Summary
Contents
Subject index
From `soldiering' and absenteeism to humour in organizations and the emergence politics of sexuality, this book explores the latest forms of organizational subversion and offers fresh insights of the underlying dynamics of management and organizational processes. The book opens with a critique of orthodox organizational analysis and maps out the wide terrain across which organizational `misbehaviour' occurs. The authors go on to examine the interconnections between identity formation, the pursuit of autonomy and organizational misbehaviour, and explore how clearly the tendency to misbehave is deeply embedded in organizational life.
The Recalcitrant Worker
The Recalcitrant Worker
In this chapter we consider the extent to which organizational misbehaviour is already known to social scientists. Although we argued in Chapter 1 that the terrain of misbehaviour has not been fully or adequately mapped, re-discovery of the recalcitrant worker has been one of the most persistent motifs of industrial sociology. Dictionary definitions are seldom very useful in exercises of this sort, but that given to recalcitrance is apt for our purposes: ‘the refusal to submit to authority, obstinate, disobedience’ (Penguin Oxford Dictionary). The recalcitrant worker may be engaged in absenteeism, sabotage, fiddles, or straightforward restriction of output. He or she may be characterized as deviant or rebellious. But whatever the focus or label, the important fact remains the long ...
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