In this article, I examine a graphic novel created by the management of a banking company and periodically circulated through the company’s intranet as part of a training initiative directed at ...several tens of thousands of employees working at the branch level. Theoretically, my study draws on two main streams of literature: that on Human Resource Management systems as meaning-creating devices to govern the employment relationship and that on the ever-tighter relation between popular culture and organizations. In addition, I elaborate on Umberto Eco’s semiotic theory—which to date has been largely overlooked in organization studies—to decipher the ‘mystery’ represented by the organizational comics case, along with the individual and collective reactions that followed it. On the basis of the available empirical material, I theorize ‘Semiological Guerrilla Warfare’ as a collective strategy to subvert organizations’ internal mass communications. In the final part of the article, I discuss the innovative possibilities that Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, comic strips, and Eco’s semiotics offer to organization studies and to all those interested in expanding the repertoire of resistance strategies to managerial control in organizations.
The article draws on the literature on the triangular employment relationship in the service industry, as well as on the debate on contemporary forms of professionalism, to explore the varied uses of ...the discourse of professionalism in a banking company. Methodologically, it is a single-case study based on 61 semi-structured interviews, company documents and observational data. The research results show how, in the company studied, the notion of professionalism was used both by individual employees and, at the collective level, by union organizations to advance front-line employees’ and customers’ interests vis-a-vis the management. Moreover, rather than a single discourse, several discourses of professionalism coexisted within the company, and they were subject to constant debate and contestation. The article thus advances extant research on both contemporary forms of service work and professionalism, while providing a bridge between these two streams of literature which, to date, have barely talked to each other.
Whistleblowing is a typical and widespread phenomenon in contemporary societies, and it has the potential to illuminate many of the issues that affect the workplace today. By recounting the story of ...an Italian whistleblower who suffered harsh professional retaliation and severe personal consequences because of his disclosure of accounting malpractices in his employing organization, this article aims to furnish a series of insights and stimulate avenues for future research. In particular, the account yields rich insights into current pervasive forms of managerial control of the workforce, the role of traditional and new actors in influencing the power dynamics of the employment relationship, and the interplay between the organizational and institutional levels in the regulation of labour relations.
Both sustainability and identity are said to be paradoxical issues in organizations. In this study we look at the paradoxes of corporate sustainability at the individual level by studying the ...identity work of those managers who hold sustainability-dedicated roles in organizations. Analysing 26 interviews with sustainability managers, we identify three main tensions affecting their identity construction process: the business versus values oriented, the organizational insider versus outsider and the short-term versus long-term focused identity work tensions. When dealing with these tensions, some interviewees express a paradoxical perspective in attempting to accept and maintain the two poles of each of them simultaneously. It emerges in particular that metaphorical reasoning can be used by sustainability managers in varied ways to cope with the tensions of identity work. We read these findings in light of the existing literature on the relation between paradoxes and identity work, highlighting and discussing their implications for both research and practice.
Paradox - understood as a set of contradictory and incompatible poles all supported by apparently sound arguments - is considered to be a key element in modern organizations. As a result, paradox ...scholars argue that successful managers are those able to accept the tensions arising from the paradox and able to pursue all its constitutive poles simultaneously instead of choosing only one of them. Paradox theory has been recently applied to corporate sustainability, and it is a theoretical approach that has been endorsed by influential authors also in the human resource management (HRM) field. In this context, this paper takes the still unexplored opportunity to apply paradox theory to green HRM. In particular, it explores the HRM-related paradoxes perceived by organizations developing environmental sustainability via HRM. Adopting a comparative multiple case study approach, semi-structured interviews and document analysis were conducted in six Italian companies explicitly pursuing an environmental strategy. The findings encompass the main characteristics of the green HRM systems of the organizations analyzed, and a list is provided of eight HRM-related paradoxes perceived by those organizations. For each paradox, we present and discuss its contrasting poles and the components of the HRM system that it affects. The implications of the findings for both green HRM research and practice are presented and discussed.
While researchers have to date mainly focused on the coping strategies employed by dirty workers to normalise taint, the organisational and managerial roots of dirty work have been little explored. ...The article contributes to filling this gap by means of a single case study conducted in a big Italian banking company. In the research context investigated, branch-level bank employees felt themselves tainted from the moral (as 'vendors') and social (as 'servants of customers') points of view. These perceptions were directly associated with organisational strategies and managerial practices intended to fulfil demanding sales targets or to create more space and freedom for customers. Although the literature assumes that occupational taint is generated by external societal attributions, by introducing the concept of 'organisationally-reinforced taint' this study shows that internal organisational strategies and managerial practices can contribute to dirtying an occupation, even a relatively prestigious one like bank work.
Purpose
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often depicted as a major challenge to current business practices, and CSR managers have recently been indicated as prime examples of change agents. ...The purpose of this paper is to take an occupational perspective to consider these managers. It focuses in particular on their occupational rhetorics, which correspond to idealized images that CSR managers use to represent their work. These rhetorics are analyzed in order to shed light on CSR managers’ change potential in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
The study, which benefits from collaboration with the Italian CSR Manager Network, draws on a multi-method research approach which included interviews, observations at public events and meetings, as well as focus groups with CSR managers.
Findings
Five broad rhetorical repertoires were identified: “the motor of change,” “the business-oriented,” “the fatalist,” “the idealist” and “the CSR bookkeeper” rhetorics. The primacy of the first two repertoires lead to the conclusion that CSR managers are more likely to foster continuity instead of change in current business practices.
Research limitations/implications
The study is mainly based on interview data and could therefore be extended by ethnographic investigations of CSR managers’ work or by observations of CSR managers’ language use in their everyday work.
Originality/value
The study is part of a growing empirical literature that investigates the role of individual actors in developing and implementing CSR in organizations and, in particular, the role of CSR practitioners. It contributes to the development of the literature on CSR-driven change within business organizations.
Abstract It has been claimed that the HR “profession” suffers from a chronic shortage of social legitimacy. In this article, we advance the idea that HR is also to some extent subject to public ...stigmatization for being immoral. In other words, we maintain that certain aspects of contemporary HR work can be conceptualized as morally dirty work. We provide empirical support for this contention by analyzing a set of 28 films portraying HR practitioners at work. The research results comprise both task‐related and method‐related filmic representations of HR work as immoral, thus furnishing a comprehensive and nuanced picture of the moral issues that can affect the HR profession. Furthermore, the results show that some of the HR characters analyzed—typically those who hold a role as (co‐)protagonists in the story—realize the immorality affecting their work and decide to distance themselves from it by either exiting the role, trying to reform it, or openly raising resistance against their employer. These research results suggest the need to integrate dirty work scholarship into study of the HR profession, while they provide important indications in terms of future HR research, practice and education.
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