh,’’ and ‘‘chronic or ongoing situations including work environments’’ by allowing negative feelings to be transformed ‘‘into positive acceptance.’’ These same conclusions have been drawn by other scholars. Davey and MacKinnon (2001, p. 81) concluded that humorous nicknames in the Cape Breton mines provided ‘‘a means of releasing the tension of working in a dangerous environment’’ and ‘‘of coping with an injury.’’ Similarly, Long (1992, p. 230) concluded that derogatory (humorous) nicknames used by Ohio railroad workers not only provided a safety valve for criticizing conditions, managers, and fellow workers, but also signaled a range of ambiguous emotions – from disgust about appalling conditions and/or the bad habits and performance of fellows to an underlying pride in the capacity to endure them.

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Such findings highlight the nexus between nicknaming, humor, and survival, as well as workplace accommodation or what Collinson refers to as ‘‘conformity.’’ In referring to the joking culture of the components division in an all-male engineering workplace, Collinson (1988, p. 187) noted: y the internal demands of group conformity y were embedded in specific rules that simulated the ‘‘laws’’ of natural selection. Social ‘‘survival of the fittest’’ was the underlying principles behind the pressure to be able to give and take a joke, to laugh at oneself and expect others to respond likewise to cutting remarks.

For Collinson (1988, pp. 187, 188), this behavior reflected the men’s concern ‘‘to be how others expected them to be.’’ As these examples show – whether focused on fellow workers, managers, or outsiders more generally – nicknames help to distinguish insiders from outsiders, and enhance ‘‘an occupational’’ or work ‘‘group’s sense of identity’’ and unity by verbally communicating assumptions about and expectations of appropriate and deviant behavior (Long, 1992, pp. 224, 225). As importantly, nicknaming also throws light on the operation of co-produced informal rules.

ASSESSING BEHAVIOR AND PERFORMANCE Most studies of humor and occupational identity that refer to nicknames note the link with behavior. Collinson (1988, p. 185), for example, referred to ‘‘Electric lips’’ who was so called because he ‘‘was unable to keep secrets,’’ ‘‘Pot Harry’’ who ‘‘as a teaboy, thirty years before y had dropped and broken all the drinking ‘‘pots’’, and ‘‘Yoyo’’ who had a ‘‘habit of walking away and then returning during a conversation.’’ Similar examples were found by Davey and MacKinnon. ‘‘A pair of miners who would try to quit early or to slow down the work in the mine’’ were ‘‘called Knock Off and Tie Up.’’ One who habitually fell asleep while working was named ‘‘Noodle Neck’’ (Davey & MacKinnon, 2001, p. 82) and one who had ‘‘a reputation for working and moving quickly’’ was called ‘‘Road Runner’’ (Davey and MacKinnon, 2001, p. 81). As Long (1992, p. 222) pointed out in his study, nicknames ‘‘related to the work on the railroad y the way a man worked’’ or ‘‘a mistake he made’’; one Ohio rail worker was called ‘‘Coldwater’’ because he was unable to keep the boiler hot and another was ‘‘‘Satchel Ass’ because he seemed never to leave the engineer’s seat’’ (Long, 1992, p. 223). At the Eveleigh Railway Workshops in Sydney, one worker who ‘‘always travelled at a snail’s pace’’ was called ‘‘Speed,’’ while another who complained

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about always having a tonne of work was called ‘‘Tunna’’ (B. Rhymes, personal communication, December 12, 2009). Such labels clearly provide an indication of the attitudes that workers had about their fellows and a commentary about their work performances. Green found similar examples of derogatory and cruel nicknames on the New Zealand docks, which were used against fellow workers as a way of reminding them ‘‘of disreputable incidents in the past’’ and ‘‘behavior perceived as less than desirable by the majority’’ (Green, 1991, p. 125). These were, she argued, fundamentally tied to male camaraderie that arose from ‘‘an informal and highly egalitarian community’’ (Green, 1991, 121–124). Although these nicknames are clearly born from local experiences and events, they share common themes across time and place, as is made particularly clear in relation to the nicknames given to workers who do not ‘‘pull their weight at work.’’ This category formed the largest group of workplace or occupational nicknames in the Cape Breton mines, and according to Davey and MacKinnon (2001, p. 82) served ‘‘as a form of social control or negative sanction’’ from fellow workers. Nicknames critical of such behavior were also observed during the Hawthorne Studies conducted from 1927 to 1932 at the Western Electric Chicago plant where a wireman ‘‘was called the ‘4.15 Special’’’ because he was so slow in performing his work that ‘‘he had to work up until quitting time each and every day.’’ Other slow workers were also referred to as ‘‘chiselers.’’ The negative connotations of these names give us an indication of the way the broader employment relationship frames group expectations about work performance and provides cues that seek to enforce informal rules relating to performance. These nicknames can, however, be distinguished from those that disparage fast workers who conform to managerial norms and formal rules and depart from informal co-produced rules. Names adopted in a context of collective output restriction, such as ‘‘rate buster,’’ ‘‘Speed King,’’ ‘‘Cyclone,’’ ‘‘Phar Lap’’ (an exceptionally fast Australian race horse), and ‘‘Slave,’’ which were identified by Roethlisberger and Dickson during the Hawthorne Studies (Fortado, 1998, pp. 14, 15), illustrate how broader cultural sources are deployed to reflect local attitudes about deviant behavior from the perspective of those who subscribed to collective norms and to sanction behaviors that deviated from the group’s collective norms (Fortado, 1998, p. 15). In this sense they throw light on the interplay between intra-group conformity and cohesion, solidarity, resistance, and conformity to normative expectations by individuals; that is, the interface between the inter-subjective and generic subjective levels of sensemaking.

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From a different time and place, although one framed by a similar institutional employment context, Bachelor’s study of the General Motors (GM) plant in Mexico provides additional evidence of the way that derogatory nicknaming has been used by workers to signal ‘‘the kinds of behavior which will not be tolerated without resistance’’ (Brandes, 1975, p. 146). Here, in May 1964, workers nicknamed a new employee ‘‘El Campeon (the Champion)’’ in order to chastise him for working much faster than the rest. According to Bachelor (2001, p. 294), they confronted the deviant by saying: ‘‘Hey what is your problem? Slow down. We’ve got to work together’’ and although the worker responded by slowing down, ‘‘for the rest of his career with the company, which spanned the next thirty-one years,’’ the moniker was retained. Such control is predicated on socialization and power. As Fortado (1998, p. 16) points out, in various work ‘‘settings, the old-timers call the new arrivals obscene names, curse them, point out their negative attributes’’ and use insulting labels, along with personal attacks, jibes and jokes as a way of putting ‘‘novices in their place: on the bottom of the totem pole,’’ where they can learn ‘‘about the power of the group, and the need to bend to the group’s wishes.’’ ‘‘Humor’’ of this sort instructs ‘‘new members on how to act and react’’ and also tests ‘‘the willingness of initiates to be part of’’ specific work groups ‘‘and to accept its rules.’’ In male dominated workplaces, being able to take a joke or cope with an insulting nickname, in Collinson’s view, provides a signal that a newcomer has learned the lessons of the workplace culture and how to be ‘‘a man’’ (Collinson, 1988, p. 188). This sort of esprit de corps was also upheld by the way workers applauded those who stood ‘‘up to the bosses to defend their own pace and preserve their level of craftsmanship.’’ At Eveleigh, a communist worker was nicknamed ‘‘Red Demon’’ (R. Butcher, personal communication, March 29, 1999). As Bachelor points out in relation to the previously mentioned GM case, the ‘‘language used to describe such individuals was imbued with connotations of manliness and fortitude.’’ At Eveleigh, a communist worker was nicknamed ‘‘Red Demon’’ (R. Butcher, personal communication, March 29, 1999). Such ‘‘gender-steeped language’’ is evident in the example of one particularly militant man who ‘‘was revered as a ‘‘worker with y balls,’’ and another ‘‘admired laborer’’ who ‘‘was christened El Caballo (the Horse), a name closely associated with endurance’’ and ‘‘sexual endowment.’’ At the same time, a manager who was judged to be tough and obdurate was nicknamed ‘‘El Gallo’’ – ‘‘the Rooster, a name also steeped in sexual connotations’’ (Bachelor, 2001, p. 294). Ironically, women meatpackers in Sweden also used ‘‘the Rooster’’ (‘‘Tuppen’’ in Swedish) but in this case the nickname was given to a disliked manager because he acted ‘‘like a rooster in a henhouse,’’ a point

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that will be explored in greater detail later. Suffice to say here that for Stro¨mberg and Karlsson (2009, p. 645), the ‘‘consciously subtle and deliberate use of applied humor’’ by these women highlights how ‘‘the device of differentiation and integration’’ was used to accentuate ‘‘the distances between managerial culture and the opposing worker culture, while at the same time emphasizing the norms and values of the worker culture.’’ This certainly appears to be the case in relation to the integrative tendencies among GM workers in Mexico and also to the joking culture in the lorry factory Collinson studied in which humor and ridicule were important to the retention of ‘‘masculine pride in y manual, productive skills and practical experience,’’ ‘‘the display of tough masculinity and the testing of these same qualities in others.’’ In this regard, Collinson argued that the ‘‘preoccupation with sexuality and the differentiation of working class men from women,’’ in the shop-floor discourse of this ‘‘the all-male environment of the components division’’ (Collinson, 1988, p. 190) were reflected by two specific forms of masculinity: the ‘‘superstud’’ and the family breadwinner, which he argues ‘‘contributed to male unity on the shop-floor and constituted a powerful pressure, to which shop-floor workers were required to conform’’ (Collinson, 1988, p. 191). Both of these forms highlight the way extra-subjective norms and expectations pervade the ‘‘uncolonized terrain.’’ However, it is also important to acknowledge that hegemonic forms of masculinity are underpinned by norms of femininity as much as masculinity. In Collinson’s study we see this in the reference made by one worker (nicknamed ‘‘Dirty Bar’’) to ‘‘the ‘nancy’ boys in the offices,’’ and the ridiculing of the company’s ‘‘yes men’’ as ‘‘effeminate’’ (Collinson, 1988, p. 186). This sort of linguistic gendering operates to not only affirm preferred models of masculinity but also of femininity. The nicknaming of a worker, who ‘‘broke down on the shop floor and cried’’ in the engine department of the GM plant in Mexico, when he could not cope with the increased speed on the assembly lines, provides a good case in point. Ridiculed by his workmates with the name, ‘‘La Llorona, after the legend of the long-suffering ‘Weeping Woman’ in Mexican oral tradition’’ (Bachelor, 2001, p. 290), it was not only the man’s tears that led to his rechristening ‘‘after a female figure,’’ according to Bachelor (2001: 294), but as importantly, his ‘‘inability to endure the travails of autowork.’’ The name explicitly equated his physical and emotional weakness with femininity, and marked a stark contrast to the norms of masculinity, which prevailed in this workplace and which centered on ‘‘craftsmanship and physical endurance,’’ both of which ‘‘represented the core of the autoworkers’ identity as workers

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and as men.’’ This form of naming not only enforced informal rules that enabled the autoworkers survive the unrelenting pace and demands of this workplace but also reinforced and perpetuated gender-related stereotypes (Phillips, 1990, p. 286) by warning others against emulating behavior that transgressed social boundaries between the sexes (Brandes, 1975, p. 146). In this way, it illustrates how localized language-making in the micropolitical context of the workplace draws on the ‘‘vocabularies of society’’ and broader ‘‘shared cultural meanings’’ (‘t Hart, 2007, p. 11) to maintain socially approved gendered identities. This sort of word play with reigning macro- and micro-level gender and sexual norms also features in nicknames used to achieve ‘‘compensatory justice’’ (Schindler, 2002, p. 57). Two cases outlined by Fortado are pertinent here. In one, located in a white collar unit, naming centered on the workers’ response to the behavior of one of their colleagues, Helen, who they believed was unfairly promoted by the Unit’s Director, Hal, to a first-line supervisory position by claiming credit for work that had been done by others. Subsequently, after Helen aggravated the resentment of her colleagues (now subordinates) by not supporting their ‘‘efforts to attain promotions and raises,’’ by yelling ‘‘at members of her work group’’ and by attributing their ‘‘animosity to the fact she was a woman and these men were sexists,’’ they called her ‘‘Hal’s Gal’’; a nickname that ‘‘embodied the favoritism that had been shown to her by Hal’’ and also ‘‘alluded to sexual improprieties’’ (Fortado, 1998, p. 19). In another case, located ‘‘in a law firm entitled Lykins and Arthur, P.A. (L&A),’’ the senior partner’s secretary was nicknamed ‘‘Queenie’’ by the rest of the secretaries who deplored her ‘‘‘superior attitude’ and curt manner.’’ At the same time these women ‘‘dubbed themselves ‘The L&A Bimbos’, in reaction to’’ a memorandum produced by one of the associates which referred to them disparagingly as ‘‘secretaries’’ in inverted commas (Fortado, 1998, p. 26). When one of the secretaries saw the memorandum, she commented to her colleagues: ‘‘They probably think we are really bimbos, but ‘Bimbo’ wouldn’t look good on a business card, so they’re going to call us ‘secretaries’.’’ This group nickname provided symbolic power to the women who went on to suggest that ‘‘if they were bimbos, they were excellent bimbos, because ‘L&A hires only the best bimbos’.’’ The moniker enhanced the women’s solidarity and their subsequent retaliatory action against the associates, which took the form of a ‘‘bloodless coup’’ in which they produced ‘‘‘Overthrown Despot’ signs for each attorney’s door.’’ Other similar examples of compensatory justice through languagemaking are evident in a range of workplace settings where nicknames draw on well-known figures from history and culture, such as ‘‘Napoleon

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Bonaparte,’’ ‘‘the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz’’ and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role of the Terminator, which were used by workers against a Personnel Director at Ministeel in campaigns against the employer’s anti-union strategy (Bacon, 1999, p. 13; Dundon, 2002, pp. 241–242). The contrast between the verbal action taken by the women meatpackers and the legal secretaries, on the one hand, and the male blue-collar workers, on the other, appears to be stark. The latter deployed highly masculinized nicknames drawn from popular culture that upheld highly masculine stereotypes and masculine attributes for both fellow workers, as well as for despised male managers. Departure from this trend is evident only when men do not conform to masculine social norms as the use of La Llorana – the Weeping Woman at GM in Mexico shows. This is not the only case. At the Eveleigh workshops, a laborer who managed to dodge any heavy work was called ‘‘Ladybird’’ ((B. Rhymes, personal communication, December 12, 2009) and in the Cape Breton mines a worker who often passed ‘‘out in the pit when given a difficult task became known as Fainting Lily’’ (Davey & MacKinnon, 2001, p. 82). Another departure from the use of masculine nicknames is evident when men do what is considered to be women’s work, as is made clear by the term ‘‘glorified maids’’ used by correctional officers ‘‘when performing servile endeavors’’ (Tracy & Scott, 2006, p. 27). In short, ‘‘the differential meanings associated with terms of women compared with terms for men y illustrate how language provides evidence of a social and moral order where men and masculinity are valued more than women and femininity’’ (Weatherall, 2002, p. 23). It is important to note that neither such meanings nor reigning gendered stereotypes are challenged by the nicknames women give each other, which subvert moral norms through sexual innuendo. For example, although the legal secretaries used ‘‘Bimbo’’ in a mockery, neither this nickname nor the one given to the disliked ‘‘Queenie’’ challenged macro norms of feminine identity and behavior. The same can be said of ‘‘gladjeflickor,’’ the nickname, which women meatpackers adopted for themselves and which enabled them to suggest that ‘‘they brought gladje (joy) to the organization as flickor (girls) with an easy-going disposition.’’ However, when the women adopted this ‘‘double-edged Swedish expression’’ in a light-hearted way, they were well aware that the term is also translatable as ‘‘ladies of easy virtue’’ (Stro¨mberg and Karlsson, 2009, p. 641). As Stro¨mberg and Karlsson (2009, p. 645) pointed out about these women’s nicknaming practices, ‘‘they usually picked a nickname that enhanced their femininity, with an ironic twist.’’ In considering these monikers alongside those used by the women for disliked managers, Stro¨mberg and Karlsson (2009, p. 645) argued that the

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women picked nicknames that made managers look ridiculous by lampooning their masculinity. Hence, they conclude that ‘‘the use of both group identity-enhancing nicknames and the belittling nicknaming of managers’’ constituted ‘‘a challenge to the predominant masculine regime.’’ This conclusion is problematic when we consider the ‘‘Rooster’’ nickname given by these women to a disliked manager. As the women told their interviewers, this name highlighted his ‘‘lack of respect for women’’ and also his ‘‘inability to control employees in general, and older female workers in particular’’ (Stro¨mberg & Karlsson, 2009, p. 642). The important point here is that in Swedish, as in Mexican cultures (as well as in others), the term denotes masculine prowess and ‘‘strutting’’ behavior (Buffington and French, 2010; Stro¨mberg & Karlsson, 2009, p. 646) particularly over women. Hence, while the nickname was no doubt critical of his power, and reflected a collective identity that enabled defiance, it cannot be said to have challenged the dominant gendered norms or structures at the extra subjective level. The inter-subjective interactions reflected in this case, as in the majority of nicknaming cases outlined in this chapter, certainly involved humor and identity performances in assessments of (mis)behavior. But the linguistic play generally enforced informal rules of behavior that supported what Castells (1997) refers to as ‘‘resistance identity,’’ which is identity construction that responds to negative experiences of oppression and discrimination but maintains broader, institutional and cultural norms and expectations intact.

CONCLUSION This chapter has considered misbehavior from the perspective of employees and the way they use nicknaming to communicate their assessments of each other’s (mis)behavior and work performance, as well as the (mis)behavior of managers and others who have an impact on their work and/or workplaces. In considering nicknaming in terms of sensemaking and language-making, rather than simply as a form of humor, it has also indicated the way that derogatory names enable employees to address the tensions and conflicts arising from formal organizational practices, rules, and managerial imperatives, working conditions and relationships at work. By drawing together a wide range of examples from different times, industries, and workplaces, the chapter has emphasized commonalities in nicknaming practices that extend beyond the micro-level. The commonalities identified here illustrate that nicknaming is not simply a manifestation of humor but

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as importantly of inter-subjective processes through which workers construct group identities in order to enforce co-produced informal rules of behavior. Such communication and action certainly create opportunities for adaptation and survival, as well as for ‘‘negation, resistance, [and] reinterpretation’’ of prevailing power structures and relations (Scott, 1996, p. 167) at the local level. However, the identity performances that are brought to prominence by nicknaming illustrate that the cultural resources drawn on from the local level, as well as from the broader field of institutions and culture, serve to maintain existing social norms, gendered identities, and stereotypes. Nicknames and nicknaming practices provide us with a glimpse of the unmanaged organizational terrain in which working people have responded to, and in some cases formally resisted what Weick depicted as the vocabularies of organization. In the final analysis, their use of humor and identity construction to address the (mis)behavioral propensities of their fellows, and of others, seems to work most effectively as a shield rather than a hammer.

NOTE 1. The projects drawn on include the Combined Railway Unions Cultural Committee Oral History Project, conducted during the early 1980s; the Australian Railways Union (NSW Branch) Centenary History Project conducted from 1986 to 1989; The Eveleigh Railway Workshops Social and Oral History project conducted in 1995 and 1996; the Eveleigh Railway Workshops: Oral History Video, funded by the NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning; The Australian Research Council funded project: ‘Work, Technology, Gender and Citizenship at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops precinct, conducted from 1997 to 2000.

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MR TAYLOR GOES TO HOLLYWOOD: MISBEHAVIOR IN FILM AND TV$ George Lafferty ABSTRACT Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to enhance understanding of misbehavior through an exploration of film and TV treatments of workplace relations. Methodology/approach – Analysis of examples of misbehavior drawn from film and TV within a theoretical framework informed by formal and substantive rationality.

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The chapter’s title contains at least three far-from-cryptic allusions. The first is to Frederick Winslow Taylor, author of The Principles of Scientific Management (1911/2006), whose prescriptions for efficiency were captured in the slogan, the ‘‘One Best Way’’ – a recurrent theme in this chapter. The second is to Mr Smith Goes to Washington, the 1939 film that tells the story of the political inge´nue, Jefferson Smith, who, by a stroke of extreme chance, becomes a US Senator (Capra, 1939). Mr Smith rapidly becomes a victim of both the party machine (run by another Mr Taylor) and his own hopeless naı¨ vete´. He is first accused of corruption and then faces expulsion from his Senate position, before being eventually vindicated. The theme of the perils of not knowing the system and its unwritten rules repeatedly surfaces in this chapter. The third allusion is to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, a band perhaps best-known for their 1983 megahit, ‘‘Relax’’ – another, albeit considerably less prominent theme in the chapter. Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 85–109 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019007

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Findings – Workplace definitions of misbehavior are multi-faceted, contextually specific, and both perspective- and power-dependent. They are constructed within workplace settings, where expressions of formal and substantive rationality intersect with everyday working practices. Research limitations/Implications – The discussion is limited by the mainly fictional character of the resources used. Practical implications – The chapter illustrates how representations of organizations as ‘‘rational’’ are limited and how more complex understandings of rationality might contribute to a more nuanced view of the co-production of workplace misbehavior practices by managers, workers, and/or unions. Social implications – The chapter illustrates how multiple rationalities may be expressed and socially embedded within specific workplace settings. Originality/Value of chapter – The focus on mainly fictional examples drawn from popular culture to interpret workplace behavior is the chapter’s most distinctive feature. Keywords: Misbehavior; film and TV; formal and substantive rationality; decision-making; power

INTRODUCTION This chapter is framed by the seemingly incongruous juxtaposition of two events that occurred in Sydney on the final Saturday of October 2011. First, Mr Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas, announced a lockout of the airline’s workforce, effectively grounding its entire fleet around the world. Second, a few hours later, a legendary film of the silent era, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), was being shown to a sold-out Sydney Opera House audience, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra playing the original score. The chapter begins by exploring how the themes played out in Metropolis, with its simple epigram ‘‘The mediator between head and hands must be the heart,’’ might illuminate our perceptions of the ‘‘misbehavior’’ of protagonists in a major industrial dispute. The chapter goes on to examine how various types of misbehavior have been portrayed in a range of film and TV settings, all possessing significant

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elements of the morality play. These examples include: the chaotic factory scenes in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times; the dubious union-management complicity portrayed in I’m All Right Jack; workers undermining the implementation of time-and-motion efficiencies in Spotswood; the equal pay campaign pursued by women automotive machinists in Made in Dagenham; and finally, the contemporary drug-affected moral and ethical tribulations of Nurse Jackie. The chapter examines how these examples of apparent misbehavior can be understood in relation to conflict between two forms of rationality: formal and substantive. Rationality has multiple forms, which need be neither complementary nor compatible. The chapter, though, does not explore these complexities, confining itself to these two forms, for the sole purpose of discussing misbehavior within these specific contexts. The chapter concludes by arguing that misbehavior may be reinterpreted as the expression of alternative or oppositional forms of rationality, rather than as deviance against a single form of rationality. This combination of mostly fictional resources may provide us with ideal types of misbehavior through which competing forms of rationality can be analyzed, aiding the further analysis of empirical events classified from various perspectives as misbehavior.

RATIONALITY, FILM, AND TV Any reference to rational behavior is unavoidably indebted to Max Weber’s sustained analysis of the topic. Indeed Brubaker (1984, p. 2) has identified no fewer than 16 possible forms of ‘‘rationality’’ in Weber’s work. Weber’s exploration of the tension between formal and substantive rationality provided a consistent theme throughout his work (Brubaker 1984, 35–36; Eisen 1978; Kalberg, 1980; Levine 1981; Mommsen 1989, pp. 70–73). Much of his writing, particularly at its gloomiest, embodies the notion of formal means-end rationality in a world inhabited by self-interested individuals: his depiction of the ‘‘iron cage’’ of bureaucracy and the inexorable advance of capitalism remain among his most enduring contributions. However, his understanding of substantive rationality also retains salience, although he viewed substantive rationality as being steadily displaced by formal rationality. In formal rationality the worker is viewed as simply a means to the end of increased economic activity, a factor of production whose value can be calculated in strictly monetary terms. Substantive rationality, in contrast, evaluates economic activity according to social values, including how

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effectively the needs of the worker are being met. (Weber, 1968, p. 86). Therefore, substantive rationality connotes value-rational action (Kalberg, 1980, p. 1155), embodying a sense of collective values, solidarity, and loyalty which can be identified in a range of situations, including the workplace. In Brubaker’s concise summation, this indicates ‘‘a tension between conflicting values: between calculability, efficiency on the one hand and fraternity, equality and caritas [charity] on the other’’ (1984, p. 41). Particularly significant with respect to an understanding of misbehavior is Weber’s insistence that ‘‘rationality’’ or ‘‘irrationality’’ are not qualities inherent in things but are dependent on perspective (Brubaker, 1984, pp. 35, 36). An action is irrational from a perspective of formal rationality if it defies the efficient pursuit of monetary gain, whereas an action is irrational from a substantive perspective if it offends against a particular set of social values. Thus, for example, misbehavior from one perspective may be entirely appropriate from another: this often implicit conflict of rationalities is inscribed in the mutual miscomprehension evident in the film and TV examples discussed in this chapter. Therefore, we need to question the classification of misbehavior as either irrational actions that contravene a model of rational organizational behavior or as the playing out of an uncomplicated control-resistance dichotomy. In these predominantly fictional film and TV situations, we can identify all four expressions of resistance identified by Prasad and Prasad (1998): open confrontation, subtle subversions of power relations, disengagement, and ambiguous accommodation. Occasionally, several expressions of resistance may even be identifiable in a single scene. There are also other expressions of resistance, including some that involve workers and managers in joint action. Within a framework of formal and substantive rationality, this leads to a questioning of not only the rationality of organizations (Shamsudin, 2006, p. 58), but also any assumption of a single ‘‘rationality’’ as a legitimate goal. Defining the rational is itself a field of contestation.

FROM THE UNDERGROUND: THE IDEAL WORKER AND ALTERNATIVES Metropolis, the Expressionist dystopia of a city dominated by a single capitalist, Joh Federsen, premiered in Berlin on January 10, 1927. Despite being the most expensive German film of its era, it proved to be a box-office failure. Consequently, the original film was withdrawn from distribution in April 1927 and replaced with a heavily edited version, aligned with the US

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version released on March 7 in New York City. The original version was lost until an almost complete copy, unfortunately in poor condition, was discovered in Buenos Aires in 2008. The October 2011 showing of the film was the Australian premiere series of this restored version. The film’s opening scene reveals the Underground City of the Workers, where the regimented occupants, known only by their numbers, march with heads bowed to their work stations. The above-ground City of the Sons provides a contrasting scene: its Eternal Gardens are set up for the endless pleasure of the (male) offspring of the Metropolis ruling class – most importantly, Freder, son of the tireless capitalist, Joh Federsen, the ‘‘Master of Metropolis.’’ Freder’s world of idle pleasure, though, is disrupted by the entry of Maria, the film’s Mediator, with a group of the Underground City’s children: ‘‘These are your brothers,’’ she says to Freder, before leaving with the children. This is the statement that prompts Freder’s transformative journey to the City of the Workers – a journey to find both Maria and the humanity she represents. It is also the film’s first notable act of misbehavior, a betrayal in his father’s eyes: Freder, with Maria’s guidance, begins his questioning of the Metropolis system and his own place within it. In short, he embarks on the search for a substantive rationality, an alternative to his father’s ruthless, unrelenting means-end rationality. He asks his father, ‘‘Where are the people, Father, whose hands built this city?’’ This, though, is a question of no interest to Joh Federsen, who has rejected his own humanity and consequently sees it as a weakness in others. The explicit denial of humanity figures prominently throughout Metropolis: humanity is a failing that impedes the great City’s efficient operation. When an appalled Freder appeals to his father, ‘‘And [the workers] are all human beings!,’’ Joh Federsen replies coolly but with a wistful tinge: ‘‘Unfortunately, yes.’’ The seemingly all-powerful Master of Metropolis is, however, also the slave of international markets. He has power only insofar as he does what he is compelled to do: for him, no less than for his workers, there is no alternative. The insatiable demands of production are matched by the incessant judgments of the London and New York markets, which govern Federsen’s every action. In the words of Thea von Harbou’s novel, on which the film was based: In this room, which was at the same time crowned and subjugated by the mighty timepiece, the clock, indicating numbers, nothing had any significance but numbers. The son of the great Master of Metropolis realised that, as long as numbers came dripping out of the invisible, no word, which was not a number, and coming from a visible mouth, could lay claim to the least attention (von Harbou, 1926/2006, p. 11).

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Maria’s efforts to achieve mediation between the workers and the great capitalist are thwarted by Federsen, who has enlisted the inventor, Rotwang, to create a robot Ideal Worker. Rotwang then captures Maria and transfers her identity to the robot worker. Thus a second, false Maria is created, whose purpose is to fulfill Federsen’s plan of inciting the workers to revolt, in order to crush them. As Rotwang explains to the real Maria: Joh Federsen wants to let those in the depths use force and do wrong so that he can claim the right to use force against them. When you spoke to your poor brothers, you talked about peace, Maria, today a mouthpiece of Joh Federsen incites them to rebel against him.

The false Maria duly incites the workers to rebellion, destroying the machines and causing the Underground City to be flooded. The workers’ children and Freder, frantically searching for Maria, are trapped in the waters. Freder and the real Maria, who has been freed from Rotwang’s attic by Joh Federsen, eventually find each other in the submerged Underground City and guide the children to safety, but lose one another again. The rampaging workers destroy the machines in their path toward the aboveground city, but when they reach the Heart-Machine (without which Metropolis cannot function), the foreman, Grot, stops them: ‘‘Who made you attack the machines, without which you’re doomed?’’ Led by Grot, the workers storm the above-ground City and, believing Maria has caused their children to drown, chase, capture and then burn her on a makeshift pyre consisting mainly of smashed furniture. However, as Freder arrives, too late to save her, this Maria is revealed as the robot, its human disguise melting in the flames. Meanwhile, the real Maria is being chased by Rotwang around the City’s cathedral, but Freder arrives to grapple with him, causing the inventor to fall to his death from the cathedral roof. The workers, led by Grot, greet Federsen, Freder, and Maria at the cathedral entrance. The film concludes: ‘‘The Mediator Between Head and Hands Must be the Heart.’’ In his role as Master of Metropolis, Joh Federsen is compelled to deny his own humanity, interpreted as a failing in himself and in other. He has moved beyond the ‘‘time of sin and suffering’’ to achieve a secular state of grace in which others are simply the means to an end. As the incarnation of an unyielding means-end rationality, Federsen is required to strip himself of all humanity. However, the vestiges of that humanity and a substantive rationality are reawakened when he is informed that his son, like the workers’ children, is caught in the rising waters of the Underground City. He begins to occupy common ground with the workers searching for their

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lost children: their grievances have attained legitimacy and he accepts the need for an alternative. The Metropolis maxim, complemented by the subtheme reiterated by Maria, ‘‘These are your brothers,’’ affirms that the death force, Moloch, will consume everyone unless that alternative is found.

MISBEHAVIOR, MELODRAMA, AND NO ALTERNATIVE So what, if anything, does this tell us about misbehavior? And what light might it shed on the Qantas dispute? To suggest that the scenario of the 1927 film could be transferred directly to the 2011 industrial dispute would be fanciful. Nonetheless, there are parallels. The incessant quest for the Ideal Worker – ever cheaper and more controllable – figures prominently, while the Qantas lockout and its aftermath certainly lent themselves to melodrama, with both sides able to muster impressive outrage. The ‘‘New Tower of Babel’’ was Joh Federsen’s headquarters, recreating the Biblical Tower: ‘‘One man’s hymn of praise became other men’s curses. People spoke the same language but could not understand each other.’’ Similarly, in the Qantas dispute, mutual miscomprehension and disbelief were repeatedly reaffirmed through the moral certitude displayed by the parties and their respective supporters. In this context, any mediators were faced with an unenviable challenge. Qantas, Australia’s national carrier, was founded in 1920, nationalized in 1947 and privatized following the Qantas Sale Act 1992. In recognition of the airline’s national status, section 7 of the Act included several provisions designed to retain Qantas as a predominantly Australian owned, managed and operated airline. These provisions included: restricting ownership by foreign persons to no more than 49 percent, preventing any foreign airlines from owning more than 35 percent, restricting foreign individuals from owning more than 25 percent, requiring at least two-thirds of Qantas directors to be Australian citizens and for the director presiding at any board meeting to be an Australian citizen, and prohibiting the incorporation of Qantas outside Australia. These legal requirements have provided a focus for ongoing debate and conflict, with Qantas unions seeking stricter controls while the airline’s board and shareholders have sought to remove these restrictions (see, for example, Hannan, 2011). The origins of the dispute can be traced at least as far back as 2003, when the company began hiring New Zealand pilots and crew for its low-cost Jetstar operations, with wages and conditions considerably below

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Australian standards. Since then, Jetstar’s operations have extended into Southeast Asia, including the employment of overseas crews on much lower rates than their Qantas counterparts, and Qantas has also gone offshore for much of its maintenance requirements. The most significant feature of the dispute for this discussion is that it demonstrated an evident contrast between the means-end rationality consistently articulated by Qantas management and a substantive counter-rationality which emerged sporadically in the campaigns by the three unions involved: the Transport Workers Union (TWU), the Australian International Pilots Association (AIPA), and the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA). Alan Joyce’s announcement of a lockout on October 29 effectively stranded around 80,000 passengers, including 17 world leaders attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth. On October 31, the national industrial relations tribunal, Fair Work Australia, intervened to end all industrial action by both Qantas management and the unions. Under s.423 of the Fair Work Act, the tribunal has the authority to intervene where industrial action is causing ‘‘significant economic harm.’’ Like Federsen, Mr Joyce sought to bring the conflict to a head: ‘‘We had no alternative,’’ he said, when announcing the resumption of flights later that day. In an article published in The Sydney Morning Herald on October 30, 2011 (Anonymous, 2011a) entitled ‘Qantas CEO has ‘gone mad’, say pilots,’’ Captain Richard Woodward, Vice-President of the AIPA, was unequivocal. Describing Alan Joyce as having ‘‘gone mad’ and the lockout as ‘‘premeditated, unnecessary and grossly irresponsible,’’ particularly in relation to the pilots’ relatively restrained industrial action (mainly in-flight statements to passengers and the wearing of red ties – viewed by Qantas management as serious misbehavior), he commented further: No-one predicted this, because no one thought Alan Joyce was completely mad. This is a stunning overreaction. It is straight-up blackmail. I knew he was trying to kill Qantas, but I didn’t know he wanted to do it this quickly. This is a grave and serious situation and the board should move to sack Mr Joyce immediately. This is the saddest day of my 25 years with Qantas. In response to [the pilots’ industrial action], Mr Joyce has now locked out every pilot working for Qantas. This is nothing short of crazy behaviour. Mr Joyce is stranding thousands of Qantas passengers all across the globe so he can engage in his mad game of one-upmanship. All so he can pursue his delusion that Qantas should be an Asian airline, instead of an Australian one. We believe this action is unlawful and we are currently seeking legal advice.

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He has locked out short-haul 737 pilots who aren’t even involved in any action at all. Let’s be clear about this: Mr Joyce would have planned to strand thousands of Qantas passengers all across the globe months ago. To ground your entire fleet, when doing so is completely unnecessary, is not the act of a sane and reasonable person. He has snatched his ill-deserved millions on Friday [a reference to a very substantial pay rise awarded to Mr Joyce] and grounded the airline on Saturday. It’s just tragic and unnecessary.

Alan Joyce, though, was, like Joh Federsen, following a coherent, meansend rationality, which was received with general approval by shareholders and markets. No madness there. A substantive value rationality in which public safety was integrated with the protection of jobs was evident in several public statements by union leaders, as demonstrated by a report of a statement made by ALAEA Federal Secretary, Stephen Purvinas before a Parliamentary enquiry into an explosion on a Qantas A380 plane (one of several safety-related incidents on Qantas aircraft in recent years), which appeared in an article entitled ‘‘Qantas offshoring blamed for A380 blast,’’ in The Australian on November 4, 2011 (Anonymous, 2011b). Here, Purvinas drew the connection between offshoring and aircraft maintenance quality by stating: I can’t say for sure or assume but there is a possibility that if these engines were maintained in Australia, that issue could have been picked up beforehand and investigated y. I know from the professionalism of our members they would investigate the source of any oil leaks rather than grab a rag and wipe it and send the aircraft on its way.

Such statements, though, can be seen as misbehavior (‘‘trying to dictate how we run our own business’’) within a means-end rationality. Managerial misbehavior, from the perspective of a strict means-end rationality, consists of failing to treat workers as a means to an end. In this respect, his action could be regarded only as exemplary and the conduct of the unions as gross misbehavior. This perspective is demonstrated by Alan Joyce, who commented in a report published by the Centre for Aviation, a provider of ‘‘independent’’ market analysis and data services for the industry: This course of action has been forced upon us by the extreme and damaging course chosen by the leaders of three unions. It is now over to them. The ball is in their court. They must decide just how badly they want to hurt Qantas, their members, our other employees, and the travelling public of Australia in pursuit of their destructive aims (Centre for Aviation, 2011).

The language of no alternative, then, was inscribed heavily in Mr Joyce’s public statements, consistently couched in the rationality provided by ‘‘global competitiveness.’’ Mr Joyce, though (again like Joh Federsen), also had at least one alternative: to negotiate further. Several commentators (for

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example, Bamber, 2011) have noted that its low-cost competitor, Virgin Australia, has pursued a more conciliatory industrial relations strategy. Virgin Australia, therefore, constitutes a relevant counterfactual – an alternative – to Mr Joyce’s ‘‘no alternative.’’ For Joh Federsen, the workers’ organization was a threat to his unilateral rationality. Similarly for many employers (including several low-cost airlines), unionization is inherently illegitimate. At best, it can be tolerated, but only if it does not challenge managerial prerogative – action which is inherently irrational within a means-end universe. In contrast to the innumerable forms that substantive rationality can assume, formal means-end rationality conforms to a simple, one-dimensional script, often based on a few stock phrases such as ‘‘no alternative.’’ Yet the means-end pursuit of financial goals, to the exclusion of all other criteria, is rarely palatable to any audience broader than the most instrumentally minded shareholders. Even a celebration of a massive increase in profits in 2011 was accompanied by an appeal to patriotic values as demonstrated by Qantas Chairman Leigh Clifford and Alan Joyce in the following statements: I am pleased to report a strong result for the Qantas Group during 2010/2011, with a 46 per cent improvement in Underlying Profit Before Tax (Underlying PBT) over the prior financial year (Qantas, 2011, p. 4). But some things about Qantas will never change. We will always be an Australian company, owned by Australians, with the vast majority of our operations based in Australia. We will always call Australia home (Qantas, 2011, p. 7).

The role of Qantas in Australian history and its continuing importance as the national carrier have required Qantas management to consistently proclaim its commitment to Australia. This has been achieved most famously through its long-running advertising campaign launched in 1998, ‘‘I Still Call Australia Home,’’ oriented around the song by Peter Allen and the theme referred to by Mr Joyce. This synthesis of economic goals and popular cultural legitimation has even found expression in the Federal Parliament, following the October 2011 grounding, with a Senate National Inquiry and a Bill, proposed by Senators Nick Xenophon (Independent) and Bob Brown (Greens). Continuing a whimsical Australian tradition (see Orr, 2001), this Bill is entitled the Qantas Sale Amendment (Still Call Australia Home) Bill 2011. Its proposed amendments include strengthened requirements for Qantas and its subsidiaries to retain their operational centers in Australia and to conduct the majority of their heavy maintenance, flight operations and training in Australia. The events addressed in this chapter,

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therefore, are of ongoing political, economic, industrial relations, and even popular cultural significance.

WHOSE MISBEHAVIOR? Several of the main themes portrayed dramatically in Metropolis – workers subordinated to time-discipline, constant surveillance, the alienation of factory work – are given comic depiction in Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), which also contains some of the most celebrated examples of worker misbehavior on film. The film’s caustic depiction of the Fordist assembly line and Taylorist management practices appeared during the Great Depression, when the official United States unemployment rate was still almost 17 percent, having peaked at 24.9 percent in 1933 (Dunlop & Galenson, 1998, p. 30). It opens with a flock of sheep (with a single black one in their midst) melding into a scene of (all male) workers heading toward the Electro Steel Corp factory. In contrast to the heroic image of the capitalist portrayed in Metropolis, Modern Times portrays a petty micro-manager, lacking any futuristic grand vision. The first example of misbehavior, a refutation of the insatiable work ethic embodied by Joh Federsen, is provided by the company President. He is seen idly playing with a jigsaw puzzle and then flicking through the comics section of his daily newspaper. He swallows his morning pill and turns to his futuristic surveillance monitor, to check the factory’s different sections as they gear up for another working day: ‘‘Section 5, speed her up, 401,’’ he barks out, evidently keen to watch others work hard. We then witness the Tramp’s first appearance in the movie, tightening nuts on the assembly line but falling rapidly behind the pace set by the machine. Through a succession of memorable sequences depicting the intensity and surveillance of factory work, he is reduced to a state of jittering exhaustion. He escapes briefly to the restroom, where he lights a cigarette, only for the President to appear on a giant screen: ‘Hey! Quit stalling, get back to work! Go on!’’ The Tramp returns hurriedly to his work-space, where, to the consternation of his fellow workers, he proceeds to turn the assembly line into chaos. The action shifts back to the President’s office. To the President’s astonishment, two lab-coated men enter, accompanied by a third, elegantly suited individual (J. Willacomb Bellows) accompanied by his patented Feeding Machine, designed to ‘‘eliminate the lunch hour, increase production, and decrease your overload.’’ The Feeding Machine, like Joh Federsen’s Ideal Worker, provides a mechanical realization of Taylorist

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rationality. Of course, the Tramp is to be the unwitting guinea pig for the new feeding device, which proceeds to barrage him with a combination of foods and seemingly possessed mechanical parts. The film’s most famous factory sequence ensues: the Tramp, apparently himself now possessed with the urge to tighten nuts at an ever-increasing rate, is dragged into the giant cogs driving the assembly line, where he continues undaunted to tighten nuts. Eventually he re-emerges, even more crazed than before, going on to sabotage the whole system. After being chased by co-workers, foremen and police, he is carted off to the nearest psychiatric hospital. We are left in no doubt as to the tribulations of Taylorism, Fordism, and the assembly line. Silence is one of the undoubted strengths of Modern Times; the mainly silent film was produced several years after the end of the silent movie era. Words are unnecessary to apprehend the Fordist labor process both emotionally and intellectually – we can share the Tramp’s terror as he is physically and psychologically mangled by the machinery of production, and we can also develop from that experience an implicit critique of factory work. The Tramp’s individual misbehavior, though, is ultimately fruitless – and indeed is seen by his fellow workers as sabotage, particularly when set against a backdrop of the Depression and the demonstration against unemployment that occurs subsequently in the film. It is only when the Tramp inadvertently leads the demonstration, by picking up a red flag dropped from the back of a car, that he becomes part of a substantive counter-rationality, being duly arrested – and the film moves away from its initial workplace setting. Misbehavior is both perspective- and power-dependent. For example, from a means-end perspective, the President spying on the Tramp is engaging in legitimate surveillance of an idling worker. Alternatively, according to a substantive rationality, he is illegitimately regulating every aspect of the Tramp’s working life. But we all know who has the power to classify ‘‘misbehavior’’ in this particular situation – and the Tramp, by then engaging in further misbehavior that alienates his co-workers, renders his own exit inevitable.

ALMOST ALL RIGHT Unlike Chaplin’s street-smart and willfully anarchic Tramp, Stanley Windrush, the central character of I’m All Right Jack (1959) is an innocent abroad, steadfastly determined to do the right thing. Despite his privileged

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upbringing and Oxford education, Stanley has repeatedly failed to secure the management position to which his background ostensibly entitles him in the 1950s England. Nor have his prospects been enhanced by his repeated questioning of such business tactics as price gouging. Having failed to fit into the business world, Stanley resorts to family and friends in the hope they might find him gainful employment. His uncle, Bertram Tracepurcel, boss of the engineering firm, Missiles Ltd, and his fellow ex-Army officer, Sidney de Vere Cox, boss of another engineering firm, Britannia Ltd, encourage him to take a shopfloor job at Missiles, on the assurance of a rapid ascent to executive status. This job will require Stanley to perform manual labor and probably join a union – a prospect the family matriarch, Aunt Dolly, finds particularly abhorrent. As she says to Tracepurcel: ‘‘Does Mr Cox seriously suggest, Bertie, that Stanley should throw in his lot with the working classes?’’ Windrush, though, agrees to the offer, unaware that he is being used as part of a bigger plan. Tracepurcel and Cox are counting on his aptitude for disaster to lead to industrial relations chaos at Missiles. This, they hope, will enable them to shift a lucrative Middle East arms contract from Missiles to Britannia, enabling them to pocket a huge cash windfall. In his new factory environment, where work is conducted at a leisurely pace, Stanley’s upper-class accent falls on hostile ears, while his enthusiasm to achieve efficiencies in his forklift job attract derision from his fellow workers. Management has previously attempted to introduce a series of undercover time-and-motion observers, the most recent being a Mr Waters, charged with the thankless task of increasing productivity at Missiles. The workers, aware of this management tactic but still unaware of Waters’ presence, initially suspect Stan (as he becomes known on the shopfloor) of being the time-and-motion spy. These suspicions are duly confirmed when he expresses his interest in ‘‘Industrial Management,’’ prompting a union stop-work meeting. The Works Committee, led by the Communist shop steward, Fred Kite, march to the Personnel Manager’s office to demand Windrush’s dismissal on the grounds of incompetence. The Personnel Manager, Major Hitchcock, relieved that the real timeand-motion spy’s identity is still a secret, is happy to oblige by sacking Stan, expressing his gratitude to the delegation: ‘‘It’s up to the unions to help us keep out the incompetents.’’ However, after a brief consultation, the Works Committee shifts their position: Fred Kite: We are obliged to point out that, if the company sacks this man, they will be in breach of their agreement with the union.

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The situation is resolved with the recognition that their mutual interests are best served by retaining Windrush. As Hitchcock concludes: ‘‘Well, in that case everything’s absolutely splendid. The fellow can stay on. I think we can all congratulate ourselves on a most productive morning’s work.’’ Windrush, saved from joblessness, gradually settles into his new workingclass life – where he becomes known as ‘‘Stan.’’ He takes up lodgings in the modest Kite household, attracted mainly by the prospect of developing a closer relationship with Fred’s daughter, Cynthia, also a worker at Missiles. In Fred’s eyes, he is also redeemable as a potential convert to the workers’ cause. However, Stan’s inherent naivety betrays him once again. He is duped by the real time-and-motion manager, Mr Waters (under Tracepurcel’s orders) to produce a burst of efficient forklifting. The data gathered by Waters provide the basis for a new set of productivity standards, introduced by Tracepurcel in the full knowledge that an industrial dispute is inevitable. Windrush, who has joined the union but only on the understanding that membership is not compulsory, is sent to Coventry by his co-workers. However, the press launch him as a media celebrity, lionized as a model of ‘‘efficiency.’’ The ensuing strike allows Tracepurcel to redirect the contract from Missiles to Union Jack Foundries. As Cox announces with due solemnity, ‘‘This valuable export order will not be lost to the old country.’’ But this is where their plans go awry. Union Jack workers go out on a sympathy strike, leading to a general strike that brings the nation to a halt. Management is forced to seek a settlement to salvage the situation. In turn, management, unions and workers draw the conclusion that their mutual interests are best served by Stanley’s departure. This is achieved through a denouement in which Stanley, on a national TV debate show, denounces management, unions and workers. The ensuing furore leads to his eventual prosecution, while Tracepurcel and Cox are untouched by the law. On being bound over to keep the peace for a year, he finds sanctuary in a nudist colony, joining his father who had years earlier retreated there from the world. I’m All Right Jack (Boulting, 1959) both reproduces and amplifies the spasmodically subversive potential of workplace humor. No doubt, managers can often merit disdain and ridicule (Rodrigues & Collinson, 1995) – and so

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too, as the film illustrates, can workers and union officials. In this context, Stanley emerges as a white sheep, espousing a consistent set of commonsense values but offending against a series of rationalities – business, workplace and even his own upper-class origins. The organizational expectations against which Stanley misbehaves are constituted through the intersection of different rationalities, at various times competing and accommodating, maintained by mutual acceptance that each party will play its role in maintaining the system. Stanley emerges as a multiple deviant, his misbehavior expressed through his role as an improbable Everyman, with whom the audience can identify. Organizational norms are negotiated and contested outcomes of interaction within specific situations, each with its own operational hegemony. Stanley, like the Tramp, disrupts this operational hegemony. Stanley, however, never gets the operational rules whereas the Tramp willfully subverts them, asserting his own set of (admittedly anarchic) values. In both cases, though, workers in conjunction with management reinforce the operational rules. Misbehavior, then, is indissolubly contextual rather than an offence against a single set of ‘‘rational’’ organizational rules. The same action in one context may become unacceptable in another context (that is, different times, places or people involved), depending on the perspective brought to bear. Such a change can occur within seconds, as illustrated by the revised position adopted by Fred Kite and his colleagues in Mr Hitchcock’s office. Formal and informal rules are rarely applied equally, although they may play an equalizing role – for example, in providing protection for workers against managerial demands. Yet there are limits to such protection, as in the situation of a workplace inge´nue such as Stanley, who refuses to fall into line with the operational workplace hegemony. Lacking in organizational knowledge or technical power, he has little basis on which to resist – eventually, his only alternative becomes exit and reliance on external support, in this case from the popular media. His ‘‘misbehavior’’ is an expression of naivety, then of powerlessness and despair.

EFFICIENCY CORRUPTED Taylorist means-end rationality re-emerges in more recent form, and again as an object of parody, in the Australian film, Spotswood (Joffe, 1992), screened in North America under the more evocative title, The Efficiency Expert. The film’s focus is the troubled Balls moccasin factory in the innerMelbourne suburb of Spotswood during the mid-1960s. The central

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character, Errol Wallace, is a latter-day reincarnation of the time-andmotion men in Modern Times, as he seeks to modernize and rationalize the quaintly archaic operations of the Balls moccasin factory. The Balls workplace is a time-and-motion nightmare in which work is more a social than an economic pursuit. Start and finish times are relaxed, while the upcoming annual slot-car racing final is the main social (and consequently work) priority. The movie’s main theme, Wallace’s plan for restructuring and redundancies, explores the human consequences of corporate decisions. The slot-car race is simultaneously Wallace’s epiphany, the equivalent of Joh Federsen’s belief he had lost his son, and the film’s watershed, through which he is given the possibility of personal regeneration – that is, regaining his humanity. A group of Balls workers, who are scheduled for redundancy in Wallace’s still secret restructuring plan, invites him to the most important event in the Balls recreational calendar – an event with real meaning for the workers, a meaning which Wallace ultimately comes to share. Initially the detached if perplexed observer, he becomes rapidly entranced by the frantic excitement of the race, to emerge as its eventual hero. In a change similar to Stanley Windrush’s emergence as ‘‘Stan,’’ the efficiency expert metamorphoses from ‘‘Mr Wallace’’ into ‘‘Errol’’ in both the workers’ and his own eyes. ‘‘Call me Errol,’’ he says – a member of the Balls community, no longer the remote, dispassionate managerial consultant. Even with his tie and cardigan, he effectively becomes part of a work team in a formally nonwork setting. Wallace finds it impossible to remain personally detached, since he now has social relationships with individuals who were previously just employees. The security of the divide between manager and managed has been undermined by interaction, which has a degree of authenticity absent from the painful ritual ceremonies (Goffman, 1962) organized by the company, such as the annual dance. However, as his wife, Caroline, later reminds him, these are the ‘men who are getting laid off’. Caroline, who deplores Wallace’s downsizing role, is set to leave him. Wallace is thrown into personal turmoil by this combination of events, eventually devising a plan to save the workers’ jobs – an action which also saves his marriage. Wallace, accompanied by Caroline, tells Mr Ball that on reflection it ‘may not be necessary to sack everyone’. He proposes an alternative plan, redeeming himself in the eyes of Caroline and reclaiming his humanity. Wallace has been drawn into a ‘‘specifically working-class discourse’’ (Rancie`re, 1997). Initially repelled and disturbed by the workers’ casual disregard for his plans and their stubborn adherence to socially embedded

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work relationships, he is eventually compelled to abandon his own managerial rationality, as he gradually appreciates the human impact of downsizing. In this context Wallace is the deviant, whose misbehavior constitutes a refutation of Taylorist means-end rationality, as he becomes integrated in the Balls substantively humanist rationality, through which it has become more of a community than a factory.

TRADING PLACES While Spotswood describes an idiosyncratic form of working class discourse, Made in Dagenham (Cole, 2010) portrays an explicitly working class women’s discourse. The film begins in May 1968. Despite being distant from the Paris Spring, the women machinists at Ford’s outer-London Dagenham plant share at least one quality with its ‘‘new working class’’ (Mallet, 1975, p. 12). Their highly specialized skills are integral to the production process, giving them significant strategic power. Management’s attempted reclassification of them from ‘‘semi-skilled’’ to ‘‘unskilled’’ triggers the film’s central event: the industrial dispute that leads on to the machinists’ strike and their eventual campaign for equal pay. The machinists’ ‘‘misbehavior’’ is manifest from the outset. Initially conveying an implicit resistance and growing to overt political mobilization, it ranges from their forthright language through to such actions as stripping down to their underwear in the heat. This misbehavior invariably has a collective purpose, a substantive rationality: the assertion of informal control over the shop floor, often with a male target, usually Albert the painfully respectable, middle-aged shop steward. This is their domain. Their pivotal act of misbehaviour and explicit defiance of both managerial prerogative and union convention is the decision to go on strike, previously seen as a male preserve. As one machinist states: ‘‘Every other bugger round here goes on strike. Why shouldn’t we?’’ Rita O’Grady, the main organizer, and her co-workers transform themselves as the strike gains momentum to attain national prominence. Albert turns out to be their most stalwart ally, well aware that the skill reclassification is about gender relations within the factory. As he says to Rita: ‘‘This dispute’s got nothin’ to do with what skill level you are. Ford decided to give you less money ‘cause they cany’ At the subsequent unionmanagement meeting to resolve the dispute, Rita provides her own practical illustration of the machinists’’ strategic role in the production process. She

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tosses the unassembled pieces of vinyl for a headrest cover toward Peter Hopkins, the Ford industrial relations manager: Here, have a look at this. There! You put them together. Go on. y We have to take all these different pieces and work out how they go together, ‘cause there ain’t no template, is there? y We have to take them and sew them all free-hand into the finished article. Same with the door-trim and God knows what else. That is not unksilled work, which is how you’ve regraded us. y We’re entitled to semi-skilled and the wages that go with it.

Made in Dagenham has its own, far less expressionistic variants of Maria in Metropolis, most notably Lisa Burnett, wife of the Ford Industrial Relations manager, and Barbara Castle, Minister (Secretary of State) for Employment and Productivity. Both offer alternatives to the ‘no alternative’ mantra to which senior Ford management adheres. As the local dispute escalates into a national strike, Ford’s US head office sends their chief trouble-shooter, Robert Tooley, to resolve the issue. Over dinner with Lisa and her husband, Tooley asks her, ‘‘So what do you make of our little problem over at the factory? Think maybe there’s a bit too much velvet glove and not enough iron fist?’’ She replies: I don’t actually. Just the opposite. Look at Vauxhall [General Motors]. They don’t appear to have any problem with the unions and that seems to me because General Motors have a much more collaborative approach to management. Whereas at Ford, you seem only to deal with the unions because you have to. You tolerate them. And as a result they’re much more entrenched and aggressive in the way that they deal with you.

Thus, she proposes an alternative, pluralist approach intended to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable interests (accompanied by the relevant counterfactual of General Motors) to an uncomplicated unitarism – the kind of proposition raised by several commentators on the Qantas dispute, with Virgin Australia as the counterfactual. However, Tooley has other, more fruitful avenues. He explains to the most prominent senior union official, Monty, their own mutual interests in strict means-end rational terms: equal pay will mean higher wages bills, job losses and therefore union decline. Monty, therefore, has to end the strike. Whereas Fred Kite, the Communist shop steward in I’m All Right Jack, exhibits unswerving allegiance to his substantive rationality of collective solidarity, the senior union officials in Made in Dagenham espouse the language of solidarity only to further means-end goals – their own, which coincide, in their view, with those of the union and the party. In the blunt words of another senior union official: ‘‘We ain’t unsympathetic. But as a union we have to remember who comes first: the Communist Party.’’ In both management and worker households, gender roles and expectations are questioned and occasionally usurped. Rita forms a cross-class

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alliance with the Cambridge-educated Lisa, who is well aware of the potential broader ramifications of the dispute. As she says to Rita, ‘‘Keep going. Please. Please keep going.’’ The cross-class women’s alliance is paralleled by the murkier conjunction of cross-class male interests, whereby many male workers, faced with possible retrenchment, begin urging their unions to withdraw support for the machinists. But Rita, addressing the Trade Union Congress (TUC) conference, sways the other unions to the machinists’ side, forcing the government to intervene. Resolving the dispute is left to Barbara Castle. Ford’s sales figures have been plummeting catastrophically – Henry Ford II himself has been on the phone to the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who is intent on demonstrating that his government is not on the strikers’ side. Tooley paints a ‘‘no alternative’’ scenario to Mrs Castle: Ford will move its operations offshore if the government refuses to intervene against the strikes. Mrs Castle, though, has her own alternative strategy: she meets directly with a delegation of striking machinists. The film’s recurrent theme of inversion of gender and class roles continues into her office, where the undersecretaries, all male, are required to serve drinks for the Minister and the workers. Rita rejects the Minister’s initial offer to support them if they return to work, arguing that she needs a substantial offer to take back to her members. Where Stanley Windrush was ineffectual and perpetually bewildered, Rita has rapidly picked up the rules of the game. Barbara Castle offers 75 percent of the male rate, but the workers only agree to return to work at a rate of 92 percent, with a further commitment to enact equal pay legislation. The Equal Pay Act 1970 provides the film’s culmination. The closing credits are accompanied by comments by several machinists who had participated in the real-life strike. Inverting any interpretation of their actions as misbehavior, one states tersely: ‘‘Women don’t make a habit of coming out on strike for nothing.’’ The strike is thus redefined as legitimate because it is by women. The final caption is: ‘‘Ford Motor Company Limited went on to effect changes in its employment practices and is now used as an example of a good practice employer.’’ While this may understate the extent of industrial conflict that took place during the ensuing decades, the film indicates how a collective counter-rationality based on substantive values but initially classified as ‘‘misbehavior’’ can attain exemplary industrial and political status. Made in Dagenham reveals misbehavior (as contravention of both formal and substantive rationalities) in multiple forms: the dominant misbehavior of Ford’s senior management, the accommodative misbehavior of Ford’s UK management, the corruption of senior union officials, the varying

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complicity of different levels of worker and unions, the maneuvering of politicians. However, it also tells a story of the emergence of set of substantively rational values, repeatedly portrayed as misbehavior by those with power but asserted through the persistence of the initially powerless. There are decisions (or, alternatively, non-decisions) to be made at every turn, with inaction usually the most means-end rational course of action. Thus, Rita has multiple opportunities not to engage in further action, but she and her co-workers risk their means-end interests (such as keeping their jobs) in asserting a substantive set of value-based goals within a context occupied by powerful adversaries who are prepared to implement the necessary means to achieve their ends. Substantive rationality is of particular relevance in these situations due to its contextual and perspective dependence. It is quite possible for different parties to believe autonomously they are acting in substantive good faith (that is, in accord with their value rationality), while they are simultaneously perceived by others to be acting in substantive bad faith. Yet this does not preclude the appropriation of substantive principles to the pursuit of meansend goals, such as in the case of the senior union officials in Made in Dagenham. Formal means-end rationality provides a relatively straightforward, uncomplicated set of criteria and goals, whereas substantive rationality comes in multiple, complex, and often conflicting incarnations – which may be compatible to varying degrees with formal means-end rationality.

MISBEHAVING TO SAINTHOOD Made in Dagenham tells a relatively uncomplicated tale of the reclassification of misbehavior to exemplary behavior and the accompanying transformation of the individuals involved. In contrast, the current TV series Nurse Jackie (Coulter, 2009) shows individuals constantly renegotiating their relationships with the shifting bounds of acceptable behavior, variously interpreted. The fictional All Saints Hospital in New York continues to function only through a reasonably enlightened cynicism, a general acknowledgment of the need to maintain patient well-being against official organizational demands. Within this context, Nurse Jackie engages in a range of ‘‘misbehavior’’ ranging from the ethically questionable to the unquestionably illegal, from drug-taking to forging a dead patient’s signature on the organ donor section of his driver’s license. Yet Jackie’s technical expertise and workplace importance give her a limited, sometimes fleeting autonomy, enabling her to create a space for

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reflection amid incessant overwork and unattainable demands. This is a space within which she reinterprets her own apparent misbehavior against an overarching substantive rationality of patient welfare. As she says to the transplant team who have a few minutes to take the accident victim’s vital organs: ‘‘27-year-old bike messenger. Yeah, of course he’s a donor. [He isn’t – leading her to forge his signature.] Of course I have the family’s consent. [She doesn’t.]’ In a later scene, the victim’s mother expresses surprise to Jackie: ‘‘My son was an organ donor?’’ Jackie’s actions, like the Tramp’s, can be classified as ‘‘guerrilla-like’’ (see Mumby, 2005, p. 25). She is, though, far from being the black sheep, a role she would no doubt occupy in many other settings. Rather, she is the principal guardian of All Saints’ substantive rationality, used to bring individualist, means-end actors into line. Thus, Jackie castigates Dr Fitch Cooper for his failure to detect the bike messenger’s acute subdural hematoma: What I need is for you to know that I know you. I have seen hundreds of you jerk-offs blow through these doors. You graduated – what, top 10, top 5 per cent in your class, right? Test scores through the roof but a total fucking retard when it comes to actual patients. I know you. I just had to sit there and look that kid’s mother in the eye and tell her that we did everything we could, you dumb shit. That was my patient. I told you he was slipping and he was. If I tell you to order a scan, you order a goddam scan because if you don’t do it I’ll just go to the next doctor and the next doctor after that. And in the meantime that kid died and it is all on you.

The operation of a substantive workplace rationality requires mutual complicity from all parties, including management. For example, Jackie and the hospital’s nursing manager, Gloria Akalitus, jointly agree to turn a blind eye to the hospital’s official working hours policy. Thus, Jackie can work the extra shifts she needs and Mrs Akalitus can cover a nursing shortage. Jackie’s vigilante actions invest her work with meaning – an admittedly wayward but consistently substantive rationality with which the viewer can often identify, despite any nagging disquiet. Almost everyone misbehaves in the ubiquitously dysfunctional context of All Saints, while we as viewers can implicitly endorse in situ actions which we might otherwise instantly classify as misbehavior. If we were simply asked the decontextualized question, ‘‘Is it acceptable for a nurse to forge a patient’s signature?,’’ we would probably respond otherwise. In a world of varying shades of darkish gray, the only (temporarily) white sheep is Zoey Barkow, the student nurse. She exclaims to Jackie, ‘‘I think you’re a saint.’’ Jackie is required to respond with disdain but later, musing on the prospect of sainthood, concludes, ‘‘Make me good, God, but not yet.

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Right?’’ Resistance, for Jackie, is not only intentional and purposive – it has become the norm in a workplace where ‘‘badmouthing,’’ parody and ridicule (see Bies & Tripp, 2005; Fleming & Spicer, 2003; Trethewey, 1997) have become embedded. As in I’m All Right Jack, maintenance of the All Saints system depends on everyone knowing and playing the game: substantive misbehavior is failure to conform to the unwritten and rarely spoken rules of everyday working life. Neither formal nor substantive rationalities exist in ‘‘pure’’ form within workplaces. But their constantly intersecting presence can be identified – in both codified organizational rules and in everyday operational practices. The former are repeatedly breached by Jackie, while the latter are taken as given in her interchange with Gloria Akalitus but have to be explained to Dr Cooper. Resistance at a ‘‘team’’ level has received limited attention (Richards & Marks, 2007, p. 43). Resistance to the formal organizational rules of All Saints Hospital is conducted by an informal ‘‘team’’ that includes both managers and workers. It is a kind of ‘‘team’’ also identifiable in several other situations discussed in this chapter. The ‘‘team’’ members are all, to varying degrees, in the know, which is how they identify one another, well aware of their own formal ‘‘misbehavior’’ but implementing what they perceive as the substantively rational goals of public health and protection of their own working environments. The participants thus shore up the organization’s faltering capacity to function, while retaining some substantive meaning for their own work. This indicates the potential emergence of substantively anti-managerialist (as distinct from antimanagement) strategies to which managers can also contribute. For Jackie and her colleagues, contravening the formal organizational rules is not only permitted, it is an operational workplace necessity imposed by the series of crises they are routinely required to confront. The substantive operational rules thus exclude the possibility of conformity with formal organizational rules. Resistance in this sense is both an expression of mutually affirmed values and a jointly pursued survival technique, expressed through an often tacit complicity.

CONCLUSION: MISBEHAVIOR, RATIONALITIES, MORALITY This chapter has suggested that there is a place for the use of film and TV examples in the analysis of misbehavior. They can provide plausible workplace scenarios, their plausibility making it possible for us to identify

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with and apprehend complex workplace situations that include action and inaction, decisions and non-decisions, amid a range of dilemmas and crises. Even events that are not empirically conceivable (such as many of the scenes in Metropolis or Modern Times) may have conceptual application in providing ideal-typical constructs through which empirical events may be interpreted. At the outset of this chapter, these mainly fictional examples were described as containing strong elements of the morality play. The substantive counter-rationalities they exhibit may be seen as constituting, to varying degrees, a kind of moral economy (Svallfors, 2006), whereby work is situated within a set of socially negotiated goals and practices. As with Nurse Jackie, they may even be seen (arguably) as performing a prefigurative role: an anticipation of future morality (Durkheim, 1912). From the perspective of means-end managerial authority, worker misbehavior is no doubt often viewed as simply irrational. Yet even the relatively simple conceptual framework provided by these two forms of rationality has helped to illustrate the complexities of misbehavior – of both managers and workers – and how misbehavior can rarely be viewed as simply irrational. As these examples illustrate, acts of apparent misbehavior, control and resistance are embedded in, and consequently inseparable from, everyday working practices. Resistance, therefore, need not be an expression of either individual deviance or collective mobilization. For example, the workers in the Balls factory are simply doing what they have done for years – although from a perspective of efficient means-end operation, the priority they place on social activities is profoundly irrational. There is no specific intent or conscious effort to subvert means-end goals – and management eventually has to accommodate this organizational reality. This leads to the observation that both workers and managers may resist the incessant demands of means-end rationality (most commonly articulated through variants of managerialism), while also constraining those individuals or groups seen as deviating from mutually negotiated but often informal practices or norms. This brief foray into film and TV depictions of workplace behavior leads to a questioning of any assumption that ‘‘managers decide what is misbehavior and what is not’’ (Collinson & Ackroyd, 2006, p. 306). Many managers would no doubt see themselves as the pivotal or even only decision-makers. Yet, at the risk of discouraging managerial hubris (which rarely requires encouragement), this discussion suggests that ‘‘misbehavior’’ is defined neither by managers nor by individuals or groups. Rather,

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definitions of misbehavior are produced through specific situations – and they are subject to change within minutes or even seconds, as in the visual moments depicted in this chapter. Misbehavior is multi-faceted, contextually specific, and both perspective- and power-dependent. The specific context in which ‘‘misbehavior’’ is interpreted contains not only the intersection of formal policies, collective agreements (where present) and labor law, but the practical operational hegemony of everyday working practices. Interpretations of misbehavior in terms of conflicting and competing rationalities may provide an alternative to analyses based on functionalist views of organizational behavior in which rationality is implicitly assigned to ‘‘the organization.’’ This requires us to clarify our use of the term ‘‘rationality’’ itself: is it being applied merely as an unacknowledged synonym for means-end rationality?

REFERENCES Anonymous. (2011a). Qantas CEO has ‘‘gone mad,’’ say pilots. Sydney Morning Herald, October 30. Anonymous. (2011b). Qantas offshoring blamed for A380 blast. The Australian, November 4. Bamber, G. (2011). How might Qantas rebuild relations with its workforce? Business Spectator, November 14. Bies, R. J., & Tripp, T. M. (2005). Badmouthing the company: Bitter employee or concerned corporate citizen. In R. E. Kidwell & C. Martin (Eds.), Managing organizational deviance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Boulting, J. (1959). I’m all right Jack. London: Warner Brothers DVD. Brubaker, R. (1984). The limits of rationality: An essay on the social and moral thought of Max Weber (2006 reprint). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Capra, F. (1939). Mr Smith goes to Washington. Culver City, CA: Columbia/Tri-Star DVD, 1999. Centre for Aviation. (2011). Qantas throws gauntlet to unions by grounding fleet and locking out union employees, October 29. Retrieved from http://www.centreforaviation.com/ analysis/qantas-throws-gauntlet-to-employees-by-locking-them-out-from-8pm-monday61587 Chaplin, C. (1936). Modern times. Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers DVD. Cole, N. (2010). Made in Dagenham. London: Paramount DVD. Collinson, D., & Ackroyd, S. (2006). Resistance, misbehaviour and dissent. In S. Ackroyd, R. Batt, P. Thompson & P. S. Tolbert (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of work and organisation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coulter, A. (2009). Nurse Jackie (episode 1), Santa Monica, CA: Lionsgate DVD. Dunlop, J. T., & Galenson, W. (1998). Labour in the twentieth century. New York, NY: Academic Press. Durkheim, E. (1912). The elementary forms of religious life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Eisen, A. (1978). The meanings and confusions of Weberian ‘‘rationality’’. British Journal of Sociology, 29(1), 57–70. Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2003). Working from a cynical distance: Implications for power, subjectivity and resistance. Organization, 10, 159–181. Goffman, E. (1962). Asylums. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Hannan, E. (2011). Unions go hard with call to strengthen Qantas Sales Act. The Australian, December 5. Joffe, M. (1992). Spotswood. Brisbane: Magna Pacific DVD. Kalberg, S. (1980). Max Weber’s analysis of rationality: Cornerstones for the analysis of rationalisation processes in history. American Journal of Sociology, 85(5), 1145–1179. Lang, F. (1927). Metropolis (restored and reconstructed). Melbourne: Madman DVD, 2011. Levine, D. N. (1981). Rationality and freedom: Weber and beyond. Sociological Inquiry, 51(1), 5–25. Mallet, S. (1975). The new working class. New York, NY: Telos Press. Mommsen, W. J. (1989). The political and social theory of Max Weber: Collected essays. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mumby, D. K. (2005). Theorising resistance in organisation studies: A dialectical approach. Management Communication Quarterly, 19(1), 19–44. Orr, G. (2000). Names without frontiers: Legislative titles and sloganeering. Statute Law Review, 21, 188–212. Prasad, A., & Prasad, P. (1998). Everyday struggles at the workplace: The nature and implications of everyday resistance in contemporary organisation. In P. A. Bamberger & V. J. Sonnenstuhl (Eds.), Research in the sociology of organisations. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Qantas. (2011). Annual Report 2011. Sydney: Qantas. Rancie`re, J. (1997). Interview: Democracy means equality. Radical Philosophy, 82, 29–35. Richards, J., & Marks, A. (2007). Biting the hand that feeds: Social identity and resistance in restaurant teams. International Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, 2(2), 42–57. Rodrigues, S. B., & Collinson, D. L. (1995). ‘‘Having Fun?,’’ Humour as resistance in Brazil. Organization Studies, 16(5), 739–768. Shamsudin, F. M. (2006). Organisational misbehaviour. Akademika, 69, 57–82. Svallfors, S. (2006). The moral economy of class: Class and attitudes in comparative perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Taylor, F. W. (1911/2006). The principles of scientific management. Fairfield, IA: 1st World Library, 2006. Trethewey, A. (1997). Resistance, identity, and empowerment: A postmodern feminist analysis of clients in a human service organization. Communication Monographs, 64(4), 281–301. Von Harbou, T. (1926/2006). Metropolis. Rockville, MD: Wildside Press. Weber, M. (1968). Economy and Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

ON THE COLD WAR FRONT: DISSENT, MISBEHAVIOR, AND DISCURSIVE RELATIONS AT PAN AMERICAN AIRWAYS’ GUIDED MISSILES DIVISION Christopher M. Hartt, Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms Mills ABSTRACT Purpose – To study misbehavior as a form of dissent and resistance in an organized labor situation where traditional forms of labor unrest are suppressed and the implications for how we understand the socio-political processes through which misbehavior is constructed. Methodology/approach – Archival research, cluster analysis, thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, actor-network theory Findings – Misbehavior is linked to a series of sociological practices not least of which is the production of knowledge through actor-networks and their relationship to far-reaching discourses. In the empirical material we find a conflict between discourses of labor solidarity and unfair management practices and discourses of patriotism and anticommunism. Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 111–140 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019008

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Research limitations/implications (if applicable) – This research is based on archival data, as such it is subject to the choices of holders to contribute and archivists to collect. Practical implications (if applicable) – This work has implications for labor leadership in the understanding of which disputes may be constrained by contextual discourses and by management in the exploration of possible means of suppressing labor unrest. Social implications – We have found that labor unrest may be constrained by contextual discourse but that suppressed unrest may result in misbehavior and other forms of counterproductive workplace activities. Originality/value of chapter – The relationship between contextual discourse and employee misbehavior has not been studied in depth. This work presents a new view of the struggles of the unionized workplace. Keywords: Misbehavior; union; noncorporeal actant; actor-network theory; discourse; Pan Am

INTRODUCTION In Organizational Misbehaviour Ackroyd and Thompson (1999) drew attention to a workplace phenomenon that incorporated resistance but went beyond in its focus on a range of behaviors that embraced ‘‘anything you do at work that you are not supposed to do’’ (p. 2). The book centered on the sociopolitical construction of (in)appropriate workplace behavior and the processes – both structural and social psychological – through which those understandings were derived. By and large, the book was concerned with three forms of ‘‘misbehavior’’ – absenteeism/time wasting, restrictions of work practices, and stealing – and the coproduction of the idea of misbehavior between the parties to the employment relation. The latter would include employers and employees, as well as trade union officials, where the employees are unionized. Although manifestations of misbehavior are, according to Ackroyd and Thompson (1999), often perceived as individual, there is some recognition (by the parties involved) that it is a social phenomenon. For example, the individual who engages in misbehavior does so with some recognition that he or she is breaking some established norm or rule (Mills & Murgatroyd,

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1990). In the latter regard, Ackroyd (this volume) ‘‘recognises the possibility of different degrees of compliance with expectations and rules from compliance and cooperation at one end of the scale to withdrawal or even out and out hostility at the other.’’ Extreme examples of challenges to workplace expectations can include organized conflict (e.g., official strikes), which moves far beyond more informal ‘‘self organized’’ misbehaviors (e.g., soldiering), and dissent, which involves rejection of official views and the active proposal of alternative perspectives (Collinson & Ackroyd, 2005). Dissent, which Collinson and Ackroyd (2005) referred to as a new area for the study of significant misbehavior, is the starting point of this chapter. We are interested in dissent for a number of reasons, not least of which are the implications for how we understand the sociopolitical processes through which misbehavior is constructed. As our study will reveal, historical context needs to be taken into account in the socio-political construction of misbehavior. This involves analysis of the discursive factors that are involved at the local workplace level, the broad formative context (Unger, 2004), and the interplay between the two in the constitution not only of particular notions of misbehavior but also of the participants themselves. In other words, by using elements of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005), we want to broaden the focus on who constitute the ‘‘parties’’ in coproduction and the limitations of the idea of coproduction of misbehavior. To that end, we explore a series of events surrounding the curtailment of organized conflict and dissent at Pan American Airways, Guided Missile Range Division (GMRD) during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and early 1960s.

COLD WAR AND THE WATERFRONT METAPHOR In 1954 On the Waterfront won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its director, Elia Kazan and writer Bud Schulberg also won Academy Awards. On the surface the movie dealt with gangster rule in New York’s dockland and one man’s struggle to overcome that rule. In order to succeed, the hero has to overcome several hurdles, not least of which is adherence to the dockside code of ‘‘D and D’’: being ‘deaf and dumb’ in the face of unwanted questions and refusing to inform on others. Those who break the code are shunned by their fellow workers and end up dead. Along the way, the movie’s hero is influenced by his love for the sister of a murdered informer, by the local priest, and notions of independence and freedom. The writer

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casts the hero as someone whose eventual misbehavior (informing) is a result of gradually realizing the truth of the situation. On the Waterfront also went on to become a commercial success, in part by the embedded politics of the film. It was, in essence, a Cold War film. Kazan and Schulberg, former Communists, had both informed on their fellow artists before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and a central part of the film set out to justify the act of informing – in the movie the hero talks to the Waterfront Crime Commission, a fictitious body that resembles HUAC (Navasky, 1981). The movie was originally conceived as the struggle of a union militant against corrupt leadership but the then writer, Arthur Miller, pulled out once Kazan-named names, and Schulberg was eventually brought in to replace Miller (Navasky, 1981). In the Cold War atmosphere of the day the movie seemed to lend itself to the view that the unions themselves were corrupt and that somehow the left-wing was behind it.1 The movie’s truths are simply contrived. The leaders of the union Local are clearly mobsters, openly gloating about their ability to steal from union members and their use of violence to enforce their rule. They are classic movie bad guys in all but black hats. The good ‘‘guys’’ include the hero – an apolitical dock laborer, the convent-educated sister of a slain informer and a local parish priest. The ability of the movie to resonate with audiences was due in large part to the Cold War context in which it appeared. Ideological struggles within labor unions were at their peak, reaching into the workplaces of a number of large corporations, including Pan American Airways (Pan Am) and its newly established Guided Missiles Range Division. Here, as we shall show, the company painted a consistent story of evil union forces trammeling on the rights of good, hard working, Christian, American employees. Unlike the movie, however, the truth was far from black and white – it was discursive. In other words, the various truths had to be constantly manufactured through a series of company and union narratives that were supported by meta-narratives of the Cold War. It was the very discursive nature of expected workplace behavior (e.g., being a good organizational citizen) that made them unstable, requiring constant statement and restatement to make them work. But, drawing on Foucault (1979), it was also the coherence of powerful ideas and practices in the creation of ‘‘truth claims’’ that gave them their power as received ‘‘knowledge.’’ In terms of workplace misbehavior there was a heightened sense of expected conformity not only with workplace rules but also with the

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supposed underlying values of capitalist society. At another time and place this might have been called ‘‘organizational citizenship’’ (Turnipseed, 2005). Within the context of the Cold War, dissent was viewed with heightened suspicion and gave rise to increasing expectations of proof of loyalty through such things as eschewing militant unionism and being prepared to inform on disloyal employees. In this context, traditional employee codes of loyalty, the ‘‘self organized’’ misbehavior of not informing, were seen as particularly troubling and disloyal in themselves. In the process the cumulative discursive factors were depicted in the movie as creating several interested parties that included not only the management and the employees but the corrupt union bosses, the loyal but disaffected union member, and the individual American. In this chapter, we focus on the relationship between powerful discourses that surrounded the development of Pan Am’s GMRD to explain the steady transformation of a militant to a conservative workforce in the course of a decade. Specifically, we set out to explore the role of discourse on the shaping of appropriate behavior and the contours of misbehavior at work through a case study of the GMRD. The research is based on extensive archival research2 of the Pan American World Airways Collection 341 at the University of Miami’s Otto Richter Library and other collections, including the Transport Workers of America collection (WAG 235) at New York University’s Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives. We also analyzed a number of histories of Pan Am (including Bender & Altschul, 1982; Daley, 1980; Josephson, 1943; Turner, 1976) and of labor, politics, and defense in the United States (including Cherny, Issel, & Taylor, 2004b; NASA, 2007; Schrecker, 1998, 2004). Using cluster analysis (Notelars, Einarsen, DeWitte, & Vermunt, 2006) and thematic analysis (Bowen, 2008; Krippendorf, 2008) the archived materials and histories were analyzed for ‘‘evidence’’ of critical discourses (Fairclough, 2003). These two concepts are closely related in outcome but not necessarily in method. In the analytic use of cluster analysis, related terms and concepts are brought together in a processual manner. Thematic analysis is more post-processual; text is read or listened to by a human interpreter who may code or cluster similar themes. The themes clustered are based on the understanding of the text acquired by the interpreter (Silverman, 2005). Both techniques were used in the production of this analysis with the emphasis on the surfacing of themes, which provide clues to the discourses at work in the situations and events. We begin our analysis with a powerful narrative of patriotism and the Cold War.

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LABOR UNREST AND UN-AMERICANISM On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched the world’s first ‘‘artificial satellite’’ into Earth’s orbit. Its launch brought about a new heightening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union as the Cold War threatened to turn into a hot war, with the fear that the Soviet’s had a lead in satellite production. Established shortly after the Sputnik launch, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) described the launch as marking the start of ‘‘the U.S. – U.S.S.R. space race,’’ ushering in ‘‘new political, military, technological, and scientific developments’’ (2007, p. 3). Thus, in many ways, from 1957 the Space Race became the front line of the Cold War. As such, as we shall argue throughout this chapter, it served to define appropriate behavior in the workplace and across American culture in general (Whitfield, 1991). In the next few years the tensions were heightened at the U.S. Space Program, in part, by perceptions that the United States was in danger of losing the Space Race or failing to catch up with the Soviets in time. For example, between 1957 and June 1961 the United States attempted 193 launchings of missiles, rockets, and satellites. Although 118 of the launches were deemed successful, the overall outcome was seen as falling far short of what was needed to win the ‘‘space race’’ with the Soviets (Time Magazine Editor, 1961). Blame was flowing and some of it attached to the unions. According to Time Magazine (1961), labor disputes cost ‘‘162,872 mandays’’ (sic) on the site construction. In May 1961, President Kennedy ‘‘ordered the preparation of a comprehensive plan to end labor disputes that delay the nation’s missile program’’ (New York Herald Tribune, 1961). It was clear to the unions involved that they would not be permitted to take action that would slow the program. The result was the issuance of an executive order to establish a Missile Sites Labor Commission to ‘‘anticipate impending problems and arrange for proper disposition of them’’ prior to the dispute becoming acute (Kennedy, 1961; Section 2.). The executive order also gave the Commission the authority to direct solutions to issues, ‘‘encouraging establishment of adequate grievances and jurisdicional procedures where such procedures do not now exist, to the end of preventing any interuptions of efficient performance’’ of the completion of missile programs (Sections 2 and 6). In a signal to concerns about inappropriate labor leadership, the executive order also stessed that the ‘‘Commission will take such steps as are necessary to assure that labor organizations will assign appropriate international union representatives to missile sites’’ (Section 2, our emphasis). It was not spelled out what constitututed ‘‘appropriate’’

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union representation but the message was fairly clear that the government did not want labor leaders who were too zealous in pursuit of union over national interests. The statement also seems to have traded on the specter of communism and the role of leftists in the leadership of trade unions.3 Investigations of the threat of communist activity and its link to labor unrest in the space program preceded the executive order. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (SPSI),4 chaired by Senator John L. McClellan, was already looking into ‘‘slowdowns and work stoppages at missile bases that have delayed completion of missiles’’ (New York Herald Tribune, 1961). McClellan went on to describe strikes at Cape Canaveral and the other missile installations as ‘‘sickening,’’ questioning how it was that ‘‘some American workmen callously contributed to the Soviet efforts to obtain and hold supremacy in space’’5 (1962, p. 258).6 Meanwhile the government, in the form of Secretary Arthur J. Goldberg, was sounding ‘‘out union leaders in the construction and missile-making industries to get their ideas on a no-strike proposal. The spokesman said no final action has yet been taken. But it was learned that some form of emergency machinery – a ‘‘Cold War Labor Board’’ of Union, Management and Public Officials – might be created to make final rulings on disputes that disrupt the missile program’’ (Pan American Airways, 1961a). What we might note here is that dissent was (1) receiving heightened attention; (2) defined through a dominant discourse of anticommunism; (3) associated with militant union action; (4) criminalized (as subversive); and (5) dealt with through a series of government agencies that collectively served to define appropriate workplace behavior.

PAN AM AND THE SPACE PROGRAM Pan Am played a role in the U.S. space program from its early days, with contracts in 1953 to help develop Cape Canaveral. In the process, the airline contributed to the building of ‘‘infrastructure and support services for the missile test range at Cape Canaveral and other installations related to the space and missile programs’’ (Hartt, Mills, Helms Mills, & Durepos, 2009, p. 231). In the process the company established a GMRD. Industrial Conflict and GMRD Prior to 1961, Pan Am’s employees had at least two notable disputes. One in 1957 involved a strike by the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship

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Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express and Station Employees, whose 7,000 Pam Am members included 1,000 at the missile testing center (Miami News, 1957). As the workers prepared to strike, the Brotherhood’s general chairman, Walter Coleman, complained that the company was already playing the patriotism card, using ‘‘our loyalty to our country and the defense program as a means of dealing on a sub par basis with’’ employees (Miami News, 1957). The second major dispute also involved employees across the Pan Am system, including the GMRD, this time to protest safety conditions following the death of a mechanic at the guided missile base (Associated Press, 1958). While strikes and other labor disputes continued throughout the space program (Post Wire Services, 1960; United Press International, 1960), the Pan Am unions seemed to have backed off. From about 1960, there is evidence that the unions at Pan Am were exempting the Cape Canaveral Base from their official strikes (Sneigr, 1960). During a March 1960 dispute across Pan Am’s system, Walter Coleman, in a reversal of his 1957 comments, stated that the union had exempted the 600 employees at Cape Canaveral because the union did ‘‘not want to interfere with an essential defense operation’’ (Sneigr, 1960, p. 1). Even McClellan’s (1962) characterization of labor disputes in the space industry as unpatriotic was silent about Pan Am employees. It would appear, at least in terms of labor actions, there had been a change in the perspectives of Pan Am employees. Pan Am’s unions occasionally threatened strikes (New York Times, 1962) and there were demonstrations at the gates but overt labor disputes were limited in the case of Pan Am GMRD employees. Elsewhere, with other space program contractors, labor disputes did continue to the point where federal government action appeared necessary. From the management side, the risk of labor interruption or slowdown signaled a weakening of the patriotic zeal to build missiles and put Americans into orbit. The Pan Am response was to increase the number of patriotic and pioneering references to the space program in its internal newspaper, The Clipper, and annual reports to employees. For example The Clipper reported, ‘‘The three-orbit flight of Astronaut John H. Glenn was a great triumph for the Free World and an event of particular pride for each Pan American employee’’ (Pan American Airways, 1962c, p. 17). The message was clear: Pan Am pride as a firm and the pride of every employee were sourced through the successful launch of spacecraft and the dangerous and excessive hard work of the employees of the Guide Missile Range Division. Employees from every division should demonstrate that pride by making the same sacrifices as the missile staff. As we have seen from the

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reaction of Walter Coleman of the Brotherhood of Clerks, the exemption of Cape Canaveral employees for strike action, and the drop in strike action, the patriotic message seemed to get through. The previous labor disputes across the space program, and the federal government’s reaction to them, reinforced the importance of the space program and the patriotic duty of Pan Am employees on the site. The alignment of Pan Am with a Senate committee, the secretary of labor, and the president of the United States to quell any labor disruption reified the firm as an important cog in the heroic mission of the space program. In this chapter, we will surface possible explanations for the relatively lower level of labor disputes among Pan Am employees in the space program.

SURFACING DISCOURSES Our research surfaced two major themes that evidence conflicting discourses surrounding Pan AM’s Guided Missile Range Division at the time. The first was what might be termed a labor discourse and the second a discourse of patriotism (or Americanism) Labor Discourses We do not pretend to be unconcerned or neutral observers. We are deeply concerned and each of us has ideas and concepts of his own and each has felt the smoke of battle. However, we have a deep attachment to the great labor union that we helped to form and for the thousands of members that it has been our pleasure to organize, lead and serve (Maurice H. Forge, investigator into union irregularities at the leadership level – Transport Workers Union, 1949a). It is our belief that Local 500 can be rebuilt into a militant trade union, acting first and always in the interest of its membership and without regard for ideological conflicts (Robert J. Franklin, William G. Linder, and Louis C. Dwyer, investigator investigation into irregularities into the union’s Miami Local 500 – Transport Workers Union, 1949b).

In the broadest sense the labor movement in the United States portrays its role as a struggle for fairness against exploitative business practices (Foley & Baker, 2009). Discursively, labor unions position management as primarily concerned with keeping the cost of labor as low as possible in order to profit unfairly. Unions discursively position themselves as a means of redressing the power imbalance (Brett, 1980; Weil, 2011). One worker can be fired but a worker collective (the union) cannot. This discourse of collective power attracts individuals to enroll7 in the actor-network that is a union. Drawing

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on ANT (see Latour, 2005), we see the union as a powerful actor-network in the identity of each of its members. As a result, the ideas of the network influence the sensemaking of each member. The discourses surrounding the notions of collective power are so important that they effect change in the networks and individuals and reach status as discursive actants (i.e., ideas of collective power can serve to encourage people not only to join unions but also to buy into the extant philosophies engendered). For the most part, these discourses are understood from the written materials of the union but each member has his/her own limits of collective action. Collective action in unions takes many forms: bargaining and working to rule are two examples, which are almost always legal (Jacoby, 2004; Wylie, 1990). Strikes are legal in many circumstances but at the particular place and time of this enquiry, they were not. Other forms of misbehavior are sometimes informally organized by unions. These include calling in sick, not showing up for work, refusing to do specific work, sabotaging the work-inprogress, and many other actions not specifically observed at Cape Canaveral (McClellan, 1962). The willingness of an individual worker to employ these forms of behavior appears to depend on their belief in the rightness of the action (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999). In order to make sense of choices to do things, such as damage a pipe because it was fit at a nonunion shop, a worker must believe that the struggle for fairness is right. This belief must become part of his/her identity. However, in order for any given individual or group of individuals to sustain belief a sense of what is profoundly right needs to be maintained. A strictly economic argument from the company that it cannot afford to meet union demands can be seen as playing to the underlying beliefs in unions that are shared by employees across a range of ideological divides. Appeals to a worker’s sense of patriotism and duty, on the other hand, may change the grounds on which the outcome is being judged. However, this broad labor union approach was discursive of the times (i.e., its dominance was of recent vintage). It represented not simply a broad statement of beliefs but an emerging outcome of interminable struggle throughout the labor movement for the better part of the twentieth century and particularly in the period stretching from the mid-1930s to the mid1950s as labor unions fought over political and economistic visions of unionism (Filippelli & McColloch, 1995; Foner, 1976; Taylor, 2008). The struggles were at their height in the mid-1930s and late 1940s. The first instance, following the enactment of the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act, 1935), saw the development of a number of radical-led industrial unions – organized under the umbrella of the Congress of

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Industrial Organizations (CIO) – whose formation challenged the dominance and more conservative approach of the craft-focussed and elitist American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions. The second instance followed the onset of the Cold War, which saw the introduction of the Taft-Hartley Act (1948) that removed many of the labor gains of the Wagner Act (Morgan, 2003; Schrecker, 1998, 2004). In this period legislation and revised union constitutions prohibited communists and those suspected of communist activities from holding union office. Both the AFL and the CIO at this point were becoming increasingly dominated by anti-leftist forces and in the process they encouraged their affiliated unions to raid the membership of rival unions with leftish leaderships.8 A sign of the increasing strength of the anti-leftist forces was the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955. These struggles inevitably reached into the Pan Am union locals, in particular the Transport Workers Union (TWU), which had been organizing sections of Pan Am employees since 1944. It was that year that the TWU began to see the postwar potential of commercial aviation as a growth area for unionization and they gained a toe hold by winning the right to represent a small group of Pan Am maintenance workers in Miami (Freeman, 2001, p. 261). This was the basis of Local 500 and was the only group of airline workers in the TWU. It was also the beginning of what was to become the Union’s Airline Transport Division (ATD). The following year, TWU representation at Pan Am was expanded to include mechanics and mechanics helpers (Freeman, 2001, p. 261). Eventually, the TWU recruited other airline’s employees and the bulk of their membership centred on Miami, New York, Tulsa, and San Francisco (Freeman, 2001, p. 263). By mid-1955 the Air Transport Division of the TWU was representing ‘‘more than 15,000 members employed as inspectors, mechanics, ground service personnel, flight attendants, flight navigators and flight radio operators’’ in various carriers (United States Aviation Subcommittee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 1955). From its inception in 1934 through to the late 1940s, the TWU was led by a coalition of Communist Party members and their allies, under the leadership of Michael J. Quill (Freeman, 2001). With the onset of the Cold War, the TWU became one of the unions targeted for raids by right wingdominated unions. By 1948, Quill (who was a close sympathizer if not a member of the Communist Party of the United States) became increasingly disillusioned with the Party and began to drive Communists and their sympathizers out of the TWU leadership and even the union itself. Two important targets were Pan Am locals 500 (Miami) and 504 (New York). Meanwhile the union’s leftist leadership moved against Quill and his allies,

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establishing a committee of the executive board ‘‘to Inquire into and Investigate certain events and developments in the Union’’ (Transport Workers Union, 1948). The committee, meeting at New York’s Hotel Lincoln in November of 1948, concluded that ‘‘there was a need for new rules to prevent undue power by the President and a tightening of rules against personal attacks on other members of the union’’ (Transport Workers Union, 1948). Quill and his allies walked out of the meeting in protest and, in ensuing elections, went on to defeat the leftist members of the executive. Heralding the outcome, the New York Times (1948) quoted Quill: ‘‘The Communist party has been completely routed within the TWU,’’ he declared. ‘‘We consider this a great victory for all labor and all America.’’ The following year, Quill acted to remove the pro-communist leadership from the Pan Am Locals 500 and 504. This time it was Quill holding an investigation – into the fraudulent use of funds by ‘‘certain officers, Executive Board members and members’’ (Transport Workers Union, 1949b). The Report recommended the expulsion of its officers from the union for corrupt financial practices (Transport Workers Union, 1949b), charges that were later proven false (Freeman, 2001, p. 322). It is more likely that the expulsions were part of a broader attack on pro-communist forces in the union that saw militants removed from Pan Am locals 500 as well as 504 (Freeman, 2001). In 1938 the leaders of the TWU had been called before the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities, a forerunner of the McCartheyite investigations of the 1950s. It was a very different union in 1959 when, along with six other airline unions, the TWU signed an agreement with Pan Am ‘‘to assure the movement of cargo and personnel essential to national defence despite possible labor difficulties between the Company and the unions’’ (Pan American Airways, 1959b). The Los Angeles Examiner editorialized that the agreement ‘‘proves that free men in a free society can retain the privilege of disagreement and at the same time guard the security of the nation,’’ while the Chicago Sun Times noted the patriotic spirit, congratulating Pan Am and the unions ‘‘for recognizing that you can be as patriotic in peacetime as you can in wartime’’ (both newspapers cited in Pan American Airways, 1959b). Pan Am, Patriotism, and Cold War Discourses Your Clippers carry the American flag to every quarter of the globe. Your Company’s routes serve the troubled areas of the world important to the national security – Berlin, an oasis of freedom in territory under Soviet domination; Vienna, on the edge of the Iron

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Curtain; Istanbul on the Bosporus; Beirut, in the heart of the Arab World; Tokyo and Hong Kong, adjacent to Red China. (Pan American Airways, 1951h, p. 1)

From its beginnings, patriotism, in different forms, was part of Pan Am’s rhetoric (Hartt et al., 2009). In its internal communications it often used a soft form of patriotism to build pride in American ingenuity, sense of adventure, and technological acumen. To be an American it was enough to be a U.S. citizen but being white and male also helped (Dye & Mills, 2012). All could take pride in the achievements of this nebulous quality of Americanism. In its external relations Pan Am developed a somewhat different sense of patriotism in its dealings with the U.S. government. Here it went to great lengths to stress its role as serving the socioeconomic and political interests of the United States in South America (and later other countries) and, in the process, earned the unofficial title of ‘‘the chosen instrument of the state department’’ (Bender & Altschul, 1982; Durepos, Helms Mills, & Mills, 2008). With the onset of World War II, Pan Am took on a new, more publically engaged, form of patriotism. Operationally the company lent itself to providing various forms of assistance to the war effort in terms of planes, material, and personnel. It also extolled the virtues of patriotism through a series of morale-boosting messages to employees and the public alike (Daley, 1980; Josephson, 1943). Although loyalty now became an issue, there seems to have been a general assumption throughout Pan Am’s communications that their employees, like the American people as a whole, were, for the most part, unquestioningly committed to the U.S. victory over the Axis countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan. With the ending of World War II came a new form of active patriotism, this time focused on demonstrable loyalty to the United States through commitment to company-defined notions of its own sense of patriotism, what at times it called ‘‘Pan-Americanism.’’ Now patriotism was seen to involve not only an active commitment to the patriotic goals of the company, but also avoidance of certain negative tendencies that made one suspected of un-Americanism. As was to be stressed from time to time repeatedly through company communications, it was no longer enough to be born in the United States to be an American, one had to demonstrate a particular loyalty. The following is one of many examples: A Word on Americanism. Last month, the Clipper ran a photograph of three GMRD employees who recently became U.S. citizens. Their enthusiasm about the history of their adopted country was both refreshing and remindful. It is so easy to lose sight of our rich heritage, to take our liberty for granted in the everyday rush and rumble. With February being the birth date of our two most famous forefathers, we feel it appropriate

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to quote a passage exemplifying their lives, a passage for each of us to live up to: ‘‘They were men marked by heritage, foresight, intelligence and wisdom. Each had a persistence to educate himself, a passion to right wrong, a courage to translate that feeling into action, a resolution that carried them through any opposition and a belief and trust in God; enduring qualities that, combined, command the respect of the world.’’ (Pan American Airways, 1962d)

In innumerable places and times Pan Am senior management took the opportunity to stress the characteristics of the ideal Pan American employee, which included ‘‘their spirit, their loyalty, their enterprise, their skill and their unremitting attention to detail’’ (Pan American Airways, 1948, p. 17). A 1948 speech by company Vice President John Leslie to the Pan Am Management Club exemplifies the new thinking. Leslie began his speech by referring to the ‘‘ingenuity, technical ability, courage and fighting spirit’’ of Pan Am employees (1948, p. 2) and the ‘‘training, discipline, technical perfection, and courage evidenced in a long record of pioneering’’ (p. 3). He then talked about ‘‘the great vision of our [company] President, supported by a courageous Board of Directors’’ (p. 3), before going on to outline the threat to the ‘‘American system’’ of economic freedom (pp. 6–7) and the need for dedicated patriots at all levels of the airline: There’s no room in this battle for those who only want security – no room for clockwatchers or feather-bedders – no room for selfish nest-featherers – no room for halfknowledge or safe-enough. This is a job for fighting men – men who know their job and are willing to work at it – men who think the task of keeping the American flag at the top in air transportation is a real crusade—men who know what this nation needs from the airlines and can tell the nation how to have it – men who rise to new heights when the going gets toughest. And that, gentlemen, describes the men and women of the Pan American organization. Yours is the battle yours will be the victory. (Leslie, 1948, p. 13)

Leslie’s speech captures in a nutshell the ideal-typical behavior and thus the contours of misbehavior in Pan Am during the Cold War. Over the next few years, rhetoric and practice would become fused in a series of operations that directly engaged Pan Am employees in Cold War military activities, including the Berlin Airlift (1948), the Korean (1950– 1953), and Vietnam (1961–1975) wars. The airline lost few opportunities to attempt to incorporate all Pan Am employees into a collective notion of commitment to the fight against communism. The airline’s engagement in Cold War activities and thinking was cast as synonymous with those of the employees. The Korean War provides a useful example of how Pan Am engaged its employees in these activities. The 1950 Annual Report of the airline starts

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with a drawing depicting Pan Am flight crew, at an unknown airport, walking from a plane protected by the U.S. military (Pan American Airways, 1950, p. 2); the caption reads ‘‘America’s ‘second line of defence’ is always mobilized’’ (emphasis in the original). The following text set out the company’s position and involvement in the Korean War: When the Communists struck in Korea, the scheduled airlines were asked to set up a military airlift across the Pacific Ocean. Four days after the invasion, the airlift was in operation, speeding men, weapons and materials across the 6700 miles of the Pacific. America’s ‘‘second line of national defense’’ is always mobilized. An average of 65 Pan American Clippers are always in the air throughout the world – scores more are readied on the flight line for instant civilian or military duty America’s civil airlines are an integral part of America’s air power. (Pan American Airways, 1950, p. inside cover - emphases in the original)

Following on the heels of the Annual Report, the airline’s president, Juan Trippe, issued a memorandum warning that: Because of the worldwide nature of our operations, we must anticipate that Pan American, its personnel and its facilities will be among the first to feel the impact of any conflict growing out of the conditions which led to the President’s declaration of a national emergency on December 16, 1950. (1951)

As a follow-up, Trippe appointed a vice president to liaise with ‘‘the various government departments responsible for the security of the United States’’ (1951). Over the lifetime of the Korean War, the airline engaged employees in a number of activities, including blood bank drives, aid to wounded Korean War soldiers, and the use of sexual imagery to cheer up the troops: ‘‘The Red Cross is Grateful For [Pam Am’s] Life Savers’’ ‘‘85 pints of blood were collected to be rushed to U. N. troops in Korea.’’ ‘‘BLOOD MEANS LIFE’’ ‘‘Former [Pan Am] Steward Now a Marine Sergeant in Korea Expresses Thanks to All Blood Donors,’’ says he appreciates copies of the Clipper ‘‘to see all the pretty girls and especially the stewardesses pictures.’’ (Pan American Airways, 1951e, p. 2)

The airline’s in-house newsletter, ‘‘The Clipper,’’ informed employees about Pan Am staff who had been called up to serve in the war, and published a regular ‘‘Letter from Korea’’ column that brought stories of those serving in Korea. In February 1952 ‘‘The Clipper’’ announced the

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death of the company’s first Latin American Division ‘‘employee killed in action in the Korean conflict’’ (Pan American Airways, 1952a, p. 2). It was against this background and the growing hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union that the GMRD was established in July 1953 (Pan American Airways, 1957).

The GMRD and Cold War Rhetoric From the beginning the GMRD was embedded in a discourse of Cold War and positioned as the company’s front line of defense contributions. As the Division grew from 65 employees in 1953 to 1,200 by 1955,9 Juan Trippe implored all employees to ‘‘fight the good fight in the Cold War’’ (1955). He was later to claim that the first 10-year period of the GMRD’s operations was successful, due in large part to the ‘‘fact that Pan American’s motives to serve have stemmed mainly from patriotism and loyalty to our national mission’’(Pan American Airways, 1963, p. 19). In a 1961 address to ‘‘the men and women of the Guided Missiles Range Division,’’ R.S. Mitchell, the vice president in charge of the division, informed employees that they ‘‘are a critical part of our country’s efforts to overtake the Communists in space’’ (Pan American Airways, 1961d, p. 3). Subsequent issues of the GMRD Clipper dealt with ‘‘Americanism’’ by, on the one hand, extolling the virtues of Americanism and, on the other hand, by highlighting the experiences of ‘‘new citizens,’’ particularly ‘‘escapees’’ from Communist countries, who found freedom in the United States (and employment at the GMRD). One of many examples was a man in the GMRD’s Facilities Engineering Department who ‘‘left troubled Cuba behind and found new happiness and new citizenship in America’’ (Pan American Airways, 1961c, p. 11).

MISBEHAVIOR AND DISCURSIVE PRACTICES Misbehavior in the workplace comes in many forms and the relationship between union membership and misbehavior has a long history (Aryee & Chay, 2001; Boxall & Haynes, 1997; Brett, 1980; Bryson & Gomez, 2003; Chaison & Bigelow, 2002; Charlwood, 2002; Jacoby, 2004; Keating, 1938). Sociological studies look to the uneven and micro political systems underpinning workplace behavior, including, among other tactics, worker

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sabotage, soldiering, and go-slows along with other attempts to control and manipulate the labor process (Beynon, 1973; Buroway, 1979; Roy, 1952). Employees strive to temper the power of employers through misbehavior (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999). Analysis of misbehavior (i.e., attempts to disrupted dominant notions of expected and/or required behavior) needs to take into account the discursive contexts in which such behaviors are evaluated. By the late 1950s, members of Pan Am’s labor unions had been involved in internal struggles over the direction of the union. Union members were entreated by one side of the leadership to reject not only the militant leadership of the Locals but also militancy itself (as a form of procommunist activity). They were also entreated by the other side of the Union leadership to commit to a vision of the union as an arm of the struggle against the evils of capitalism. Those very divides were reflections of a broader sociopolitical discourse of anticommunism that saw leftist union members hauled up before the HUAC, and various other Senate investigative committees, and questioned about their union activities. Cold War rhetoric and activities also marked the internal communications of Pan Am itself and in many ways rivaled those of the McCarthyites involved in HUAC, SPSI, and other similar Senate committees. For example, in 1954 the Company issued a statement outlining its policy ‘‘in connection with any of its employees named in connection with Communist or other subversive activities’’ (Pan American Airways, 1954, pp. 1–2): Pan American World Airways doesn’t want any Communists among its employees. We consider them cowardly subversives who have done our country and our Company incalculable harm. In some cases, Pan American has suffered from guilt by association with the Communists which infiltrated the local CIO-TWU Union, with which Pan American has a labor contract. These Communists were never employed by the Company, but their names became associated with Pan American because they were running the CIO-TWU Union. It is a source of deepest regret to us that they succeeded in reflecting discredit on our thousands of loyal American citizens and good [Pan Am] employees. It has been Company’s policy for many years to turn over any and all information obtained about Communist activities on the part of any Pan Am employee to state and federal authorities, including FBI. Most of the information involving [Pan Am] employees which has been brought out in recent hearings has been in the hands of the FBI for more than 10 years y. Where there has been sufficient grounds, the Company has quickly discharged Communist and Fascist employees.

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This was done in the case of y a recently self-admitted former Communist who was discharged on the grounds that he had falsified his employment application. It has also been done in a number of other cases where Pan American has been able to obtain sufficient ground to justify the discharge.

The message was clear. Not only members of the Communist Party would be fired from the company but also those who were ‘‘former’’ members and likely behaved as if they were Communists. In the meantime the FBI would be invited to open files of all suspect employees. The best way to avoid FBI investigation, subpoenas to appear before HUAC, or discharge from the company was to give every appearance of being a ‘‘loyal American’’ and a ‘‘good’’ employee.10 As if the Company’s efforts were not enough, from time to time Pan Am informed employees of praise for its Cold War efforts from the highest levels. These affirmations included a message from the U.S. Air Force praising the GMRD’s loyalty and patriotism (Pan American Airways, 1962b); the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Science and Astronautics, which, in identical language to that of the Air Force, noted that Pan Am’s contribution to Space ‘‘is one that is based on patriotism – the profit motive is decidedly secondary’’ (Pan American Airways, 1962a, p. 11); and from U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who, in 1965, personally commended Pan Am as a major defense contractor, for its ‘‘positive program of cost reduction to help guarantee our country a maximum of defenses at a minimum cost’’ (Pan American Airways, 1965, p. 11). For a Company used to stressing cost savings to labor unions, it must have been gratifying to be able to quote the president of the U.S. as singling out the GMRD for its ‘‘continuing effort towards greater economy’’ (Pan American Airways, 1965, p. 11). Alongside external testimonies the Company provided space and encouragement to various anticommunist groups, including, curiously,11 the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) group. In a series of articles, beginning in 1951, ‘‘The Clipper’’ carried supportive stories on MRA, calling it a ‘‘worldwide group that believes that human nature can be changed’’ through commitment to Jesus and conflict resolution (Pan American Airways, 1951a, p. 2). The article went on to quote the MRA leader as calling for an ‘‘ideological revolution’’ to deal with the threat of communism (Pan American Airways, 1951a, p. 3). Two accompanying photographs show Pan Am employees attending an MRA international conference, and the piece ends with quotes from other employees encouraging support for MRA. The following edition of ‘‘The Clipper’’ reported that 120 Pan Am employees

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from the Latin America Division had attended the MRA ‘‘world congress’’ in Michigan (Pan American Airways, 1961b, p. 1.). The extent of MRA’s influence can be gleaned from the following 1952 report: Very recently Pan American employees of all levels made a step in another direction, which has implications greater than anything that has yet been done. During the Pan American Airways Family Night, held here in Miami last spring, the employees of the Line established a precedent by adopting the Moral Re-Armament Movement. A new era in mutual faith and understanding between management and labor was ushered in. This affirmation of faith was sponsored jointly by the unions and management. It pointed out that many labor management problems can be solved amicably and with understanding. The Family Night found 2,500 airline employees and officials supporting the ‘‘what’s right’’ and not the ‘‘Whose right’’ principle for living. The employees of Pan American can be proud of what they have done for aviation and our National defense. They can be proud of being instrumental in furthering the Moral Re-Armament Movement, which promises so much as another forward step in welding together management and labor and bringing many of our people into closer understanding with people from the other free nations of the world. The entire air transport industry, of which Pan American World Airways is an integral part, had done much for our Nation’s defense and well-being. The story of Pan American and its employees can be used as an example of what private industry is doing today to further the cause of democracy. (Pan American Airways, 1952b, pp. 9–10)

Here employees are engaged with a message that links forms of industrial conflict with irreligious behavior, encouraging labor unions to work together with management in the interests of freedom and democracy. And if they didn’t get the point, there were plenty of stories like the appeal from West Berlin’s mayor, Willy Brandt, to Pan Am engineers asking them to call off a strike that was affecting flights in and out of Berlin. As one newspaper commented, the strikers needed to take into account ‘‘the impact of an American strike on an embattled free people 200 miles inside the Communist lines,’’ arguing that ‘‘it is vital to the U.S. cold war operations’’ (Riesel, 1961). Finally, from 1950 onward, relations within Pan Am, especially at the GMRD, were imbued and mediated by a series of security measures that served, for one thing, to reinforce the active and ongoing reality of the Cold War. In 1951, Pan Am employees were notified that, as ‘‘a result of the declaration of a national emergency by President Truman, strict security measures are being placed in force.’’ Identification badges were introduced which had to ‘‘be worn AT ALL TIMES while on the [Pan Am] base’’ (Pan American Airways, 1951g, p. 1, emphasis in the original). Beginning in San Francisco, the wearing of badges and other security measures was spread

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throughout the company. A memorandum to all employees on ‘‘emergency regulations’’ warned that a ‘‘System wide security organization is being instituted’’ with the aim of protecting information vital to the defense of the United States and to facilitate Pan Am’s ‘‘integration into the war effort’’ in the event of general war (Pan American Airways, 1951f). Toward the end of 1951, a notice went out to those employees who were ‘‘aliens’’ to let them know that they were ‘‘required to report their current address on an Address Report Card y according to the requirements of the Internal Security Act’’ (Pan American Airways, 1951b). Once again employees were encouraged to rally around, being told that ‘‘effectiveness of measures will depend up [the] cooperation and alertness of all employees:’’ To repeat what has been said before – too many of us think of sabotage as one big bang! Minor interruptions and slow-downs can be just as effective. In the case of our air lift operation, repeated REM’s can be just as valuable to the enemy as the total destruction of an airplane. Damage to building and equipment by explosives, fire, breakage or chemicals – these are a few of the ‘‘little things’’ that can be accomplished by the saboteur. He might tamper with precision tools or testing devices, with blueprints or gauges. Maybe no one gets hurt, but it’s sabotage, just the same. (Pan American Airways, 1951c, p. 1)

For those who did not get it, or who didn’t want to get it, occasional stories in the newsletters warned that those directly involved in security duties were armed to kill (e.g., Pan American Airways, 1951d). After a decade of Cold War activities and rhetoric it is not surprising that Pan Am was able to pull off a no-strike deal with its unions, enabling the company to classify various activities as serving the nation’s defense needs and thus could not be subject to industrial action. As Pan Am explained to its employees, these ‘‘new contracts between your Company and its operating unions well illustrate the ability of free men in a democratic society to work voluntarily for the security of all. The privileges and freedom of the individual are retained, but the national security is served without regimentation or dictatorship’’ (Pan American Airways, 1959a, p. 4).

THEORIZING MISBEHAVIOR In classic Marxist terms, the failure of the Left to develop and maintain leadership over the workers can be explained in terms of the ideological dominance of the ruling classes and their use of the apparatus of the State as

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weapons of fear (Marx & Engels, 1971[1846], 1967). Certainly, there is some evidence of these factors at play but they are far from explaining ideology and how it works to prevents workers from developing class consciousness (Seliger, 1977). Taking up the challenge, Gramsci (1978) sought to explain the process by reference to cultural leadership and struggles over the hegemony (i.e., dominant ideas that are connected to the cultural sensibilities of people) of the ruling classes. While Gramsci (1978) went some way toward disconnecting knowledge from some ultimate truth claim (i.e., that class consciousness constitutes a greater or truer form of knowledge), the idea of hegemony still carries the notion of an obfuscation of the truth. More recently the works of Foucault (1972, 1979) and Latour (2005; Latour & Woolgar, 1979) attempt to grapple with a sociology of knowledge that explains how knowledge is constituted but without the necessity of rooting the process in a notion of objective truth. Foucault, as we have tried to show, roots the origins of extant knowledge in the power of discursive practices, which serve to construct in people a sense of reality and of themselves. Thus, changes in the consciousness of Pan Am workers may not be simply explained by ideological and repressive attacks on their way of thinking but rather through changing notion of what constituted knowledge of the world they inhabited at the time (i.e., that substantial numbers of employees came to accept dominant views of the Left as outmoded and out of touch with the realities they were experiencing). Foucault’s focus on the social construction of discursive identities helps us to understand the relationship between knowledge and power and explains how and why people – caught in the intercedes of a series of (Cold War) discourses – come to change their way of thinking. However, it doesn’t fully help us to understand how knowledge comes to be constructed in the first place. Here Latour shifts the emphasis away from the discursive subject to explanations of knowledge production. In nutshell, he and his colleagues trace knowledge production to actor-networks, or a consistently fused group of actors that, in support of their sociological project (e.g., the creation of a labor union) produce and reproduce supportive ideas and practices. However, what is of interest here is Latour’s conceptual framework for analyzing the factors needed to sustain an actor network. Discourse may propel individuals into action, either solely or in concert with others. Groups thus motivated may be termed action-nets (Czarniawska, 2004). The action-net may be viewed as a precursor to an actornetwork (Latour, 2005). A persistent network may originate from a compelling discourse (e.g., a call to action to become a patriot or a member

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of the working class). The conversion from action-net to actor-network can occur where actors, through one means or another (e.g., cultural leadership), convince others of the profound merit of their shared position and thus lock those others ‘‘into place by coming between them and their alternatives’’ (Law, 1986, p. 16). Callon (1986), Callon and Law (1982), and Law (1986) refer to this stage as ‘‘interessement.’’ In other words, actors have to be sufficiently interested and committed to join with others and thus ‘‘enroll’’ in the network. But, according to Latour (2005), it is not simply other human actors that enroll others into a network but nonhuman actors such as material (e.g., space equipment) and nonmaterial (e.g., history) phenomena that also influence human action. They are collectively referred to as actants to note that they have the ability to influence actors to become enrolled in an actor-network through their negotiation of shared interest and understanding of the rationale for joint action. For example, Pan Am employees can be seen as being sufficiently interested in joining a union through the initial activities of union organizers but those activities have to be sustained. A level of interessement has to be maintained. In this case, actants can be seen in such things as references to the militant history of the union (nonhuman actant) as an advancement of workers’ rights (Freeman, 2001): elsewhere Hartt (2009, 2011) has referred to this form of actant as a noncorporeal actant (NCA) to draw attention to the utilization of powerful ideas and phenomena in influencing actor-network decision making. On the other hand, the ability of an actor-network to sustain itself may depend on a series of competing actors, nonhuman actants, and NCAs that compete for the necessary translations (i.e., the way that a sense of a situation is enacted, Weick, 1995). In this case, Pan Am employees faced competing actors (e.g., employers and different groups of union actors), nonhuman actants (e.g., understandings of Sputnik), and NCAs (e.g., competing notions of the origins of the Cold War). ANT describes a process of knowledge production that is always more or less undergoing a process of ebb and flow where various actors are in various stages of enrolling (or losing interest) in an actor-network (e.g., a union). Some elements may become durable (e.g., the union as an organization may continue to exist), while others (e.g., the left-wing character of the union) may dissipate. This also means that what constitutes appropriate workplace behavior, and its nemesis misbehavior, will be more or less stable and reliant on, not simply what the individual employee comes to view as legitimate forms of action or otherwise, but also on the discursive nature of a given situation in time. Thus, for example, the ability and willingness to take industrial

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action against the employer across a range of actions in the pre-World War II era and the immediate aftermath of the war years may take on different understanding in the context of a defined wartime (NCA) context in the 1950s onward. Employees may not simply have changed their opinion but their core notions of self and society against a background of changing knowledge.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have tried to contextualize the notion of workplace misbehavior through a case study of Pan Am’s Guided Missile Range Division. Our argument has been that misbehavior is linked to a series of sociological practices not least of which is the production of knowledge through actor-networks and their relationship to far-reaching discourses. In the process, we have tried to suggest that misbehavior is a changing entity that depends on a series of relationships that mediate how appropriate behavior is not only made sense of but is also related to a person’s connectedness to an actor network and associated views of self and reality. This differs markedly from any fixed notion of misbehavior or its representation either as a negative or as a positive act of resistance. Its characterization, we would argue, is relational rather than relative or absolute (Durepos, Mills, & Weatherbee, 2012). That is, it relies on the processes of knowledge production of specific groups at specific times. It also contributes to the construction of relevant parties, that is, misbehavior may be a relationship not only between management and employees but also between competing interest groups (e.g., leftist and rightist union leaderships; religious groups such as MRA). That the GMRD employees, more than other employees in Pan Am, and across the space industry, moved along a path of close collaboration with the employer to the point of accepting managerial definitions of inappropriate (anti-national defense) behaviors is explained in part by the industry itself (national defense), in part by the ideological struggles within the union locals (the purging of the leftists from the TWU), and in large part by Pan Am’s adopted role as Cold War warrior. The employees were faced with competing discourses of labor unions as the defenders of the working class and their rights (a strong form of dissent) and appeals to patriotism and Americanism. The latter was ultimately the stronger of the two, with its strong appeal to sense of nation, citizenship, and threat (Whitfield, 1991). Arguably the strength of this discourse is in its

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consistency of appeal to patriotism and Americanism that goes back at least to 1776 and the War of Independence (Zinn, 1999). The weakness of the former discourse, arguably, lies in the fragmentation of appeals to trade unionism over the same time period (Foner, 1975): it was a form of dissent that was successfully characterized as a threat not only to the workplace but to society as a whole. Fragmentation has included disputes over whether a union should be a means to an end (i.e., a tool to bring down capitalism) or the end in itself (i.e., a tool for better working conditions within a capitalist states); whether it should be purely economic or political in intent; whether it should be organized around craft work or industries or even one big union for all workers (Filippelli & McColloch, 1995; Foner, 1976; Minton & Stuart, 1940). From the perspective presented in this chapter, misbehavior in all its variants needs to be understood through the discursive practices and historical contexts that constitute it.

NOTES 1. Three years after the film’s release the U.S. Senate set up a committee, chaired by Senator John McClellan, to investigate ‘‘corruption and racketeering in the unions.’’ The committee often linked Reds to union corruption (Cherny, Issel, & Taylor, 2004a, p. 3). 2. Elsewhere we have described the process of undertaking critical archival case study research (see Mills & Helms Mills, 2011). 3. Given the fact that the Taft-Hartley Act (1947) had been successfully used to purge leftists from union leaderships in the late 1940s (Schrecker, 2004), the Executive Order seems more likely to have raised the spectre rather than the reality of communism in the labor leadership. 4. This was the committee that was chaired by Senator Joe McCarthy in 1953– 1954 and used to ‘‘launch investigations designed to document charges of Communists in government’’ (United States Senate, 2011). McClellan publically distanced himself from McCarthy during the hearings into communist influence in the U.S. Army, staging a public walkout of Democrats during one stage of the proceedings. Nonetheless, following the Senate censure of McCarthy in 1954 McClellan took over the chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee and continued investigations into ‘‘subversive activities’’ at the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth. 5. In 1957 McClellan had taken an interest in ‘‘improper activities in labor and management,’’ and helped to establish and chair a Senate committee of that name. The committee was charged with investigating ‘‘corruption and racketeering in the unions’’ (Cherny et al., 2004, p. 3). 6. This was said against a background of press reports that linked labor unrest with communist activity across industry. The Orlando Sentinel, for example, claimed that ‘‘many U.S. unions are now infiltrated by Communists. This was established last

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week by the Central Intelligence Agency. Most union members are, of course, loyal Americans. But the fact that positions of union power may be controlled by subversives makes it imperative to write into the law, in Florida and the nation, a provision that known Communists may be eliminated from unions. The Florida law does this’’ (Orlando Sentinel, 1961). 7. In actor network theory to ‘‘enroll’’ means something more than to simply join; it refers to a level of commitment or belief not necessarily implied in the act of joining. 8. Raiding refers to the attempt of one union to recruit members of another union. This is a practice usually frowned upon by confederations of unions because it is thought to weaken the movement through union–union battles. 9. The number of employees exceeded 4,000 by December 1958 (Pan American Airways, 1958). 10. Evidence of Pan Am’s close association with the FBI can be glimpsed in the invited talk of a former FBI operative – a ‘‘veteran of many years of undercover investigation work for J. Edgar Hoover’’ – to speak at the Pan Am Management Club in May 1961. The talk highlighted the dangers of Communism and the important role of Pan Am in the front line of defence work (Pan American Airways, 1961a, p. 10). 11. We say ‘‘curiously’’ because the MRA had a controversial history that included charges not only that it had been sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazis in their drive against communism, but also that its initial Protestant biases were antiCatholic (Contesti, 1957; New York Times, 1946, 1952). The one certain thing was that the MRA was decidedly anticommunist and worked among labor unions to fight leftist influences (Hailey, 1954).

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INCORPORATING INSTITUTIONALISM: RECONCEPTUALIZING THE RESISTANCE AND MISBEHAVIOR BINARIES Tony Dundon and Diane van den Broek ABSTRACT Purpose – The chapter analyses potential interconnections between competing strands of worker misbehavior and mischief that result in forms of active resistance for those workers employed in nonunion settings. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis integrates extant literature and theory concerned with differences between resistance, mischief and misbehavior on the one hand, and patterns of nonunion and unorganized workplace relations on the other. Findings – Using a revised conceptual framework that advances a deeper and more nuanced understanding of unorganized workplace resistance, mischief, and misbehavior, the chapter illustrates the role that institutional and structural regulation plays in delineating between formal (and often collective) indicators of conflict, and informal (sometimes individualized) instances of mischief and misbehavior. Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 141–159 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019009

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Research limitations/implications – The chapter offers a potential schematic framework for future researchers seeking to explore the complex interactions between resistance and misbehavior in a global and increasingly nonunion context. Originality/value – While researchers have observed the quantitative decline in unionized conflict and industrial action, this chapter argues for a more inclusive incorporation of employment relations institutions to understand the deeper qualitative affects on workforce misbehaviors. Keywords: Misbehavior; resistance; mischief; institutions; nonunion workplaces

INTRODUCTION Traditional understandings about worker resistance tend to focus on the activities of collective associations defending worker interests. However, this chapter argues that for a variety of reasons these conceptual frameworks have become limiting analytical tools to explain industrial conflict and the various forms of employee (mis)behaviors at work. The tendency to assume that workers respond to managerial prerogative either formally or informally (Freeman & Medoff, 1984) has often led to a propensity to downplay structural factors that underscore and shape resistance and misbehavior (van den Broek & Dundon, 2012). A neglect of the structural and organizational contexts surrounding acts of protest behaviors, particularly for unorganized and vulnerable workers, is often predicated on individual interpretations of mischief. Ackroyd and Thompson (1999, pp. 2, 31) define resistance as ‘‘anything at work you are not supposed to do.’’ However, agreeing on a unified concept about the multiple ways in which workers respond to managerial authority is a complicated process (Collinson & Ackroyd, 2005; Vardi & Wiener, 1996). Resistance and misbehavior often overlap. Similarly individual acts of mischief can coalesce into collective forms of resistance. An act or certain behavior in one context (say in a highly unionized work environment) may be regarded as a misnomer or minor act of mischief that is less substantial than a strike or official work-to-rule. Yet in another context (where unions are absent and employees lack the support of a representational workplace regime structure) the same response may be defined as a significant and

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innovative form of resistance, say an informal or unofficial act of collective absenteeism. Importantly, the response may vary in terms of the nature of the behavior and according to its perceived intent and outcomes (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, p. 24). Mischief can be defined as some employee response which seeks to ‘‘get back’’ at management (or customers) but at the same time it can be an act of defiance which seeks to challenge employer legitimacy when denied access to union protection or representation (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, p. 24; Zoller & Fairhurst, 2007). In understanding the interplay between mischief/misbehavior on the one hand, and resistance on the other, the chapter advances a more nuanced institutionally sensitive framework to loosen previous rigid or static binaries between misbehavior and resistance. It does this firstly by outlining the contextual backdrop of managerial authority and the institutionalization of industrial conflict; followed by analysis of the literature on resistance and misbehavior, highlighting the institutional void in much extant theory. The final section of the chapter discusses the implications for understanding conflictual workplace behaviors by advancing a more developed institutional theoretical approach. The chapter is conceptual and therefore offers the potential for other researchers to test and explore these issues empirically in subsequent research settings.

CONTEXTUAL ADAPTATION TO CONTEMPORARY MANAGERIAL LEGITIMACY AND AUTHORITY The contemporary workplace has changed considerably, particularly in the period after the 1980s. Global competition and deindustrialization resulted in the restructuring of global business and the internationalization of labor. Production processes also adapted away from a mass production and standardization system toward more flexible (and knowledge based) production regimes. Similarly (information) technologies underscored flexible organizational structures spawning an array of new managerial control techniques. Labor markets also changed in a number of ways, toward greater casualization, flexible specialization, downsizing, outsourcing, and offshoring. Within the workplace, and in relation to control regimes specifically, these developments have underscored shifting relationships between control, consent, misbehavior, and resistance among vulnerable workers who lack formal collective channels of representation (Dundon & Rollinson, 2004; Edwards & Scullion, 1982; Townsend & Richards, 2001).

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Those who adopt a more optimistic interpretation of workplace change have argued that top down managerial control was replaced with decentralized management attuned to flexible, knowledgeable and autonomous workers (Barley & Kunda, 2004; Pink, 2001). Empowerment, excellence, and engagement crept into the contemporary managerial lexicon (Peters & Waterman, 1984; Pfeffer, 1998) and resistance relegated to a by-gone era. On the more pessimistic side, notions of peer and selfenslavement emerged as forms of cultural and coercive control (Barker, 1993; Grugulis, Dundon, & Wilkinson, 2000; Smith & Tabak, 2009). Here it was suggested that managerial omnipotence rendered employee dissent futile, with workplace technologies often represented as the last nail in the coffin of potential employee resistance (Spitzmu¨ller & Stanton, 2006; Zuboff, 1988). For instance, Sewell (1998) identifies the combination of vertical managerial control with horizontal peer pressure to produce a totalizing ‘‘chimerical control’’ where employees, like prisoners, were aware of being watched was enough to counteract worker resistance (Sewell, 1998). While management control systems have been interpreted both optimistically and pessimistically, this contemporary twist toward employee ‘‘selfdiscipline’’ as an undercurrent of the control/resistance debates have been a notable distraction from how workers respond to the regime configurations they encounter (Thompson & van den Broek, 2010). For example, Knights, Calvey, and Odih (1999; p. 20) proposal that ‘‘Commsco’’ employees ‘‘willingly turned themselves into self-disciplined subjects’’ was attributed to their relations to consumption (rather than production as a worker) and a concern for brand and customer management. For example, brand and customer loyalty ‘‘locked individuals into performance’’ (Aleroff & Knights, 2001, p. 11) rather than resistance. In a similar vein, occupationally prestigious workers such as pilots, resisted by ‘‘overtly consenting’’ to managerial directives (Ashcraft, 2005, pp. 69, 83). While viewing worker improvements in service quality as an example of resistance is highly dubious, the more salient point is that by viewing employee misbehavior as an escape into work itself realigns managerial control and power as something benign, individualistic, and devoid of reciprocal agency or structural and institutionalized forms of workplace regulation. Bargaining mechanisms or employee voice structures were seamlessly sidelined to make way for managerialist and poststructural interpretations which relied on normative, and consumer focused priorities. Such recent developments in the scholarship around worker acts of defiance or mischief and resistance highlight the complexity of social and

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institutional influences (Townsend, 2004). It has long been realized, for instance, that important social factors shape the type and form of organizational behaviors, including issues such as gender relations (Pollert, 1981), masculinity (Collinson, 2005), occupational identity (Ashcraft, 2005; Dundon & Rollinson, 2004), or community solidarity (van Maanen & Barley, 1984), to name a few. The analysis of micro political systems underpinning workplace behavior can be contrasted across various phases of social structures of accumulation, resulting in a shift from monopoly to financialized capitalist domination (McDonough & Dundon, 2010; Thompson, 2011). Against such huge economic and institutional reconfigurations, workers have evidently not lost the capacity to moderate or question managerial prerogative and legitimacy (Beynon, 1973; Burawoy, 1979; Collinson, 2005; Cullinane & Dundon, 2011; Gall, 2011). These actions and responses are mixed with other various structural realignments across labor market institutions. Importantly, the boundaries between employer and employees are much more blurred by flexible contracts, outsourcing and job delayering (Grimshaw, Marchington, Rubery, & Willmott, 2004; Standing, 2009). The work itself in many sectors is increasingly feminized and casualized, and workers experience less tenure, insecurity, work intensification, and labor market vulnerability (Pollert & Charlwood, 2009). Longitudinal data indicates an international trend of workers ‘‘detaching themselves from national regulatory and protective regimes’’ (Standing, 2009, p. 99). Trade union membership (as measured by density) has declined significantly in most industrialized countries and collective bargaining has either ceased to exist for many workers, or has been relegated to a form of managerial decree rather than negotiation. While precise cause and effect predications remain debatable, it is more than coincidental that the substantial decline of collective representation has occurred during periods of intensified geopolitical reconfigurations within nation States and market economies: Thatcherism in the United Kingdom, Regan in the United States, and the Howard governments’ neoliberal assault on trade unionism in Australia all bear the hallmarks of a public policy endorsement for nonunion forms of work organization (Cooper, Ellem, Briggs, & van den Broek, 2009; Dundon, 2002). Consequently, employer militancy espousing more assertive antiunion strategies, buttressed by government policy, has recast the structural and contextual milieu within which employee resistance and misbehavior emerge. Yet despite the prevalence of the nonunion enterprise, there remains a dearth of research on workplace resistance among nonunionized workplaces (van den Broek & Dundon, 2012).

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INCORPORATING INSTITUTIONALISM: EMPLOYEE RESISTANCE AND MISBEHAVIOR Some have differentiated between a management/organizational behavior approach to misbehavior as contrasted with an industrial sociological approach. With the former offering prescriptive suggestions for management to ‘‘fix’’ organizational problems (Shamsudin, 2006) most of the latter persuasion have looked at resistance as a product of the wage effort bargain that includes ‘‘anything at work you are not supposed to do’’ (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999), a deliberate act to contravene organizational norms as well as societal standards about appropriate conduct (Vardi & Wiener, 1996). Since the publication of Organizational Misbehavior, resistance research has focused on a range of issues: cynicism, sexuality and gender, leadership, humor, culture, subjectivity, identity (Fleming & Spicer, 2007; Hodgson, 2005; Ka¨rreman & Alvesson, 2009; Willmott, 1993; Zoller & Fairhurst, 2007). However, much of this analysis, especially concerning informal acts of mischief or misbehavior, has occurred in an institutional vacuum. Fleming’s (2005) research on worker resistance at ‘‘Sunray’’ is one notable example. The study outlines various culture programs and paternalistic management styles. Yet the forms of employee resistance, largely based around employee cynicism, are analyzed in the absence of contextual factors explaining the structural and regulatory context against which these employee behaviors are interweaved (and mediated by). The closest Fleming (2005, p. 60) comes to discussing organizational context is when he notes that the ‘‘construction of identity’’ (and cynicism) was bound by societal discourses relating to ‘‘class, capitalism, and patriarchy.’’ The potential potency of this context is treated as little more than an acknowledged footnote. He continues, ‘‘the metaphor of production is appropriate here because it reveals how these resistant identities are realized when and where power is applied’’ (Fleming, 2005, p. 60). Thus, the specific mechanisms or alternative levers of worker power or powerlessness are left unexplained. Worker resistance, within the context of class, capitalism, patriarchy or power, as it relates to Sunray employees, remain unqualified, other than noting its potential importance as a mediator. Analysis of employee (mis)misbehavior such as this becomes isolated from important structural and organizational conditions: the dynamic of capitalist crisis, workforce vulnerability, and the decline of collective structures for employee voice. Indeed, it is a mistake to assume that because trade unions are absent from an organization or sector then there is no

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employee conflict (van den Broek & Dundon, 2012). What may be evident is that workers engage in acts of mischief and misbehavior amid different conditions than workers who are unionized. As such this chapter argues that mischief, conflict, misbehavior, protest or resistance can only fully be understood when situated within the political, institutional, and economic context in which the employment relationship operates (Cullinane & Dundon, 2006). In this chapter we do not suggest concepts such as subjectivity or identity have no value or utility, however we believe that there is an intellectual need to incorporate important structural constraints which affect the dynamic of worker behaviors for those who are vulnerable in the labor market by being denied access to collective representation (Pollert & Charlwood, 2009). One important by-product of this perspective has been the tendency to ignore structural factors by downplaying the regulatory, sectoral, occupational, and institutional configurations that shape employment relations, both cooperative and consensual as well as resistant. Arguably, as one area of neglect, such as labor agency, was rectified, others, like the structural and institutional context, have become more acute. For example, informal relations are significantly shaped and constituted according to regulatory impositions on capital and labor, particularly within smaller nonunion firms (Dundon, Grugulis, & Wilkinson, 1999). Similarly, the wage effort bargain remains the foundation of industrial relations analysis, and tensions within the production process more generally remain an important anchor from which employee (mis)behaviors are moderated or adapted. We have argued the need to incorporate institutional factors in research into resistance and misbehavior both separately and collectively (van den Broek, 2002, 2004; van den Broek & Dundon, 2012) and in this chapter we propose a conceptual framework to assess and test empirically the forms, scope and longevity of nonunion workforce (mis)behaviors ‘‘as’’ resistance by incorporating the institutional, contextual and structural context in the mix alongside employer strategies for nonunionism.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: EMPLOYER DE-COLLECTIVIZATION AND NONUNION WORKER RESISTANCE While firms have undertaken some very considerable de-collectivizing strategies over the past two decades, employer choices have been located in

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discrete institutional and workplace contexts. Likewise, unorganized and vulnerable worker responses have not gone away and can take on multiple and varied forms of mischief, resistance, or misbehavior acts. In this section we draw on Peetz’s (2002) model to advance at least three employer de-collectivizing strategies that have emerged owing to institutional reconfigurations and workplace regime change (antiunionism; inconsistent objectives, and reinforced managerial prerogative). These employer strategies in themselves may be influenced and shaped by a number of unique international and national institutional factors: for instance global neoliberal competition, financial capitalism, union membership decline, outsourcing, workforce feminization, casualization, and so on. From these three employer de-collectivization strategies, we can predict at least four types of unorganized worker resistance: worker identity; informal and formal collective responses; individual forms of mischief as resistance; and finally, tactics to circumvent management authority. The characteristics that may be observed under each of the four types of resistance are simplified in Table 1. As Peetz (2002) argues, nonunion worker reactions to various employer strategies of control and consent are not necessarily exclusive and of the four clusters of types of action in Table 1, it is quite feasible some of these will coexist, even in the same organization. The first reaction, that of resisting employer antiunionism through worker identity, may include actions by employees that symbolize a collective recognition that workers have interests that are in opposition to those of their employer. One action might be union joining, another could be seeking union recognition in a nonunion context by distributing union campaign material and literature despite managements preferred nonunion status. Such actions have been reported in research by Dundon (2002) when workers were faced by de-recognition of their union at a public sector training agency. Bacon (1999) and Gall and McKay (2001) also report similar instances of workers forming collective bonds of identity when faced with union de-recognition by employers. In long-established nonunion setting, collective worker identity has also been found to be especially important. For example, McKinlay and Taylor (1996) noted how nonunion employees formed a team identity as a way to exclude management from interfering in worker decisions and the solidarity of the team underpinned a collective response that was inconsistent with employer objectives. Other call center research has shown how ‘‘teaming up’’ bonded workers who shared information that enabled them to ‘‘beat’’ the rigidity of the technology or managerial directives. Teams shared information about when monitoring of output was taking place allowing them to resist and indirectly

Worker petition

Getting back at management or customers Absenteeism

Union joining

Union recognition campaign Occupational or team-based solidarity

Inconsistent objectives

Reinforced managerial prerogative

Informal and formal collective responses

Managements’ antiunionism

Worker identity

Employees find their own space Disruption through active suggestions Sabotage (overt or covert); Time-wasting; soldiering

Individualized mischief

Worker Acts of Mischief/Misbehaviour as Resistance

Employer De-Collectivization and Nonunion Worker Resistance.

Adapted from Peetz (2002, p. 272) and van den Broek and Dundon (2012, p. 104).

Employer De-collective Strategy

Table 1.

Foiling surveillance

Time-wasting; soldiering

Sabotage (overt or covert)

Tactics to circumvent management authority

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challenge management directives in nonunion settings (van den Broek, Barnes, & Townsend, 2008). The next type of response, informal and formal collective responses, can include workforce petitions, publicity campaigns demeaning the company, or forms of resistance by ‘‘getting-back’’ at management objectives that are seen as inconsistent with worker interests, perhaps by offering a less than adequate customer service. Van den Broek (2002, 2003) shows how unorganized and vulnerable employees at a call center responded to work intensification after management reduced call-waiting times, by producing some limited pockets of collective resistance. Workers opposed the introduction of a new system whereby calls would have been automatically sent to an idle employee’s headsets. The collectivized action included a petition to their supervisor registering the workers opposition by indicating that customer queues were being generated not from understaffing, as management implied, but from the new call system (van den Broek, 2002, p. 53). Collective resistance can also take the form of what appears as sporadic or uncoordinated action but is in fact unofficially organized resistance, such as when individual members of the Irish police force (An Garda Sı´ocha´na) phoned in sick en mass, an action referred to as the ‘‘blue flu’’ (Wallace, Gunnigle, & McMahon, 2004). Dundon and Rollinson (2004) show how nonunion delivery drivers who were prohibited from using company vehicles outside of working time responded to the removal of this long-established employment benefit by all arriving for work late, claiming public transport disrupted travel times for those required to start work early in the morning. These types of responses – habitually arriving for work late, submitting petitions to a supervisor, or phoning in sick – hardly constitute resistance in the same sense as a strike or other form of collective mobilization. However in the context of employer de-collectivization and a lack of union support, these actions are important and well thought through forms of worker resistance. The third category of resistance that may be possible among unorganized workers is labeled as individual forms of mischief. Evidence of this can be found in numerous studies, when call center operatives returned ‘‘anonymous feedback’’ as a way to disrupt managerial objectives using the company’s own employee suggestion scheme, at times because workers felt humiliated by the treatment of their supervisor in public (van den Broek, 2002). Or when workers may find ‘‘their own space’’ to ameliorate pressures from management demands for increased work, such as the delivery drivers given tighter schedules and targets in Dundon and Rollinson’s (2004) research. One driver explained, because drivers are under the watchful eye of

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technological surveillance while out making deliveries, they use traffic congestion as a method of obtaining their own unofficial break. Other forms of resistance in this cluster may also include ‘‘time wasting,’’ ‘‘limited work effort,’’ and classic ‘‘soldiering’’ as tactics to counter employer objectives to increase work and performance. As Ackroyd outlined in his introduction, what is surprising is that these activities are on the rise rather than on the wane. For example, the 2008 Time Wasting Survey (www.salary.com) of 2,500 US employees across all job levels show a 10 percent increase from the previous year’s study with the primary reasons reported as dissatisfaction with work and feeling underpaid. More recently, in 2011 reabur.com surveyed 2,913 workers, pointed to new and novel time wasting and effort limitation tactics by British respondents. For example, in Liverpool 42 percent of workers reported that they waste around three hours or more each working day, while in Manchester around one-third of employees admitted to wasting three hours of their working day. The most popular time wasting activities include spending time on personal social networking (e.g., Facebook) and shopping online rather than focusing on paid work tasks. A further tactic to circumvent management authority can be ‘‘foiling surveillance.’’ For example, research shows how nonunion call center workers know when they were being monitored and can control the pace of their work by ‘‘flicking’’: a behavior that involves hanging-up on customers or redirecting calls to other areas of the corporation, or leaving customers waiting for lengthy periods of time (van den Broek, 2008). The final cluster of worker responses in Table 1 we call tactics to circumvent management authority. Examples of these types of resistance include individual or collective actions that have a purpose in seeking to undermine management’s desired objective or espoused authority in a workplace. Research by Bacon (1999) and Dundon (2002) in a union derecognized steel plant revealed how acts of ‘‘sabotage’’ through insulting graffiti spray-painted around the factory was targeted at the senior plant manager. An (unknown) employee would paint graffiti on various walls around of the plant describing the Personnel Director as Napoleon Bonaparte. Again, while such a tactic is minor as a form of mischief, it nonetheless had much broader and significant implication as it represented a major boost to employee morale. Also with respect to call center research there are abundant examples of workers ‘‘ignoring’’ or overriding and/or bending managerial instructions that relate to performance and output, and time management (Townsend, 2005; van den Broek 2004; Vardi & Weitz, 2004).

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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Global competition and employer de-collectivization has restructured organizations around nonunion work paradigms, leading to intensified flexibility that has generated new forms of labor vulnerability. At a workplace level these developments have adjusted the dialogues around industrial conflict gravitating between control and consent and resistance and misbehavior (Edwards & Scullion, 1982). Optimists have suggested greater worker empowerment (Peters & Waterman, 1984; Pfeffer, 1998), with resistance relegated to a by-gone era. Others have envisaged a more pessimistic outlook with peer and self-enslavement via cultural and coercive control (Barker, 1993; Willmott, 1993). Here managerial omnipotence rendered employee dissent futile, with workplace technologies often represented as the last nail in the coffin of potential employee resistance (Smith & Tabak, 2009; Spitzmu¨ller & Stanton, 2006; Zuboff, 1988). However both these interpretations have been a notable distraction from how workers respond to the ebbs and flows of labor management systems they are exposed to (Thompson & van den Broek, 2010). To reiterate the introductory comments by Steven Ackroyd in this volume: ‘‘there has been much innovation in managerial control regimes, and if the findings of more recent research into work are accepted, there is also much innovation of new kinds of misbehavior as well.’’ Our argument is that much of the ‘‘innovation’’ around misbehavior has been shaped by the changing institutional context in which industrial relations and conflict takes place. This is particularly relevant to nonunionized workers or where strong de-collectivization strategies exist. Although proxies of strikes and lockouts still have much utility, the problem remains that these activities only record formal and collective manifestation of resistance, lacking any explanatory power to understand the constraints around worker (and managerial) behavior. We also recognize that recent developments in the scholarship around worker acts of defiance or mischief and resistance highlight the complexity of social and institutional influences. Social factors are important in shaping organizational behaviors, including gender relations and masculinity (Collinson, 2005; Pollert, 1981) as we witness the greater focus on appropriation of identity, (rather than time, work and product) as an increasingly significant dimension in Ackroyd and Thompson’s (1999) original dimensions of misbehavior. The analysis of micro political systems underpinning workplace behavior can be contrasted across various phases of social structures of accumulation,

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resulting in a shift from monopoly to financialized capitalist domination (McDonough & Dundon, 2010; Thompson, 2011). Against such huge economic and institutional reconfigurations, workers have evidently not lost the capacity to moderate or question managerial prerogative and legitimacy (Beynon, 1973; Burawoy, 1979; Collinson, 2005; Cullinane & Dundon, 2011; Gall, 2011). These actions and responses have been significant to the structural realignments across labor market institutions. Importantly, the boundaries between employer and employees are much more blurred by flexible contracts, outsourcing and job delayering (Grimshaw et al., 2004; Standing, 2009). The work itself in many sectors is increasingly feminized and casualized, and workers experience less tenure, insecurity, work intensification, and labor market vulnerability (Pollert & Charlwood, 2009). Longitudinal data indicates an international trend of workers ‘‘detaching themselves from national regulatory and protective regimes’’ (Standing, 2009, p. 99). Trade union membership (as measured by density) has declined significantly in most industrialized countries and collective bargaining has either ceased to exist for many workers, or has been relegated to a form of managerial decree rather than negotiation. While precise cause and effect predications remain debatable, it is more than coincidental that the substantial decline of collective representation has occurred during periods of intensified geopolitical reconfigurations within nation states and market economies: Thatcherism in United Kingdom, Regan in United States, and the Howard governments’ neoliberal assault on trade unionism in Australia all bear the hallmarks of a public policy endorsement for nonunion forms of work organization (Cooper et al., 2009; Dundon, 2002). Consequently, employer militancy espousing more assertive antiunion strategies, buttressed by government policy, has recast the structural and contextual milieu within which employee resistance and misbehavior emerge. Yet despite the prevalence of the nonunion or poorly represented workplaces, we know less about the resistant misbehaviors that might occur there (van den Broek & Dundon, 2012). Given that most workers in capitalist market economies now lack formal collective representation, this chapter has suggested that a more nuanced framework is required to identify the misbehavior/resistance binaries. However, rather than adopting a discursive individualistic and organizationally and institutionally neutral approach, we argue that the anchor for future analysis requires greater attention to the changing institutional context in which workplace relations are moderated and legitimized. This is especially relevant in contexts and workplace settings

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where de-collectivization and the dilution of labor agency is most evident. We also recognize that identifying and assessing informal incidences of resistance and misbehavior are methodologically more complex and often impossible to uncover. Nonetheless, it is these forms of behaviors that are increasingly more critical in understanding how reward-effort relationships are developing in a variety of (trans)national industrial and occupational settings. By differentiating actions, Ackroyd and Thompson (1999) argued that misbehavior should not be seen as a junior version or alternative to trade unionism or as a generic term which replaces, or leads to, resistance. It’s ‘‘just different’’ and ‘‘it is there’’ (1999, p. 164). Leading on from such differentiations, this chapter argues that misbehavior is more than ‘‘just there,’’ it is conditioned, shaped, and reconfigured by the political, institutional and economic context in which the labor process operates. We have also argued that the wide range of (mis)behaviors identified in the literature are not easy to delineate; however, within the context of nonunion settings all worker behavior is constrained by the changing structural and institutional workplace regime: by sector, size, structure, or managerial strategy (among others). In short, context matters. Arguably, what is often portrayed as types of misbehavior may substitute for more assertive forms of resistance by workers who are vulnerable in the labor market or denied access to traditional collective structures of representation. By recognizing the importance of context and place, the boundaries between misbehavior and resistance are less clear and more complex and the lines between them uncertain. In some nonunion firms, there may be one or two active union members, despite managerial opposition. Union/nonunion binaries may be further blurred due to the presence of (in)effective unions. In a wider European context, for example, women and part-time workers in service sector outlets unknown for their militancy have undertaken workplace occupations to show opposition to a wave of employer-imposed redundancies implemented during the global recession. Such examples represent forms of resistance that are separate and often in defiance not only of employer decisions, but also in defiance of national union agreements (Dundon & Ryan, 2010). These forms of informal collective resistance have also become particularly significant in developing countries such as China, Russia, and Vietnam where wildcat strike tactics dominate due to the ineffectiveness and state integration of the union movement (Chang-Hee, 2006; Clarke, 2011). It is the contention here is that it is specifically due to wider institutional changes, such as the decline of traditional or more formalized institutions

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of industrial relations that we need to (re)consider individual and localized forms of agency within the wider political economy of deindustrialization. While employee and occupational identity have been important factors in shaping resistance, such identity has more cogency when analyzed within distinct contextual constraints. As such locating the indeterminacy of labor within specific occupational, institutional or structural contexts in which resistance and misbehavior emerges facilitates a greater understanding of employee resistance within its political and industrial (as well as its identity) context.

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Pollert, A., & Charlwood, A. (2009). The vulnerable worker in Britain and problems at work. Work Employment and Society, 23(2), 343–362. Shamsudin, F. M. (2006). Organisational misbehaviour. Akademika, 69, 57–82. Smith, W., & Tabak, F. (2009). Monitoring employee emails: Is there any room for privacy? Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(4), 33–48. Spitzmu¨ller, C., & Stanton, J. M. (2006). Employee compliance and resistance with monitoring and surveillance policies and practices. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79(2), 245–272. Sewell, G. (1998). The discipline of teams: The control of team-based industrial work through electronic and peer surveillance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 43(2), 397–429. Standing, G. (2009). Work after globalisation: Building occupational citizenship. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elger. Thompson, P. (2005). Brands, boundaries and bandwagons. Critical reflection on Critical Management Studies. In S. Fleetwood & S. Ackroyd (Eds.), Critical realism in action in organisation and management studies. London: Routledge. Thompson, P., & van den Broek. (2010). Managerial control and workplace regimes: An introduction. Co-editor for Work Employment and Society, September 2010, 24, pp. 1–12. Thompson, P. (2011). The trouble with HRM. Human Resource Management Journal, 21(4), 355–367. Townsend, K. (2004). When the lost found teams: A consideration of teams in the individualised call centre environment. Labour and Industry, 14(3), 111–126. Townsend, K., & Richards, J. (2011). Re-examining resistance and misbehaviour. In A. Wilkinson & K. Townsend (Eds.), The future of employment relations: New paradigms, new approaches. London: Palgrave Macmillan. van den Broek, D. (2002). Monitoring and surveillance in call centres: some responses from Australian workers. Labour & Industry, 12(3), 43–59. van den Broek, D. (2003). Recruitment strategies and union exclusion in two Australian call centres. Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, 58(3), 515–534. van den Broek, D. (2004). Call to Arms? Call Centre organising in Australian telecommunications call centres. In S. Deery & N. Kinnie (Eds.), Human resource management and call centres. London: Palgrave. van den Broek, D. (2008). Doing things right’, or ‘doing the right things’? Call centre migrations and dimensions of knowledge. Work, Employment and Society, 22(4), 601–613. van den Broek, D., Barnes, A., & Townsend, K. (2008). ‘Teaming up’: Teams and team sharing in call centres. Journal of Industrial Relations, 50, 257–269. Van den Broek, D., & Dundon, T. (2012). (Still) up to no good: Reconfiguring the boundaries of worker resistance and misbehaviour in an increasingly non-union world. Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, 67(1), 97–121. van Maanen, J., & Barley, S. (1984). Occupational communities: Culture and control in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 6, 287–365. Vardi, Y., & Weitz, E. (2004a). Misbehavior in organisations: Theory, research and management. Mahwah, NJ: LEA. Vardi, Y., & Wiener, Y. (1996). Misbehaviour in organizations: A motivational framework. Organizational Science, 7(2), 151–165. Wallace, J., Gunnigle, P., & McMahon, G. (2004). Industrial relations in Ireland (3rd ed.). Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.

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Willmott, H. (1993). Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom: Managing culture in modern organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 30, 515–552. Zoller, H. M., & Fairhurst, G. T. (2007). Resistance leadership: The overlooked potential in critical organization and leadership studies. Human Relations, 60(9), 1331–1360. Zuboff, S. (1988). In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power. New York, NY: Basic Books.

FURTHER READING Australian Bureau Statistics. (2008, August). Employee earnings, benefits and trade union membership, Australia, Cat 6310.0. Ackers, P. (2002). Reframing employment relations: The case for neo-pluralism. Industrial Relations Journal, 33(1), 2–19. Aleroff, C., & Knights, D. (2000). Quality time and the beautiful call. Paper presented for workshop, Are Regimented Forms of Work Organisation Inevitable? Call Centres and the Chances for an Innovative Organisation of Service Work in Europe, Duisburg University, December 2–3, Germany. Badgett, L. M. V. (1996). Employment and sexual orientation: Disclosure and discrimination in the workplace. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 4(4), 29–52. Barnes, A. (2004). Diaries, dunnies and discipline: Resistance and accommodation to monitoring in call centres. Labour and Industry, 14(3), 127–137. Barrett, C. (2009). Trade union membership 2008. London: Department Business. Belfast Telegraph. (2009). Workers continue sit in at Cork DIY store. Belfast Telegraph, August 14. Callaghan, G., & Thompson, P. (2001). Edwards revisited: Technical control and call centres. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 22(1), 13–37. Contu, A. (2008). Decaf resistance: On misbehavior, cynicism, and desire in liberal workplaces. Management Communication Quarterly, 21(3), 364–379. Dixon, M., & Fiorito, J. (2009). Can unions rebound? Decline and renewal in the US Labour Movement. In G. Gall (Ed.), Union revitalisation in advanced economies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Donovan (Lord) (Chairperson) (1968). Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Associations Report, Cmnd. 3623, HMSO: London. Economic and Labour Market Review. (2009, June). Labour disputes in 2008. Economic and Labour Market Review, 3(6), 26–39. Office for National Statistics: London. Edwards, P. K. (Ed.). (1995). Industrial relations: Theory and practice in Britain. Oxford: Blackwell. EmployeeBenefits.Co.UK (2011, February 24). Employees waste time at work. Retrieved from http://www.employeebenefits.co.uk/item/12357/23/5/3. Accessed on March 13, 2012. Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2003). Working at a cynical distance: Implications for power, subjectivity and resistance. Organization, 10, 157–179. Grugulis, I. (2002). Nothing serious? Candidates’ use of humour in management training. Human Relations, 55(4), 387–406. Hobsbawm, E. (1965). Primitive rebels. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Hyman, R. (1989). Strikes (4th ed.). London: Macmillan.

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Iremonger, J, Merritt, J., & Osborne, G. (Eds.). (1973). Strikes: Studies in twentieth century Australian social history. Angus and Robertson, Australian Society for the Study of Australian Labour History: Sydney. Irish Times. (2009). Thomas Cook staff demand ‘way out of line’. Irish Times, August 11. Jermier, J., Knights, D., & Nord, W. R. (1994). Resistance and power in organizations. London: Routledge. Mumby, D. (2005). Theorising resistance in organizational studies: A dialectical approach. Management Communication Quarterly, 19(1), 19–44. Putnam, L., Grant, D., Michelson, G., & Cutcher, L. (2005). Discourse and resistance. Management Communication Quarterly, 19(1), 5–18. Robson, C. (2002). Real world research: A resource for social scientists and practitionerresearchers (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Roy, D. (1952). Quota restriction and goldbricking in a machine shop. The American Journal of Sociology, 57, 427–442. Smith, P. (2009). New labour and the commonsense of neoliberalism: Trade unionism, collective bargaining and workers’ rights. Industrial Relations Journal, 40(4), 337–355. Taylor, F. W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Taylor, P., & Bain, P. (2003). ‘Subterranean worksick blues’: Humour as subversion in two call centres. Organisation Studies, 24(9), 1487–1509. Townsend, K. (2005). Electronic surveillance and cohesive teams: Room for resistance in an Australian call centre? New Technology, Work and Employment, 20(1), 47–58. Thompson, E. P. (1963). The making of the English working class. London: Gollancz. Thompson, P., & Warhurst, C. (1995). All quiet on the workplace front? A critique of recent trends in British industrial sociology. Sociology, 29(4), 615–633. van den Broek, D. (1997). Human resource management, cultural control and union avoidance: An Australian case study. Journal of Industrial Relations, 3(3), 332–348.

CUSTOMER SERVICE WORK AND THE AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE Alison Barnes ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter seeks to contribute to our understanding of how the delivery of customer service shapes the development and expression by workers of resistance, misbehavior, and accommodation. Workers at three call centers enjoyed customer service and endeavored to enhance its importance. At the same time, however, they knew it to be emotionally wearing and, on occasion, morally dubious. Methodology – The chapter draws on interviews with and a survey of call center employees and management and trade unions. Findings – The chapter explores how workers used the aesthetic skills that underpin ‘‘good’’ customer service to subvert management objectives and give vent to their frustration with disgruntled customers. Social implications – Even in the most closely controlled and monitored situations, people are capable of developing unanticipated and often ingenious responses to regimens that are antithetical to their immediate interests.

Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 161–179 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019010

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Originality – The exploration of how call center workers use their customer service and aesthetic skills to undermine managerial control. Keywords: Customer service; call center; aesthetic resistance

INTRODUCTION Employee resistance: when 1,223 workers ‘‘stayed on the script’’ One worker told the Conference a story about their job at Telstra 1223 call centre (White Pages): When automation/voice recognition was first introduced staff were instructed that when the customer came through the staff member had to say ‘You requested y ’ and repeat back to the customer exactly what they had just said. For example, ‘You requested ‘‘John Smith’’.’ Since many customers hated the voice recognition software, many of them swore into the phone. Many Telstra workers then ‘worked to rule’ and would say things like ‘You requested ‘‘F I hate this fing machine’’.’ (Oncall, 2002, p. 3)

This chapter explores the responses of call center employees to managerial attempts to control the emotional aspects of customer service. It seeks to contribute to an understanding of how call center workers are required to respond in their interactions with customers and argues that the embrace by workers of elements of customer service should not be equated with their consenting to emotional control. The chapter analyzes the impact of emotional control on employee notions of dignity and autonomy and examines how this shapes employee resistance, accommodation, and misbehavior. The chapter utilizes the concepts of resistance, accommodation, and misbehavior to explore how employees make use of the aesthetic skills essential to the performance of their role to accommodate or resist management control. It distinguishes between ‘‘resistance’’ and ‘‘misbehavior’’ and uses ‘‘resistance’’ to refer to conscious worker opposition to managerial control, and ‘‘misbehavior’’ to refer to noncompliant behavior that does not contest managerial authority (and thus may have no further implications for the workplace). ‘‘Accommodation’’ describes behavior that workers indulge in to ameliorate work stresses. Misbehavior, however, because it may be a means of releasing or expressing workplace stress, can be a form of accommodation, but if it contributes to a growth of or

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identification with worker solidarity, misbehavior may also be a form of resistance. The focus of this chapter is, however, on employee resistance and accommodation rather than on misbehavior because resistance and accommodation were the most common responses to emotional control.

EMOTIONAL CONTROL AND AESTHETIC RESISTANCE The ambiguous phrase ‘‘emotional control’’ can refer either to the control management exerts over employees’ expressions of emotion or to the exercise by employees of self-control. In this chapter, ‘‘emotional control’’ is used in the former sense, and the terms ‘‘emotional labor’’ or ‘‘emotional management’’ are used to refer to employee self-control. Emotional control is the commodification and objectification of employee emotions (Sturdy, 2000; Sturdy & Fineman, 2001, p. 136). Integral to emotional control of call center workers is control of what is said and how it is said. Emotional control obliges customer service representatives (CSRs) to engage in emotional labor, that is, to manage their emotions so that they respond to customers in ways that management defines as appropriate, regardless of context or the CSRs personal perception of what may be appropriate. As Hultgren (2011, p. 38) notes, ‘‘The call center industry engages in exceptionally wide-ranging activities of prescribing and enforcing rules for the linguistic behavior of call center workers in their interactions with customers.’’ Call centers seek to provide customer service that is consistent, upholds the company image, attracts and retains clients, and thereby, it is hoped, promotes and sustains profitability. In exercising emotional control, management seeks to ensure that customers are not inadvertently or deliberately antagonized. Thompson, Warhurst, and Callaghan (2001, p. 937) observe that interactive service work often requires social and tacit knowledge that expresses itself in workers managing their emotions but that ‘‘the profitable practice of such knowledge is still a matter of negotiation between workers and managers.’’ A range of studies have demonstrated that call center workers are expected to manage their emotions in order to uphold the commercial interests of their employers (Taylor & Tyler, 2000, p. 84). Callaghan and Thompson (2001), Taylor and Bain (1999), and Taylor (1998) have embraced the concept of emotional labor1 and asserted its importance in identifying aspects of control in call centers. Taylor (1998, p. 84) contends that, in light of the decline in manufacturing and the growth in the service sector, it is essential to incorporate emotional labor into any

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analysis of ‘‘the new workplace’’ But, as Callaghan and Thompson (2002, p. 248) argue, the failure to develop Hochschild’s ‘‘somewhat onedimensional concept’’ has made its utilization difficult. Drawing on Bolton’s work, they see control of emotions as ‘‘contested terrain’’ and contend that workers are skilled in the management of emotion and are not simply ‘‘passive providers’’ of emotional labor (2002, p. 248). Nickson, Warhurst, Witz, and Cullen (2001, p. 170; see also Warhurst & Nickson, 2007; Witz, Warhurst, & Nickson, 2003) further refine the concept of emotional labor by examining its corporeal dimensions aesthetic labor, which in its simplest expression, consists of ‘‘looking good or sounding right.’’ They argue that interactive service workers are expected to manage not only their feelings but also their ‘‘corporealness’’ in order to ‘‘produce the desired service encounter’’ (Nickson et al., 2001, p. 186). In the context of call centers, they suggest that the importance of vocal aesthetic has been under appreciated (2001, p. 186). Cameron (2000) examines the importance attributed to warmth and friendliness, the ability to smile while talking and to seem engaged. She suggests that the ‘‘styling’’ of call center workers’ language and its ‘‘commodification and regulation’’ (Cameron, 2000, p. 328) has resulted in ‘‘the valorization of a speech style whose characteristics include expressiveness, caring, empathy, and sincerity – characteristics popularly associated with the speech of women’’ (p. 342). The focus of the literature reviewed above has been on the importance to management of what CSRs say and how they say it, that is, on stylized or aesthetic labor, and its implications. What tends to be overlooked, however, is how workers feel about this control and how they use their vocal skills to achieve their own ends and resist managerial control by undermining customer service. To fill this void, I develop the concept of ‘‘aesthetic resistance,’’ which involves an employee’s utilization of aesthetic skills to resist or undermine management control. In the case of call center workers, their aesthetic armory consists of vocal skills such as intonation, timber, and inflection. Aesthetic resistance is the expression of ‘‘real’’ rather than feigned feelings. It involves the employee’s use of skills and knowledge, not to promote corporate objectives but to protect the employee from attack or customer abuse. As such, it may convey an intangible but real hostility toward a client and thereby directly, if covertly, defy management’s imposition of emotional control, the aim of which is to advance the company’s goal of not alienating clients. Aesthetic resistance may, however, also be used in a variety of situations that do not involve customer hostility. Aesthetic resistance may take different forms in different contexts. At the case study sites, it involved the subverting of the vocal tools that the

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CSRs were employed to use. The pulling of faces or making of rude gestures may be a means for call center workers to vent their frustrations but they do not necessarily undermine or challenge management control. In contrast, however, these actions by retail or hospitality workers employed because of their aesthetically pleasing appearance, may constitute aesthetic resistance. Context is critical to how aesthetic resistance manifests itself: Aesthetic resistance is a convenient stratagem. It requires no coordination with others, no resources other than one’s own skills, and can be used, y time and time again. Individual acts of aesthetic resistance may appear inconsequential, but their cumulative impact in undermining emotional control and protecting CSRs from the corrosive effects of surface acting should not be discounted. Nor should their ability to undermine corporate objectives of maintaining good customer relationships irrespective of customer behaviour. (Barnes, 2005)

THE PARADOX OF CUSTOMER SERVICE As Leidner (1993, pp. 3–4) notes, in interactive service work all three parties – management, customers, and employees – want their interactions arranged in ways that best suit them. From the customer’s perspective, it is likely that hostility will result from an unsatisfactory service encounter. Time constraints placed upon the interaction may intensify the hostility. Healy (2000, pp. 74–75) and Korczynski (2002, p. 178) also note that call centers create a distance between customer and worker that is absent from face-to-face encounters and that this increases the likelihood of the customer engaging in ‘‘disrespectful and dehumanized behavior.’’ Korczynski (2002, p. 92) describes ‘‘the pleasures and pain of call center work’’: the tension between the satisfaction derived from serving customers and the emotional distress that may result. CSRs regard customer service as the most rewarding aspect of their work even though it exposes them to recurrent customer abuse. In attempting to resolve this seeming paradox, it is necessary to examine those features of call centers that promote customer hostility and to provide the context in which aesthetic resistance develops.

THE CASE STUDY SITES The findings presented in this chapter are based on a case study of three organizations: IOC, CallOut, and Austravel. Survey data was collected from 170 CSRs employed at the sites, supplemented by 110 interviews with

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workers, managements, and the Australian Services Union between 1999 and 2004. IOC was a non-advisory investment brokerage department of a larger multinational bank. Two distinct teams provided low cost share transactions in both domestic and international stock exchanges: a client services team and an equities dealing team. The dealing team placed orders for shares over the internet or by telephone. Its work was fast paced but routine in nature when compared to that of the client services team. CSRs were bior trilingual and provided customer service in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. In 2001, a total of 31 staff worked the phones. Fifty-five percent of survey respondents were female and 45 percent male. IOC was nonunionized, and in October 2002 a nonunion certified agreement, providing for individual agreements to be offered over the course of the agreement, came into effect. Austravel was a national airline, which had operated large call centers for many years, administering reservations and sales for international and/or domestic flights. The centers handled predominantly inbound calls and each day received about 38,000 calls nationally. Management estimated that more than 70 percent of the 1,000 CSRs employed were female, and 86 percent of survey respondents were women. Austravel had a long history of union activity, with union members being covered by the Australian Services Union. The Australian branch of CallOut International provided external call center operations to other companies. CallOut had multiple offshore sites and several sites within Australia. The 800 predominantly male CSRs at the company’s Sydney headquarters were employed on Australian Workplace Agreements. Employees possessing specialized technical skills were better paid than data entry or nontechnical customer service staff. Men comprised 70 percent of the CSRs surveyed. Although the ASU had made several attempts to organize CallOut, it remained largely nonunionized.

USE BY MANAGEMENT OF EMOTIONAL CONTROL AT THE STUDY SITES Controls employed at the study sites involved prescribing appropriate behavior and establishing standards. Only in Austravel’s case were the standards set down in writing. All companies, however, used standards, whether written or implicit, to appraise CSR/customer interactions. Management at Austravel and IOC were eager to talk about the significance

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of customer service as a means of differentiating their organizations from other call centers and thus retaining existing customers and attracting new ones. At CallOut, the provision of ‘‘quality’’ customer service was promoted as a means of attracting and retaining businesses seeking to outsource their call center work. Because the individual CSR is ultimately the person who delivers the service, it is not surprising that companies should seek to regulate CSR/ customer contact. At the study sites, once CSRs had commenced work they were assessed by quality assurance staff and supervisors who used silent monitoring to appraise their communication and presentation skills, product knowledge and, when appropriate, sales pitch. At no organization were CSRs informed when call monitoring would occur. Austravel CSRs were supposed to be monitored every six weeks but supervisors were often too busy to monitor so frequently. IOC randomly listened in to calls twice a month. Although IOC’s monitoring was regular, policing customer service was difficult because conversations with customers were often conducted in Cantonese or Mandarin, languages that only one of the two supervisors understood. CallOut’s clients were able to stipulate the type and frequency of monitoring they wished the Quality Assurance Department to perform. CallOut’s employee information pack provided some general behavior guidelines: ‘‘Quality is used as our major criterion for assessing employee performance’’ The pack also noted that ‘‘Superior client and customer communications are CallOut’s lifeblood. We will not tolerate discourteous communications of any kind.’’ It went on to declare that ‘‘disconnecting a call in progress is reason for immediate termination’’ (CallOut, n.d., pp. 9, 23). The two most obvious responses to customer hostility – hanging up or responding in kind – were thus prohibited under pain of dismissal. Clearly, key requirements of the job were to restrain one’s emotions. Austravel had the most clearly defined customer service criteria: CSRs had cards on their desks that constantly reminded them of the 10 ‘‘Telephone Sales Standards’’ workers were required to adhere to. Management claimed that the standards provided clear behavioral guidelines. They were, however, highly subjective measures of performance, particularly when the question was how something had been said rather than what was said. Although CallOut was the only organization to rely heavily on scripted responses, employees across all organizations were, like those studied by Taylor and Bain (1999, p. 109), ‘‘in various ways y required to conform to acceptable, predetermined phrases, scripts and modes of behavior and delivery.’’ Staff had to state their names, offer assistance, and then repeat

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details of the transaction to the customer. Responses were, in effect, standardized. Scripting, from management’s perspective, not only shaped the content and nature of the interaction, it had the additional advantage of reducing the need for skilled workers and the costs of training new ones. Although all managements advocated the importance of good customer service, a consideration of equal, if not greater importance to them, was cost minimization. Servicing customers while simultaneously minimizing costs was the primary aim. The pressure to restrain costs, however, appeared to undermine customer service standards. Insufficient staffing led to long waiting times, the rushing through of customers and, in CallOut’s case, the transferring of calls back to the outsourcing organization. One result was antagonized, potentially rude customers.

THE AMBIGUITY OF CSR RESPONSES TO EMOTIONAL CONTROL AND CUSTOMER SERVICE Both the survey and interviews indicated that CSRs were wedded to the idea that they should provide good customer service. Seventy-seven percent of staff surveyed agreed that customers had a right to expect superior treatment from all staff, and 87 percent that, when doing their job, CSRs should always have the customer’s best interests in mind. Ninety-four percent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, ‘‘I am always willing to improve the quality of service I give customers,’’ and eighty-eight percent agreed or strongly agreed that ‘‘I put a lot of effort into my job to try to satisfy customers.’’ Ninety-two percent of CSRs gained satisfaction from providing good customer service. Eighty-one percent of CSRs at Austravel and 73 percent at IOC agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, ‘‘I really enjoy dealing with customers.’’ These responses should not be interpreted to mean that CSRs had been seduced by company values. CSRs are, after all, members of a broader community that values courtesy, helpfulness, and effort. The CSRs’ responses reflected these social mores. Pride in customer service reflects the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction derived from the feeling of doing a job well. If the customer is satisfied, not only are employees gratified at seeing a task through from conception to execution, they also experience the finished outcome: a happy customer. In light of the amount of time CSRs spent on the phone, it is not surprising that they found controlling their emotions occasionally stressful.

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For many, the obligation to be agreeable day in and day out was mentally and emotionally exhausting regardless of how the customer behaved. The pressure to adjust one’s personality to fit customer expectations exacerbated mental exhaustion. One operator described the work as ‘‘mind gymnastics’’ because the CSR was never sure how a customer would react. During busy periods, CSRs often became agitated with indecisive customers. For CSRs who prided themselves on their customer service skills, this further diminished their work satisfaction. In some operators it created unease about treating others in a manner that they themselves would find unacceptable.

CUSTOMER SERVICE: A MEANS TO ACCOMMODATE There was very little evidence of CSR opposition to the notion that good customer service was an essential feature of the work. CSRs, however, did use their interactions with customers to accommodate other components of the work, such as its repetition and monotony. Call center work is inherently insular, affording only limited opportunities to interact with workmates, so talking to customers often adds a humanizing or social dimension. Friendly or unusual conversations provide a break from the repetition. CSRs at the study sites related instances of their being able to solve problems for clients (an example of CSRs being in control) and of customers writing letters to thank staff for their assistance (an affirmation of CSRs’ technical and service skills). They recounted stories of joking with customers and how this had relieved the tedium. Even if inquiries were very similar, diverse customer personalities and different approaches to dealing with people added variety. Even difficult customers were often seen as a challenge, with staff feeling they had an opportunity to use their skills to resolve tricky situations.

CUSTOMER SERVICE: A SOURCE OF RESENTMENT Although identification with customer service might be a form of accommodation in that it can make the job more enjoyable, the inability to provide good service can also generate resentment. Not all call center customers are serviced equally, and profitable customers may receive preferential treatment. The need to generate a profit to some extent

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determines the type of service that a customer is accorded, a factor that may further limit a CSR’s ability to respond in a way the operator deems appropriate. In the case of the airline industry, operators may feel obliged to rush through an inquiry from an elderly person who has never flown before but to lavish extra attention on a gold level frequent flyer. The lack of equity in how customers are dealt with may give rise to moral/morale problems for staff. Misgivings about the ways in which customers are treated may create unease not only about whether the company is acting in bad faith but is also requiring the CSR to do likewise. Such moral tensions were most apparent at CallOut where the use of outsourcing further complicated the issue of operators’ accommodation and resistance. Unlike CSRs at the other organizations, CallOut CSRs occasionally had to knowingly supply incorrect information. Staff worried about pressure, for example, to sign people up to plans when staff knew that they would not be serviced, and were concerned that they were obliged to make excuses or lie for the contracting company. Another irritation was the failure to provide staff with accurate or up-to-date information about products, making it difficult to assist customers. Although CallOut management was not always held accountable for this ‘‘moral/morale dilemma,’’ the company’s outsourcing role served to heighten and complicate employee concerns. A conviction that customers were the unwitting recipients of treatment they did not deserve distinguished CallOut CSRs from those at Austravel and IOC. But there were other differences. CallOut employees had less control over their workplace situation than CSRs at the other two organizations. Austravel was unionized, so employees felt more empowered; and IOC was small, so staff could and did raise concerns with senior management. At CallOut, control over the CSR/customer interaction lay partially with a third party. How could employees challenge their work situation when management was able to argue that they were being directed by an external organization? If talk times were deemed inadequate, CallOut management could approach the outsourcing organization and request that times be extended. This process, however, was time-consuming and not always successful. CallOut staff appeared to respond by voting with their feet. The company’s exit interviews with CSRs suggested that outsourcing was a bigger concern to staff than working in a call center per se because, as a human resources coordinator put it, ‘‘[staff] don’t have a great deal of control over things.’’ Because workers identified so strongly with customer service, it was a focus for discontent. At the study sites, this discontent most commonly

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stemmed from the belief that management policies were compromising the ability of CSRs to deliver good service. A major source of resentment was the disparity between managerial rhetoric regarding the primacy of customer service and the realities of call numbers and talk times. The policing, via the collection of statistical data, of call numbers and talk times was seen to compromise service quality by restricting CSR control of the interaction. CSRs interpreted these restrictions as indicative of the hypocrisy of management rhetoric, ‘‘[I] wish to point out that QA [Quality Assurance] guidelines and good customer service are not synonymous’’ (CallOut, survey comment). Indeed resentment at statistical monitoring was often couched in terms of its adverse impact on customer service. An Austravel CSR expressed this tension when she noted on her survey, ‘‘Call centers concentrate too much on statistics y It’s hard to give exceptional customer service when you’re worried how it will affect your statistics.’’

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND EVERYDAY RESISTANCE In light of the importance CSRs attach to excellent customer service, it is difficult for them to challenge the premises on which emotional control rests because they seem so fair and reasonable. Moreover, complaining about service requirements can be construed as reflecting on a CSR’s own competence and sense of accomplishment. CSRs, making the quality of customer service the focus of their resistance, however, serve the dual purposes of undermining statistical assessment and potentially enhancing job satisfaction. In addition, resisting within a managerially defined paradigm of customer service is often more prudent than open confrontation because the CSR is ostensibly promoting and acting in accord with company objectives of quality customer service. Asserting the primacy of customer service also requires no coordination with other workers and no resources. At the study sites, the frustration generated by the inability to deliver good customer service led workers to resist either by attempting to ignore talk times and statistics or by playing different management departments off against each other. At CallOut, two CSRs claimed their appraisals for customer service were excellent, whereas their statistical appraisals were unsatisfactory by company standards. This had led to a situation where quality evaluators praised their work but team leaders, who were often under pressure from senior management to enforce statistical requirements, were less than happy. Both CSRs commented that they would not

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compromise their customer service as they regarded it as the most important feature of their work: ‘‘It’s really hard saying, ‘I am in the customer care department but I only care for 300 seconds’.’’ Their responses suggested that, if workers were unhappy about some aspect of their work, they were able to find ways to avoid or lessen the problem, even if it meant flouting company procedure. In such instances, paradoxically, resistance can be a means of accommodating the work. The approval bestowed upon the CSRs by one management group, however, made resistance easier than it might have been if that approval had been withheld. Moreover, the refusal to compromise was a less risky form of resistance because the CSRs were able to maintain that their actions accorded with the best interests of the organization. Ultimately, whether customers are reviled, liked, or pitied, they do not possess the employer’s power. At the study sites, if CSRs chose to compromise their statistics it was motivated, not by fear of the customer, but by empathy with the customer’s problem or by a desire to do the job as they thought it should be done. The tension created by the ‘‘opposing goals of service and efficiency’’ (Wallace, Eagleson, & Waldersee, 2000, p. 147) may suggest that CSRs were consenting to managerial control because they believed customer service was paramount. But my impression was that, by giving primacy to an ideal of customer service, CSRs were turning management’s rhetoric against the management. CSR motivations may have been mixed: a genuine belief in customer service and management being an impediment to providing it; a wish to spend more time on the parts of the work they enjoyed or believed they were good at; a desire to control the pace and substance of the work; or a combination of all of these factors.

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND OVERT RESISTANCE Austravel management claimed that staff preferred to be appraised on customer service rather than on statistics. Staff resistance to statistics had resulted in the development of 10 service standards, and CSRs had been involved in their design. The standards represented a simultaneous collective resistance to and accommodation of emotional control. Employee involvement in designing the sales standards was a de facto acknowledgement of the company’s right to expect CSR adherence to specified service standards. From the CSRs’ perspective, customer-service-based appraisals counteracted the high premium management placed on statistics and were the result

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of resistance to statistics. Service appraisals were also an acknowledgment of workers’ skills. And, as indicated above, the 10 standards could be contested, as workers’ and management’s perceptions of what constituted good customer service often differed. Assessing staff on customer service is inherently subjective. In some respects assessment undermines and delegitimizes managerial control because it purports to be objective when it clearly is not and so provides staff with an opportunity to argue that supervision is biased. Phone transactions at Austravel were not taped, so it often came down to one person’s word against another’s. Conduct on the phone was not monitored regularly and it was therefore easier for a CSR to maintain that any allegedly ‘‘unacceptable’’ behavior was an isolated instance and not necessarily attributable to a CSR’s poor performance. Austravel’s telephone sales standards referred to the statistical component of monitoring – ‘‘I will always be available to answer calls as per my roster’’ – and the company used the guideline to discipline CSRs. A letter entitled ‘‘Allegations of inconsistent performance’’ from management to one CSR asserted that she was not adhering to this standard and proceeded to detail late arrival for shift and failure to take first calls for several minutes, the making of external calls, calls to other staff members, and excessive use of after-call work. In her response, the CSR was able to use monitoring records to confirm that external calls were work-related, several in an endeavor to assist passengers who had missed a flight. She also commented that she would address the problem of excessive after-call work by entering and confirming details during the call rather than at its completion, thereby presumably lengthening the call duration but shortening its aftermath, a possible pyrrhic victory for management. She was also able to identify times when she had logged on and off the job and to demonstrate that any discrepancies were due to faulty equipment. Clearly, monitoring can be a double-edged sword able to be used by and against both workers and management. CSRs at IOC used the recording of calls to defend themselves against customers and management, and workers at CallOut played management departments off against each other. Interviews suggested that workers in unionized workplaces, even if they were not union members, were more likely to confront management directly about their customer service performance appraisals. Austravel union delegates recounted details of their overt resistance to monitoring: ‘‘One QE [quality evaluator] told me I was depressed and wanted me to sign something and I said, ‘But you’re not a doctor’. He said, ‘Yes, but that’s what I think.’ And I said, ‘I don’t care what you think’.’’

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CSR RESPONSES TO CUSTOMER ABUSE Worker attitudes to customer service were complex, as were their reactions to customer abuse. Seventy-eight percent of CSRs across all sites agreed that they did not express their emotions to customers, and that they hid their feelings from a customer even when that customer had upset them, indicating a strong preparedness to surface act. Sixty-six percent of CSRs surveyed agreed that ‘‘No matter how I feel, I always put myself out for every customer I serve.’’ This figure suggests that the majority of CSRs were prepared, even in trying circumstances, to conform to service standards. Eighty percent of operators across all the case study organizations disagreed that they were unable to hide their feelings when dealing with customers. The practice of concealing their true feelings did not seem, however, to adversely affect CSR perceptions of their self worth. Some CSRs believed that it was a useful skill. A CallOut CSR who claimed not to be bothered by abuse thought it to be a part of many jobs. He described it as being like ‘‘tears of a clown: happy on the outside, sad on the inside. You choose how people see you’’ (2001). His comments may be suggestive of alienation from his own emotions, but he looked upon his ability to disguise and pretend with a degree of satisfaction. It would seem that, although the labor process may be alienating, workers do not passively resign themselves to it. Rather, they seek to overcome alienation in a variety of ways, whether by overt resistance or pride in the ability to act out a role. In the above case, pride in a job well done did not work against the interests of management. It should not, however, be interpreted as an example of passive acquiescence to management wishes. Regardless, however, of whether the camouflaging of emotion created pride or unease, it did contribute to mental and emotional exhaustion. The substance of resistance and/or accommodation to emotional control is influenced by whether staff blame the customer or the company for permitting customers to behave badly. If, for example, insufficient staff are employed and wait times build up, the CSR may blame either the person who insults them or the company for its employment policies, or both client and company. Austravel CSRs often attributed customer rudeness to fares being so cheap that ‘‘the common herd’’ could now afford to travel. Snobbery of this sort served to undermine the customer’s standing in CSRs’ eyes and was used to explain and take the edge off customer abuse. It was a method of depersonalizing abuse by ascribing it to someone else’s failings. Accommodation by reference to perceived social standing was also found at IOC where CSRs did not consider themselves to be working in a ‘‘real’’ call

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center. Differentiating oneself from a situation or a person held to be inferior provides a way of accommodating the unpleasantness of one’s own situation. Many CSRs had previously worked in face-to-face service jobs and felt that face-to-face aggression was more confronting than customer abuse via the telephone. At the study sites, previous work experience and the identifying of call center work as the lesser of varying evils appeared to assist CSRs to accommodate the work process. The presence or absence of earlier negative or positive work experiences will, presumably, play a part in shaping how resisting or accommodating behaviors manifest themselves. Even though 100 percent of CSRs at IOC (compared to 60 percent at CallOut) agreed that customers have a right to expect superior treatment, moral reservations about the treatment of customers were less apparent at IOC than at either of the other two organizations and accommodation of customer abuse greater. This was particularly so in the team that had to deal with people who had lost a lot of money through poor investment decisions. The perception that customers were often to blame for their own misfortunes meshed with a view at IOC that clients would attempt to rip CSRs off by accusing them of making mistakes in the recording of orders to buy or sell. IOC dealers also claimed to have considerable control over their interactions with customers, and this may have helped to eliminate concerns about the absence of control that CSRs elsewhere experienced. The dealers’ status was in part derived from not having to provide extensive customer service, a factor that further encouraged dealers to differentiate themselves from the client service department and call centers generally. At the most basic level, a CSR’s distress may be proportional to a customer’s malevolence. But the substance of an insult may also influence how CSRs react to it. If, for example, the abuse was directed at the company, many CSRs might secretly agree with the complaint or be able accommodate it by deflecting the insults away from themselves and onto the company. In doing so, CSRs may surface act or pretend feelings but they cannot be said to be deep acting. When, however, insults become personal, disregarding abuse is difficult to accommodate. Austravel management encouraged CSRs not to take abuse personally, and this may have helped some CSRs accommodate abuse, but it also generated resentment. One CSR wrote: ‘‘While it’s all very well to be told not to take it personally, I don’t find it easy not to when I’m the one copping the bad language and the demand for options that I find to be outrageous.’’ Another method of accommodating abusive customers involved CSRs taking refuge from customer demands by waiting until the conversation had

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finished and then talking to workmates. There were limitations to this, however, as an Austravel CSR pointed out: ‘‘You can’t let off steam to the person sitting next to you as you’re always being monitored.’’ There were more opportunities for this form of accommodation at IOC where lower call volumes provided CSRs with greater recovery time between calls.

AESTHETIC RESISTANCE AND THE BLURRING OF ACCOMMODATION, RESISTANCE, AND MISBEHAVIOR Aesthetic skills can provide ways to accommodate customer abuse, but these skills can also be turned against customers and used to express genuine feelings in an endeavor to resist abuse. In so doing, CSRs indirectly and covertly challenge management attempts to impose emotional control and thereby contest a fundamental aspect of call center work. Experienced operators claimed they had learned ways to manipulate customers and defuse tense situations. Others had developed a thick skin. A CSR at IOC said: We are trained to speak in a certain manner: there are certain lines; certain ways we can speak to them without putting ourselves in trouble. For example, if they start to be vulgar or rude we say ‘Sir, if you continue in this manner, I won’t be able to help you.’ Basically we try and calm them down. Initially it was stressful, but then we got a little bit thick skinned and we tell ourselves ‘Don’t take it personally’.

This comment highlights the complex nature of emotional response to abuse; the CSR used verbal skills to take control of the encounter, and vocal skills to depersonalize the situation and to distance herself from her own emotions. The end result was a sense of personal accomplishment, as well as an accommodation to an unpleasant aspect of the job. The comment, however, not only reveals different facets of accommodation, it also hints at the aesthetic armory available to CSRs. The reference to ‘‘certain ways of speaking without putting ourselves in trouble’’ signals a consciousness of the potential range of vocal inflections, and the phrase ‘‘Sir, if you continue in this manner, I won’t be able to help you’’ contains an implicit threat that the CSR would refuse to continue the conversation. At the sites studied, the distinction between vocal (intonation, timber, inflection) accommodation and resistance was often not clearly discernible, but resistance, accommodation or misbehavior could take other, more physical forms. CSRs believed that the anonymity provided by the

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telephone allowed customers to be ruder than they would be in person. But the invisibility worked both ways. To express their frustration, CSRs could engage in misbehavior (such as pulling faces or literally giving the customer the finger) that would be unacceptable in face-to-face interactions. This did not stop customer abuse, but it did provide CSRs with an outlet for their emotions and thus a means to accommodate the abuse. Although the CSR might sound polite, other CSRs could see how the CSR was feeling. The pulling of faces or use of offensive gestures may not have undermined the production process (which is why I have termed it misbehavior), but it did promote solidarity among CSRs. It is possible that accommodation and misbehavior, when they promote a sense of solidarity among workers, also create the preconditions for resistance.

RESISTANCE TO CUSTOMER ABUSE Aesthetic resistance is a means of expressing ‘‘real’’ rather than feigned feelings. It involves the use of skills and knowledge, not to promote corporate objectives but to protect oneself from attack and to combat customer abuse. As such, it counteracts estrangement from one’s own emotions, conveys an intangible but real hostility toward a client, and thereby directly, if covertly, defies management’s imposition of emotional control. CSRs at the study sites were aware that they changed the inflection in their voices when dealing with difficult customers: ‘‘You can answer in ways that are a bit nasty without seeming so’’ (Austravel supervisor). Experienced operators were more adept at aesthetic resistance because they had greater familiarity with monitoring and knew what they could get away with. A typical comment was, ‘‘As you get more experienced you don’t take as much crap.’’ Aesthetic resistance at the case study sites was individual and required no resource or assistance other than the employee’s skill. Although by its very nature resistance of this type is both difficult to quantify and hard for management to police, I believe it is common and, with the rise of the service sector, deserves further research. Misbehavior such as verbal insolence has always been a feature of the employer/employee relationship but in the past it has usually had little impact beyond the immediate workplace. Aesthetic resistance, however, is more subtle and draws on the very skills for which the worker is employed. It has the potential to create wider impacts because it undermines employer/client relationships. Clearly it would be wrong to overstate its impact but neither should it be overlooked.

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CONCLUSION This chapter has examined how the inequality of the customer/CSR/ management relationship, as exemplified by customer abuse, contributes to CSR alienation, and stress. The case study findings suggest that, although emotional control and customer abuse produced resentment, this did not result in a habitual aversion to the service interaction. The findings reveal the ambiguity of responses to customer service: CSRs enjoyed it and endeavored to enhance its importance, yet at the same time they found customer service to be wearing and occasionally morally dubious. The chapter has sought to extend the understanding of aesthetic labor by exploring how employees use aesthetic skills to accommodate or resist emotional control. Central to understanding workplace resistance, accommodation, and misbehavior is a desire for workplace autonomy and control, which would allow CSRs to validate their sense of self by responding to customers as they deem appropriate rather than as management dictates. This aspiration underlies both the refusal of CSRs to compromise customer service and their seeking of greater control over the handling of customer interactions.

NOTE 1. Hochschild (1983/2003, p. 7) defines emotional labor as ‘‘the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display y [that is] sold for a wage.’’ In the case of call center workers, it is not physical appearance but the operator’s aesthetic skills – vocal tone and timber and verbal expression – that is purchased. Hochschild (1983/2003, p. 7) contends that: This labor requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others. y [It] calls for a coordination of mind and feeling.

Hochschild (1983/2003, p. 33) identifies two types of emotional labor: surface and deep acting. Surface acting entails pretending to feel an emotion one does not actually experience. Deep acting involves deceiving oneself as well as others: real emotion has replaced feigned emotion. She suggests that deep acting offers tangible benefits to employers and senior management, particularly in industries where a competitive edge may be gained through service.

REFERENCES Barnes, A. (2005). The centre cannot hold – Resistance, accommodation and control in three Australian call centre. School of Industrial Relations and Organisational Behaviour, University of New South Wales (UNSW), NSW, Australia.

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Callaghan, G., & Thompson, P. (2001). Edwards revisited: Technical control and call centres. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 22, 13–37. Callaghan, G., & Thompson, P. (2002). We recruit attitude: The selection and shaping of routine call centre labour. Journal of Management Studies, 39(2), 233–254. CallOut (n.d.). CallOut information pack, Information booklet for employees, CallOut International Pty Ltd (2000). Working With Us, Employment benefits booklet. Cameron, D. (2000). Styling the worker: Gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4(3), 323–347. Healy, J. (2000). Job burnout beyond the helping professions: A case study of customer service representatives in a telephone call centre. Unpublished honours thesis, University of Queensland Business School, Graduate School of Management. Hochschild, A. (1983/2003). The managed heart-commercialization of human feeling (20th anniversary ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hultgren, A. K. (2011). ‘‘Building rapport’’ with customers across the world: The global diffusion of a call centre speech style. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 15(1), 36–64. Korczynski, M. (2002). Call centre consumption and the enchanting myth of customer sovereignty. In U. Holtgrewe, C. Kerst & K. Shire (Eds.), Re-organising service work-call centres in Germany and Britain. England: Ashgate. Leidner, R. (1993). Fast food, fast talk-service work and the routinization of everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Nickson, D., Warhurst, C., Witz, A., & Cullen, A. (2001). The importance of being aesthetic: Work, employment and service organisation. In A. Sturdy, I. Grugulis & H. Willmott (Eds.), Customer service – Empowerment and entrapment (pp. 170–190). Houndmills: Palgrave. OnCall (2002). ‘‘Why Australia?’’ [online], Retrieved from http://www.ozcallcentres.com/ why_australia.html. Accessed on February 16, 2003. Sturdy, A. (2000). Training in service – importing and imparting customer service as an interactive process. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 11, 1028–1103. Sturdy, A., & Fineman, S. (2001). Struggles for the control of effect – resistance as politics and emotion. In A. Sturdy, I. Grugulis & H. Willmott (Eds.), Customer service – empowerment and entrapment (pp. 135–156). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Taylor, P., & Bain, P. (1999). ‘‘An Assembly Line in the Head’’: Work and employee relations in the call center. Industrial Relations Journal, 30(2), 101–117. Taylor, S. (1998). Emotional labour and the new workplace. In P. Thompson & C. Warhurst (Eds.), Workplaces of the future. London: Macmillan Business. Taylor, S., & Tyler, M. (2000). Emotional labour and sexual difference in the airline industry. Work, Employment & Society, 14(1), 77–95. Thompson, P., Warhurst, C., & Callaghan, G. (2001). Ignorant theory and knowledgeable workers: Interrogating the connections between knowledge, skills and services. Journal of Management Studies, 38, 7. Wallace, C., Eagleson, G., & Waldersee, R. (2000). The sacrificial HR strategy in call centres. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 11(2), 174–184. Warhurst, C., & Nickson, D. (2007). Employee experience of aesthetic labour in retail and hospitality. Work, Employment & Society, 21(1), 103–120. Witz, A., Warhurst, C., & Nickson, D. (2003). The labour of aesthetics and the aesthetics of organization. Organization, 10(1), 33–55.

CUSTOMERS BEHAVING BADLY! Lawrence Ang and Scott Koslow ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter seeks to understand the concept of consumer misbehavior, especially in the form of consumer deviance and/or dysfunction. Method/approach – We review the marketing literature on consumer misbehavior, organizing the major themes scholars have used. We also differentiate between two perspectives researchers can employ: (1) misbehavior as deviance and (2) misbehavior as a wider construct. Findings – Marketers generally overlook consumer misbehavior and put the cost down as that of running a business. Furthermore, they are burdened by the notion of customer sovereignty which is the dictum that ‘‘customers are always right.’’ But customers also lie, cheat, steal, harass, and abuse. Consumer misbehavior is thus multifaceted which in turn makes the definition difficult to pin down. After reviewing the many definitions of consumer misbehavior, including cyber misbehavior, the authors concluded that the disruption perspective is more managerially useful than the perspective based on violation of norms. This is because disruption of the business is not only harmful or unlawful but can lead to a loss of well-being, material resources, and reputation of individuals and/or organizations. Implications – The chapter proposes a Pre-di-post framework that can be used to deal with customer misbehavior.

Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 181–207 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019011

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Originality/value – Most marketing scholars have focused primarily on misbehavior as deviance, yet this limits the kinds of problems one tends to focus on and the range of solutions one normally considers. We offer an alternative perspective where misbehavior may be instead ‘‘an unremarkable consequence of normal conditions’’ which may suggest a wider range of amelioration strategies. Keywords: Consumer misbehavior; customer sovereignty; dysfunctional-; disruptive-; deviant-; aberrant-behavior; norm violation; service encounter; service quality

INTRODUCTION To many marketers, both practitioners and academics, the phrase consumer misbehavior is an interesting oxymoron. It is not that consumers sometimes fail to act in polite or acceptable ways, but rather that to even begin to ask how consumers could misbehave, one first runs up against the dominant normative perspective in marketing that focuses on consumer sovereignty: ‘‘The customer is always right.’’ That is, many marketing scholars have difficulty with the topic of consumer misbehavior exactly because it is routinely tolerated and accepted if not ignored altogether. However, marketers can and do routinely deal with deviant or dysfunctional consumers who partake in a variety of unsavory activities like:    

purchasing a dress for a single use before returning it for a full refund, changing the price tags of goods to reflect a lower price before buying, driving away from a petrol station without paying, not turning up for a dinner reservation in a restaurant even after confirmation,  paying for one salad meal but sharing it with another guest,  writing false letters of claims in order to exploit insurance policies, and  queue jumping. From the dominant marketing perspective, deviant or dysfunctional consumer behavior is a burden to be managed by marketers so as to control consumers’ actions better. That is, marketing is a discipline that examines the behavior of consumers for the purpose of influencing them. Within the field, marketing is criticized for sometimes being devoid of practical or managerial usefulness (Butanek, 2007; Starkey & Madan, 2001), so if

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consumer deviance is considered at all, it is in the context of an applied discipline that searches for solutions that can address deviant consumer practices. Occasionally, researchers explore whether consumers act poorly for a number of legitimate reasons, including stealing from an organization as revenge for being treated unfairly (Greenberg, 1990), but more typically consumers are studied as if they are merely acting in expedient ways, for example, by exploiting service recovery policies simply because they can (Berry & Seiders, 2008). Fullerton and Punj (1993) outline the many contextual factors for why consumers behave in an aberrant way, but their purpose is to limit that deviance. The focus of the marketing discipline on managerial control is an interesting one predominately because it limits the kinds of perspectives that can be applied. That is, consumer misbehavior or deviance itself isn’t usually the center of a research focus. So if the problem cannot be ‘‘fixed’’ managerially, it often isn’t studied. Thus, a primary focus on consumer misbehavior itself becomes ghettoized as a niche topic. However, other fields have managed to change perspectives toward deviance taking in a wide range of perspectives. A useful parallel can be made by examining the study of deviance and social control in sociology. One good example is Scull’s (1988) elegant history of deviance and social control which notes how early research in the area focused on ‘‘nuts, sluts and perverts.’’ Unfortunately, leading early scholars only made limited forays into the area and then quickly retreated. Little effort was made to systemize research into a coherent theoretical perspective. It was not until the rise of the Chicago School of Sociology, and their focus on poor, marginalized, and ethnic communities, that the study of deviance was integrated into mainstream sociological thinking. For example, Whyte’s (1943/1993) seminal Street Corner Society took the view that deviance was ‘‘an unremarkable consequence of normal conditions,’’ therefore taking deviance to be the result of social disorganization and fragmentation. Although deviance in consumer behavior can also be viewed through a lens of narrowly rational responses to a chaotic marketplace, Scull (1988) also warns against the theoretical antithesis, or rather an excessive preoccupation with the mechanisms of social control, which has been fashionable in sociology for the last few decades. In a marketing perspective, the fashion shows itself as the current dominant orientation toward a normative managerial perspective. To set consumer misbehavior in a more helpful theoretical framework, this chapter starts with one of the dominant marketing paradigms – namely that of service quality – and then views deviant consumer behavior

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in that light. Thus, terms like misbehavior, deviance, and dysfunction will largely be used interchangeably – but when reporting on specific authors we will use the terms they used. However, this chapter also argues that one can always approach consumer deviance from the perspective of either poor service quality begetting deviant consumer behavior, or deviant consumer behavior leading to poor service quality. It is not the focus of this chapter that one or the other perspective is right, but rather it seeks to set aside the moralistic perspectives that typically usher in a managerially oriented social control solution. We take a wider perspective that looks at the possibility of mutual causality and spiraling interactions which may suggest alternative solutions to the problems introduced by consumer deviance. Two examples are offered here to lay out the two perspectives. The first one is typical of most consumer deviance studies focusing on managerial control and the second of an alternative perspective:  In a recent visit to a vineyard, one of the authors of this chapter experienced how a group of four consumers completely disrupted a winetasting experience. Tours of vineyards are an important marketing tool in which vineyards can showcase their wines. Typically, in a cellar-door experience, there will be a host who will give a short history of the vineyard, the various grape varietals grown, soil, micro-climate, and how the wines are made. Consumers are expected to listen intently. This is then followed by a tasting session in which consumers get to sample a number of wines. After the tasting, the consumers can then decide whether they want to buy these wines, often at a discount. However, cellar-door experiences are also open to abuse by consumers who get drunk and rowdy especially when they come on buses in large groups. One such incident was experienced by the author. A group of young men on a large bus tour entered the cellar hooting and shouting before proceeding to deliberately disrupt the host by using foul language and then stealing bottles of wine. Management was called and the four were summarily expelled from the vineyard and the tour.  Another author was involved in a contrasting situation involving training department store retail managers. One of these managers’ major frustrations is customer shoplifting or theft. When retail managers were asked to look at the shoplifting problem through the lens of customer service management, the group came to the conclusion that if shoplifters did not have opportunity to steal, they would not. Thus, the goal was to give high

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levels of customer service to all customers, especially those in groups viewed as high risk for shoplifting. As a test, one store with a significant shoplifting problem was focused on. Staff numbers on the floor were increased, and additional training was given to current staff members. Standards of customer service were greatly increased, especially in entrances and high traffic areas. Most customers entering the store receiving a warm greeting and were explicitly assisted wherever possible – reserving the best service reserved for high risk shoplifting categories. The result was a 50% drop in shoplifting and an increase in sales. The cost saving and additional revenue paid for the higher wage costs. Employees realized that many of those who were in demographic groups at risk for shoplifting could often be good customers. Staff moral also rose. These two examples illustrate the two perspectives one can take on consumer misbehavior. One can take a ‘‘nuts, sluts and perverts’’ approach typical of the managerial control orientation of marketing and these challenges are usually solved by punitive action against the culprits. Alternatively, one can take an ‘‘unremarkable consequences of normal actions’’ perspective to address customer misbehavior and solve the problem by improving service rather than by greater managerial control. The aim of this chapter is to explore consumer misbehavior and along the way understand how the prevailing managerial control orientation guides and directs how marketers study misbehavior. Though there is a growing amount of research on consumer misbehavior to report on, this chapter attempts to show how the managerial control orientation limits the full understanding of the misbehavior concept. If approached from a more sociological perspective, there arises a wider array of issues – and some of these ultimately suggest managerial solutions one may not have uncovered if one only focused on managerial control exclusively. This chapter is organized as follows. First, the case will be made for why consumer misbehavior should be studied within the context of marketing’s managerial control focus. Second, the issue of how consumer misbehavior can be measured will be addressed. Misbehavior will next be viewed from the perspective of norm violations. Fourth, this chapter will address the effect of misbehavior on other consumers, that is, disruption of functional experiences. Lastly, in keeping with the orientation of the marketing field, a managerial oriented framework will be offered to address misbehavior, but because this review also considered sociological orientations, it can offer a wider range of options to a manager.

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CONSUMER MISBEHAVIOR – WHY IT SHOULD BE STUDIED? Although the study of deviant human behavior is not new, in marketing it is still a young field with research gathering pace (Fisk et al., 2010). However, what makes the study of deviant consumer behavior interesting is that in marketing, we faced a nuanced complication. The complication is as follows. In marketing, organizations are often burdened by the notion that the ‘‘customer is always right.’’ This so-called customer sovereignty is the dominant paradigm driven by research that has shown relationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty (see the reviews of Parasuraman & Grewal, 2000; Singh, 2000). The whole premise rests on the assumption that customers are well behaved (Harris & Ogbonna, 2002). However, if customers behave badly, this relationship may not hold true. Many organizations also seem to tolerate such misbehavior for the simple reason that it is thought to be harmless. Therefore, all things being equal, the paradigm of customer sovereignty reigns supreme, yet as the two scenarios above presented illustrate, this is clearly not the case. Consumers do and often misbehave. They lie, cheat, steal, and behave aggressively, to the extent that they verbally, physically, and sexually harass frontline employees (Harris & Reynolds, 2003; Yagil, 2008). It is not harmless. But what makes it even more difficult for frontline employees is that they are still expected to behave courteously, often feigning a sense of subservience. Customers on the other hand are not bound to the social norms of courteous behavior. This asymmetrical power relationship often exposes employees to emotional strain. Another reason organizations seem to tolerate consumer misbehavior is the mistaken idea that such infractions are infrequent. The argument goes that when they occur, they tend to be committed by a deviant few. Yet, this is not always true. Some forms of misbehavior tend to be quite prevalent. For instance, recent research into counterfeit goods indicate that approximately 97.9% of female undergraduate respondents (aged 20.9 years) in Korea said they had purchased counterfeit fashion products such as clothing, handbags, accessories, sunglasses, and shoes (Lee & Workman, 2011). In the United States, Herman (2005) estimated that about 15% of tax returns are falsified to inflate deductions, while frontline employees are subjected to customer aggression about 10 times a day (Grandey, Dickter, & Sin, 2004). This figure is likely to be conservative since the prevalence of much consumer misbehavior tends to go unreported.

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Consumer misbehavior is also costly. It disrupts the smooth functioning of business activities and in the process decreases its efficiency and profitability. For instance, shoplifting alone is estimated to cost $3.75 billion annually in the United States (Covert, 2007) while fraudulent claims of property and casualty insurance have been calculated at $24 billion (Accenture, 2003). Organizations often put such infractions down as a cost of running a business, but what is not fully appreciated is that this will inevitably lead to increased prices and premiums. This has generated great interest among industry practitioners trying to help organizations reduce such costs. For instance, it spawned a whole industry in retail security (e.g., surveillance cameras), one of the many unintended consequences of consumers behaving badly. One study like Fisk et al. (2010) even suggests that consumer misbehavior can be viewed as functionally positive for society. Another important point is that the misbehavior of one consumer can also affect the enjoyment (and the desire to repurchase) of other consumers who happened to be in the same environment (Huang, Lin, & Wen, 2010). This is the precisely the case with the wine tour discussed above as point C in Fig. 1 schematically shows. One ugly episode with misbehaving customers can spoil the enjoyment for innocent others. This is unfair on other customers. As Berry and Seiders (2008, p. 37) argued, organizations ‘‘must acknowledge the unfair behavior of certain customers and manage them

Misbehaving consumer A

A C

Organisation B

Fig. 1.

Well-behaved consumer B

Organizations have to manage both misbehaving consumers as well as well-behaved consumers affected by the former.

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effectively y Denying the existence and impact of unfair customers erodes the ethics of fairness upon which great service companies thrive.’’ The managerial implication is that organizations not only need to deal with misbehaving customers (point A) but also manage the innocent ones caught in the cross fire (point B). Even more insidious is the negative domino effect that can occur when other consumers also learn to mimic the bad behavior exhibited by other customers (Harris & Reynolds, 2003; Yagil, 2008). Hence, Fullerton and Punj (2004a) argued that marketing’s main paradigm of customer sovereignty has the unintended consequence of socializing all consumers to behave badly.

WHAT IS CONSUMER MISBEHAVIOR? But what is consumer misbehavior? Since this is a relatively new in the discipline, the literature tends to be fragmented. Table 1 outlines some of the different ways in which marketing studies have approached the subject. The studies can be roughly divided into two major perspectives – violation of norms and disruption of functional experiences. Consumer misbehavior is thus not a singular concept but a construct that can encompass a number of behaviors. Indeed, Mitchell and Chan (2002) developed the Consumer Ethics Index, a 50-item instrument, for measuring unethical behavior of customers. Many of the items in this instrument are common forms of misbehavior. In the same fashion, Neale and Fullerton (2010) more recently developed and tested a 14-item instrument.

VIOLATION OF NORMS Two of the earliest marketing scholars to discuss the concept of consumer misbehavior are Mills and Bonoma (1979), who referred to it as deviant and defined it as what ‘‘society considers inappropriate or in conflict with previously accepted societal norm’’ (p. 348). They theorized and tested the proposition that it is the incongruity of the power relationship between retailers and consumers that encourages them to destroy and damage goods, vandalize stores, shoplift, and make fraudulent complaints and return of goods. What they found in two studies generally supported their theory that the greater the power difference between retailers and consumers, the greater the likelihood that such misbehavior would occur.

Mills and Bonoma (1979) Moschis and Cox (1989)

Fullerton and Punj (1993)

Denegri-Knott (2006)

Selwyn (2008)

Zemke and Anderson (1990)

Aberrant consumer behavior

Bad behavior online

Online Misbehavior

Customers from hell

Author/s

Deviant consumer behavior Deviant consumer behavior

Terms

Qualitative

Quantitative

Conceptual

Conceptual

Conceptual

Quantitative

Nature of Study ‘‘Behaviour in a retail store that society considers inappropriate or in conflict with previously accepted societal norm’’ (p. 347) Behavior that ‘‘differs from some norm or standard’’ which are in the ‘‘form of customs, manners, rules and regulations, laws, and mores’’ (p. 732) ‘‘Behavior in exchange settings which violates the generally accepted norms of conduct in such situations and which is therefore held in disrepute by marketers and by most consumers’’ (p. 570) ‘‘Bad behaviour is defined as consumer activities on the web that defy conventionally accepted norms of conduct in consumption situations in offline environments’’ (p. 82) Refers to ‘‘behaviors that are quasi legal and do not constitute serious criminal acts but nevertheless constitute non-conformance to a given set of norms that are accepted by a significant number of people society’’ (p. 447) Customers who, ‘‘belittle, demand, threaten to get physical, get physical, throw tantrums, throw heavy objects, spew poisonous invectives, lie, rant, rave and in general behave like Caligula on a bad day’’ (p. 26)

Definitions

Disruption of functional experience of employees and the need to curb such customers.

Violation of societal norms but not serious enough to be considered criminal in nature

Violation of societal norms in the offline world carried out online

Violation of reputable norms of marketers and other consumers

Violation of customs, manners, rules and regulations, laws, and mores.

Violation of societal norms

Definitional Focus

Table 1. A Summary of Different Perspective on Consumer Misbehavior.

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Lovelock (2001)

Bitner, Booms, and Mohr (1994) Harris and Reynolds (2003, 2004)

Huang et al. (2010)

Problem customers

Dysfunctional customer behavior

Other-customer failure

Author/s

Jaycustomers

Terms

Quantitative

Qualitative

Quantitative

Conceptual

Nature of Study

Customer that engage in ‘‘drunkenness, verbal and physical abuse, breaking company policies, and lack of cooperation’’ (p. 99) Refers to ‘‘actions by customers who intentionally or unintentionally, overtly or covertly, act in a manner that, in some way, disrupts otherwise functional service encounters’’ (2003, p. 145). Refers to ‘‘actions by another customer, whether intentional or unintentional, that disrupts one’s own service experience’’ (p. 152)

Customers that are ‘‘thieves, rule breakers, the belligerent, vandals, family feuders, and deadbeats’’ (p. 73)

Definitions

Table 1. (Continued )

Disruption of functional experiences of other wellbehaved customers.

Disruption of functional experience highlighting personal harm and resource depletion.

Disruption of functional experience of employees and the need to curb such customers. Disruption of own satisfaction by behaving dysfunctionally

Definitional Focus

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Moschis and Cox (1989) then followed by extending the focus beyond the retailing setting. In their conceptual paper, they drew parallels between the deviant behavior in abnormal psychology with that of consumers, pointing out that consumer research has generally studied the desirable aspects of consumer behavior (e.g., brand loyalty or satisfaction) rather than the undesirable aspects. Drawing on classic sociological theories of Merton (1968) and Cloward (1959), particularly relating to ‘‘anomie,’’ they proposed that much of deviant consumer behavior may stem from values cultivated through poor socialization process (e.g., peers) or by virtue of the consumer’s social class or position. They also used the term, deviant consumer behavior. Other influential early theorists of consumer misbehavior were Fullerton and Punj (1993) who argued that there is no single underlying cause of consumer misbehavior which they termed aberrant consumer behavior. They proposed that consumer misbehavior is influenced by two major factors (with its many sub-factors) and their interactions. These are: (i) the type of consumers (e.g., demographics, psychological characteristics, level of moral development, social influence, and frame of mind); (ii) the nature of exchange setting and marketing institution (e.g., types of products, physical environment, level of deterrence, attitude and behavior of marketing personnel, public image of organizations, antecedent state). Using a structural diagram, these scholars demonstrated how these two major factors can directly lead to a spectrum of misbehavior. Although no specific hypotheses were offered, their paper was the first to greatly expand the various factors that can cause consumer misbehavior. Subsequently, Fullerton and Punj (1997a, 1997b) extended their structural model. It is interesting to note that Mills and Bonoma (1979), Moschis and Cox (1989), and Fullerton and Punj (1993) all shared the common idea that consumer misbehavior is defined as a violation of accepted norms. For Mills and Bonoma (1979) this centers on societal norms (and expectations), while Moschis and Cox (1989) construe it as violations relating to customs, manners, rules and regulations, laws, and mores. In the case of Fullerton and Punj (1993), the norms pertain to those in an exchange setting. It is not surprising that these definitions are skewed toward a focus on violations of norms since they center on the notion of deviancy. Deviancy means deviation from norms and by implication suggests low frequency of occurrence. It is also a perspective dominant in abnormal psychology. Researchers with this perspective have even called for a more thorough

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investigation of deviant exchange behavior (Houston & Gassenhiemer, 1987). As another illustration of this perspective, Fullerton and Punj (2004a) provided a historical picture of kleptomania, documenting how this abnormal condition has changed over time. Cyber-space misbehavior has also aroused recent interest (e.g., Tuzovic, 2010), with some scholars concluding that the growth of internet usage will increase the scope of such misbehaviors (Chatzidakis & Mitussis, 2007). For instance, an FBI report (cited in Hu et al., 2011, p. 628) suggests that online auction fraud accounted for 45% of all fraud cases referred to US law enforcement agencies. The internet makes misbehavior very convenient to commit because one can misbehave from the comfort of one’s sofa. Furthermore, the anonymous and impersonal nature of the internet coupled with the slim chance of being apprehended makes it significantly easier for people to misbehave without feeling guilty (Freestone & Mitchell, 2004; Goleman, 2007; Lodgsdon, Thompson, & Reid, 1994). It also makes it easier for consumers to engage in neutralization techniques like denial of victim, denial of injury, and so forth, to justify cyber-misbehavior (Harris & Dumas, 2009) and its impact on victims. One of the earliest definitions of online misbehavior is that of DenegriKnott (2006, p. 82), which is defined as ‘‘Consumer activities on the web that defy conventionally accepted norms of conduct in consumption situations in offline environments.’’ Interestingly, this definition also emphasizes the societal norm perspective of deviancy but the comparison of ‘‘normalcy’’ is between the web and offline activities. Another online misbehavior definition by Selwyn (2008) also emphasizes violation of social norms by focusing on activities that ‘‘constitute non-conformance to a given set of norms that are accepted by a significant number of people in society’’ (p. 447). Interestingly, he is keen to qualify that cyber-misbehavior is not a crime, but quasi-legal. Thus, like the early researchers, online research into consumer misbehavior also adopts a normative perspective. However, the focus on ‘‘normality’’ – whether it is offline or online – suffers from three major weaknesses that are discussed below:

What is an Accepted Standard of Norms? Norms can be subjective. Therefore, the first difficulty with using norms to define consumer misbehavior is that not everyone agrees on what constitutes acceptable standards. Even within abnormal psychology this has long has been debated (Szasz, 1960). In marketing, this raised even more questions.

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An action may be considered deviant or even criminal by an organization (e.g., stealing of hotel bathrobes or shoplifting), but not so by the consumers simply because ‘‘everyone does it.’’ For instance in self-report studies, more than 30% of respondents admitted to shoplifting (Kallis & Vanier, 1985; Klemke, 1982). Tonglet (2002) found similar figures in the United Kingdom where 32% of British consumers admitted being involved in shoplifting with 7% occurring in the last 12 months. Or consider the fact that 40% of web users are likely to give false information (Denegri-Knott, 2006) with 30–63% engaging in illegal downloads of music and video files from peerto-peer websites (Levine, Dato-on, & Rhee, 2004; Madden & Rainie, 2005). It should be noted that these figures are likely to be conservative since nobody likes to admit to misbehaving. So in reality, these figures are probably higher. If the concept of norm violation (i.e., deviancy) implies low frequency, then the high prevalence of such misbehavior would suggest that either such behaviors are not deviant or that defining misbehavior using a norm perspective is not logical. Another issue is that norms change with context. What is considered to be a deviant behavior in one context may be quite normal in another. For instance, getting drunk and rowdy is tolerated in a bar – in fact it is expected. But getting drunk in a church is sacrilegious. In the same vein, misbehavior in one country may not be considered to be so in another. For instance, in Hong Kong, the consumption of sharks’ fins is considered a delicacy, but such diners will be considered as environmental pariah in western culture. Recently, Neale and Fullerton (2010) reported that Europeans (like Australians) tend to be less critical in their views of unethical consumer behavior than Asians and Africans who are less tolerant. What is considered to be normal is even vaguer on the internet. In the online world, downloads are expected to be free, regardless of legality, and it is in fact aberrant to pay for anything (Shanahan & Hyman, 2010). Libertarian discourse often centers on whether the internet has different norms or lacks them altogether (Drucker & Gumpert, 2000; Williams, 2000). Even seemingly illegal behavior like hacking may still be condoned in the online world (Thomson, 2005). Witness the most recent actions of the hacking group, Anonymous which crippled the websites of FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music, the Motion Picture of Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America for their support of recent proposed copyright acts called Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and protect IP Act (PIPA). These acts are thought to be badly drafted, which would lead to online censorship and restricting internet innovations (SMH, 2012). Google, Mozilla, and Wikipedia have also

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protested with Wikipedia staging a voluntary 24-hour shutdown on January 19, 2011. Libertarians may point to such online grass root actions (including hacking) as a legitimate form of protest rather than misbehavior.

Moralistic Connotations The adoption of the ‘‘normality’’ concept also smacks of moralistic overtones implying that all forms of deviant consumer behavior are universally bad. Such instances may include: the wearing of nose or lip rings, having unusual hairstyles, going to nude beaches, and so forth. However, this may be prerogative. In some quarters, like the fashion industry, being deviant in appearance is considered good, and is in fact encouraged since such behavior can be seen to be trend setting or innovative (Wang, 2011). In the internet sphere, what is considered to be deviant can also be innovative (e.g., Denegri-Knott, 2006). But what complicates this issue even more is that morals change. One insightful (and less moralistic) way of looking at norms is a model developed by Fowler (2007) who suggested that there are two different kinds of norms – cultural and institutional – which in combination would yield four classes of consumer behavior, of which three are ‘‘anomic’’, ‘‘aberrant,’’ and ‘‘carnivalesque’’ misbehaviors as shown in Table 2. Quadrant 1 refers to normal, functional consumer behavior where for instance a person buys a music CD from a retail shop. Such behavior does not violate either cultural or institutional norms. Behavior in quadrant 2 on the

Table 2. Fowler’s Typology of Different Kinds of Consumer Misbehavior. Meets Cultural Expectations Meets institutional norms Violates institutional norms

1. Abiding behavior (e.g., buying a music CD from a shop) 2. Anomic behavior (e.g., stealing a music CD from a shop)

Source: Adapted from Fowler (2007).

Violates Cultural Expectations

3. Carnivalesque behavior (e.g., buying a CD that preaches racial hatred) 4. Aberrant behavior (e.g., downloading of hard core pornographic material from the Internet)

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other hand is considered ‘‘anomic’’ because it violates institutional norms. An example would be shoplifting. This form of consumer misbehavior is not considered to violate cultural norms because people are expected to shoplift sometime in their lives. Behavior in quadrant 3 is described as ‘‘carnivalesque’’ because even though behaviors may not violate institutional norms, they can still violate cultural expectations. An example would be to buy CDs that preaches racial hatred from a shop. Finally, quadrant 4 violates both institutional and cultural norms like downloading hard core pornographic material from the internet, which he calls ‘‘aberrant.’’ By combining two kinds of norms this framework gets away from the necessarily singular concept of ‘‘deviancy’’ and all its attendant conceptual problems discussed above. Furthermore, because it relies on different kinds of norms, it is more precise in explaining why some forms of deviant consumer behavior may be more tolerated than others such as shoplifting versus downloading of pornography. However, because the framework still relies on norms, albeit of two different kinds, it still suffers from issues of contextual subjectivity.

Not Managerially Useful Although Fowler’s framework provides some insights, it is not entirely clear how useful such a typology is for a manager. One may ask whether managers really care what labels are placed on different types of norm-violations consumer misbehavior. One suspects that a large part of the definitional problem of consumer misbehavior is that it is too broad. One approach to address this problem is to narrow its definitional boundaries by limiting the focus of the definition to specific customers (or potential customers) instead of consumers in general. If so, then the term ‘‘consumer’’ as in consumer misbehavior may be too broad and should be replaced by the word, ‘‘customer’’ instead. In other words, to be managerially useful, the level of analysis should be at the organizational level devoted to understanding dysfunctional behavior of one’s customers.

DISRUPTION OF FUNCTIONAL EXPERIENCES The disruption of functional experiences involves those behaviors that interfere with the business functions of the organization. It also involves the

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experiences of the employees or other well-behaved customers who have become attenuated by the dysfunctional behavior of these customers. Lovelock (2001) pointed out that dysfunctional customers can ‘‘act in a thoughtless and abusive manner, causing problems for the firm, its employees, and other customers’’ (p. 73). He termed such consumers ‘‘jaycustomers.’’ He went on to categorize their misbehavior labeling these customers thieves, rule breakers, belligerent, vandals, family feuders, and deadbeats. Earlier, Zemke and Anderson (1990) too pointed out that some of the most difficult customers are also the loudest. They tend to, ‘‘belittle, demand, threaten to get physical, get physical, throw tantrums, throw heavy objects, spew poisonous invectives, lie, rant, and rave’’ (p. 26) to service providers. They categorize these customers from hell as egocentric, foulmouthed, hysterical, and freeloader, and suggest ways of curbing these customers. Harris and Reynolds (2003) also took a functional view. Their definitions of dysfunctional customer behavior includes ‘‘actions by customers who intentionally or unintentionally, overtly or covertly, act in a manner that, in some way, disrupts otherwise functional service encounters’’ (p. 145). As they point out, the consequences of bad customer behavior may include negative long-term psychological effects, short-term emotional detriment, and behavioral and physical harm of front-line employees. Harris and Reynolds (2004) pointed out that such customers also covertly engage in property abuse (e.g., vandalism, theft). More extreme cases include the consequences of resource depletion for the organization. Some direct financial costs due to dysfunctional customer behavior includes: replacing of damaged or lost property, increased insurance premiums, and the cost of recompensing innocent customers affected by dysfunctional ones (Harris & Reynolds, 2003). In the digital era, harm can also extend to reputation. The rise of social media and the collaborative nature of web 2.0 have created opportunities for cyber-misbehavior. One prominent form is fraudulent product or service reviews. A whole host of user-generated evaluative website exists (e.g., Epinions, Hot or Not, CNET, TripAdvisor). What makes this form of misbehavior especially troublesome is that customers tend to satisfice rather than optimize on quality so that when customers encounter a negative review, the threshold is then perceived not to be met (Clemons & Gao, 2008). Furthermore, variability of quality ratings also hurt. Ye, Law, and Gu (2009) found that a 10% increase in variance in the ratings of reviewers can decrease sales by 2.8%. Fake reviews are not uncommon and as Hu, Bose, Gao, and Liu (2011) and Pogue (2012) recently pointed out, internet

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reviews are easy to manipulate, and are increasingly problematic for e-commerce. In fact, it spawns new research areas in detecting fraudulent reviews and reputation management of reviewers (e.g., Jura & Faltings, 2009; Lee, Law, & Murphy, 2011). Digital reviews of this kind, true or otherwise, tend to have a longer impact which affects the reputation of organizations and in turn their future income by damaging corporate reputation if not properly managed. Consumer misbehavior has also been studied from a customer-satisfaction perspective. One early study by Bitner et al. (1994) found that sometimes customers themselves contribute to their own dissatisfaction by overtly misbehaving. After examining 774 critical service incidents in hotels, airlines, and restaurants, Bitner et al. (1994) concluded that employees cannot be held responsible for the satisfaction of ‘‘problem customers’’ whose misbehaviors include drunkenness, verbal and physical abuse, breaking company policies or laws, or simply being uncooperative. The last form of misbehavior raises some additional issues. While most form of consumer misbehavior studied tend to be in the active form (e.g., verbal and physical abuse), sometimes disruption can also occur by and through passive uncooperative behavior. Recently, Keeffe (2010) found that customers can simply refuse to engage, to devote time and effort, to provide accurate information or to pay. This form of behavior is also akin to the idea of employee resistance often discussed in organization behavior (e.g., see Barnes, 2012, this volume). Thus, customers can also misbehave by simply refusing to cooperate. Finally, an often neglected yet important area in marketing is misbehavior in consumer-to-consumer interactions. Martin (1996) argues that consumer interactions with each other on-premise (e.g., restaurant) will affect their broader consumption experience. This is often neglected in marketing yet is important. He identified seven categories of unsatisfying behavior which he labeled as gregarious, grungy, inconsiderate, crude, violent, malcontent, and leisurely. More recently, Huang et al. (2010) coined the term ‘‘othercustomer failure’’ to refer to ‘‘actions by another customer, whether intentional or unintentional, that disrupts one’s own service experience’’ (p. 152). Here the focus is how the misbehavior of other customers can affect our quality of experience. This is an under-researched area and the researchers found that innocent customers will come to perceive the organization more poorly and are less likely to repurchase from them if they perceived the misbehavior of other customers as controllable. Harris and Reynolds (2003) earlier coined this the ‘‘spoilt consumption effects’’ to signify the decrement of a person’s consumption experience because of the dysfunctional behavior of other customers.

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Some authors still continue to use terms that suggest a ‘‘nuts, sluts, and perverts’’ approach to consumer misbehavior while continuing to deny it. For example, Harris and Reynolds (2003) use the phrase ‘‘dysfunctional customer behaviour’’ yet argue that this term is ‘‘neutral’’ (p. 145). Of course, there is nothing ‘‘neutral’’ about the term dysfunctionality and it is loaded with negative connotations. Fisk et al. (2010) also recently suggested using the same term ‘‘for reasons of clarity’’ (p. 418), yet did not explain how this is so.

PREVENTION, DIRECT INTERVENTION, AND POST-EPISODE MANAGEMENT If one were to accept the notion that not all customers are good or right, and that dysfunctional customers can indeed create havoc, the dominant perspective in marketing usually asks what should a manager do? Surprisingly, there is hardly any research on this (cf. Fullerton & Punj, 1997b; Suquet, 2010). Managers can perhaps start by acknowledging the detrimental effects of dysfunctional customers. Once this is accepted, steps can then be taken to manage the dysfunctional customers separately. To this effect, a manager can be guided by three general questions: (i) is the misbehavior occurring, (ii) what is the likely root cause, and (iii) how should it be dealt. This chapter suggests a three-step process dealing with prevention, direct intervention, and post-episode management of dysfunctional behavior. We call this the ‘‘Pre-di-post’’ framework of managing dysfunctional customer behavior. This means one can choose to prevent, directly intervene or work on post-episode management of dysfunctional behavior. The Pre-di-post framework is only meaningful if it is pertinent to the purchase–service cycle of an organization. The cycle should be well-researched to include where dysfunctional behavior occurs (or likely to occur) and to manage this in such a way that it does not inadvertently boomerang onto well-behaved customers. The Pre-di-post framework can be detailed as follows. Prevention Management should first try to prevent dysfunctional behavior from occurring in the first place. One way of doing this is to identify the root cause(s) of various dysfunctional behaviors within the cycle. The conceptual model developed by Wirtz and Kum (2004) is useful here. They argue that

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there is always a cost-and-benefit tradeoff for why customers behave badly. For instance, whether a customer cheats or not is driven by the sum of motivators (i.e., perceived rewards), inhibitors (perceived costs), and their associated personality and situation factors. Their conceptual framework can be summarized in the equation below where M represents motivators, I represents inhibitors, P represents personality, and S represents situational factors. Cheating Behavior ¼ PðM; IÞ þ SðM; IÞ þ PSðM; IÞ What this implies is that at the minimum, all root causes of dysfunctional customer behavior can be reduced by removing the motivation or increasing the inhibiting factors. For instance, if the cost attached to a form of dysfunctional behavior is too high, unacceptable behavior is less likely to occur. A good example for the application of this model can be seen in curbing cyberspace mischief. On the internet, one effective deterrent is to ensure that the proper verification of identification is carried out of the user. This has been found to be a major deterrent because one of the main reasons cited for cyber-mischief is the anonymity of the perpetrator (Freestone & Mitchell, 2004). Once we understand the cost-and-benefits driving the root cause/s of dysfunctional customer behavior, new deterrent policies, procedures or code of conduct may be instituted to curb such behavior. These should be clearly communicated to customers with its logic clearly spelt out. This is especially true of the internet where very often what is right or wrong is not as clear cut, as discussed earlier. While this does not necessarily mean that customers will accept the new policies, it however leaves no doubt where the organization stands in this regard. It also means that prosecution can be legitimately carried out when needed. Education may also be used to play a broader role in preventing dysfunctional behavior in society. In some East Asian countries like Singapore, civic education is part of the curriculum for all primary school children (Chew, 1998). This does not appear to be so in more westernized countries like the United States, Australia, or United Kingdom. While one may be accused of being a nanny state, civic education may be useful for younger generation since it is well known that certain dysfunctional behavior like shoplifting and vandalism is widespread among young people (Hagan, Gillis, & Simpson, 1985; Tonglet, 2002). Preventive solutions may include the manipulation of physical environments to promote functional behavior. For instance, cafes can create a separate space for mothers with their prams (and crying babies!) so that

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regular customers can continue to enjoy their cafe´ experience. Similarly, restaurants can create smoking areas for those patrons who want to smoke without annoying the non-smokers. More strong-handed environmental deterrent tactics like the use of surveillance cameras may be needed in retail settings to prevent shoplifting. Finally a word of caution: Using preventive or deterrent tactics is not without its dangers (Fullerton & Punj, 1997b). They may end up punishing functional (and honest) customers. For instance, some forms of deterrence (e.g., surveillance cameras, warning signs, and security guards) imply distrust of customers. Friend, Costley, and Brown (2010) suggested that such signs will in turn generate even more distrust. They suggest instead that all outward signs of distrust should be replaced with more interpersonal interactions between frontline employees and customers to enable and enhance better relations which build trust.

Direct Intervention Besides prevention, management must also consider how to intervene when dysfunctional behavior actually occurs. This is an important contingency plan because no matter how well preventive measures are undertaken, there will inevitably be situations in which some customers will behave badly. One reason is because there will always be psychologically unstable customers (Fullerton & Punj, 2004b). Since direct interventions fall into the domain of frontline employees, it is therefore critical that they be trained in problem solving, conflict resolution, assertive and coping skills. For example, they can be taught how to tactfully, yet assertively tell a dysfunctional customer to correct their aberrant behavior (e.g., stop smoking in a non-smoking area or queue jumping). Part of the training should include the close monitoring of an escalating difficult situations and how to ‘‘nip the problem in the bud’’ before it worsens. Action-training and role plays will help induce confidence in frontline employees. Management may also provide mentoring and team building training. Here, different solutions are trialed and if found to be successful, should be communicated to other parts of the organizations. Finally, it might be easier to hire the right personnel in the first place instead of relying on training. For instance, organizations may recruit their frontline employees not only based on their functional competence, but also on their ability to remain ‘‘cool’’ under pressure.

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Post-Episode Management If tactics in prevention and direct interventions cannot eliminate dysfunctional customer behavior, then management has to plan what to do following an incident. This is especially important if the dysfunctional behavior is illegal and/or harmful. Typically, if the misbehavior is a minor infraction, management will overlook it. However, if the level of severity (of harm or illegality) is high, then one option is to report the case to authorities or to sue the dysfunctional customer. Management has to weigh the pros and cons of such actions. Often, it may not be as clear cut as it seems. Even for an innocuous (but still illegal) act of evading bus fares, calling the police after having caught the fare-evader may in fact be more disruptive in the short run because the bus service will have to stop which goes against the mission statement of public transport (Suquet, 2010). Similarly, lawsuits have not stopped the sharing of files in peer-to-peer websites (Sinha & Mandel, 2008), to the extent that some researchers now suggest that a different business model needs to be developed for the digital world (Shanahan & Hyman, 2010). Organizations can advertise the fact that actions have already been taken against dysfunctional customers. This will send a strong signal that the organization is taking customer dysfunctional behavior seriously. This is important because customers tend to become less satisfied if they perceive a service failure can be easily rectified (Choi & Mattila, 2008). Following a dysfunctional episode, an organization can also communicate that such occurrences are commonplace and not peculiar to this organization. By making a global attribution, it helps mitigate the failure on one episode for one organization (Huang et al., 2010). Organizations may also choose to publicly blacklist customers who repeatedly offend. Some restaurants, for instance, are using social media to publicly shame customers who booked a table (and later re-confirmed) but did not turn up for the meal (Sunday Telegraph, 2012), which represents a loss of revenue. Since restaurant profit margins are thin, this is one way in which the industry can discourage the misbehavior of customers. While the jury is still out on whether this form of deterrence is effective, it does provide a good tracking system for identifying (re) offenders. Following an incident, organizations may also need to defend its reputation if the incident is unfairly reported in the media or a third-party consumer reviews websites. Management of reputation in cyber-space is viewed as important because the reach of the internet is world-wide and digital memory is long lasting (if not permanent). Organizations are

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beginning to recognize that public online venting of anger is not good for business (Gre´goire, Tripp, & Legoux, 2009; McGregor, 2008; Ward & Ostrom, 2006). However despite this, very few companies manage their reputations online. O’Connor (2010) for instance found that only 0.5% of hotels use the ‘‘right to reply’’ option found in TripAdvisor. Almost all (i.e., 99.5%) of hotels do not bother to defend the negative ratings posted by customers – truthfully or otherwise. In summary, management of dysfunctional customers can occur before, during, or after the episode. Prevention of dysfunctional customer behavior requires first an understanding the root cause/s and their implications of deterrence measures, education or environmental manipulations to prevent customers from behaving badly. Unfortunately, the focus on managerial control doesn’t deal directly with this issue and can limit appropriate responses – especially if the misbehavior is the result of managerial control itself. Direct intervention requires capable frontline employees to be recruited and trained in order to deal with dysfunctional customer behavior on the spot. Post-episode management may include reporting to authorities or taking legal actions, shaming publicly, advertising the fact that such behavior will not be tolerated, and actively managing corporate reputation on the internet if it is unfairly tarnished by dysfunctional customers.

CONCLUSION The aim of this chapter was first to clarify what misbehavior means in consumer behavior. After reviewing the literature, it was noted that a number of perspectives were offered over the years. Whether explicitly stated or not, the majority of authors took a ‘‘nuts, sluts and perverts’’ perspective on consumer deviance with all the moral implications that come out of it. Overall the Pre-di-post perspective attempts to blend both of them by seeking out the causes of consumer misbehavior and tries to set it in a useful perspective to both understand and deal with it. So far the mainstream frameworks in marketing of consumer sovereignty and managerial control still exert influence on the kinds of issues researchers study. To return to the examples used at the beginning of this chapter, if retail store employees unconsciously treat all persons in certain demographic groups as potential shoplifters, then those in those groups may feel they have little to lose by playing along in that role and partaking in consumer misbehavior – even if only for ‘‘sporting’’ purposes. That is, by

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exerting managerial control, some individuals who may have been inclined to behave appropriately may start to misbehave. Thus, focusing excessively on managerial control may lead to less of it. One explanation for the paradox of control may be based on reactance theory which states that consumers resist constraints on their choices they feel should be rightfully theirs (Brehm, 1966, 1972). For example, consumer sovereignty implies that consumers have the right to choose products for themselves. Thus, when faced with a situation where consumers are pushed by a salesperson to purchase one pair of sunglasses for inappropriate reasons, they often have a ‘‘boomerang’’ reaction and choose another (Clee & Wicklund, 1980). Likewise, when consumers have honest and persuasive advertising directed toward them they are often motivated to resist such too-good-to-be-true advertising even though it isn’t rational (Koslow, 2000). When applied to a retail setting, consumer may engage in reactance by resisting the control marketing managers’ attempt to have over them – and one important way of enacting reactance may be to misbehave in ways they would not in non-market settings. Researchers need to acknowledge that misbehavior may be ‘‘an unremarkable consequence of normal conditions.’’ That is, marketers need their own ‘‘Chicago School’’ of consumer behavior to bring misbehavior into mainstream research. The Pre-di-post framework presented here, while appearing to be focused on managerial control, can also serve a wider perspective. Although few researchers have looked at prevention issues outside of managerial control, this is ripe for consideration. If managerial control is causing the problem, then this control can be ceded back to consumers. For the post evaluation phase, again wider reasons for misbehavior can be considered and changes made in future situations. Finally, we use the phrase ‘‘direct intervention’’ rather than control to suggest that managers may act, but these actions don’t necessarily need to be controlling. Overall, consumer misbehavior is a vital area in which there is increased interest. But what the area needs most is a creative and refreshing new direction for research that looks at misbehavior more widely in the context of the consumer experience.

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EXPLORING ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS MISBEHAVIOR Erik Lundmark and Alf Westelius ABSTRACT Purpose – To explore the links between entrepreneurship and misbehavior. Approach – Conceptual development using cases as illustrative examples. Findings – The chapter finds that there is an overlap between the way misbehavior is defined and the way entrepreneurship is conceptualized in the literature. It also finds previous research, distinguishing between desirable and undesirable misbehavior based on the intentions or the outcomes of behavior, insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship as misbehavior. The reason is that for entrepreneurial ventures, the underlying intentions are often good, but the outcomes often not; and that making assessments of the outcomes of entrepreneurial ventures a priori is notoriously difficult. Assessing misbehavior based only on organizational level evaluations is likewise insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship. The reason for this is that support for the venture may be needed also from actors outside of the organization. Furthermore, what constitutes the organization is not always clear. Therefore, we argue that it is necessary to broaden the view of what institutions determine whether a venture classifies as misbehavior when analyzing entrepreneurship.

Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 209–235 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019012

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Research limitations – The cases used to illustrate the overlap between entrepreneurship and misbehavior are conspicuous and not necessarily representative of entrepreneurship and misbehavior in general. Originality – This is a first attempt at merging the misbehavior and entrepreneurship literatures, which highlights an important niche with a great promise for future research. Keywords: Deviance; entrepreneurship; misbehavior; norm; rule; institution Without deviation from the norm progress is not possible. – Frank Zappa

INTRODUCTION This chapter focuses on misbehavior as deviance from norms and rules that is driven neither by a wish to hurt the organization, nor by a wish to resist perceived unfairness. The driving force behind the type of misbehavior this chapter focuses on is the wish to pursue an entrepreneurial opportunity. Such wishes, in turn, can stem from a desire for personal gain, for organizational gain, to realize a vision, or a combination thereof. This chapter builds on the emerging literature that focuses on the deviant nature of misbehavior. In the literature, this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as misbehavior (e.g., Vardi & Wiener, 1996) and sometimes as deviance (e.g., Galperin, 2003; Robinson & Bennett, 1995). Despite the different labels, the definitions are very similar (cf. Robinson & Bennett, 1995; Vardi & Wiener, 1996). In this chapter, we use the terms deviance and misbehavior interchangeably, and we find that their definitions, in fact, would incorporate many entrepreneurial ventures. For example, Robinson and Bennett (1995, p. 556) define deviance as ‘‘voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in so doing threatens the well-being of an organization, its members, or both.’’ Although Robinson and Bennett’s (1995) definition was adopted by Galperin (2003) to specifically denote destructive deviance, it could also be used to denote many entrepreneurial ventures. This is because entrepreneurship: is associated with breaking habits, norms, and rules (Johannisson, 2002; Weiskopf & Steyaert, 2009; Wright & Zahra, 2011); can take place within established organizations (Sharma & Chrisman, 1999); and is fraught with risk and uncertainty

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(Aldrich & Auster, 1986; Aldrich & Ruef, 2006; Knight, 2002; Lundmark & Westelius, forthcoming). Although this type of misbehavior is risky, it can also have positive consequences for the organization, its members, or both. Research on the positive consequences of misbehavior is a neglected area of the literature and one requiring further research (Richards, 2008). In order to develop previous conceptualizations of misbehavior, this chapter draws on the emerging strand of research that focuses on the dark side of entrepreneurship (e.g., Baumol, 1990; Kets de Vries, 1985; Osborne, 1991; Shane, 2008; Webb, Tihanyi, Ireland, & Sirmon, 2009; Wright & Zahra, 2011) and the limited work that emphasizes positive aspects of misbehavior as deviance and rule-breaking (e.g., Galperin, 2003; Morrison, 2006; Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2004; Vardi & Wiener, 1996). In doing so, it explores links between entrepreneurship and misbehavior theoretically and empirically. The chapter is structured as follows: in the next section, we review the entrepreneurship literature with the aim of providing a conceptualization of entrepreneurship and how it relates to institutions such as norms, rules, and laws. Thereafter, we review and critique the emerging literature that focuses on conceptualizations of misbehavior as behavior that deviates from norms and rules. We find that definitions of misbehavior and conceptualizations of entrepreneurship overlap, and we argue that distinguishing between desirable and undesirable misbehavior based on the intentions or the outcomes of behavior, as is done in the existing literature, is insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship as misbehavior. The reason for this is that for entrepreneurial ventures, the underlying intentions are often good, but the outcomes often not. Furthermore, making assessments of the outcomes of entrepreneurial ventures a priori is notoriously difficult. We also argue that it is necessary to broaden the view of which institutions determine whether a venture classifies as misbehavior, when analyzing entrepreneurship. The reason for this is that support for the venture may be needed also from actors outside of the organization, and what constitutes the relevant organization is not always clear. Therefore, we develop a framework for assessing entrepreneurship as misbehavior based on the reviewed literature. This framework captures the potential inconsistencies in the institutional frameworks by which behavior is assessed. In addition to these conceptual developments, the chapter discusses the links between entrepreneurship and misbehavior and uses a number of noticeable instances of independent and corporate entrepreneurship in order to illustrate how institutional constraints affect entrepreneurial ventures. Lastly, we discuss the chapter’s findings and assess them critically and conclude with suggestions for further research.

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WHAT IS ENTREPRENEURSHIP? Entrepreneurship has been defined in a myriad of ways not only by practitioners but also by academics (Gartner, 1990). Perhaps the archetypical description of entrepreneurship is a process where someone starts a firm, combining means of production and labor; the process or the output is novel (an innovation); the venture is associated with risk, but if successful, rewards are great both for the founder and for society. The entrepreneur is the instigator or driving force in this process. However, Schumpeter (2008) separates the inventor, the entrepreneur, and the capitalist into three different roles that can be held not only by one person but also by different people. Differentiating between the inventor and the entrepreneur emphasizes that the entrepreneur is someone who acts on an idea, without necessarily being its originator. With the capitalist as a central figure in the trinity, entrepreneurship is a phenomenon that is strongly associated with the capitalist paradigm. In contrast, Baumol (1990) argues that entrepreneurship is always prevalent regardless of whether it is a feudal, capitalist, socialist, or other form of society, and that entrepreneurship can be more or less productive or even destructive. For example, he suggests that drug dealers and feudal warlords should be considered entrepreneurs. More recent research has reframed the scope of entrepreneurship. In their seminal paper, Shane and Venkataraman (2000) created a framework where the discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities constitute the focal phenomena. These processes can be instigated and driven by a single individual or many people, they can take place in new or established organizations and they are inherently associated with uncertainty. Furthermore, Shane and Venkataraman (2000, p. 220) define entrepreneurial opportunities as ‘‘those situations in which new goods, services, raw materials, and organizing methods can be introduced and sold at [a price] greater than their cost of production.’’ Shane and Venkataraman (2000) acknowledge that entrepreneurship occurs for reasons other than for profit, but limit their discussion to the for-profit situation and to the capitalist paradigm. In order to provide a more general definition of entrepreneurial opportunities, Davidsson and Wiklund’s (2001) discussion is helpful. In their view, entrepreneurship is about ‘‘emergence of new economic activity’’ (p. 93). They highlighted that entrepreneurship takes place not only in new organizations, but also in existing organizations and in cooperation of less formal nature. In later work, they also explicitly state that economic has a much wider meaning than commercial (Wiklund, Davidsson, Audretsch, & Karlsson, 2011). Therefore, what separates

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entrepreneurial opportunities from opportunities in general, is that they are associated with the emergence of new economic activity (e.g., new goods, services, and methods).1 Although Shane and Venkataraman’s (2000) discourse is framed in a capitalist paradigm and assumes legality, there is nothing, in principle, that prevents the phenomena of opportunity recognition and exploitation from taking place in other settings. For example, Webb et al. (2009), building on Shane and Venkataraman (2000), emphasize that some entrepreneurial opportunities exist outside of the frame of legality and legitimacy. Webb et al. (2009) distinguish between two types of institutions—formal (laws and regulations) and informal (norms, values, and beliefs). In their terminology, formal institutions determine legality and informal institutions determine legitimacy. Although most people have norms that roughly correspond to the legal framework, in some respects norms, beliefs, and values of large groups in society deviate from laws and regulations. For example, using undocumented labor and sharing copyrighted files over the Internet are examples of activities that are illegal (in most countries), but nevertheless deemed legitimate by large parts of the population. Consequently, some entrepreneurial opportunities may exist and may be pursued in what Webb et al. (2009) refer to as the informal economy. The informal economy is the part of the economy that is illegal but considered legitimate by a large portion of the population. The renegade entrepreneurs operate outside of both formal and informal institutions. Although Webb et al. (2009) do not give a name to the type of economy that is legal but considered illegitimate by large parts of the population, activities falling into this category are clearly conceivable. For example, prostitution is legal in many countries, but is still considered illegitimate by large parts of the population. We term this category offensive entrepreneurship. The separation between the formal and informal types of entrepreneurship is likewise found within the corporate entrepreneurship literature (Zahra, 1991). Corporate entrepreneurship denotes entrepreneurial processes within already established firms (Sharma & Chrisman, 1999). Within this literature it is emphasized that entrepreneurial initiatives often originate from bottom-up processes (cf. Burgelman, 1983; Burgelman & Grove, 2007; Kuratko & Goldsby, 2004). At times these bottom-up ventures are informal, that is, they are not sanctioned formally by the organization (Zahra, 1991). In promoting their ventures, corporate entrepreneurs often have to negotiate and create coalitions in its favor. In the seminal terminology developed by Hirschman (1970) they have to voice. At times voicing may go so far as to defy top management directives. For example, the development

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of the laptop by Toshiba was vetoed twice by the headquarters and consequently driven underground and developed by engineers officially working in another project (Abetti, 2004). In face of too harsh resistance, corporate entrepreneurs may opt to cease pursuing the venture, which corresponds to loyalty in Hirschman’s (1970) terminology. However, the entrepreneur may also opt to leave their organization and start their own firm, an action that Hirschman (1970) refers to as exit. As illustrated in Table 1, entrepreneurs can break norms or laws (or both) in their pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities. In other words, entrepreneurial action (i.e., pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities) is only partly constrained by institutions (Webb et al., 2009). In addition, the strategies employed by entrepreneurs to respond to institutional pressures may influence the very institutional framework in which they find themselves and their organizations (Oliver, 1991). Thus, some scholars use the term institutional entrepreneurship in reference to entrepreneurial actions that reshape our institutional frameworks (cf. Aldrich, 2010, 2011). Conspicuous firms like Ford, IKEA, and McDonalds have reshaped not only peoples’ habits but also their view of reality (Johannisson, 2002). However, these processes are not predictable. As humans are myopic to the impact of their ventures in the market place (Lundmark & Westelius, forthcoming), they are even more so with regards to their impact on institutions (Aldrich, 2010, 2011). Of course, this has neither stopped people from starting firms, nor from trying to influence institutions. In other words, despite being unable to control and foresee the outcome of their actions, entrepreneurs start ventures, which inevitably involve uncertainty (Knight, 2002), and great variance in outcomes (Shane, 2008). As entrepreneurs strive to introduce new products, services, methods, or to reach new groups with existing ones, they often find themselves in conflict with existing norms and rules. These conflicts

Table 1.

Typology of Entrepreneurship Based on Institutional Trespassing. Legality Legal

Illegal

Legitimacy Legitimate

Formal entrepreneurship

Informal entrepreneurship

Illegitimate

Offensive entrepreneurship

Renegade Entrepreneurship

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sometimes stifle entrepreneurial ventures, at other times redirect entrepreneurial effort (cf. Baumol, 1990) and sometimes lead to the emergence of new institutions such as norms, rules, and laws.

MISBEHAVIOR AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS The concepts incorporated under the large umbrella of misbehavior include deviance, resistance, antisocial behavior, social loafing, dysfunctional behavior, aggression, violence, counterproductive behavior, sexual harassment, delinquency, vice, retaliation, and revenge (Collinson & Ackroyd, 2006; Sagie, Stashevsky, & Koslowsky, 2003; Shamsudin, 2006; Ackroyd, 2012). While most of these concepts have negative connotations, recent research emphasizes that misbehavior in the form of rule and norm breaking can lead to positive outcomes (Appelbaum, Iaconi, & Matousek, 2007). For example, Galperin (2003) includes some innovative and entrepreneurial behavior in the concept of workplace deviance. With such a wide variety of possible behaviors, definitions of misbehavior vary substantially between authors. For example, Ackroyd and Thompson (1999, p. 2) include ‘‘anything you do at work you are not supposed to do.’’ Others focus specifically on acts that are intended to harm, or that have negative consequences (for reviews see Collinson & Ackroyd, 2006; Shamsudin, 2006; and Richards, 2008). This chapter adopts a definition of misbehavior that is centered on the institutional framework in the focal context. This definition is based on the emerging literature that emphasizes the deviant nature of misbehavior. In this literature, misbehavior is seen as the conscious breaking of institutional constraints such as norms and rules. For example, Collinson and Ackroyd (2006, p. 306) define misbehavior as ‘‘self-conscious rule-breaking’’; Vardi and Wiener (1996, p. 151) define it as ‘‘any intentional action by members of organizations that violates core organizational and/or societal norms’’; Robinson and Bennett (1995, p. 556) specifically focus on workplace deviance, which they define as: ‘‘voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in so doing threatens the well-being of an organization, its members, or both,’’ which has been boiled down to ‘‘voluntary behavior that violates organizational norms’’ by Galperin (2003, p. 155). In all these definitions, norms are defining what is, and what is not, misbehavior or deviance. Furthermore, the labels, misbehavior and

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deviance, refer to strikingly similar phenomena, and there is as much similarity between different definitions of misbehavior as there is between definitions of misbehavior and deviance. Therefore, we use the terms interchangeably. In an attempt to subdivide the concept of deviance, Galperin (2003) distinguishes between constructive and destructive types. She used Robinson and Bennett’s (1995) definition to denote destructive deviance, which is contrasted with constructive deviance, which in turn is defined as ‘‘voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in so doing contributes to the well-being of an organization, its members, or both’’ (p. 158). Consequently, in Galperin’s (2003) typology, the outcomes of behaviors are also considered. However, the consequences of many types of behavior are not known prior to the behavior itself. Consequently, the distinction between constructive and destructive deviance can only be made post hoc or on a speculative basis. What makes this even more troublesome is that the types of behavior Galperin (2003) includes in the category constructive deviance, include entrepreneurial and innovative behavior. For these types of behavior, the consequences are particularly difficult to predict and many entrepreneurial ventures have negative consequences (Davidsson & Wiklund, 2001; Lundmark & Westelius, forthcoming). Therefore, trying to separate constructive and destructive deviance, based on the outcomes of the behavior, renders the distinction meaningless but for speculation or hindsight evaluations. Others have tried to separate desirable and undesirable deviance on the intentions of the deviant (e.g., Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2004). Admittedly, intentions often precede behavior and are frequently used by people to judge the appropriateness of behavior. Nevertheless, intentions are often disguised by people and for entrepreneurial behavior (which is this chapter’s focus), the intentions of the entrepreneurs are not sufficient to evaluate its desirability as the outcomes of even well intended ventures are uncertain (Knight, 2002; Lundmark & Westelius, forthcoming; Shane, 2008). Another categorization is made by Vardi and Wiener (1996), who separate norms into two kinds—societal and organizational. In addition, as described previously, Webb et al. (2009) distinguish between informal institutions (norms, values, and beliefs) and formal institutions (laws and regulations). Similarly, but in relation to organizations rather than society at large, Morrison (2006) distinguishes between explicit organizational rules and informal organizational norms. Combining these categorizations produces four possible institutional constraints to break for a potential misbehaver: (1) societal laws and regulations (Laws); (2) societal norms,

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values and beliefs (Societal norms); (3) organizational formal rules (Rules); and (4) organizational norms, values, and beliefs (Organizational norms). This categorization is admittedly based on fuzzy concepts, as laws and rules are sometimes ambiguous and norms can vary between subgroups in organizations and in society, and over time. Therefore, the distinctions presented in Table 2 constitute simplifications in order to be parsimonious.2 If one or more of the constraints in Table 2 are broken, the act is misbehavior (from some perspective). If none of the constraints are broken, the act is not misbehavior. Defined this way, our typology excludes intentions, which are central in much of the previous literature. For example, Vardi and Wiener (1996) only include intentional actions in their definition. However, it is unclear whether the intentionality regards breaking the norms or only the intended outcome (i.e., to benefit self, to benefit the organization, or to inflict damage). Robinson and Bennett (1996, p. 556) use the term voluntary instead of intentional: ‘‘Employee deviance is voluntary in that employees either lack the motivation to conform to normative expectations of the social context or become motivated to violate those expectations.’’ Drawing on both Robinson and Bennett (1996) and Vardi and Wiener (1996), Galperin (2003) uses the terms purposeful and intentional in order to include voluntary acts and exclude accidental acts. Consequently, little distinction is made between the terms intentional, purposeful, and voluntary. We find the inclusion of these concepts (i.e., intentionality, purposefulness, and voluntariness) into the definition of deviance or misbehavior problematic for two reasons. First, although purposeful and intentional could be used synonymously, they are both different from voluntariness. For example, an employee can be forced to break rules. This kind of rule breaking is intentional but not voluntary. Conversely, an act can be carried out voluntarily, without intention to break rules, norms or laws, but still do

Table 2. Institutions Defining Misbehavior. Type of Institution Formal

Informal

Level Societal

Laws

Societal norms

Organizational

Rules

Organizational norms

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so. Second, and more importantly, norms and rules often incorporate intentionality and voluntariness. An honest mistake is normally not considered as a breach of norms or laws. However, in some cases neglect could imply culpability both in the eyes of colleagues and the law. Put differently, an act breaks the law when the judicial system rules it so, and norms are broken when people upholding those norms consider it to do so; in both these cases, intentions and voluntariness are normally considered by the relevant institution. Therefore, we see no need to incorporate intentionality and voluntariness in the definition of misbehavior, as norms, rules and laws already incorporate these aspects. Inspired by the distinction made by Reeve (1982), who separated intention (inside perspective) from responsibility (outside perspective), our definition takes the outside perspective, which in this case is the perspective of the relevant institutions. It is thus not the actor’s intentions or active choice that defines whether an act is misbehavior; it is how the act would be assessed by the relevant institution if the act were noted. This general framework (summarized in Table 2) allows for different types of misbehavior depending on which institutions are trespassed against. Separating the kind of institutions people can trespass against also removes the blind spot created by a monolithic view of institutions. For example, whereas Robinson and Bennett (1995) have argued that dumping toxic waste in a river should not be considered misbehavior if the organizational norms encourage such behavior, the framework suggested in this chapter captures both the unlawfulness and societal illegitimacy of such behavior. In other words, this chapter’s framework captures potential inconsistencies in the institutional frameworks in which people exist. In addition to misalignment of societal and organizational institutions, there may also be discrepancies between formal and informal institutions within the same level of analysis (i.e., organizational or societal). Webb et al. (2009) highlight the discrepancy between how large parts of the population and people in some countries view sharing of copyrighted files. Furthermore, within organizations, the formal and the informal institutions may be contradictory. Returning to toxic waste—it is unlikely today that the formal rules of any organization would condone dumping, although informally norms may encourage it. In such cases, employees find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Regardless of their actions, they will misbehave from some perspective. In fact, this discrepancy may be used as a buffer for managers, who, in case of external exposure, can blame the particular employees who got caught.

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LINKS BETWEEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND MISBEHAVIOR According to the definitions provided above, entrepreneurship is misbehavior if it involves trespassing against organizational or societal formal or informal institutions. Our definition of entrepreneurship makes the distinction between entrepreneurial action and non-entrepreneurial action possible. Entrepreneurial actions are associated with pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities, which in turn are associated with the emergence of new economic activity. Thus, seizing the opportunity to steal cash or some products from the organization is not entrepreneurship, whereas seizing the opportunity to produce a new type of product or finding a new use for old products is. Stealing cash from the organization would fit neatly under the wide misbehavior umbrella, whereas a new use for old products could be misbehavior, but need not be necessarily. For example, reusing pace makers from dead people would not be in accordance with US institutions if the reuse takes place in the United States (cf. Kantharia et al., 2011; Ramqvist, 2011) and would therefore constitute both misbehavior and entrepreneurship. Recycling plastic bottles to produce fleece fabric, on the other hand, would be entrepreneurship but not be misbehavior as it would be in accordance with both formal and informal institutions. Therefore, according to the definitions discussed in this chapter, there is a conceptual overlap between misbehavior and entrepreneurship as some entrepreneurial ventures break rules and norms and therefore qualify also as misbehavior. In addition to the discussed conceptual overlap between entrepreneurship and misbehavior, there is a range of potential empirical commonalities between the two phenomena. Such commonalities can stem from organizational factors that enable both entrepreneurship and misbehavior. For example, autonomy is positively related to entrepreneurial behavior (Lumpkin, Cogliser, & Schneider, 2009; Lumpkin & Dess, 1996), but it has also been found to be positively related to misbehavior (Vardi & Weitz, 2003). Consequently, attempts at supporting entrepreneurial behavior can unintentionally enable misbehavior. Another source of overlap may be common characteristics of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. For example, Wright and Zahra (2011) portray entrepreneurs as rule breakers; Kets de Vries (1985) claims that entrepreneurs are often suspicious of authority; Johannisson (1987) stresses that entrepreneurs frequently assume the role of an anarchist in relation to the existing institutional framework; and Kramer, Cesinger, Schwarzinger, and Gelle´ri (2011) find that narcissism

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and psychopathy are positively related to entrepreneurial intentions. Furthermore, Shane (2008) draws upon a substantial body of research when he claims that many entrepreneurs are uninterested in working for others. However, successful business start-ups regularly employ people and consequently owner–managers often end up with substantial power over the firm’s employees. This power can corrupt and in doing so promote both deviant and harmful acts by the entrepreneur (Osborne, 1991). In order to exemplify how entrepreneurship can clash with existing norms and rules and how these clashes are viewed by entrepreneurs, managers, and society, we draw on some noticeable cases of entrepreneurship. These examples are all prominent and large-scale ventures that have been represented as controversial. They range from rather mild organizational misbehavior, via examples involving both legal and social complications, to those that members of the general public have branded outrageous misbehavior. These examples are chosen because they are conspicuous and are therefore not necessarily representative for entrepreneurship and misbehavior in general.

Defending the Project Against the Project Review Procedures The ulcer drug – Losec – is the most successful product developed by the pharmaceutical group Astra. From its introduction in 1988 until the expiry of the patents, Astra had the income from Losec as a mainstay. Still, while now competing with generic drugs, the worldwide sales in 2010 amounted to almost $1 billion (AstraZeneca, 2011, p. 57). However, Losec was not developed as a consequence of corporate top management strategy nor even a continuously accepted development effort. In fact, it was developed in defiance of corporate management research portfolio norms, and the development project was saved from premature termination five times between 1966 and 1984 (Eliasson & Eliasson, 1997). Repeatedly, according to the corporate project assessment criteria, the project development and test results qualified it for termination, and top corporate management moved to enforce the norms. However, Ivan O¨stholm, head of the research team at the Astra division Ha¨ssle, championed the project in the face of opposition from top management. In order to obtain the needed funds for the continuation of the project, he collaborated with another pharmaceutical company, Abbot. In addition, he applied for governmental funding on other occasions when corporate management did not supply the funds needed. The last challenge, in 1984, when test results indicated that the drug

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was carcinogenic, should have resulted in project termination. The project team nevertheless persisted in challenging and reinterpreting the test result, eventually showing that the carcinogenic indication was false. Four years later, Losec was successfully launched. In terms of legality and legitimacy in the eyes of the general public, this is uncontroversial. In the terminology of Table 1, it is a clear example of formal entrepreneurship. The behavior of the project champion, O¨stholm, would typically be viewed as laudable. In that assessment, the outcome plays a large role; the evaluation would probably have been different if the project had failed, and especially if the indications of carcinogenic traits had held up to subsequent tests. It is possible that a manager, who promotes his own project not only against top management, but also against carcinogenic indications, would have been classified as practicing offensive entrepreneurship. Given the highly successful outcome, O¨stholm and others defending the project and guiding it through the organizational maze did not break any laws or societal norms (cf. Table 2). However, in terms of organizational norms, positing that top management should be the ones to prioritize the research project portfolio, and that assessment routines should be adhered to, the nonconformity and unswerving belief in the project exhibited by O¨stholm defied these norms. Therefore, his behavior could be classified as resistance (see Ackroyd, 2012). Nevertheless, this behavior certainly was entrepreneurial, putting considerable company resources at risk, treading paths where the outcome was genuinely uncertain—and the potential rewards large. Again, what makes the project champion in this case an entrepreneurial hero, rather than a resisting or even misbehaving middle manager, is the ultimate success of the project. The later into the project, the higher the probability that project failure would have cost him his position.

Innovating Social Networking to Find a Successful and Legal Solution Like most other entrepreneurial ventures, the idea behind the internationally renowned social networking site Facebook developed during an extended period of time including experimentation and interaction with many people (cf. Klofsten, 2005).3 Some early experimentation started with Zuckerberg obtaining photos of female Harvard students from student Houses’ online archives and creating the website Facemash, where users could rate the relative attractiveness of the students based on their photos being presented two at a time. Zuckerberg did not have permission from either those

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photographed or from the organizations that stored the files online. The site quickly became so popular that the traffic crashed parts of Harvard’s network. Also, representatives of Harvard female student associations sharply criticized the site. The entrepreneurial action is consequently based on illegal use of photos (violating copyright and violating individual privacy) and for purposes deemed unethical by the Harvard administration and by a number of female students. Zuckerberg was called before the Harvard Administrative Board to face charges (Kaplan, 2003). The venture Facemash could thus qualify for the label renegade entrepreneurship in the terms of Table 1, and it violated all four types of institutions in Table 2. However, the view of violation of social norms is not universal. The large amount of users at Harvard obviously did not see the system as violating their norms sufficiently to refrain from using it. The actual traffic that crashed the servers was enabled by Zuckerberg, but created by large numbers of his fellow students. Another experimental step was to create a social study tool used by students in an art history class to share notes relating to 500 depicted works of art in preparation for the final exam. The tool was successful, students became unusually well acquainted with the art covered in the course, and no one appears to have objected to the venture, although it probably involved copyright infringement concerning the pictures that were posted. Although strictly speaking illegal, those who came in contact with the application probably viewed it as legitimate and did not think of it as illegal. In terms of Table 1, this activity qualifies as an example of formal rather than informal entrepreneurship. The organizational setting would tend to stress the desired positive qualities of student collaboration and collegial knowledge-sharing while studying and preparing for examinations, relegating copyright concerns into the background. Akin to the Astra case, the success of the venture (in this case, student learning) tends to skew the assessment toward laudable entrepreneurship rather than entrepreneurship as misbehavior, although the reproduction of pictures in the social study tool violates copyright laws. The final, and by now internationally renowned entrepreneurial step, was taken the following year. The creation of the facebook,4 a networking site open to Harvard students, built on users uploading their own material to collectively create an all-Harvard facebook with social networking functionality, thus not dependent on that Zuckerberg should obtain and post pictures of others. Unlike the study tool and Facemash, the facebook would thus neither seem to breach legal nor social institutions.

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Zuckerberg was not an inventor of the concept social networking media. Perhaps he was not even the originator of the idea to build a tool that capitalizes on the networking desires within an existing high-status group, like Harvard students. But he was an entrepreneur, acting to capture the potential of such a tool; he wrote the code and launched the tool. However, fellow students claimed that the idea was theirs. The twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss contracted Zuckerberg (orally) to develop the code for their social networking site for Harvard students, Harvard Connection. Zuckerberg did not fulfill the contract, but instead developed the facebook on his own. This eventually led to a lawsuit, a countersuit, and a settlement where Facebook agreed to pay $65 million. This seems to strongly indicate that it was indeed a case of misbehavior – at least informal, if not renegade, entrepreneurship in terms of Table 1. But the size of the settlement is perhaps a less valid indicator of severe misbehavior. As one Harvard Law School professor commented: [The notable problem of the lawsuit is t]he total and absolute absurdity of the world where the engines of a federal lawsuit get cranked up to adjudicate the hurt feelings (because ‘‘our idea was stolen!’’) of entitled Harvard undergraduates y Did Zuckerberg breach his contract? Maybe, for which the damages are more like $650, not $65 million. Did he steal a trade secret? Absolutely not. Did he steal any other ‘‘property’’? Absolutely not—the code for Facebook was his, and the ‘‘idea’’ of a social network is not a patent. It wasn’t justice that gave the twins $65 million; it was the fear of a random and inefficient system of law. That system is a tax on innovation and creativity. That tax is the real villain here, not the innovator it burdened. (Lessig, 2010)

This is strong criticism of the norms of a legal system, posed by someone well acquainted with that system. In Lessig’s view, the alleged misbehavior of the entrepreneur (Zuckerberg) is a minor one: the enterprising people filing the lawsuit against Facebook used the norms and rules of a flawed legal system to extort unreasonable compensation. Here, playing within the laws and organizational norms of the legal system is at odds with social norms of ‘‘fair’’ compensation and organizational norms within the fledgling enterprise later to be known as Facebook. Zuckerberg exited from the organization led by ‘‘the twins,’’ possibly in breach of his contract with them, to devote his energy to his own entrepreneurial venture. Lessig suggests that it would be more appropriate to view the twins as the misbehaving entrepreneurs, using the threats of a flawed legal system to tax a more successful entrepreneurial colleague, thus violating the norms of fairness held by many in the US society. Zuckerberg’s entrepreneurial venture was not, according to Lessig, in itself a case of misbehavior.

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Subsequently, Facebook was rolled out to other prestigious universities, and eventually to the general public. It has now achieved success at a level where it starts to become viewed as misbehavior by creating societal norms that compromise other, existing, societal norms. Facebook makes it easy to display and share private thoughts, ideas, accounts of events, and pictures. Indeed, its success is based on the encouragement of such sharing to an ever greater extent. This has started to create concerns regarding the threat to integrity that this Facebook-facilitated and -encouraged norm of divulging private information poses to the norm-adopting user. According to the assessment of a Wall Street journalist (drawing upon American Customer Satisfaction Index scores connected with integrity concerns), Facebook is now one of the 10 most hated American companies (Kederstedt, 2012). Among people sharing these views, the managers of Facebook are now engaging in offensive entrepreneurship, in terms of the Table 1 classification.

Innovating the Sharing of Digitized Material in the Legal Borderlands Like with the creation of Facebook, the third case relates to an Internetbased entrepreneur engaging in behavior that could be considered either laudable or criminal. The high-profile site The Pirate Bay is one of the world’s largest sites facilitating file-sharing and, according to the web information company Alexa’s traffic ranking, the 75th most accessed website in the world (Alexa, 2012). Unlike our other examples, it was intended to be controversial, as an active part of the anti-copyright movement. It is an Internet site upon which the general public can post and follow links, called Torrent files or, more recently, Magnet links, which direct users to chunks of another file, potentially allowing them to download it. This second file may be copyrighted, making the site a potential facilitator of copyright infringement. Because the site does not itself contain copyrighted material, it is likely that it was legal when it was first founded. However, after a change in the law, a Swedish court deemed the founders to be guilty of facilitating copyright infringement, a sentence they have appealed. The trial generated much public interest and debate. Some have claimed that its founders were great entrepreneurs who have instigated Schumpeterian creative destruction (Lewan, 2009). Others have viewed them as common criminals (Dagens Nyheter, 2009). The case illustrates that illegality as a criterion for misbehavior implies that the same phenomena can be categorized differently at different points

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in time. The Pirate Bay was an example of legal entrepreneurship when it first started, but ceased to be legal after a change in the law and the current court rulings. If the appeals court upholds its founders’ appeal, however, they would once again become legal entrepreneurs. If this leads to the law being changed, it would be reasonable to maintain that the operation should not have been considered to be criminal in the first place, resulting in them having been engaging in legal entrepreneurship all along. From a legal perspective, a particular entrepreneurial venture could thus sometimes be considered as misbehavior and sometimes not, depending on the current law and the court rulings, which in the case of The Pirate Bay are unclear in lack of a precedent. Legitimacy is another matter. The entrepreneurs knew that they were engaging in controversial activity when they set up a site to facilitate filesharing. Even though the torrent technology employed by The Pirate Bay could be considered legal, the general public and representatives of national and international organizations held widely differing views regarding the legitimacy of the file-sharing that users engaged in, facilitated by the site. Some would agree with The Pirate Bay founders that the site was engaging in legitimate activity, and that its provocation of Internet-averse contentindustry actors was just and laudable. Others would side with copyrightdefending actors, maintaining that the entrepreneurs were engaging in illegitimate activity and that this was a clear case of what Table 1 terms offensive entrepreneurship. Interestingly, some people engage in file-sharing of copyrighted material as it benefits them despite considering it wrong in principle. Others refrain from doing it as it is illegal, although they think that in principle it should be legal. A point that appears to be important to the assessment of legitimacy is whether or not the entrepreneurs earned considerable amounts of money on the operations or not. An idealistic provocation of the copyright-based industry was considered far more legitimate than a for-profit business venture facilitating both legal and illegal file-sharing. As in the previous cases, the assessment of whether a certain entrepreneurial act is misbehavior is not determined solely by the act itself or by the intention of the actor, but rather through a complex interplay between rules and norms, outcomes, and intentions as viewed by those assessing the entrepreneurial act. Different people can come to different conclusions, and an individual may reach different conclusions at different points in time. Ultimately the media attention about The Pirate Bay and the trial helped direct the general public’s attention to copyright and privacy issues to such an extent that the Pirate Party managed to secure seats in the European Parliament based on a

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platform of reforming copyright and patent legislation and strengthening the citizens’ right to privacy.

Monetizing Healthcare Too Far Like The Pirate Bay, our final example is played out in an area where public opinion is divided. However, unlike the entrepreneurs in The Pirate Bay case, the entrepreneurs behind the for-profit healthcare provider Capio, did not wish to provoke opponents or upset feelings. The Capio Group, with annual sales of approximately 1,100 million EUR, comprises about 60 operating units with some 9,000 employees and operates in Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In Sweden, the firm has been one of the front runners in establishing for-profit care and healthcare when politicians started to allow such ventures to expand. Capio’s official ambition is to be the healthcare provider that best fulfills the demands imposed by patients, public healthcare, companies, and organizations. In order to fulfill that ambition, they claim to focus on high-quality and effective care services and place the individual patient’s needs and expectations in the center. Furthermore, they express their intention regarding entrepreneurial development within the company as follows: Instead of traditional competition, Capio has chosen to collaborate with public healthcare. In close co-operation with principals, Capio develops methods, models and concepts with the aim of creating new opportunities for co-workers to pursue renewal work. (Capio, 2012)

Instead of conveying these intentions through their actions, Capio has recently made headlines through cases where it has focused to the extreme on the monetary results, compromising care goals to increase profitability, to such an extent that it appears that contract conditions have been violated (Svenska Dagbladet, 2011a). Such short-term commercial optimization compromises the espoused quality norms of professional medical staff as well as of clients and family. The mass media has presented individual cases of neglect or seemingly outrageous attention to monetary consequences ahead of well-being and caring. This have resulted in strong reactions from the general public as well as from politicians. In addition, Capio’s managers have used transfer pricing to move money between countries in order to reduce taxation,5 not obviously in violation of laws, but certainly compromising social norms in societies where healthcare is not generally viewed as a legitimate area for profit-seeking operation.

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Striving to be entrepreneurial at corporate and local levels, actors within the group have thus managed to cross borders that at least in the eyes of people outside the organization appear as misbehavior (Svenska Dagbladet, 2011b). The misbehavior may presently be limited to breaching societal norms rather than laws, but the case has also sparked discussions about legislation against for-profit healthcare and against the type of tax-reducing measures Capio employed. Thus, what today is a case of offensive entrepreneurship in the terms of Table 1 may in the future become renegade entrepreneurship. Company officials have attempted to sooth the public and politicians by promising to improve its quality of service and by discontinuing the export of profits. Nevertheless, some county councils and municipalities have terminated their contracts with the company.

DISCUSSION From a purely analytical perspective, most entrepreneurships could be viewed as misbehavior, if we hold that entrepreneurship involves the breaking of habits, norms, or rules (Johannisson, 2002; Weiskopf & Steyaert, 2009; Wright & Zahra, 2011) and that the ventures expose the organization hosting them to risk because of their uncertain outcomes (Aldrich & Auster, 1986; Aldrich, & Ruef, 2006; Knight, 2002; Lundmark & Westelius, forthcoming). As illustrated by the examples in the preceding section, most ventures of any importance have proponents and opponents, and assessments of the character of the entrepreneurial ventures tend to differ between people and over time. For example, O¨stholm’s persistence in pursuing the development of Losec in the face of corporate top management opposition and in violation of the standard evaluation rules in the pharmaceutical group breached corporate institutions. However, in retrospect, when O¨stholm’s faith in the research path and the subsequent drug turned out to be warranted, success silenced concerns, and few would any longer view it as a case of misbehavior, even if they did before the success became evident. Similarly, Zuckerberg’s early defiance of norms appears more forgivable given the subsequent success of Facebook. Had he quenched his entrepreneurial urge after Facemash, those who had learned about his actions would probably have considered them as offensive or even renegade entrepreneurship. However, the success of Facebook has also contributed to widespread negative attitudes toward it, particularly in relation to the largescale disclosure of private details about people. Some tend to look to the

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benefits, viewing it as a positive case of formal entrepreneurship. Others, paying more attention to actual and potential drawbacks, view it as offensive entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurs creating and running The Pirate Bay intentionally challenged laws and pro-copyright norms, championing free-content norms pervasive in parts of society. By launching themselves into a contested area, it was obvious that there would be people condoning and people condemning their venture. This case illustrates how public opinion was influenced by the relationship between lawmaking, the case, and people’s own behavior and positions. Swedes voted the Pirate Party into the European parliament, partly in protest against the changes in the law that strengthened the position of copyright holders and decreased the individual’s right to privacy. Large portions of the general public viewed actions of The Pirate Bay entrepreneurs as legitimate, even if they would be judged unlawful. Simultaneously, others viewed it as misbehavior from both legal and legitimacy perspectives. The Capio case, finally, illustrates how the actions of individual entrepreneurs can influence the proponents of general principles. In Sweden, there has been a political divide between those proposing that for-profit operation can help vitalize the healthcare sector and make it more efficient, and those who maintain that it is unethical to make money from peoples’ need for care and treatment.6 When cases of maltreatment could be tied to organizational norms, guidelines, and profit-seeking behavior in Capio, it not only led to the view of those specific acts as malpractice, but also to a general vilification of the Capio group as offensive entrepreneurs. Furthermore, it increased sentiments against for-profit care. As illustrated by these examples, rather than being objective and static, the assessment of entrepreneurship as misbehavior depends on the perspective of the assessor, which in turn can change over time and both influence and be influenced by laws and societal norms. The judgment of whether entrepreneurship is misbehavior rests on people’s emotional and moral assessment of the venture. This judgment is influenced, but not determined, by the (assumed) intentions of the entrepreneurs and/or the noted consequences, and relations to other acts. An important risk in this regard is that successful ventures end up in the entrepreneurship literature and unsuccessful ones in the misbehavior literature. The Losec case is not unique. In fact, the entrepreneurship literature highlights the informal nature of many entrepreneurial ventures in existing organizations (Burgelman, 1983; Burgelman & Grove, 2007; Kuratko & Goldsby, 2004; Zahra, 1991). However, the misbehavior

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literature tends to omit successful ventures as post hoc evaluations tend to be skewed by the outcomes. For example, the development of the laptop computer by Toshiba, mentioned earlier (cf. Abetti, 2004), was a clear example of both misbehavior and entrepreneurship. However, it ends up in the entrepreneurship literature and not in the misbehavior literature. Another issue in the assessment of misbehavior is that of organizational versus societal norms. In a startup, norms will be built around the entrepreneur’s idea(l)s, and are thus highly unlikely to clash with the entrepreneurial venture. For entrepreneurs acting in existing firms, on the other hand, there will be established norms, rules, and routines that, at least to some extent, can be expected to be compromised by the entrepreneurial venture. Indeed, if no such clashes occurred, the venture would hardly qualify as entrepreneurial. The entrepreneurial venture might or might not clash with the societal norms surrounding the organization. The Losec venture came to conflict with some corporate norms and rules, but those clashes would hardly have mattered sufficiently to people outside the organization to make them brand O¨stholms’s conduct as misbehavior. The mistreatment in Capio, on the other hand, resonated with internal norms favoring economic efficiency while clashing with norms stemming from the caretaking and medical professions. Unlike in the Astra case, people outside Capio tended to care and pass judgment on the actions and the ethos of Capio as depicted by the maltreatment cases. Zuckerberg’s entrepreneurship, finally, did not initially clash with his core organization, which originally comprised only himself and some friends. However, his organization was initially not just, or even primarily, interacting with and exposed to the general public, it acted within the larger organization, Harvard, of which he, as a student, was a member, and of which his original target users or ‘‘customers’’ were members. In relation to that organization, his Facemash initiative compromised norms and rules, and the moral standards of influential organizational members and some, but not all, fellow students. The collaborative study tool matched the organizational norms to a far greater degree, and the facebook did not clash in any conspicuous way with the Harvard norms or rules. However, the start-up of the Winklevoss twins that contracted Zuckerberg to develop code for their social network site, viewed Zuckerberg’s actions not only as a failure to deliver to them, but also as theft of their business idea. The twins’ view was that Zuckerberg’s entrepreneurship was a clear case of misconduct—both in relation to Harvard honesty norms and in relation to their work contract with him. That assessment was contested not just by Zuckerberg, but, regarding the severity of the debated misconduct, also by,

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for example, the Harvard law professor Lessig. The question of consonance or clashes with organizational norms and rules is thus not entirely separate from that of the surrounding society, but rather a matter of degree. What constitutes the formal organization could be clear and unambiguous, but in a world more and more characterized by networks and virtual organizations, it is less obvious what constitutes the relevant organization. A related issue is that of exit, voice, and loyalty (Hirschman, 1970). In a case like the Losec project, the project champion O¨stholm clearly opted for the use of voice. He did not just accept the top management decision to close down the project, but instead searched for, and found, different means to keep the project he advocated going. This could, as discussed above, be construed as misbehavior. But say that he instead had accepted the top management decision and exited from the company to pursue his idea? Had he succeeded in developing Losec outside of the Astra group, this would probably have been viewed as misbehavior by at least some people within Astra—starting a competing business rather than staying and fighting for the idea. Likewise, the Winklevoss twins clearly saw Zuckerberg’s exit from their collaboration as misbehavior. Not surprisingly, many organizations tried hard to restrict the possibilities of employees to exit and start their own competing business. Nevertheless, recent research emphasizes that the exiting in order to start a competing firm is an important mechanism for the commercialization of new knowledge and the creation of new successful firms (Audretsch, 2007; Audretsch & Keilbach, 2005; Klepper, 2011). Therefore, misbehavior in the form of exit and start-up may be a rich source of misbehavior with positive outcomes, at least from a societal point of view.

CONCLUSION In this first attempt to explore entrepreneurship as misbehavior, this chapter has suggested that entrepreneurship is often in conflict with organizational and societal institutions, such as norms and rules. In fact, we have found that there is an overlap between the definitions of misbehavior and conceptualizations of entrepreneurship in previous literature. In addition, the chapter has found previous research, distinguishing between desirable and undesirable misbehavior based on the intentions or the outcomes of behavior, insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship as misbehavior. The reason is that for entrepreneurial ventures, the underlying intentions are often good, but the outcomes are often not (Aldrich & Auster, 1986;

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Aldrich, & Ruef, 2006; Lundmark & Westelius, forthcoming; Shane, 2008); and that making assessments of the outcomes of entrepreneurial ventures a priori is notoriously difficult (Aldrich & Auster, 1986; Aldrich & Ruef, 2006; Lundmark & Westelius, forthcoming). Assessing misbehavior based only on organizational level evaluations (Robinson & Bennett, 1995) is likewise insufficient in relation to entrepreneurship. The reason for this is that support for the venture may be needed also from actors outside of the organization. Furthermore, what constitutes the organization is not always clear. Therefore, we argue that it is necessary to broaden the view of what institutions determine whether a venture classifies as misbehavior when analyzing entrepreneurship. Doing so highlights frequent inconsistencies between various institutions’ assessments. Such inconsistencies can put employees in situations where they have to choose which institutions to trespass against. In this regard, exiting the organization to pursue the venture elsewhere is not a guarantee against being classified as misbehavior. Considering the emphasis that the entrepreneurship literature puts on the informal nature of many entrepreneurial ventures within existing organizations (Kuratko & Goldsby, 2004; Zahra, 1991) and the lack of research on misbehavior with positive consequences (Richards, 2008), the overlap between entrepreneurship and misbehavior seems to be fertile ground for future research.

NOTES 1. One can of course discuss the degree of newness required to qualify or the entity to which the newness refers, for example, new to the organization, new to the industry, new to the region, or new to the world. Such discussions are, however, outside of the scope of this chapter. 2. There are other levels of institutions such as industry and profession (Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2004). 3. Facebook currently claims to have more than 800 million active users in total and 400 million a day and 80% of the users are outside the USA. More than 7 million apps and websites are integrated with Facebook and users perform more than 20 million apps downloads per day. (Facebook statistics, accessed 25-01-2012). 4. The original name of the website was thefacebook, which was located at thefacebook.com. In 2005 the domain facebook.com was acquired for $ 200,000 (Williams, 2007). 5. A common vencap procedure is to provide expensive loans from group units on channel islands (tax havens) to countries where operations run at a profit. 6. Interestingly, the general public and the politicians seem much less concerned about Swedish pharmaceutical companies making profit than care and healthcare being operated by for-profit companies.

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MISBEHAVIOR, ITS DIMENSIONS, AND RELATIONSHIP TO COMMITMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS Gordon Brooks ABSTRACT Purpose – Both misbehavior and commitment in organizations have attracted substantial attention. This chapter reviews the misbehavior and commitment literature to investigate the implicit negative correlation between these two important organizational phenomena. Methodology/approach – A four-dimensional typology of counterproductive workplace behaviors (CWBs) is developed from the misbehavior literature, describing individual behaviors in terms of: their target(s), the vehicle for misbehavior, their social acceptability, and their quantity. The typology facilitates characterization of CWBs, and, more generally, comparisons between workplace commitment and the field of misbehavior, comprising the range of CWBs. Findings – The chapter supports the assumed negative relationship between commitment and misbehavior although the strength of the relationship varies across some of the four dimensions.

Rethinking Misbehavior and Resistance in Organizations Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations, Volume 19, 237–257 Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0742-6186/doi:10.1108/S0742-6186(2012)0000019013

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Research limitations/implications – The reliance on secondary data limits evaluation of the typology. Further research using primary data is commended. Practical implications – More insightful audits of organizational misbehavior can be produced to guide interventions. For example, CWBs that are directed at individuals, through a person’s work role, and are socially unacceptable will require different interventions to those who are directed at the organization, through extra-role behavior, and are more socially acceptable (e.g., minor thefts). Social implications – Clarifying the impact of CWBs on commitment and, hence, turnover, etc., highlights the cost of CWBs and may motivate organizations to address CWBs and, thereby, promote healthier workplaces. Originality/value of chapter – This chapter is novel in developing a more comprehensive typology of CWBs. Describing the various CWBs in a single, comprehensive framework provides additional insight into misbehavior. Keywords: Misbehavior; counterproductive behavior; withdrawal; bullying; organizational behavior

INTRODUCTION Misbehavior in organizations has been studied under various titles, including counterproductive behavior (Fox & Spector, 1999), disfunctional behavior (Griffin, O’Leary-Kelly, & Collins, 1998), organizational misbehavior (Vardi & Wiener, 1996), and workplace deviance (Robinson & Bennett, 1995, 1997), each recognizing that individuals may abuse, micromanage, bully, criticize, deceive, harass, sabotage, steal, withdraw, or perform other deleterious behaviors in organizational contexts. Misbehavior, from an organizational behavior perspective, is related to negative outcomes for the organization. Increasing commitment, on the other hand, is generally related to positive organizational outcomes. These include reduced lateness, absenteeism and turnover, increased organizational citizenship behavior, and higher productivity (Klein, Becker, & Meyer, 2009; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). Given the apparently opposite outcomes from misbehavior and commitment, it would seem reasonable to

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propose a negative correlation between commitment and misbehavior. However, a relationship between commitment, a construct, and misbehavior, a collection or category of specific, individual behaviors cannot be considered directly. Commitment can be measured with a set of scales, each producing a measure of the quantity of the variable in question. Individual misbehaviors can also be measured in this way. However, each particular CWB has its own place in the field of misbehavior, and comprehensively studying the relationship between commitment and misbehavior would currently require the individual study of a wide range of CWBs. Identifying this plethora of relationships is possible, but does little to illuminate the relationship between commitment and the field of misbehavior in general. To illustrate by way of analogy, visible light can be characterized by its color; we are all familiar with the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, etc.). These colors can also be characterized by their wavelength. A relationship between some variable and an individual color provides information at one level, whereas a relationship between that variable and wavelength provides information at a more general level that addresses all colors. This chapter seeks to develop a framework within which the many CWBs can be located, clarifying their position in the field of misbehavior, and, hence, their relationship to each other, and also enabling the examination of relationships between various factors (e.g., commitment) and the field of misbehavior rather than individual CWB. By using a four-dimensional typology of CWBs, the chapter identifies evidence of a correlation with commitment, and on this basis, concludes that commitment decreases as the social acceptability of CWB decreases. This chapter begins by considering misbehavior, specifically examining efforts to categorize CWBs or describe dimensions of CWBs. From this, a comprehensive typology is identified. Commitment is then described, and relevant literature on the relationships between individual CWBs and commitment is reviewed and examined for evidence of relationships between commitment and the higher-level CWB variables, that is, the typology dimensions: target, vehicle, social acceptability, and quantum. Finally, directions for future research are developed.

COUNTERPRODUCTIVE WORKPLACE BEHAVIORS The study of misbehavior, which has attracted increased interest since the mid-1990s, has also attracted a range of definitions. In reviewing the field,

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Shamsudin (2006) identified 10 different definitions. These included general approaches such as workplace deviance (Robinson & Bennett, 1995, 1997), organizational misbehavior (Vardi & Wiener, 1996), antisocial behavior (Giacalone & Greenberg, 1997), dysfunctional behavior (Griffin et al., 1998), and counterproductive behavior (Fox & Spector, 1999) as well as other, more specific definitions. Generally the approaches to defining what will be referred to, for the purpose of this chapter, as counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB), have common elements. The first is that these definitions do not attempt to define a construct, such as a state or attitude, which might be described in terms of valence and scale. Rather, they identify discretionary behaviors or actions as the matter of interest. Second, they usually identify the source of those behaviors to be members of an organization. Third, they identify the target(s) of the behaviors. Fourth, and finally, they identify criteria for establishing behaviors as being CWBs. Existing definitions of CWBs, then, provide means for categorizing behaviors as CWBs or not CWBs, rather than measures of the quantity or quality of CWBs, or the individual’s disposition toward CWBs. Given that a major operational utility of CWB definitions is to provide a basis for the categorization of behaviors, it is unsurprising that attempts have been made to further subdivide CWBs. Holinger and Clark (1982) identified property deviance and production deviance as two then-contemporary themes in the literature, that is, two categories of worker deviance studies. These categories provided a useful distinction in their empirical investigation of the importance of formal and informal sanctions in controlling deviant behavior. The theoretical work of O’Leary-Kelly, Griffin, and Glew (1996) focused on violence and aggression within the work context and proposed organization-motivated aggression and organization-motivated violence as separate constructs, drawing on the social psychology literature for definitions of aggression and asserting the importance of separately identifying violence. Aggression would lead to violence and occur concurrently. Baron and Neuman (1996) considered witnessed and experienced person-to-person workplace aggression, categorizing them in terms of three dichotomies: verbal versus physical, direct versus indirect, and passive versus active (Buss, 1961). Their survey results demonstrated utility for this application of Buss’ (1961) approach, suggesting that workplace aggression was more frequently verbal, direct, and passive, such as failing to return phone calls and isolating a target by withdrawing communication. Their study, however, does not address the breadth of CWBs. Other authors have also addressed the categorization of CWBs (e.g., Griffin et al., 1998; Lewicki, Poland, Minton, & Sheppard, 1997).

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Two investigations to provide empirically derived two-dimensional maps are those of Robinson and Bennett (1995) and Gruys and Sackett (2003). Robinson and Bennett (1995) first asked people from a number of organizations for examples of deviant behavior, and then asked a different group to rate them against an ideal or target behavior. The results were analyzed using multidimensional scaling. The authors suggest two dimensions, one about whether the behavior is directed at a person or at the organization, and the other is about the severity of the misbehavior. Their study embraced 45 CWBs ranging from working unnecessary overtime, through covering up mistakes to sexual harassment. Robinson and Bennett (1995) suggested that their two-dimensional model could be considered as distinct quadrants. The minor/organizational and the serious/organizational quadrants are, respectively, similar to the production deviance and property deviance of Holinger and Clark (1982). The minor/interpersonal quadrant was labeled political deviance defined as CWBs that put others at ‘‘personal or political disadvantage’’ (Robinson & Bennett, 1995, p. 566). The major/ interpersonal quadrant was labeled personal aggression, and defined as ‘‘behaving in an aggressive or hostile manner toward other individuals’’ (Robinson & Bennett, 1995, p. 566). The study by Gruys and Sackett (2003), instead of asking about similarity to a single ideal, asked which misbehaviors were likely to co-occur. Specifically, if you see one type of misbehavior, are other CWBs also likely to occur? In this multidimensional scaling study, the clusters are about what groups of behaviors you are likely to see, and how much of a stretch it is, how much of an escalation or diminution is involved, in seeing other, different behaviors. The resulting two dimensions did not include the severity of the misbehavior. The dimensions were about the target of the CWBs and their task relevance. The target dimension reflected the degree to which the CWBs were directed at an individual or an organization and reflected the person/organization dimension identified by Robinson and Bennett (1995). The task relevance dimension includes CWBs that are related to the tasks involved in the individual’s job versus CWBs that are not related to tasks performed within the context of the individual’s job. Considering both of these two-dimensional models, it can be argued that four dimensions would more properly describe CWBs. Firstly, both Robinson and Bennett (1995) and Gruys and Sackett (2003) found an interpersonal-organizational dimension, describing the target of CWB. Positioning the organization and the individual at opposite ends of a single dimension would be interpreted as CWBs being wholly directed at the relevant target at the extremes of the dimension and equally aimed at both

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targets at the midpoint. Consider, for example, a dispatcher sending a contractor to the wrong address. This disadvantages both contractor and company, wasting the contractor’s time, for which they will not be paid, and damaging the company’s reputation with the client, and with the contractor. Both contractor and company are victims of the behavior in some measure. Bowling and Gruys (2010) have taken a somewhat different view. Contrary to earlier work (Gruys & Sackett, 2003), they suggest that the two targets, the individual and the organization, are separate dimensions. In his meta-analysis of the relationship between CWB and organizational citizenship behavior, Dalal (2005) notes that citizenship behavior research predominantly uses separate scales for citizenship behavior benefitting an individual and that benefitting the organization. This approach treats behavior directed at these two targets as separate categories. Further, Dalal (2005) argues that CWBs can be addressed in the same way, using two target-based categories, citing the work of Bennett and Stamper (2001) in support. However, the Q-sort and multidimensional scaling study of Bennett and Stamper (2001) identifies a dimension pertaining to the target of behavior. Therefore, studies generally support the existence of a targetrelated dimension (Bennett & Stamper, 2001; Gruys & Sackett, 2003; Robinson & Bennett, 1995). Contracting such a dimension to two categories is an arbitrary convenience. Describing them as dimensions is not accurate, as one cannot have more or less of either of these two target entities, that is, more or less of a person or an organization. The second, task relevance, dimension (Gruys & Sackett, 2003) ranges from CWBs occurring wholly within one’s task activities, such as using time and resources appropriately or giving inappropriate directions to a subordinate, to those wholly outside one’s work activities, such as theft and property damage. This may be considered to represent the vehicle for CWB. This dimension would be operationalized in the same way as the first, with those CWBs delivered wholly through the antagonists work role at one end and those delivered wholly through extra-role behaviors at the other. In between the CWB would be delivered through both in-role and extra-role behaviors. The third dimension was identified by Robinson and Bennett, and reflected the ‘‘seriousness or harmfulness of the deviant acts’’ (1995, p. 560). This was related to respondents’ judgments about the seriousness, ethicalness, and harmfulness of the CWBs. The dimension included an employee hiding in a back room to read a newspaper at the less harmful end and stealing a customer’s possessions at the more harmful end. This dimension does not include scale, that is, the time of the working day spent

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hiding in the back room is an additional aspect. As it does not include scale, and, being identified by peoples’ opinions, it is more likely that seriousness, ethicalness, and harmfulness reflect the respondents’ judgments about the social acceptability, including criminality, of the CWBs rather than their magnitude. The fourth dimension is scale or quantity, an aspect not included in other dimensions. This dimension is distinct from the others in that it does not describe the CWB itself, but rather the amount of the CWB. As such it is necessary when describing the target’s experience of the CWB, the impact of the CWB on the target, but not necessary when discussing CWBs in a theoretical sense. There are then four distinct dimensions that can be used to characterize CWBs. The first is the interpersonal-organizational dimension identifying the target of the CWB. The second and third dimensions represent two aspects of the nature of the CWB, the vehicle for CWB (task relevance), and the social acceptability of the CWB (seriousness or harmfulness). These latter two dimensions are distinct, but not necessarily independent. Neither can they be construed to completely describe CWBs without further research. The fourth dimension, scale, is necessary to quantify specific instances of individual CWBs, rather than to describe them more generally. Bowling and Gruys (2010) advocate the examination of legality as a dimension. This may seem logical; however, it can also be considered a component of the social acceptability dimension discussed above. For example, being found guilty of not parking correctly is far more socially acceptable than being found guilty of theft or fraud. Given the broad range of behaviors that fall under the umbrella of misbehavior, it is of interest to note where the behaviors studied fall in the field, further assisting in the categorizing of CWBs. The typology discussed above enables the CWBs to be so positioned, providing additional insight into the extant research and possible directions for future research. Amalgamation of the results of the two multidimensional scaling studies would provide such data on three dimensions of CWBs. However, while Robinson and Bennett provide information on each of the specific CWBs considered (1995, pp. 562–563), Gruys and Sackett (2003) provide information about groups of CWBs. This renders direct comparisons difficult. For example, the Gruys and Sackett destruction of property category has separate items relating to the co-worker, customer, and company, spanning the breadth of the person/organization dimension (2003, p. 34). In summary, consideration of the extant literature suggests a fourdimensional conception of CWB. However, there is much still to be

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explored, with some dimensions attracting little research (Bowling & Gruys, 2010). Clarity around the dimensions of CWB, the nature of the dimensions, and their application may assist future research, allowing specific CWBs to be unambiguously located within a multidimensional construct space.

COMMITMENT IN ORGANIZATIONS Early notions of commitment were framed around concepts such as identification, socialization, and other factors, and parallels can be drawn with Fayol’s century-old notion of esprit de corps (1984). Today, commitment embraces the attachments that people may have to a range of entities, people, and constructs such as an organization, a supervisor, a work group, a goal such as project implementation or a philosophy, such as sustainability (see Klein et al., 2009 for a fuller discussion). Three conceptualizations of commitment have been fundamental in developing the field. First, Becker’s (1960) was framed around investments. A person in a job makes investments in elements of the job context. The person may invest emotionally in the friends that they make at work, they may invest their self-image in their career, position or the tasks that they perform, and they may invest financially in tangible benefits. If we then view a move to a different company as a bet, that is, an event that has a degree of uncertainty around it, then in making that bet, the person is also making side-bets about the other emotional, self-image, and financial investments. If the cost and risk associated with putting the other investments at risk outweigh the cost and risk associated with the main bet, that is, changing companies, then the person is less likely to change companies. They would be committed to their organization. The second conceptualization, that of Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulian (1974), was framed around a view that commitment was best defined in terms of an individual’s identification with and involvement in an organization. They asserted that ‘‘commitment can generally be characterised by at least three factors: (a) a strong belief in and acceptance of the organisation’s goals and values; (b) a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation; (c) a definite desire to maintain organisational membership’’ (Porter et al., 1974, p 604). While influential and regularly studied (Cohen & Gatteker, 1994; Gaertner & Nollen, 1989; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990), their conception attracted criticism. In particular, willingness to exert effort and desire to maintain membership are outcomes of commitment, hence elements of their conception relate to outcomes of commitment

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rather than commitment itself (e.g., Hom, Katerberg, & Hulin, 1979; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Reichers, 1985). The third conceptualization (Meyer & Allen, 1991, 1997) separated commitment into three constituent elements, each independent of the others and measured by its own instrument. Each component (affective, continuance, and normative commitments) is a psychological state, a mind set, that in some way, characterizes the employee’s relationship with their organization and has an impact on the employee’s decision to continue (or not) with the organization. In 2003 Cohen stated that the Meyer and Allen (1991, 1997) affective commitment scale was used in most research on commitment in the workplace. Viable alternatives to their scales are yet to be proposed. Affective commitment to the organization: ‘‘refers to the employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organisation. Employees with a strong affective commitment continue employment with the organisation because they want to do so’’ (Meyer & Allen, 1991, p. 67). Continuance commitment to the organization: is ‘‘the extent to which employees feel committed to their organisations by virtue of the costs that they feel are associated with leaving’’ (Meyer & Allen, 1984, p. 375), which they paraphrased as employees being committed because of the need to stay with the organization (Meyer & Herskovitch, 2001). Normative commitment to the organization: ‘‘reflects a feeling of obligation to continue employment. Employees with a high level of normative commitment feel that they ought to remain with the organisation’’ (Meyer & Allen, 1991, p. 67). Other popularly studied commitment forms are: career commitment Blau (1985, 1988), job involvement, and work involvement (Kanungo, 1982). Recently, Klein, Molloy, and Brinsfield (2012) have proposed a re-conceptualization of commitment. They assert that the development of commitment scholarship has held two implicit assumptions that are not useful, or, at least, no longer useful. One assumption is that all workplace bonds are commitments. The other is that commitment to the employing organization is generalizable to other targets. Consequently, they develop four types of bonds, lying along a continuum of psychological involvement. The bonds titled ‘‘commitment’’ are the third highest in involvement and are ‘‘characterised by volition, dedication and responsibility’’ (Klein et al., 2012, p. 135). The individual makes a conscious choice to care about the target and dedicate themselves to it, to whatever degree, and to accept responsibility for the target. In each of these conceptions, the defining characteristics of a commitment form are its focus or target, and its basis. A basis is a fundamental principle

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upon which commitment is founded. Various bases have been proposed, including shared values, personal involvement, identity relevance, investments, lack of alternatives, benefits, reciprocity expectations, socialization, and the psychological contract (Becker, 1992). A focus is the target of an individual’s attachment. It may be an entity, an abstract concept, behavior, or an outcome. Individuals commonly have multiple foci, which may be inside or outside the organization, or, more commonly a combination of inside and outside. A meta-analysis conducted in 2005 considered 23 different commitment forms.

COMMITMENT AND ORGANIZATIONALLY IMPORTANT OUTCOMES There is a substantial literature on the outcomes of commitment. Significant correlations between various commitment forms and outcomes, such as turnover, absenteeism, citizenship behavior, lateness, performance, and quality, are regularly reported. Reviews have been conducted by Mathieu and Zajac (1990), Tett and Meyer (1993), Brown (1996), Meyer and Allen (1997), Griffeth, Hom, and Gaertner (2000), Lee, Carswell, and Allen (2000), Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, and Topolnytsky (2002), Cohen (2003), and Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran (2005). According to this scholarship, affective commitment to the organization is most strongly correlated with these behaviors (Klein et al., 2009 and reviews cited above). Turnover has been arguably the most studied outcome related to affective commitment. This is perhaps a direct consequence of it being a focus of the pivotal work of Porter et al. (1974), and represented by specific items in the instrument developed by those authors. To illustrate, Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran’s (2005) meta-analytic study of a range of commitment forms included 748 studies of turnover intention (a cognition or attitude) and a further 200 of turnover behavior, representing 295,066 and 73,545 responses, respectively. The same authors reported a relatively more modest 424 studies of performance representing 99,250 responses. Mowday et al. (1982) argued that reduced turnover should be the strongest behavioral outcome of increased organizational commitment. However, while numerous studies have shown a significant relationship, they generally support the existence of a moderate, rather than a strong, relationship. For example, meta-analyses have consistently demonstrated significant relationships between turnover and affective commitment,

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with increasing commitment being associated with reducing turnover (e.g., Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer et al., 2002). In summary, commitment has been related to a range of organizationally important outcomes, with increasing commitment being correlated with positive organizational outcomes. For example, higher commitment is correlated with increased productivity and decreased turnover. Some of these outcomes, or aspects thereof, can be cast in the negative, as misbehavior (e.g., voluntary or discretional absenteeism), and will be considered again when the relationship between misbehavior and commitment is considered.

CWBS AND COMMITMENT The three-component model of Meyer and Allen (1991, 1997) is currently the most used instrument in commitment research, and of these three, affective commitment is the most studied. Therefore, research was sought from 1991 or later, to capture work done using the Meyer and Allen model of commitment (1991, 1997). Searches for peer-reviewed journals in electronic databases were conducted using commitment and particular CWBs as search terms to interrogate the abstracts of articles in the databases. The results were disparate. While CWBs such as bullying and harassment have significant literatures, there is minimal work on commitment and CWBs such as theft. Sexual harassment was regularly studied against commitment. Two metaanalytic studies were found. The most recent by Chan, Lam, Chow, and Cheung (2008) included 16 studies containing measures of both harassment and affective commitment. The corrected mean correlation was 0.28 both overall and for females. The correlation for males was 0.27. The slightly earlier meta-analysis of Willness, Steel, and Lee (2007) reported a correlation of 0.22. The study of Estrada and Berggren (2009) is notable in that it surveyed the population of women officers and cadets in the Swedish Armed Forces (N ¼ 424), rather than a subset. They found a correlation of 0.18. Another recent study (Kath, Swody, Magley, & Gallus, 2009) included the effect of work-group climate. They found that affective commitment and sexual harassment were correlated, with a coefficient of 0.24 for females and 0.17 for males. Further, the more the work-group environment did not support harassment, the greater the impact on females. It can be concluded that the literature consistently demonstrates a negative impact on affective commitment from this CWB.

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Bullying can refer to a range of behaviors. Einarson describes bullying as ‘‘situations where a person repeatedly and over a period of time is exposed to negative acts (i.e., constant abuse, offensive remarks or teasing, ridicule or social exclusion) on the part of co-workers, supervisors or subordinates, and where the person confronted has difficulties defending himself/herself against this mistreatment’’ (2000, pp. 383–384). Studies of bullying have included a wider range of CWBs. Mathisen, Einarsen, and Mykletun (2008) examined bullying in restaurants in Norway. They specifically examined the proposition that bullying is a natural and beneficial component of this industry that is important for creativity. The Negative Act Questionnaire (Einarsen & Raknes, 1997; Hoel, Cooper, & Faragher, 2001) results were negatively correlated with both commitment (r ¼ 0.32) and creative behavior (r ¼ 0.27). Yildirim (2009), examining the bullying of nurses in Turkey, found that bullying was negatively correlated with commitment to work (r ¼ 0.44). McCormack, Casimir, Djurkovic, and Yang’s (2009) study of schoolteachers in China found bullying to be negatively correlated with affective commitment (r ¼ 0.39) (Meyer & Allen, 1991). A comprehensive New Zealand study (O’Driscoll et al., 2011) considered a sample of 1,700 employees in 36 organizations across four industries: education, health, hospitality, and travel. They reported a correlation between the Negative Act Questionnaire (Einarsen & Raknes, 1997; Hoel et al., 2001) and affective commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991) of r ¼ 0.36. Fay and Kline (2012) considered commitment and exclusion in the context of telecommuting. Telecommuters were considered to be ‘‘employees performing at least part of their responsibilities remotely, outside their central organisation’s physical boundaries, using technology to interact’’ (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007; Thatcher & Zhu, 2006). While telecommuting was, in general, associated with higher job satisfaction and lower levels of work–family conflict and turnover intention (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007), high levels of telecommuting have been linked to increased work–family conflict, negative co-worker relationships, and feelings of isolation (Golden, Veiga, & Dino, 2008). In this virtual work context, examining telecommuters who worked remotely at least three days per week, Fay and Kline (2012) found that the level of exclusion messages was negatively correlated with affective commitment to the organization. Given these findings, one can surmise, prima facie (at first sight), that there is a strong negative relationship between bullying and commitment evident across nations and industries.

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Absenteeism and commitment have been regularly studied, with absenteeism and other withdrawal behaviors seen as consequences of commitment. The meta-analytic study of Mathieu and Zajac (1990) reported correlations between affective organizational commitment and attendance (r ¼ 0.10) and lateness (r ¼ 0.12). However, attendance demonstrates minimal correlation with normative (r ¼ 0.06) and continuance (r ¼ 0.05) commitments (Meyer et al., 2002). Considering voluntary absence, Meyer et al.’s (2002) meta-analytic study reported a correlation of r ¼ 0.22 with affective commitment. There is some evidence that the relationship between commitment and absenteeism may vary with career stage (Cohen, 1991). Huiras, Uggen, and McMorris (2000) looked at a general deviance index against whether people were in jobs that they saw themselves as having a career in. The deviance measure asked people the frequency with which they engaged in behaviors such as being late for no reason, taking ‘‘sickies,’’ giving away goods or services, fraudulent working hour claims, theft, intoxication, lying, misuse or theft of money, and deliberately damaging company property. The responses were summed to give a total score. Their other measure asked people the degree to which they saw themselves having a career in their current job. It is, therefore, a surrogate for aspects of job involvement and career commitment. Results indicated that people who had no stake, that is, no commitment, in their current job committed deviant acts more frequently. Interestingly, those in authority were more frequently deviant. The meta-analytic study of Mathieu and Zajac (1990) reported a mean correlation of r ¼ 0.18 between affective commitment to the organization and the individual’s job level, that is, the commitment literature would generally suggest that more senior people have higher commitment levels, and, as a consequence, fewer instances of CWBs. Sims (2002) considered affective commitment to the organization against the probability of the individual breaking the organizations rules. Rulebreaking was assessed based on the individual’s choices in a set of scenarios. The scenarios involved the option of lying, withholding information, and triggering intra-role conflict and personal conflict. Affective commitment was negatively correlated with rule-breaking. The correlation, at r ¼ 0.18, was significant, but not strong. In their review of antecedents of CWBs, Lau, Au, and Ho (2003) noted that employees lower in organizational commitment would steal more. Belschak and Den Hartog (2009) considered the impact of positive and negative feedback on attitudes and intentions including affective commitment and CWB. In their study, only minor CWBs were considered. Their findings suggest that negative feedback, and particularly negative feedback

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given in public, is associated with lower levels of affective commitment and higher levels of CWBs. In summary, the limited amount of available research supports the posited negative relationship between misbehavior and organizational commitment forms, most notably affective commitment. These correlation studies do not, however, identify any causal linkages. An additional phenomenon, inextricably related to CWB, is the corporate psychopath (Boddy, 2010; Hare, 1991, 1999). While psychopaths represent around 1% of the general population, they have the potential to do harm to organization, especially when they occupy management positions, offices to which they are attracted (Boddy, Ladyshewsky, & Galvin, 2010; Clarke, 2005). By definition, the behaviors of corporate psychopaths include lying, seduction, actions that harm others, making fun of others, and being emotionally or verbally abusive. In looking at the effect on the organization of corporate psychopaths, one Australian study (Boddy et al., 2010) has considered the commitment of the organization to the individual, rather than the individual to the organization. Employees were asked to rate their managers in terms of psychopathic behavior, corporate behavior in terms of social responsibility (i.e., socially desirable behavior, environmentally friendly behavior, benefitting the community), and, also, commitment to the employees. Higher levels of psychopathic behaviors were associated with lower levels of each of these desirable behaviors. Further, increasing corporate psychopathic behaviors were associated with decreasing employee perceptions of the organization’s commitment to them. Given that an employee’s perceptions of the organization’s level of support for them are consistently positively correlated with the individual employee’s commitment to the organization (Wayne et al., 2009), it is reasonable to infer that increasing corporate psychopathic behaviors are associated with decreasing employee commitment to the organization.

POSITIONING CWBS IN THE FOUR-DIMENSIONAL TYPOLOGY The above review of commitment in the misbehavior literature has considered a range of CWBs: absenteeism, breaking an organization’s rules, bullying, deviance, corporate psychopathy, sexual harassment, and theft. Of these, many represent suites of CWBs. Bullying, for example, includes abuse, offensive remarks, teasing, ridicule, and social exclusion

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(Einarsen, 2000). The general deviance measure of Huiras et al. (2000) and the actions of corporate psychopaths also represent collections of CWBs. As noted previously, for the four-dimensional typology to be useful, individual CWBs must be able to be positioned unambiguously within the four-dimensional construct space. Table 1 demonstrates this fundamental utility, categorizing selected CWBs that were considered in relation to commitment according to the four-dimensional typology. Only three dimensions are included, as the magnitude dimension is not relevant in considering the efficacy of the typology in categorizing CWBs. CWBs were categorized as: person versus organization; within job versus outside of job; more acceptable versus less acceptable. The placement of CWBs into particular categories was determined based on information provided within the relevant article. Where insufficient information was provided, categorization was based on similar items in the two multidimensional scaling studies (Gruys & Sackett, 2003; Robinson & Bennett, 1995), supplemented by the author’s subjective deductions where necessary. Two CWBs were not included. Breaking organizational rules (Sims, 2002) was not included in Table 1 due to difficulties in coding the behaviors. Similarly,

Table 1.

Dimensions of Selected Counterproductive Workplace Behaviors.

Behavior

Dimension of CWB Person versus Organization

Absenteeisma Bullyingb

Organization Person

Deviancec – a summation of nine CWBs Sexual harassmentd

Person (self) and organization Person

Thefte

Organization

a

Vehicle/Task Relevance Outside of job Within and outside of job Within and outside of job Within and outside of job Outside of job

Social Acceptability

More acceptable Less acceptable CWBs range from more to less acceptable Less acceptable Depends on what is being stolen

Mathieu and Zajac (1990) and Meyer et al.’s (2002). Einarsen (2000), Mathisen et al. (2008), O’Driscoll et al. (2011), and Yildirim (2009). c Huiras et al. (2000). d Chan, Lam, Chow, and Cheung (2008) and Willness et al. (2007). e Holinger and Clark (1982). b

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while Boddy et al. (2010) describe a range of behaviors, there is insufficient information for their inclusion in Table 1. Inclusion of the Huiras et al. (2000) composite CWB measure serves to illustrate the issues that such measures can have, that is, they span the breadth of the three dimensions considered. With regard to social acceptability, being late for no reason and taking ‘‘sickies’’ would be considered more socially acceptable than the theft of money and deliberately damaging company property. Similarly, misuse of company property is likely to occur within the job tasks, while lying might occur within or without the job. Considering Table 1, it is evident that the studies included represent a limited range of CWBs. Only one CWB, absenteeism, is unambiguously identified. Absenteeism is directed at the organization, a vehicle outside of the job and more socially acceptable. Theft is also directed at the organization and a vehicle outside of the job; however, social acceptability depends on the items stolen. Bullying and sexual harassment both are directed at the person and less socially acceptable; however, the vehicle(s) for bullying can be within and outside of the job (high and low task relevance). Considering CWBs’ correlations with commitment and their placement in the typology, it can be seen that the correlations between absenteeism and commitment are roughly half those for bullying, with those for sexual harassment falling between the two. This suggests that there is variation in the strength of correlation between misbehavior and commitment across the target and social acceptability dimensions; however, conclusions cannot be drawn on the basis of this data.

FUTURE RESEARCH The four-dimensional typology presented in this chapter suggests that all four dimensions are useful. The practice of collapsing the description of CWBs to two, target-based categories (Bowling & Gruys, 2010; Dalal, 2005) implies that the task relevance and social acceptability dimensions have little utility. Clarifying this proposition would assist the further study of CWB by either simplifying research, if it reduces to one task versus organization target-based dimension, or confirming the additional dimensions for more complete descriptions of CWBs. The independence of the dimensions and their individual utility in explaining variance in organizationally important antecedents and consequences could be explored, establishing their utility for the practicing manager. Issues of level might also be addressed,

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considering correlations with outcomes at both the individual and work unit levels. The four-dimensional typology allows a more detailed categorization of CWBs. Investigation into the extent to which CWBs in the same category have the same relationships with antecedents, consequences, and CWBs in other categories, that is, the internal consistency of the categories, will also clarify the utility of the categorization. While the more site-specific composite measures supported by Bowling and Gruys (2010) have merit in terms of directly addressing the particular situations of the individual organizations that they address, they are still encumbered by issues around incorporating a range of CWBs with different frequencies of occurrence in one measure (e.g., Holinger & Clark, 1982). Mapping CWBs using the fourdimensional typology avoids this limitation, allowing the characterization of a workplace’s CWBs in terms of their target, vehicle, social acceptability, and quantity. This additional clarity will facilitate the assessment of an organization’s position, and guide interventions. For example, CWBs that are directed at individuals, through a person’s work role, and are socially unacceptable will require different interventions to those that are directed at the organization, through extra-role behavior, and are more socially acceptable (e.g., minor thefts). Consideration of studies of workplace commitment and CWBs has demonstrated the paucity of research regarding the relationship between CWBs and this important construct. It has also demonstrated that commitment levels can vary across a four-dimensional typology, suggesting that the typology may provide useful higher-level variables for the examination of the field of misbehavior, rather than individual CWBs. Further research that examines commitment against the CWB dimensions is commended to determine the utility of each dimension. Similar research addressing organizationally important consequences and antecedents is also recommended. It is possible that the examination of CWBs with particular dimensional configurations, as used in this chapter, will clarify future research priorities if those CWB categories that have strong relationships with outcomes can be identified.

CONCLUSION Reviewing the workplace commitment literature with regard to CWBs has provided useful insights into the fields of misbehavior and commitment. Contributions have been made in three areas. A typology was developed

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from one previously identified dimension, reinterpretation of two others, and the inclusion of an additional, new dimension. The operation of these dimensions has been clarified. The typology may enable CWBs to be specifically identified and the position of an organization with regard to the occurrence of CWBs to be comprehensively and conclusively determined. Additionally, the target, vehicle, and social acceptability dimensions may constitute higher-level variables, allowing the consideration of the relationships between variables of interest, such as antecedents and consequences, and the field of misbehavior in general, rather than consideration of relationships with individual behaviors. As anticipated, commitment and CWB were negatively correlated. The strength of the correlation varied with the CWB being considered, providing support for the categorization of CWBs based on their target, the vehicle for misbehavior, and their social acceptability. The four-dimensional framework warrants further testing as it may provide an alternate method for classifying CWBs, potentially simplifying their future study.

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