Rethinking Hybridity in Postcolonial Contexts: What Changes and What Persists? The Tunisian case of Poulina’s managers

The research context

Data collection and analysis

To address these issues, I carried out thirty-eight interviews between May and June 2004 at Poulina’s head office and at two of its subsidiaries. I started by interviewing Poulina’s chairman as well as four top managers and six middle managers at the head office; I re-interviewed them at the end of the field study. Sixteen interviews were also conducted at two different subsidiaries. At each subsidiary, I carried out interviews with the head manager, five middle managers and two low-skilled workers. In total, I held thirty-eight one-hour interviews with twenty-seven people. ⁴

The interviews were semi-structured and used a flexible interview guide which, while tailored to the interviewee and the situation, was typically centred around three main themes: (1) the perceptions of the impact of the imported management practices on the functioning of Poulina; (2) assessment of the strategies adopted in implementing these practices and the difficulties involved; and (3) comments about the conditions that might determine the appropriateness and effectiveness of this transformation. It is worth noting that the cultural dimension was not originally envisaged as a main theme of the interviews, but it was implicit in how the respondents commented on various issues. Due to their different ways of expressing their opinions, the interviews with the workers shed light on the specific issues raised by some managers about the implementation of new practices. The back-and-forth process between the head office and the subsidiaries enabled me to distinguish between ‘the managerial jargon’ and the concrete adaptations that were undertaken on the ground. It is worth noting that, for this type of investigation, the categories that structure the discourse of ‘the outer form’ are just as important as the ‘content’ (d’Iribarne, 2011). Thus, the interviews were recorded and then transcribed. All quotations below are the respondents’ comments, which I have deliberately chosen to be descriptive in presenting the findings. Extracts from their interviews have been selected according to the themes that were prevalent and recurrent in interviewees’ comments. ⁵

Discourse analysis was used in order understand how the interviewees interpreted the new practices and subsequently implemented them. As my research goal is to explore the interplay between action and cultural shared frames of meanings in the hybridization process, I used an interpretive approach that considers discourse as being constructive of social and organizational reality (Abdallah & Langley, 2013; Heracleous & Hendry, 2000; Langley & Abdallah, 2011). Moreover, I follow Alvesson and Deetz’s (2000) and d’Iribarne’s (2011) suggestions by providing interpretations of the various ways that the interviewees’ accounts might be used for research purposes. I focus here on three interconnected levels of interpretations. First, I consider the surface level of communicative actions, as statements say something about the norms of managerial jargon and the production of effects, such as impressions and identity work. Second, I highlight the implicit cultural references. In doing so, I use statements in order to uncover shared frames of meaning that both constrain and enable actors by providing them with the symbolic resources needed for social interaction and the appropriation of the imported management practices. Third, I consider that action is intimately connected to interpretation. As my interviewees were encouraged to talk about how and what they did in practice, I use their statements to establish their understanding of the concrete transformations brought about by the imported practices. The ‘what’ of their answers enables me to describe their actions and the ‘why’ gave way to the interpretations underpinning these actions (Rouleau & Balogun, 2011). This type of discourse analysis allowed me to move between different lines of interpretation, which confronted an earlier vocabulary with a line of interpretation offering a different perspective, and with a different vocabulary. This enabled me to analyse the interrelated action/interpretation cycles and to offer a more sophisticated view of the hybridization process.

I free-coded the interview data following a three-stage procedure that was associated with the research goals. First, I focused on eliciting the modernization rhetoric and how managers used it in constructing the context in which they implemented the US management model. I was able to observe how managers used managerial jargon to position themselves and to construct their identity in relation to the challenges involved in implementing the imported practices. Second, I identified a specific incident in the data – the implementation of management by objectives – in order to examine the managerial rhetoric in context. I juxtaposed the managers’ accounts with those of the workers and analysed how different actors reacted consciously to the imported practice, how they conceptualized their role in resisting or adopting it, and how they negotiated its implementation. This led me to identify the process of reinterpretation and adjustments of the imported practice. Third, following d’Iribarne (1998), I explored how the local framework of meaning underlay interviewees’ perceptions and strategies. I paid attention to the stories and anecdotes used by the interviewees in order to suggest what constitutes both an ideal boss–worker relationship and good cooperation. This included identifying how metaphors, words, expressions, repetition and emphasis were used to formulate comments and opinions about the various changes brought about by the US management practices. The process was used for each interview, and was then extended on a much larger scale. The overlapping stories and expressions provided clues as to how the imported practices took on meaning in the Tunisian context.

In this way, the aim was not to discover whether the interviewees had positive or negative opinions of what they were talking about, or even whether or not they were telling the truth. The goal was to assess the common criteria that my interviewees used to express their opinions, regardless of differences in opinion or points of view. When mentioning a particular reaction to the new management practices, all the interviewees implicitly described similar ideal ways for organizing and working, which prevails in the Tunisian context. Finally, the analysis presented in this article does not aim to exhaustively establish every reference point involved in determining the Tunisian context of meaning, or to give a detailed description of Poulina management practices. Instead, it aims to show the way in which certain particular elements of cultural representations can influence the implementation of US management practices in a Tunisian context. The constant interplay between the negotiation processes shaping the hybridization process and the implicit cultural references underlying it constitutes the basic articulation of this analysis.

When Poulina’s managers embrace ‘modernity’

Interviewees were unanimous in pointing out that the successful implementation of modern management methods was the key reason for Poulina’s success. The question is: What do Poulina’s managers mean by modern? To what extent has their identification with ‘modernity’ influenced their identity formation?

Their accounts reveal that this modernity is made up of two aspects: universal values and the acquisition of management techniques. Interviewees evoked the concepts of ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’, ‘rigour’ and ‘meritocracy’ in explaining Poulina’s modernization process. Top managers reported that the ‘American’ model largely inspired the quest to implement such values. A top manager (4) commented:

We [top management] are adopting the American management system that allows each employee to be responsible for his work and to see his objectives … People are judged on the basis of their achievements. If they cannot fulfil their objectives, they are held responsible.#

A head manager (1) pointed out:

The most important asset of Poulina is the rigour in management secured by well-defined procedures … We make the rules, we follow the rules and we take measures against people that do not respect the rules.#

Interviewees stated that management tools (such as management by objectives) and programs (such as HR access) were critical in concretizing the sought-after modernity. A head manager (2) explained:

We wanted to make the organization more rational and modern, so we introduced modern tools everywhere. What we aim at is to achieve equity and equality by establishing a meritocracy based system. Now we have transparent and clear procedures everywhere.#

A middle manager (3) added:

We will be able, with this tool HR Access, to face all the challenges of managing human resources across the whole group. We will be able to do things more efficiently and in a more modern way.#

Moreover, the introduction of the US management model – considered modern and objective by our interviewees – was depicted as an effective way to mitigate confusing or arbitrary situations that tend to prevail in other Tunisian companies. Indeed, interviewees viewed Poulina’s explicit formalized procedures and the rules particular to the US management model as a means of alleviating the ‘dysfunction’ found in the family-based model. ‘Dysfunction’ refers to how personal relationships interfere with work, which gives way to a great deal of confusion and ambiguity when managing work relationships. Interviewees spoke of these procedures as ‘solutions’ to identified ‘dysfunctions’. A middle manager (9) highlighted the issue: ‘Poulina’s strong point is to have neutralized the dysfunctions of a family-based model that prevails in Tunisian companies.’ Poulina’s managers’ main concern was getting rid of ‘the paternalist management model’ prevalent in Tunisia, in which the boss is a company’s sole decision-maker. Poulina also prohibited the recruitment of shareholders’ ‘close relatives’ as a means of managing family co-optation, relying instead on competence as its main criterion. A top manager (2) explained:

We have neutralized the dysfunctions of a family-based system. What I appreciate at Poulina is the way the management encourages the added value and the promotion of its workers. Transparency is important, there is no clan, no more baronies and everybody does their job. The most important thing is to achieve the annual objectives, everything is organized.*

According to Poulina’s managers, workers welcomed the explicit, formalized and standardized processes of the ‘American’ management model because they perceived them as safeguards against managerial favouritism and corruption. As a middle manager (11) commented:

The watchwords here are rigour and discipline. Here we manage figures, not feelings. The system is strong because people prefer to work here rather than in a family structure where the CEO’s son goes around with the checkbook and interferes with all the decisions. At Poulina, we don’t have a patriarchal system.

From a postcolonial perspective, one could argue that these narratives are a perfect illustration of the spread of the colonizing ideology of managerialism founded on western (American) rationality and scientism being imposed on local knowledge systems and practices. Poulina’s managers seemed to have internalized the superiority of US practices that promote individuality and meritocracy over the local Tunisian methods of organizing and working (Chio, 2004; Dar, 2008; Gantman & Parker, 2006). The fascination that Poulina’s managers expressed about the US management model exemplifies the process of whitewashing (to use Fanon’s expression). Trained in a western education system, such individuals copy everything from the dominant ideology and adopt a discourse of mimicry that dictates all interpretations and representations of organizing and managing (Bhabha, 1984; Dabashi, 2011; Lazarus, 2004; Memmi, 1957). Their attempts to dismantle existing traditional working relations based on blood or friendship and to replace them with new ways of organizing based on individual performance liken them to the definition of ‘compradors’ (literally, ‘buyers’) used by Gantman and Parker (2006), which denotes a native of a country who acts as an agent of the colonizer. This was exemplified by the chairman’s quote: ‘I have simple ideas, I am pragmatic, but I have also an ambition: I want to prove that we can do as well as Europeans.’

Yet, I advocate that other quotes offer a different interpretation that extends this analysis beyond the simple process of internalizing the hegemonic dominant view. Many accounts suggest that the reference to the US management model helped the Tunisian managers to distance themselves from the domination of the French model. As a top manager (3) explained: ‘Everybody knows that the American system is the best. We wanted to be the best and to free ourselves from our dependence on the French model.’ The reference to the ‘American’ management system serves as a means of emancipation rather than of simple subjugation. On the same topic, a middle manager (12) commented:

I did my studies in the 90s in a business school in United States, I got access to many interesting articles and books, I learnt how to master tools such as board management intelligence or management by objectives; at that time these tools didn’t even exist in France. I can say proudly that Poulina surpasses French companies – we are at the same level as American companies. #

Taking into account the history of French colonialism in Tunisia, Albert Memmi suggests that when assimilation fails ‘the day has come when it is the colonized who must refuse the colonizer’ (Memmi, 1957, p. 180). This led us to conclude that, through the process of importing the US management (often qualified as modern and universal), Tunisian managers relocate their identity by freeing themselves from the domination of the French system. The internalization of the US discourse is compounded with an emancipation narrative which creates a hybrid version, simultaneously indicating the effect of the (American) dominating force and resistance to French domination (Bhabha, 1994). By openly revealing their appropriation of the US management model and its emancipative potential, Tunisian managers engage with a new identity without taking on a subaltern position. As an illustration of this, a middle manager (15), while acknowledging the hybridity of his knowledge and practices by indicating the persistence of the French influence, explains what he appreciates most in the ‘American’ system:

I think the French influence is still there, it is really anchored in our way of privileging the global picture rather than focusing on the details or in the importance attached to the hierarchical status. What I appreciate most in the American system is its sophisticated control system, they control everything so that you can trace the problems – that is the main difference.*

Therefore, while US hegemony is often portrayed as a total and absolute phenomenon, the contextualization of the Tunisian colonial experience allows us to better understand the ambivalent nature of mimicry in managers’ identity construction. The mimicry of the US management model does not preclude the possibility of opening up a space for Tunisian managers that could entertain difference, and disrupt the asymmetrical authority with the French model. In addition, the identity formation was intimately linked to Tunisian managers’s hybrid knowledge, who themselves navigate between local knowledge management, be it Tunisian and/or French, and the imported management knowledge in presenting their identity.

Moreover, it is easy to infer that, if the Poulina managers had succeeded in setting up an effective management system, it was because they had moved away from prevalent traditional Tunisian practices by applying US management formulas. This would confirm the assumption that the only condition required for modernizing management in developing countries is to replace the local ways of organizing with the so-called ‘best practices’, which are seen as ‘universal wisdom’. However, this assumption does not hold if one considers the interviewees’ comments, which recount the difficulties faced in introducing the new practices and how managers motivated people to accept them. In what follows, I will use the example of mise à mille (MAM) to explore the hybridization process of imported practices inherent in the resistance and negotiation processes at work.

Management by objectives in the face of what a good performance appraisal should be

The dominant influence of US managerial thinking can be found is the notion of management by objectives, whereby individuals are rewarded according to their individual contributions, and if they fail to perform are prepared to move on (Schneider & Jean-Louis Barsoux, 2003). As mentioned above, management by objectives was Poulina’s main borrowing from the US management model. The underlying assumption was that bosses and subordinates would be expected to engage in a two-way dialogue in order to agree on what had to be done, by what date, and how. This assumed that power differences were not an issue, and that employees had the right to make input in order to determine their goals. The top managers at Poulina who embraced these ideas used these assumptions to emphasize the relevance of adopting a management by objectives system known as mise à mille (MAM). ⁶ Mise à mille is an evaluation system based on a scale of 1,000, which determines the variable part of one’s salary. However, several comments revealed that MAM was not implemented spontaneously. The resistance expressed by many workers to the idea of establishing individual objectives forced top management to adapt the MAM to local expectations. While I acknowledge the universal dimension of resistance to individual assessment that could be found elsewhere outside Tunisia, I focus here on how local expectations of what a good performance appraisal system should be interfered with the process by which the MAM was implemented.

Those who welcomed the new tool explained that they had adopted it because it ‘made them feel secure’ by ensuring an objective evaluation of their performance and thus mitigating the risk of an arbitrary hierarchical evaluation. Under the old system, many workers were convinced that they worked harder than their colleagues without getting anything in return for their extra efforts and competence. The top management was often held responsible for the unfairness of the wage system. As a worker (1) explained:

MAM can never be exhaustive but it makes the person who uses it feel secure; this makes communication much more objective, it is not like before when you constantly heard: ‘I feel that my boss is not happy with my work!’*

A middle manager (8) commented:

Nobody wanted to be evaluated, this was a very sensitive topic, people felt highly questioned when the topic of evaluation was brought up, people didn’t accept to be evaluated because it was subjective … Now, with MAM, I was surprised, there are people who are glad to be assessed because they know on what basis they are being assessed … If you give them elements that they accept, they are willing to play the game.*

From this perspective, MAM helped to clarify responsibilities and made it possible to evaluate people using well-established criteria. As a middle manager (12) commented:

Generally speaking in Tunisia, people systematically seek excuses to get rid of their responsibility, when there is a problem it might be the fault of the market or the rate of exchange but never their own responsibility. MAM helps people to be committed because they sign a paper, otherwise they wouldn’t respect their obligations.*

Once again, these quotes seem to confirm that the modernization process, which introduces formal rules and clarifies responsibilities, is the only way to break away from the supposedly ineffective ‘traditional’ local practices. Yet, other workers showed resistance towards this system by emphasizing its penalizing aspects. MAM was perceived as a tool to penalize those who fail to reach their objectives rather than being an incentive-based system. As a middle manager (2) pointed out:

The aim of la mise à mille is to set up objective criteria for evaluation, but some workers don’t see the incentive side of this tool, this system is paradoxically blocking team work, the workers tend to reject any kind of individual responsibility because they are afraid that their mise à mille will decline or their bonus decrease … Instead of motivating them, I find myself penalizing them, I have more deadlines to manage and I become unpleasant with them.#

A worker (4) commented: ‘Some call it mise à pied [punitive layoff/suspension] rather than mise à mille.’ Another worker (2) mentioned: ‘MAM is a clever way to block our salaries if we don’t achieve the objectives; it is a way of exploiting us.’

The resistance of some workers to this performance appraisal system led the Poulina’s mangers to renegotiate the MAM. The implementation of mise à mille went through a trial-and-error period, during which workers and managers reconstructed the transferred practices according to local expectations. As a top manager (3) commented:

In our work, we are faced with many unanticipated questions; some workers used the MAM system to simply refuse to do anything that was not written into their contract. We then realized that the philosophy of management by objectives had not been understood and we realized that we needed to reflect on how to adapt it to the local context.#

Similarly, a middle manager (13) explained:

The implementation of MAM takes time, we went through a period where we asked ourselves many questions: How should we set up the objectives? Should we start with the workers and then go up in the hierarchy? Or should we start at the top and then go down? We started with the workers; it didn’t work out, so we adjusted the process by setting up objectives for the managers. We set up objectives for the heads of the subsidiaries, they were the first to be assessed, their objectives were very clear and then broken down into different objectives for different hierarchical levels.*

Thus, instead of establishing individual objectives, Poulina’s management established team objectives. The bosses’ MAMs were the sum of their employees’ MAMs, thus guaranteeing team cohesion and implicitly maintaining the bosses’ responsibility. As a middle manager (5) pointed out:

My performance appraisal is the sum of the performance appraisals of all my collaborators. It is not individualized. Everyone knows their responsibilities and the tasks they have to execute but there is a collective solidarity thanks to collective objectives that reinforce the team spirit.*

The new adapted performance appraisal system places emphasis on the process that is used to achieve the result, rather than on the outputs. As a middle manager (6) explained:

It was vital for us to change our way of looking at the MAM. We privileged the process that allowed us to achieve the results, a process based on teamwork where individual objectives are linked to collective ones. We also allowed for flexibility by offering the possibility of renegotiating the objectives between bosses and subordinates.*

A worker (2) commented: ‘MAM is useful in maximizing the person’s output. I am not focused on achieving objectives. MAM is a way to orientate or to correct people.’*

Obviously, Poulina’s managers were not simply incorporating practices and procedures defined by prevailing concepts of US management model. As the interviews indicate, the translation of MAM at Poulina reveals the power relations between managers and workers. The differences between the ideal of an US management model and the negotiation of MAM confirm the power dynamic inherent in the hybridization process as exposed by the postcolonial perspective (Prasad, 2003). More than a selective adaptation of MAM to fit the local context (Kostova & Roth, 2002), the new organizational practice can be understood as a product of resistance and enforcement. Yet, it is worth noting that management by objectives is not implemented in its original form in the US either. Robert Jackall (1988) demonstrates that this system is political and thus prone to resistance, even in the US. He points out that in the US, individual commitments made by subordinates are collated and locked into the commitments made by their immediate superiors, and that this process of interlocking goal commitments continues all the way up to the divisional president’s commitments to the CEO. However, one question remains: If there is anything specific about the Tunisian context, how can one capture it? The following quotes add a layer to the analysis suggesting that local meanings may have influenced the negotiations over the adaptation of the imported practices by providing criteria for assessing what a good performance appraisal should be.

The interviewees interpreted MAM in terms of the rewards attached to the duties vis-a-vis the boss, demonstrating the persistence of a paternalistic leadership style. As a worker (1) explained: ‘MAM means that if you have accomplished your duties, that the boss will be happy with you and will increase your wage.’ Similarly, certain workers’ references to Islamic concepts showed that the new appraisal system was reinterpreted according to local and specific frames of meaning. A worker (3) drew on the concept of ‘Ijtihad’, which means the interpretation of the Islamic law (sharia) through one’s personal effort rather than through following the decisions made by a religious expert: ‘What does MAM mean for me? It means I have a fixed salary and also bonuses. What is needed is Ijtihad to achieve a result.’* Another worker (4) used the metaphor of the prayer to make sense of MAM: ‘MAM is like the five prayers, the prayers are here to remind us of our duties, we make an effort to accomplish our duties and then we receive a judgment: a penalty or a bonus.’*

One might argue that, the local cultural symbols that accompanied these adaptations are manifestations of a socio-political dynamic by which the most powerful actors respond to the resistance of workers by intentionally manipulating the prevalent cultural references in order to legitimize the enactment of the imported practices (Ozen & Berkman, 2007; Saka, 2004). Yet, a closer examination of the interviews shows that what is a stake is much more than a simple ideological device being used to make sense of the enactment of the imported practice. Instead, these local meanings provide a shared ideal of a good working relationship against which the new, imported practice is assessed and hybridized. Similarly, in what follows, I will focus on how the ‘code of honour’ has influenced the hybridization process of the imported US practices.

A system that preserves honour

One of the most striking aspects when conducting my interviews was that, even though I asked the questions in a Tunisian dialect, the top managers used English and/or French when they described Poulina’s management system, reflecting their training in France or in the United States. This is consistent with Jackall’s (1988) findings that suggest that corporate management uses sophisticated managerial vocabulary to gain legitimacy. Yet, the interviewees automatically switched to the native Tunisian dialect when asked to comment on the implementation process of the US management practices, using their own language to describe their own experiences in different terms, a far cry from the classic managerial jargon. These switches implied the mobilization of local references and local metaphors in giving meaning to the imported practices (Yousfi, 2011). In this, interviewees’ native dialect can be seen as a vehicle for the continued transmission of culture: it ensures the continuity of national thought, but also maintains and reinforces cultural identity. As such, interviewees’ use of their native dialect altered the western managerialist discourse and ensured the reconnection with the local ideal of a good working relationship. Following Bloom (1996) and Ricoeur (1978), I paid particular attention to metaphors, viewing them as a bridge between the material and the ideal and/or the conceptual, finding that they recreated reality by adding a sense of materiality to abstract concepts. The expressions, metaphors and repetitions that I detected in the interviews revealed managers’ and workers’ primary concern, which was how to solve the dilemma of working for others (considered as alienating and often compared to slavery) while maintaining a feeling of dignity. Interviewees manifested this concern in their redefinition and reinterpretation of the imported US contract-based model through their recurrent references to the ‘code of honour’. As mentioned in the Poulina Group’s official ‘vision’, modernity goes hand-in-hand with honour:

The Poulina Group Holding is a group of men and women who are working together to accomplish a common ambition: the building of a modern company that gives honour to our country and that is on par in terms of quality management and efficiency with the companies of even the most developed countries.#

This ‘code of honour’ has been seen as the quintessential moral code of the Mediterranean and is a defining feature of the region (Pitt-Rivers, 1997). The Arab word sharaf (honour) comes from a root verb signifying ‘highness’, both in terms of physical position and social status. It determines people’s trustworthiness and therefore their status as good and reliable patrons or clients. All good achievements, be they the result of personal accomplishments or the arduous efforts of other members of the kin-group to which a man belongs, constitute his sharaf, or at least contribute to it. Thus, honour is not simply related to the social standing of individuals, but also to the standing of the social groups to which they belong (Khaldûn, 1377). Interviewees often referred to Poulina’s management system as a system that preserves ‘the honour’ of those that adhere to it: ‘Everyone is responsible and aziz (honourable),’ a middle manager (10) commented. Moreover, the system’s formality allows for equal treatment for everyone: ‘Everyone is subject to the same rules.’ Consequently, employees preserve their ‘honour’ and are still shielded from their boss’s arbitrary use of power. At the same time, they cannot do whatever they want due to the fact that procedures define what they can and cannot do. The word aziz, which literally means honourable and dignified, perfectly illustrates this morale. To be aziz implies being independent, free and respectful with reference to the fundamental principle of equality. An illustration of this came from Poulina’s chairman, who exemplified the link between equality and dignity through the analogy between compliance with the procedures and the relationships between God and Muslims:

Procedures help people preserve their honour. On one hand, they are committed, responsible; they do not have a boss looking over their shoulder dictating what they must do. On the other hand, they can lose face if they do not achieve written objectives … If somebody says ‘No, I do not agree with something,’ we tell him ‘OK, go ahead, suggest something else.’ If he doesn’t succeed in proving he is right, he will end up submitting himself to the rule … The procedures make the relationship between superiors and their subordinates impersonal; you do not have anybody looking over your shoulder telling you what you should do … Muslims do not have an intermediary with God, there is no hierarchy, and they are not at ease with a boss who is on top of them, controlling them. With a procedure, they can self-check everything, and so they preserve their honour.*

The important distinction underlying the interviewees’ accounts lies between the work of slaves and the work of free men or men of honour. As Zghal (1994) pointed out, dignity is highly valued in Tunisian culture; it plays a role of defiance against the social hierarchy, and it shields against exploitation. Different metaphors were used to symbolically overcome the otherwise humiliating subordinate role. They also help to ease and smooth the workers’ submission to impersonal, cold rules. By using the metaphor of the craftsman, workers underlined that they adhered to strict rules, but in independent ways that preserve their dignity. A middle manager (5) explained this balance as follows:

Working for others is considered as degrading in Tunisia [slavery is the metaphor most often used to describe a subordinate’s situation]. As soon as someone starts to succeed in his work, his circle of family and friends pushes him to work for himself. The term zoufri, from the French word ouvrier (worker) means ‘thug’ in Tunisian dialect … That’s why I think the craftsman is happier than the worker. The procedures help people preserve their honour: they are working autonomously, like craftsmen; they are committed, responsible, they do not have a ‘boss’ who controls them and who dictates to them what they have to do. At the same time, they can lose their ‘honour’ if they do not achieve their written objectives.*

Poulina’s chairman further elaborated this theme:

We are inspired by the model of a craftsman working for himself. SNA [a Poulina subsidiary] had 62 employees; today they have 50. The other employees became associates or subcontractors. The craftsman is happier than the worker because he has the feeling he is working for himself and not for an anonymous shareholder. For instance, we give our drivers ownership of their vehicles so they can feel free, and then they do a better job for us. They repay the debt on the vehicle whenever they can. Thus, they manage the vehicles as good fathers and they do their best to deserve our trust. The same things applies to our shops under the Poulina brand; we give ownership of the shop to the manager and so on and so forth.*

It is this ideal of a craftsman’s autonomy – more than the actual reproduction of an old artisan model – that gives meaning to the system of relationships between subsidiaries and the head office, as well as to those between superiors and subordinates. This model expresses the autonomy required to escape ‘servile’ docility to a boss or to an anonymous ruler. It provides workers with the autonomy required to develop their capacities and to set up their own businesses, while at the same time guaranteeing reliable relationships with managers who become subcontractors. As a worker (4) put it:

With a contract, I don’t see myself as a worker, I am almost a boss with all the rights accompanying this status, I am free to do whatever I want and I am only constrained by my capacities.*

Similarly, it is instructive to read the definition of a contract in Poulina’s internal documents:

The contract between Poulina and its employees is more than a simple legal contract that governs the work relationship, it is a contract of honour. The worker prides himself by achieving the objectives and fulfilling the mission of his job.*

The second metaphor used to overcome the subordination status is that of the family. Paternalism or brotherhood eclipses servitude, and the boss–worker relationship is defined in terms of ‘father–son’ rather than slave–master. As a middle manager (16) explained:

I try to be a brother for my collaborators, the atmosphere is very important, the way we speak to people is very important, people are very sensitive and we have to cope with this sensitiveness. It is very important to accompany them and to educate them.

Other responses repeatedly mentioned the positive image of the head office as a ‘caring father’ that helps his companies and supports them when they perform well. A middle manager (1) explained:

The role of the head office is to push the subsidiary companies to do their best, to advise them, but the last word is their word: if they perform well, we tell them sahiit (well done), if not we will ask them to be ‘careful’.*

The boss was also portrayed in a more negative way as an ‘authoritarian’ father, which paradoxically lent him an increased level of legitimacy. As top manager (2) put it:

If we notice one of our companies deviating from the plan, we put verbal pressure on the director for one year, then we put the director under supervision, like a child is under supervision: he will only ‘sign papers’ (just execute tasks) until he adjusts his behaviour, and if not, he will step down.*

The paternalism evoked by the interviewees is a form of supervision that allows workers to symbolically overcome an otherwise humiliating subordinate role. It also allows for a charismatic style of leadership, which is preferred in cases where authority must be exerted. The stress on the image of the ‘good father’ and the family metaphor enabled workers to manage the formal constraints of imported practices while at the same time maintaining their dignity. As mentioned above, this metaphor was also the backdrop against which workers resisted the establishment of individual objectives and negotiated the MAM adjustment.

To sum up, the ‘code of honour’ altered the US managerialist discourse, which itself imposes a vocabulary, style and language of its own. The code of honour also largely influenced interviewees’ reinterpretation of the imported practices as well as the local hybridization of these practices. The same managers who consciously adopted the modernization rhetoric in constructing their identity and in explaining the relevance of adopting the new US management model spontaneously referred to local shared frames of meanings in order to describe the process by which they managed to transform Poulina’s practices. The underlying assumption here is that Poulina’s workers were willing to adhere to the new management practices only because they felt that they were being treated in accordance with their ideal of a work relationship that respected their honour, a fact that was illustrated by the metaphors seen in their accounts.

One might argue that the notion of honour exists in virtually all cultures; however, when compared to other (both past and present) Mediterranean societies, honour still plays a dominant role (Pitt-Rivers, 1997). The specificity of the code of honour in Tunisia manifests itself in a particular constellation of references (such as Islam) and metaphors (such as the family or craftsman), giving actors locally rooted criteria with which they assess whether or not the boss–worker relationship is respectful of their dignity. Moreover, the reference to dignity is not only prevalent outside Poulina, it has also remained stable throughout history (Khaldûn, 1377), allowing us to distinguish the national context from the organizational one (Zghal, 1994). For example, one can find traces of this shared frame of meaning in popular proverbs (Khmiri, 1967) such as: ‘An olive tree is wealth, working for other men is self-abasement’ or ‘Only misery pushes a free man to work for another man’ as well as in the Tunisian literature or in the political slogan ‘dignity before bread’, which has been chanted by Tunisian workers during various social movements.

This said, however, it is also easy to argue that the ‘code of honour’ may be the result of compromises with national culture made by top managers in legitimizing the implementation of the US management model (Ozen & Berkman, 2007). As we cannot concretely assess whether or not and to what extent the workers were manipulated, the importance of this kind of shared frame of meaning lies in its symbolic value. It shows that for imported management practices to be accepted they must appeal (at least symbolically) to local meanings of what a good relationship between bosses and subordinates should be. More than a simple outcome of a socio-political dynamic involving managers and workers, or a cultural device used to legitimize the imported practice, the code of honour was the local shared frame of meaning that enabled the different actors to reconstruct their identities, the local strategies of resistance and the new ways of working that would correspond to their ideal of the boss–worker relationship.