1,721,004 research outputs found
The strange case of ‘Ugo Fantozzi robot’: Control and resistance through comics in a bank
No full textIn this article I examine a graphic novel created by the management of a banking company and periodically circulated via 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 HRM 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
Critical perspectives on sustainability in business contexts: paradoxes, rhetorics and identities
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Discourses of Professionalism in Front-Line Service Work: Insights from a Case Study in an Italian Bank
Full text linkThe 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
A paradox view on green human resource management: Insights from the Italian context
Full text linkParadox - 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 fromthe 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
A Farewell to Arms... Manufacturing: Learning From a Landmine Producer Who Became a Deminer
Full text linkCertain industries—labeled “dirty,” “sinful,” “stigmatized,” or “controversial”—are under public scrutiny because of the ethical, social, and environmental concerns that they raise. Previous research has typically focused on the industry or organizational level of analysis, examining how companies in controversial industries can enhance their legitimacy by reforming the way they operate, for example by means of specific CSR and communication strategies. This article challenges that approach by adopting an individual-level lens and presenting a life-story interview with the former owner of a company involved in the arms industry, specifically the production of anti-personnel landmines, who refused to reform his business to make it appear less controversial. After a difficult period, he decided to close the family business. He then redirected his technical expertise by joining the social movements supporting the global campaign against landmines and by working as a deminer, thus trying to act as an individual change agent and to repair the damage to which he had contributed. This heterodox individual-level analysis challenges the conventional wisdom that controversial industries should seek only incremental improvements, and it sparks provocative reflections on the possibility of exiting them and contributing to their outright closure
‘Activists in a Suit’: Paradoxes and Metaphors in Sustainability Managers’ Identity Work
Full text linkBoth 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
Dirty bank work: Exploring organisational sources of taint
No full textWhile researchers have to date mainly focused on the coping strategies employed by dirty
workers to normalize taint and maintain a positive sense of self, the organisational and
managerial roots of dirty work have been little explored. The article contributes to fill this gap
through 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, for example, to
pursue demanding sales targets or to create more space and freedom for customers. Although
the dirty work literature assumes that occupational taint is normally generated by external
societal attributions, the study thus shows that the dirtying of an occupation is a process that
can be fostered by internal organisational strategies and managerial practice
Dirtying bank work: when taint is reinforced by the organisation
No full textWhile 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
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