Consequences of the new organizational culture

Less hierarchy, more control?

As hierarchy is downplayed and the spatiality of work becomes less defined, normative control is reinforced. 

While the surveillance of workers has always existed during industrial times, it now operates through a “discursive disciplinary apparatus” (Foucault, 1977).

Workers are given the illusion that they are more independent and free to “be themselves” inside the workplace. To a certain extent, that is accurate. Yet, their alleged freedom and independence only involves superficial aspects of work life, such as the dress code or informality in interactions. Furthermore, instant communication fosters the continuous control of individuals. 

In Postscript on the Societies of Control, Gilles Deleuze (1992) critically analyzes the “homogenization of all values” due to the marketization of all aspects of society, following the same school of thoughts as Karl Marx or Foucault. He writes:

Just as the corporation replaces the factory, perpetual training tends to replace the school, and continuous control to replace the examination. Which is the surest way of delivering the school over to the corporation.(p.5)

Normative control is reinforced through a requirement for workers to adjust their identity to fit the company's values. For instance, Disney workers are expected to have a positive, fun, juvenile personality. However, the officially desired character type is not always clearly defined but is nonetheless expected by the corporation, which can create discomfort and confusion. (Casey, 1999)

Moreover, scripted interactions in service work have become the norm and they create “new depths in deskilling” (Ritzer, 1998). As a result, workers go through intense emotional labour. Language is a powerful form of control, especially when workers are encouraged to “act in patterned and predictable ways.” (Brown and Coupland, 2005)Consequences on workers

The use of technology to evaluate the performance of workers has fostered a “new age of anxiety” (Robbins & Wilner, 2001). While the “friendship culture” in organisations might work for some employees with extroverted and compliant personalities, several researches have pointed out the negative consequences operated by a disruptive normative control. Hence, workers often find themselves in a situation of inauthenticity as a result of the constant pressure to be fun, open and social (Costas, 2012). Moreover, they experience “emotional dissonance” (Brown and Coupland, 2005) when they disagree with the values or actions of their company.

In 1999, Catherine Casey conducted a research in a large American multinational corporation, who had adopted a new culture program during the 1980s. The company shifted from a “paternalistic and familial camaraderie” to a “team-family culture” promoting egalitarianism through a series of slogans, new problem-solving procedures, new vocabulary in marketing, etc.

However, Casey pointed out that the egalitarian rhetoric didn't change the inherently unequal power relationship existing between the employee and the corporation. She even wrote about “corporate colonization of self” caused by the new organizational culture. In order to match the new expectations of their company, employees went through a “psychic accommodation”, adjusting their personality traits and attitudes to the corporate culture. As a result of an internalized “psychic discomfort”, Casey reported several consequences such as increasing levels of anxiety, compulsive hyperactivity, indecisiveness and confusion.

Resistance

Employees develop coping mechanisms as a means to show their resistance such as irony, scepticism, dis-identification (Fleming and Sewell, 2002) and re-appropriation of the company through “goldbricking” (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999) and ambivalence, which is the “manifestation of an incomplete internalization or rejection of the new cultural values and behaviours” (Casey, 1999).

However resistance and opposition can sometimes reinforce structures of domination. Indeed, sceptical workers might have the illusion that their cynicism and hard feelings towards their company is an act of resistance in itself. This “false dis-identification” (Zizek, 2000) or “artificial negativity” (Piccone, 1976) is far from being a threat to the foundations of capitalism. 

When employees show some type resistance but keep doing their work properly, their cynicism becomes an “ideological phenomenon” that reproduces relations of power (Du Gay and Salaman, 1992). Critical social theoreticians such as Marx and Durkheim assert that “ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.” (Geuss, 1981)