Coercion

Conceptual Overview

In a taken-for-granted understanding of organization and organizations, that which Jackson and Carter characterize as organizational behavior (OB), coercion may not be something that we readily consider when reflecting on organizations as entities or processes. Indeed its being, and remaining, hidden is part of the censoring function of an organization. Yet, over the past three decades, since the publication of Braverman's seminal work and Foucault's volume on discipline, the attention of scholars of the labor process/critical management studies on the one hand, and poststructuralist scholars of organization on the other, have sought to lift the lid on the process of organization to expose its hidden complexities. In a similar vein to radical arguments that suggest violence is inherent to all organizing processes, coercion may also be viewed as inherent to the processes of organization, and thus “useful” to organizations and the process of organizing.

There are a number of paradigms in which coercion have been addressed. Two shall be considered here. The first is what is termed the “Nozick-style” accounts of coercion, which, Anderson suggests, argue that coercion works by degrading an agent's prospects for action. It is suggested here that these approaches subscribe to the ethos of coercion being viewed pejoratively, as being offensive, bundled up with terms such as compulsion, constraint, force, and the like. However, Anderson argues that such approaches overlook the sine qua non of analyses of coercion; for example, they don't consider the roles and intentions of the coercer; how they may be allowed to coerce others; and how coercion may structure the pattern of social life when it is used, unexpectedly, against an agent. In other words, within the context of organization studies where critical theorists generally view the labor process pejoratively, viewing work organizations are exploitative, constraining freedom, degrading labor, and so forth, to see these processes solely in the light of Nozick-style approaches to the study of coercion misses the point.

Coercion, then, ought not to be understood in a simple sense, that is, as containing a conditional threat that would result in impoverishing its recipient more than he or she might have been otherwise—for example, a manager saying to a subordinate, “If you don't do as I ask, I'll find something more unpleasant for you to do.” This may be understood to be coercive because it offends a “moralized baseline.”Yet if both parties agree that another course of action may be pursued that is offensive to neither party—one that contains nothing that is immoral, illegal, or a violation of the subordinates rights—here the conduct of the manager–subordinate relationship may be understood not as coercive but as one of negotiation, the type of behavior that is commended in best-practice appraisals, albeit as part of a disciplinary regime.

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