Elusive Domination and the Fate of Critique in Neo-participative Management: A French Pragmatist Approach

The move towards flexibility and pluralism at Cookiz

At Cookiz we identify dimensions of a flexible and pluralist order, starting with its status of subcontractor in a fragmented value chain. Indeed, Cookiz produces biscuits for a large panel of retailers, ranging from gourmet brands to supermarkets, which are sold under the retailers’ brands. It is in this operating context that Cookiz management appropriated themes of alternative and sometimes militant or radical organizing (Parker, Cheney, Fournier, & Land, 2014). The result is a pluralist social order in which workers are encouraged to act innovatively, taking a direct role in decision-making processes. Such involvement is not limited to line-specific issues and target setting for production; rather, this decision-making devolution has extended to issues usually seen as outside the remit of production teams, such as local recruitment or product and service innovations.

The then-CEO of Cookiz who led the ‘liberating management’ programme reveals the motivation behind this break with the past:

The fundamental reason for the change we stand for, of our project, is a deep-seated conviction that corporations need to reform themselves, but really, deeply! … We must change everything! … My challenge is… really to put people at the heart of the system, and at the same time to meet the market’s expectations, to be competitive… eh, no one escapes these rules.

The motivations expressed borrow from a vocabulary of ‘radicality’, linking the deep reform of structures, aligned with market demands, with a humanistic agenda (Carney & Getz, 2009; Getz, 2009, 2011).

The practical realizations of this positioning are numerous: the abandoning of formal systems of appraisal and removing clocks to stress the primacy of ‘trust’ and ‘autonomy’ so workers, in theory, can shift towards self-management. In this new world, the expression of one’s own views about work processes, products and ‘the future of the company’ is encouraged, as evidenced by a day-long stoppage of shop floor production lines at the main site, that ensured all employees of this plant could participate in what was termed a ‘collective intelligence’ exercise. Here, production decisions rely on implementing a ‘bottom-up’ approach deliberately deemed ‘rebellious’, whereby the workforce is encouraged to challenge the status quo:

We wanted everyone, each and every one of us equally, to try to work like each person wished to work. We didn’t want to give a blueprint. It had to come from the shop floor, this new way of doing things. (line worker 62, member of the event’s coordinating committee)

Other actors reveal that this deeper involvement of workers may also serve their mobilization in a more results-driven corporate culture:

There’s a profit-oriented culture at Cookiz: the focus really is profit, profit, profit. We’ve even started talking about the service rate, the return rate, the P&L numbers, etc., with people on the line and they relate to it! … The numbers are available to anyone, so people definitely look at them. (site manager 69)

Worker performance is shared and managed using self-monitoring systems such as the physical display of weekly results and quality rates, with the support of a technical infrastructure including SAP software. Participation is framed in terms of ‘the factory of the future’, with each new initiative ensuring that the (managerially defined) idea of performance subsumes the espoused well-being of the workers: ‘Well the aim is… everybody’s well-being, company, workers, shareholders, and everybody, everybody is winning’ (line worker 55). This organizational model attempts to garner widespread support by claiming to create a workplace where profit and self-fulfilment are accommodated.

By positioning Cookiz at the forefront of ‘tomorrow’s corporation… and even, tomorrow’s society’, senior management insisted the firm was not settled in a structured (perhaps rigid) model (Carney & Getz, 2009). Rather, the intent was to ensure that organizational and product innovations would shake up daily routines. This principle was implemented through the deployment of consultants and managers from the main manufacturing site for Cookiz (the oldest and the first to implement ‘liberating management’ in 2006) to other sites in an effort to ‘go further’ in their radicalized mode of operating driven by change and innovation.

Permanent change is a mode celebrated with investments towards fostering an ever-innovative – and fast-moving – corporate culture, including not only basic cross-level product innovation but also collaborative relationships with local start-ups. Training in ‘intrapreneurship’ emerged alongside the establishment of a new in-house business incubator hub to encourage innovative thinking. Such developments ensured the new norm in the workplace was to celebrate innovation, with the idea of good work and good craftsmanship effectively shifting: ‘because we… we are constantly moving… Our work is moving all the time. […] Every time we get new information, data… we bounce back’ (technician 34).

Against this backdrop, it is not unsurprising that change was not universally embraced since this ethos challenged how workers understood their role and place on the shop floor. And yet, there is little evidence of resistance or shop floor ‘push back’, which was (we thought) unusual.

The consequences of organizational reform: Acquiescence or resistance?

As part of the change programme, middle and line management positions were stripped out and replaced with (fewer) coordination positions that were loosely defined as ‘technical expert’. As one plant manager stated: ‘Well, basically since […] the jobs’ descriptions hadn’t been defined to the last centimetre, right, so each person, from where they stood, […] they had to figure out in which perimeter they could operate and in which way’ (Site manager 69). In turn, the content of the technical expert positions remained very flexible, which had consequences:

What I experienced when I was [an expert] was that… well I would be there, not knowing where to go exactly, to the [line] 2, or the 6, or the 10. I was grabbing bits of information left and right, yeah… so once in a while, we were quite, quite confused when it came to who would decide, let’s say, to stop the line. (line worker 67)

Feelings of isolation were not uncommon. After the ‘liberation’, Rose, who was a supervisor for twenty years, spent two years jumping from coordinating SAP, to being in charge of continuous improvement programmes, to logistic support; she was not alone when she said: ‘It feels like essentially people don’t see what you’re doing here… it’s like… it’s like you’re doing nothing… [Rose cries]’ (supervision worker 33).

Workers’ participation was increasingly valued and deemed prestigious, particularly when it occurred in the context of innovation groups that contributed to the strategic ends of Cookiz. All workers were also pushed to challenge the status quo during dedicated fun occasions. For example, more than 350 workers took part in a ‘collective intelligence’ exercise using techniques from the ‘world café’ method, ² framed as an open brainstorming forum to initiate the organizational transformation. Workers described gathering around tables covered in coloured paper on which they could draw and write to express their desire for change in this fun and unconventional atmosphere:

Everyone was sat around small tables, in small teams, and we started thinking out of the box, expressing people’s wishes, how we could work differently… So it was a game-like set-up, writing on little papers, and then bringing them together on a board… (line worker 7)

Yet some workers recounted the difficulties they encountered in attempting to express their disagreement with the ‘vision’, or their discomfort with the new organization and roles: ‘At the beginning, I was told off because I spoke out every time something went wrong. I just spoke my mind. But after a while, people got me to understand that some stuff should not be said’ (supervision worker 61). Other workers similarly reported that weekly meetings were not always welcoming to people voicing conflicts and unpleasant emotions. Thus, while the drive for flexibility created a ‘dynamic’ work environment, the focus on innovation effectively circumscribed the ways in which individuals could reflect on their work experience. A case in point was a situation where workers were unable to frame an operational problem as an attractive innovation project:

For example, we asked for a new pump to avoid mixing chocolate and vanilla filling… but they said no, it’s too expensive… But they’re ok to take people off the line, and that’s a cost, to go to the [innovation] meetings. (line worker 66)

Interestingly, the less invested workers reported feeling additional pressure to engage in participation processes: ‘We are doing too many things at once, and yet again we are asked to take part in each and every group. We are “the bad guys” if we don’t go…’ (line worker 66). It was also clear that, for those who appeared less able or willing to conform, there was always the suspicion that they were ‘doing less’. Many looked elsewhere for work (to our knowledge, 18 of 27 supervisors resigned from the plant between 2006 and 2013): ‘We had many supervisors and some had to go. So people could leave in a natural way, and as long as they chose to leave happily, all the better’ (site manager 69). Commitment to the new way of working reflected personal willingness to accept the uncertainty of the workplace, which was to be celebrated and embraced. Within this understanding, opting out was not to be seen as a rejection of the system but recognition that this arrangement demanded a new relationship that did not suit everyone:

We have colleagues who do not feel well here because it is difficult for them to adapt. And because if this does not fit with who you really are, it is going to be even harder to adapt and sooner or later you are forced to leave, there is no halfway. (site manager 69)

The discomfort and disillusionment behind those departures were thereby repressed, while the dominant narrative of Cookiz as an enjoyable workplace was reaffirmed.

The regime of justifications: Ideological plasticity deprives critique of its argument

Organizational members are – according to French pragmatists – repeatedly engaged in interpretation to make given situations fit with a limited set of abstract principles of justice or moral grounds that help them qualify and assess situations (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). The works of Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) and Lafaye and Thévenot (1993) refer to a diversity of principles of justice – namely the inspired, domestic, civic, opinion, market, industrial and ecological principles. Each principle of justice allows individuals to categorize, rank or calibrate what is of high or low value, and supports their justification efforts. Sometimes disputes arise when opposing views are confronted in public (Boltanski, 2012; Cloutier et al., 2017). Organizational disputes encompass both disagreements about the value to be assigned to an individual or object according to a given principle of justice, as well as confrontations regarding the principle of justice on which the assessment should be based (Patriotta, Gond, & Schultz, 2011; Taupin, 2012; Jaumier, Daudigeos, & Joannidès de Lautour, 2017).

Importantly for French pragmatists, the maintenance of the dominant social order rests on the capacity of capitalism to be justified, and hence on its capacity to renew its spirit, i.e. the moral principles that ground its justification (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005). At the organization level, social order is (re)produced when organizational members assess their day-to-day situations with principles of justice that align with the assumed principles of the dominant order. Reflecting on the developments shaping the rise of new flexible organizational forms promoting participatory management, Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) find evidence of a shift in the principles of justice associated with capitalist companies in the last few decades. While adherence to the dominant social order rested, since the end of World War II, on a compromise devised between industrial and civic principles, ³ the new spirit of capitalism now locates the gratifications attached to one’s commitment to the social order in the autonomy afforded by participation in temporary projects. Within this new spirit, as demonstrated in the all-day ‘collective intelligence’ exercise and the ongoing encouragement of worker participation in innovation processes at Cookiz, an openness to a plurality of ideas is now among the qualities expected of organizational participants.

Interestingly then, as at Cookiz, obedience to the social order rests on a paradox, since organizational members are asked to conform to the principles of late modernity that value their autonomy, their capacity to offer new ideas and to think differently. Conformity then encompasses an injunction to engage in work situations critically. In this case, critique becomes part-and-parcel of the way individuals confront change. Yet, such critique is unlikely to disrupt practices significantly for two main reasons.

First, every time a new critique emerges and questions the former justification, the organization makes the new critique its own thanks to its ideological plasticity. As noticed by Nyberg, Spicer and Wright (2013, p. 437) in their study of corporate engagement with climate change in Australia, ‘corporations are now routinely involved in forms of stakeholder dialogue which are often less about ensuring increased accountability, and more about incorporating potential critics into their own strategy formulation processes and thus closing down radical challenges’. This ability to appropriate the rhetorical content of critique is even more tangible in neo-participative management systems, where multiple critiques emanate from inside the organization. As our vignette illustrates, management at Cookiz made the most radical discourses of alternatives – responsibility, autonomy and anarchist principles – their own to promote their capitalist project. In these organizational settings, the maintenance of domination is ensured via moves to deprive critique of its argument (i.e. the moral principles that ground the justification for change) and thus, ultimately, of any effectiveness (Huault & Rainelli-Weiss, 2013). Workers’ critique confirms the dominant principle, instead of subverting it (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005; Reinecke, van Bommel, & Spicer, 2017).

Second, rhetorical efforts supporting putative win-win arrangements help such organizations to loosely connect plural and often contradictory principles of justice (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). A good example of such supposedly win-win solutions is the widely diffused discourse on corporate social responsibility (CSR). As mentioned by Fleming, Roberts and Garsten (2013, p. 340), commenting on the rise of CSR:

This is the explicit revival of the assumption that has perhaps been mainstream CSR’s enduring feature: that we might have both global capitalism and sustainability, corporate control and welfare, a consumer society and green solutions, etc. […] As a number of commentators have noted, this ‘win–win’ expectation underlying much CSR practice and ideology misses the structural nature of the capitalist economic imperative.

Hence, the organizational forms that fit with the latest spirit of capitalism are populated with multiple principles of justice that are held together in loose connections (Kazmi, Leca, & Naccache, 2016; Nyberg, Wright, & Kirk, 2017).

Here again, our vignette of Cookiz helps to illustrate how, in flexible and neo-participative management systems, the market and its corollary, profit orientation and individual accountability for performance, are made compatible with workers’ desire for more autonomy and responsibility (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005). Explicit in the expression of reforms undertaken in Cookiz was the opportunity to serve the needs of the individual as an autonomous being in terms that supported market rules and profitability.

To sum up, within pluralist and flexible organizations like those embracing neo-participative management features, two mechanisms in the regime of justification deprive critique of its argument (see Figure 1). First, the great ideological plasticity of managerial rhetoric leads to the appropriation of the radical discourse of critiques. Second, managerial rhetoric accommodates critique by connecting conflicting principles of justice within putative win-win solutions. Here again, critique’s main arguments seem compatible with the incumbent order and critique is no longer able to promote radical alternatives.

The regime of fairness: Fast-changing rules and sacrosanct conventions deprive critique of its object

Whereas principles of justice are made explicit via public discourse in the regime of justifications, they are tacit in the regime of fairness (Gomez & Jones, 2000). In everyday situations, principles of justice are supported by a range of conventions that recall more or less explicitly the sense of justice. Conventions may be defined as a common form of evaluation that reduces coordination uncertainty by qualifying the frame and object of interactions (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Gomez & Jones, 2000). They help organizational members to assess what is of high or low value according to a given principle of justice, and their behaviour is deemed appropriate or fair when they follow the dominant conventions in place. Conventions rest on explicit cognitive representations such as standards, formal rules, rankings or indicators that guarantee their stability and increase confidence in a shared interpretation (Gkeredakis, 2014).

The explicit expressions of conventions constitute for principles of justice what French pragmatists call reality tests. Indeed, these are socially constructed proofs of the relevance of principles of justice (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). As Boltanski (2011, p. 105) states: ‘in organizations, people and things are constantly subjected to reality tests so that their quality and quantities are confirmed’. However, the notion of a test presupposes a space for critique in the regime of fairness. Organizational members can either denounce the way in which existing reality tests are conducted and thus call for a refinement of the test, or they can create new tests based on different assessment devices that may ultimately become conventions if they become taken-for-granted (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006).

In flexible and pluralist organizations, the opportunity to criticize reality tests is not easily achieved. Focusing on change, the latest organizational expressions of the new spirit of capitalism eliminate those conventions and associated material expressions that hinder the quest for ‘flexibility’ and ‘agility’. To avoid the ‘bureaucratic trap’, formal rules are in short supply. And because work is light on rules, there are few opportunities to measure, exemplify or disclose injustice, which generates a de facto deregulation of the workplace (Reed, 2011). As noted in our vignette, the emergence of ‘technical experts’ and the suppression of formalized roles and defined procedures effectively deprived workers of the means to evaluate the new workplace. Put another way, ‘the deconstruction of social categories […] helps to disrupt work relations, and particularly the tests governing access to employment, promotion, certain levels of remuneration, and so on’ (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005, p. 315).

This situation is compounded because the rules that are available, or at least their material expressions, are constantly threatened by the will of the management to implement continuous change (Clegg & Baumeler, 2010; Du Gay, 2003). Critique becomes instrumental to this project devoted to flexibility. At Cookiz, the key manufacturing site symbolized and enabled efforts to achieve flexibility, acting as the knowledge hub from which staff could be deployed to instigate continuous change. The constant push for change had the effect of squeezing the time available for assessment of any injustice, to name it and denounce it. Such a management mode generalizes a sense of emergency and temporariness (Finchelstein, 2011; Hassard, 2002), with strong implications for critique. At Cookiz, pressure to ‘constantly innovate’ dictates the agenda of participatory spaces. Critique loses its object when a new innovation priority emerges and team members are shuffled between participative groups.

Fast-changing rules are not, however, the sole mechanism preventing a radical critique rooted in the regime of fairness from emerging in flexible and pluralist organizations. Without censorship, organizational members are in principle encouraged to address any topic they want in the participatory spaces created by management. However, as illustrated in our vignette, employees rapidly came to feel that some concerns were more appropriate to these spaces if they wanted to be heard. Some matters are prohibited – effectively, if not formally – and thus the scope for critique is circumscribed. Here we refer to organizational taboos, i.e. the limits placed on talk about sacrosanct matters, which participate in the maintenance of dominant norms and the definition of deviant conduct and identity (Land, 2008, p. 1195; see also Hoon, 2014; Martin, 1990). In Cookiz, the dominant taboo was to question the basis of flexible and innovative organization, framed by foundational principles that constitute the dominant ideology of capitalism (Goll & Zeitz, 1991; Nyberg et al., 2017; Petersen & Willig, 2011). The potential for critique was effectively limited to particular issues framed as innovation projects – where conventions reflect (and encourage) fluidity in work processes, critique has nothing to grasp and falls short of meaningful objects.

To summarize, flexible and pluralist organizations are characterized both by fast-changing temporary rules and sacrosanct conventions (see Figure 1). This context is detrimental for critique, which is deprived of its objects of contention. On the one hand, ever-changing rules constitute unstable ground on which to build radical critique and the rapid pace of change quickly renders any given critique obsolete, generating a constant need for new critiques. Critique is thus highly unstable. On the other hand, some sacrosanct conventions are never questioned and critique remains circumscribed and mostly instrumental to the never-ending pursuit of newness.

The regime of emotions: filtered emotions deprive critique of its source

Beside justifications and conventions, the regime of emotions points to a third way in which people engage in action (Boltanski, 1999, 2012; Boltanski & Godet, 1995). In this case, how people act is not framed by existing conventions or by reference to explicit principles of justice, as in other regimes. The regime of emotions is instead a coordination mode through which engagement goes beyond calculation, as it implies a low degree of reflexivity. In other regimes, equivalence rules allow individuals to categorize, rank or calibrate what is of high or low value, which ultimately triggers their engagement. In the regime of emotions, mediating devices are much less important than in the regimes of justifications or fairness, because there is no need for qualification to judge equivalence. No equivalence can be set where action is guided by emotions. ‘Loving without condition’ or ‘blind violence’ are two ways to exemplify the incommensurability of this mode of interaction (Boltanski, 2012).

If people engage in action on the basis of their emotions, social orders rest on the capacity to govern people’s emotions, not only their reasoning (Martin, Knopoff, & Beckman, 1998). This idea is in line with the concept of ‘emotional regime’ developed by Reddy (2001), who sees social structures as emotionally governed. In his view, ‘any political regime has to establish a certain normative emotional regime and to define and separate highly valued emotions from deviant ones’ (Baumeler, 2010, p. 276). While emotional regimes play an obvious role in engaging people in action, they also have strong implications for the possibility of critique. Emotions are considered as the necessary condition that ignites indignation, rendering critique possible:

The formulation of a critique presupposes a bad experience prompting protest, whether it is personally endured by critiques or they are roused by the fate of others. This is what we call the source of indignation. Without this prior emotional – almost sentimental – reaction, no critique can take off. (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005, p. 36)

In flexible and pluralistic organizations that espouse the new spirit of capitalism, we contend that critique and domination can go together because those organizations encourage certain emotional states that have in return a profound influence on the nature of critiques that are expressed in the workplace. At first glance, the expression of emotions is warmly welcomed at Cookiz – as the key slogan of the ‘new model’ indicated, ‘people [are] at the heart [of the organization]’. However, as our vignette illustrates, organizational members’ emotions are filtered. Two mechanisms are especially visible. While employees are supposed to show a ‘happy face’ at work, leaving their possible negative emotional states aside, they are also encouraged to propose ‘happy critiques’ or diet critiques that would foster innovation and change without radically challenging the organizational project (Clegg & Baumeler, 2010). At Cookiz, enthusiastic, invested workers affirm their adherence, and signal this investment by being (productively) critical in the innovation or intrapreneurship groups. Moments of exaltation are staged, such as the initial day-long ‘collective intelligence’ gathering. Regarding this event, during which the lines were stopped, many workers recall the joy of using coloured pens as part of transgressive and fun activities.

At the same time, employees who do not conform to this model of a happy, enthusiastic and productive critique find that more confrontational or difficult emotions are ostracized, their validity contested. Several issues could thus not be heard and were discarded. As illustrated in our vignette, some workers learnt how to censor themselves. More generally, some employees experienced isolation and disarray within the ‘happy’ work collective, as they could not find a space in which to voice uncomfortable feelings. Some of the interviewees were very emotional when they shared their frustration at not being heard. The only form of expression of discomfort or discontent tolerated in such cases is exit. As noted in our vignette, a large majority of supervisors left the company, and many shared the idea that workers needed to either adapt to the new situation or leave. Even then, leaving ‘happily’ seems best. Whereas a (happy) voicing of critique is tolerated – even praised – when it expresses adherence to the project (that is to say, strong and unquestioning loyalty), a silent exit is the only form of resistance that seems to be left in the neo-participative system. The two dominant mechanisms – happy face and happy critique – hamper the emergence of more subversive contestation.

Many organizational scholars have already highlighted the emergence of a ‘human relations’-based capitalism that aims to enhance workers’ positive emotions in order to foster loyalty and long-term engagement (Hochschild, 1983). In line with these precepts, strategies to elicit positive emotions have flourished, such as those found in ‘corporate culturalism’ (Casey, 1999; Kärreman & Alvesson, 2009) and ‘be-yourself policies’ (Endrissat, Islam, & Noppeney, 2015; Fleming, 2014; Fleming & Sturdy, 2011). If some research has underlined the potential of a value-laden ethical approach that focuses on good management practices for the benefit of employee well-being (Jenkins & Delbridge, 2013), many studies have also denounced the effects of an ‘excessive positivity’ (Collinson, 2012; Fineman, 2006; Vince & Mazen, 2014). Not only does this excess mask the contentiousness of relationships at work, but by denying the very existence of the dark side of employees’ experience, it also becomes a form of violence in itself (Vince & Mazen, 2014). This selection and orientation of emotions has consequences for the expression of critique. It can disarm critique insofar as alternative voices are perceived as betrayal or even not perceived at all because they do not fit with the shared fantasy (Cederström & Grassman, 2010; Collinson, 2012; Gabriel, 1995; Vince & Mazen, 2014).

Reflecting on how emotional display is filtered in modern organizational forms that espouse the new spirit of capitalism, we argue that domination rests on two processes in this context: the encouragement of positive and constructive critiques (happy critique) and the exclusion and silencing of difficult feelings (happy face) (see Figure 1). The effect of these mechanisms is to deprive critique of its emotional source, a necessary foundation for any critique.