Organizational Misbehaviour

195 Pages·1999·11.71 MB·English

by  Stephen Ackroyd

ORGANIZATIONAL MISBEHAVIOUR

ORGANIZATIONAL M/SBEHAVIOUR
Stephen Ackroyd and Paul Thompson
SAGE Publications
London · Thousand Oaks · New Delhi
© Stephen Ackroyd and Paul Thompson 1999
First published 1999
Reprinted 2000,2003
AU rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 0 8039 8735 8
ISBN 0 8039 8736 6 (pbk)
Library of Congress catalog record available
Typeset by Type Study, Scarborough, North Yorkshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd,
Guildford and King's Lynn
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Why Organizational Mwbehaviour?
2 The Recalcritrant Worker
3 Irresponsible Autonomy - Self-organization as the
Infrastructure of Misbehaviour
4 Management and Misbehaviour
5 Only Joking? From Subcultur e to Counter-culture
Organizational Relations
6 Ruling Passions: Sexual Misconduct at Work
7 The End of Organizational Misbehaviour?
References
Name Index
Subject Index

Acknowledgements
Stephen Ackroyd would like to thank the many students who have shared
his enthusiasm for this subject over the years. Several former students have
been disposed to take their interest in the matters discussed here further,
and some of them have contributed to this field in their own right. Here the
names of Farhad Analoui, Philip Crowdy, Mark Stevens and Frank Wor-
thington deserve special mention. Numerous managers have also con-
tributed to the understanding of misbehaviour that has now emerged, not
least by allowing the organizations for which they have been responsible to
be studied, and by discussing the behaviour that research uncovered. Above
all in this category there is Maurice Phelps, who, many years ago now, gave
me my first opportunity to research the informal organization of misbehav-
iour at close quarters.
Colleagues at Lancaster have not always shared a high degree of intel-
lectual interest in misbehaviour, though they have remained supportive in
other ways. The names of Keith Soothill, Frank Blackler, Mike Reed and
Colin Brown must be mentioned. There are exceptions to every rule of
course, and Gibson Burrell and John Hughes (both well equipped by tem-
perament to be empathetic observers of misbehaviour) could be relied on
to provide a sympathetic audience for ideas and findings in the early years.
At different times, Karen Legge and Barbara Townley were also willing to
listen to discussions of this material; even though neither was fundamentall y
sympathetic to the overall explanatory scheme. Interestingly, also, both of
these friends were not above taking a disciplinary attitude to what they con-
sidered my own tendencies to misbehave. Such episodes serve as a demon-
stration, if any is needed, that academic work is not exempt from the
political processes through which self-organization is developed. However,
it would be unfortunate indeed if readers were to get the impression that
conflict was pervasive. Karen Legge, in particular, not only has read and
commented on sections of this manuscript, much to their benefit, but is
owed a huge debt for many other practical and intellectual contributions .
Paul Thompson adds that after a lifetime's experience of observing his
own and others' workplace misbehaviour, there are too many people and
places to mention by name. But he would like to thank Heidi Gottfried,
Julia O'Connell-Davidson and Fiona Wilson for help with Chapter 6. MBA
students at Edinburgh have been a stimulating audience for these ideas, and
have provided valuable means of road testing the ideas in many of these
chapters. They have also contributed many examples and illustrations of
misbehaviour, some of which have found their way into these pages. Col-
leagues at Edinburgh, particularly Tricia Findlay and Jim Hine, have given
viii Organizational Misbehaviour
valued support during the long gestation period of this book. Like anyone
who knows me, they will no doubt be glad never again to hear any refer-
ence to The book on organizational misbehaviour I'm working on with
Steve Ackroyd'. They can now read the book for themselves.
There are some people to whom both authors feel indebted. The work of
David Collinson and that of Paul Edwards has been imporant to us, as
anyone will see who reads the book. Paul Stewart and Miguel Martinez-
Lucio have also been consistent sources of (more pointed) stimulatio n and
for us both their ideas are matters of lively interest. Pam Ackroyd read the
manuscript through on several occasions, and helped us to avoid a number
of errors. She also prepared the bibliography. Special thanks are due to Sue
Jones of Sage Publications who originally commissioned the book and was
consistently in our corner. More recently Sue's task was taken over by Rose-
mary Nixon, who is also to be thanked for her consistent support and
encouragement.
Stephen Ackroyd and Paul Thompson,
Universities of Lancaster and Edinburgh
Introduction
The project of writing this book began with a simple concern that the
account of organizational behaviour expressed or implied in academic work
often did not give an accurate picture of what it is like. Initially, we thought
of our task as writing an alternative organizational behaviour book, one
which redressed the inaccurate account of organizational behaviour con-
tained in many texts in our field. Standard textbooks in this area actually
say surprisingly little about the character of the phenomenon with which
they are centrally concerned - the behaviour routinely exhibited by people
in organizations. What they do say suggests, as much by implication as direct
assertion, that behaviour in organizations is, almost exclusively, conforming
and dutiful.
And yet this assumption simply did not square with what we know of
organizational behaviour as researchers, what we know of it as academics
with a knowledge of the relevant research literature, and, not least, what we
know of it as organizational members ourselves. Thus, we thought it would
be a good idea to correct this imbalance, and to draw a richer picture of
behaviour in organizations. This would not be simply a matter of giving
more serious attention to such things as absenteeism, pilferage, soldiering,
sabotage and vandalism, which have been studied at length by scholars from
time to time (see, especially, Chapter 2 of this volume); but, since such
things are recurrent features of organizations, to connect them with the
orientations of employees towards their work. In this way we thought we
could consider more realistically the problems of misbehaviour as they are
known to managers and employees. To give an account of behaviour warts
4
and all', would be to rebut an obvious and ultimately unhelpful normative
bias in the study of organizational behaviour.
Such an account of organizational behaviour would have the substantial
merit of being interesting for readers, and likely to incline them to read what
we have to say. The novelty of our book would be that it offers a view of
behaviour that rings true, and which would account for the experience of
organizations as it is known to people who work in them. We remain hopeful
that a good many readers will find their way into the narrative we have
written by enjoying the jokes and examples of behaviour arrayed in what
follows, especially as they appear in the boxes sprinkled through the text.
At the very least this is a useful antidote to the sanitized accounts of behav-
iour that appear in many books on organizational behaviour. Thus we
emphasize the working definition of misbehaviour with which we began,
which includes the widest range of behaviour - from failure to work very
hard or conscientiously, through not working at all, deliberate output