Abstract
Whenever a new edition of a book is released, it raises the question of why. In the intervening years since first publication, has society so altered or has our knowledge so advanced that the original text is rendered obsolete? Or is the new edition simply a cynical money-making ploy by a publisher hoping to entice repeat purchases? Such questions are heightened when a work remains so widely read and influential as Organisational Misbehaviour. First published in 1999, few books in the last 25 years have had greater influence on employment and labour studies, nor done more to reinvigorate the field for the 21st century. Perhaps the only contemporary books of similar significance are John Kelly’s (1998) Rethinking Industrial Relations and Beverly Silver’s (2003) Forces of Labor. In fact, the first edition has featured on the essential reading list of all the Human Resource Management, Employee Relations and Industrial Relations modules that I have taught over the last four years. Moreover, it continues to influence large swathes of research; according to Google Scholar, the first edition was cited 76 times last year alone – including in three of my own articles for which it was a major inspiration. However, within a few pages of this second edition, Ackroyd and Thompson allay any questions or cynical fears, making it clear that a new edition is needed for both substantive and academic reasons.
Substantively, the empirical object of inquiry has undergone significant change over the past 25 years. Throughout the new edition, Ackroyd and Thompson ensure that the continuities are clear while highlighting the consequences of a changing economy and society. For instance, the Internet and social media have opened up new spheres of misbehaviour. Academically, the first edition was written as a riposte to mainstream organisational behaviour (OB) scholars who had largely ignored misbehaviour. This OB myopia has lessened over time, but misbehaviour in this field remains largely understood in individual terms rather than situated within the power relations of the employment relationship and the sociality of the workplace. This second edition, therefore, seeks to counter this new OB orthodoxy and, as a consequence, greater emphasis is placed on the role of management in generating misbehaviour and managerial regimes in shaping it.
Before exploring the new edition in more detail, it is worthwhile briefly restating why the book was so influential in the first place, and why it remains a must-read for those wishing to understand the world of work. By drawing on a rich body of empirical research, especially workplace case studies, the authors demonstrate that while worker recalcitrance may not always take the same force or form, it will, nevertheless, be present – if researchers have the time and inclination to search for it. The inevitability of misbehaviour results from workers possessing an inherent strive towards autonomy. A fact that sets them on a path towards contention with management. Managers seek to appropriate workers’ autonomy in four spheres: working time, work, product, and identity. Moreover, this dynamic of appropriation and contention takes place within a context where a strong tendency towards informal self-organisation is present. Therefore, each of these four spheres gives rise to distinct forms of misbehaviour of varying intensity. The importance of these insights during a period of declining union membership, collective bargaining, and strike action in the global north cannot be overstated.
So, what’s new in this second edition? First, the empirical bases of the claims have been significantly updated and strengthened with reference to new research, and, as indicated above, the discussion of misbehaviour has been brought up to date to include a critique of contemporary OB. A completely new chapter has been included on social media in both facilitating misbehaviour and, in some cases, even mobilisation. There is also a new chapter on bullying, which, as the authors point out, has gone from being little discussed to being a central theme in accounts of poor workplace treatment. Additionally, the chapter on sexual misbehaviour has been thoroughly reworked to better reflect contemporary concerns and experiences. This chapter and the one on humour, previously provided lucid accounts of workplace undercurrents (dynamics that I also found present in my PhD research into contemporary retail work); but were somewhat one-sided, ignoring the darker side that such activities frequently take on.
Conceptually, a major addition is an extended discussion of the location of misbehaviour within ‘managerial regimes’. This chapter concludes that low trust, high regulation ‘direct control regimes’ of the Fordist/Taylorist era have, at least partially, been displaced by hybrid ‘after-Fordist’ regimes. These high involvement, high regulation regimes rely on the use of normative controls, flexibility and teamwork, at the same time as enhanced surveillance and monitoring. The authors also argue that a second phase of managerial change has taken place in the 21st century, as firms have become increasingly financialised. These financialised regimes give rise to new managerial trends such as the platformisation, precarisation, extensive performance management and digital Taylorism and surveillance. Not only have these changes in managerial regimes reshaped worker misbehaviour, they have opened up terrain for corporate management misbehaviour, which is explored in depth in another completely new chapter.
Over the past 23 years, the first edition of Organisational Misbehaviour has become a classic in the sociology of work. In updating their arguments to reflect cutting-edge academic developments and empirical debates, and by making significant new conceptual arguments, this second edition ensures that Organisational Misbehaviour will remain essential reading for the next 23 years.