Abstract
“Going postal” has long been synonymous with the violent and often deadly outburst of a disgruntled worker dealing with grievances in the workplace. In a world where precariousness and insecurity increasingly describe the conditions facing more and more workers, we should be increasingly concerned with how workers experience, and then deal with, uncomfortable situations at work. In what Ralph Fevre, Duncan Lewis, Amanda Robinson, and Trevor Jones describe as “the largest, specialist research programme on ill-treatment in the workplace” (p. 1), Trouble at Work is an attempt to bring sociology into the analysis of problems that workers experience with co-workers and managers.
The first chapter of the book lays out the terrain, pointing out that psychologists and social psychologists marked out the early parameters of the problem, using concepts like bullying and stress to identify both personal and organizational consequences of what euphemistically is referred to as a “bad day at work.” But, the authors suggest, these frames may hinder our understanding of how such behaviors are not just the result of character flaws by those who bully, or by those who feel stress, but in fact may reflect aspects of the social organization of work that enables the targeting of certain classes of people and may even represent forms of workplace control. That is, what at first may appear to be bullying behavior instead reflects bullying organizations with processes that bully. In the first chapter we are introduced to the literature that details how this concept is taken up by industrial relations, ethnography, and criminology and how the relationship of violence and minorities within society writ large may simply be reflected in workplace behavior. The problem, the authors conclude, is that “the concept of workplace bullying did not attempt to generalise from the individual experience and, therefore, could only propose individual solutions” (p. 22). How, then, are sociologists to formulate both public responses and a social understanding of the problem at hand? The solution, reflected in the title of the book, is to refer to trouble at work, which will redirect the narrative to a full range of “workplace dynamics involving managers, workers and in some cases, clients and customers” (p. 23) who all contribute to making workers feel troubled. More broadly, by considering the array of social relations within the workplace, we can approach the problem as an examination both of troubles at work (from the worker’s perspective) and of the troubled workplace (from the organization’s perspective).
The remainder of the book is divided into a section that uses large data gathered in various studies to quantitatively delineate the types of workplace troubles encountered and a section presenting detailed case studies of workplaces to better understand “why some workplaces are more troubled than others and what can be done to reduce trouble at work” (p. 105). Part Two begins with a generalized meaning of trouble at work, identifying twenty-one items found in the data and three prominent factors: unreasonable management, incivility and disrespect, and violence. The three chapters which follow deconstruct in greater detail each of these factors before concluding that the problems are not about bullies and victims, or about the stress endured at work, but rather about the “troubled workplaces and the sociological factors which contribute to them” (p. 60). Had this book ended after Part Two, we would have been presented with a rich set of data on how workers experience and report uncomfortable situations at work. But we would have missed a rich story of processes and practices that only detailed case analyses could reveal about how different environments create the dynamics leading to troubled workplaces and trigger problems, whether originating with managers, with the organization of work, with poor communication, or with a failure in otherwise effective communication.
Part Three is the real gem of this volume. In its four chapters, we are offered detailed discussions of how an organization contributes to these troubles. Chapter Five, “The Briar Patch,” details how strife and conflict, distrust, and poor conditions contribute to an environment of hostility and incivility. The result is that the more vulnerable members of society are more prone to be victims of poor treatment—for example, female workers are more likely to be harassed or insulted. In Chapter Six, “The Office,” we are exposed to what on first blush appears to be a nice working environment with enthusiastic and happy workers. Yet there is anxiety that organizational change may jeopardize the existing culture of fairness and respect. And Asian employees discussed how, despite an inviting workplace, they felt culturally isolated at work, contributing to a less than optimal working experience. Chapter Seven, “Permanent White Water,” presented an environment in constant flux as a result of shifting regulations and budgetary constraints, creating a situation where managers and workers had to deal with a strained and fractured workplace. The trouble in this workplace was caused by a decrease in perceived and real autonomy, by super-intense working conditions, and by pressures associated with dealing with organizational clients. The last chapter in this part, “Keeping the Faith,” reveals that even when an organization makes every effort to support their workers and minimize workplace issues, social forces may intervene to undermine the experience of some workers. In this instance, minority and Asian workers still experienced more ill-treatment than their white counterparts—perhaps not as much as if they had been employed by a different kind of firm, but still enough to trouble their workplace. Formal mechanisms or informal tactics may not be enough in situations like this.
The book concludes in Part Four with a summary that may, in some readers’ minds, seem a bit too all-encompassing. However, the authors make a convincing argument that by changing the frame of reference from violence, victimization, and bullying to one in which we explore why a workplace is troubled, we can begin to deal with these concerns in a public and generalized manner. For sociologists, Trouble at Work presents an important step in recognizing that sometimes, “going postal” may not mean a person has lost their self-control. Rather than seeking answers to why and how a person’s character deteriorated, we would be better served exploring how we organize work within the workplace, and how it reflects society at large. Then we might find policy recommendations to reduce troubles at work. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in workplace culture and workers’ relationship to work—especially as that relationship becomes increasingly tenuous, insecure, and precarious.