‘A Minute’s a Life-Time in Fast-Food!’: Managerial Job Quality in the Quick Service Restaurant Sector

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that the structural relations of a capitalist economy in which firms operate impacts on how organisational practices are shaped and implemented (e.g. Bolton, 2007: 8). Sociologists thus tend to view changes in job quality as reflecting the outcomes of long-term structural features of the labour market (Kalleberg, 2016: 119), for example cost cutting as a competitive strategy, job design that limits autonomy and a neo-liberal policy environment (see Carré et al., 2012). Vital questions concern whether high job quality is inherently restricted to certain contexts and occupations (Grote and Guest, 2017: 158) and if the acuteness of such pressures precludes others. The manner in which structural pressures intersect with job quality is especially severe in certain sectors of the economy – significantly those where success depends on price leadership allied to uniformity in the provision of the product or service. Fast-food – the focus of this study – represents the prototypical service sector example (see, for example, Leidner, 1993), the corollary being the requirements for efficiency, calculability, predictability and control (Ritzer, 1998). The ubiquity of the fast-food phenomenon has inevitably attracted academic scrutiny and references to neo-Fordist regimented, assembly line techniques (e.g. Leidner, 1993; Royle, 2002: 61) have become an enduring cliché. Indeed, there is a lineage of accounts stretching back to Garson (1988) depicting quick service restaurants (QSRs) – the industry’s preferred terminology – as the apogee of Braverman’s (1974) ‘degradation of work’ thesis, manifest in a deskilled and alienated labour process. Job quality is however a multi-dimensional phenomenon reflected in diverse understandings of what constitutes a ‘good’ job (Kalleberg, 2016: 112) involving both objective and subjective components (e.g. Brown et al., 2012; Kalleberg, 2016). Within the fast-food literature the analytical gaze has for the most part however fallen on ‘crew’ members, that is customer facing shop-floor personnel (e.g. Allan et al., 2006; Lam and Zhang, 2003). Surprisingly, while various authors (e.g. Royle, 2002) have highlighted the presence of pervasive bureaucratic controls, ‘restaurant’ managers have not hitherto formed the principal focus of any study. This article accordingly investigates front-line managerial work in ‘QSRco’ – a multinational fast-food organisation with a long-standing presence in the UK. The research speaks to important debates vis-a-vis managerial job quality in front-line service sector work (e.g. Grugulis et al., 2011; Lloyd and Payne, 2014) and whether ‘meaning’ can be derived from routinised (Brannan et al., 2015) and stigmatised work (e.g. Bailey and Madden, 2017). The theoretical contribution of the article lies in the rigour of the analytical lens and exploration of how objective quality of working life (QWL) criteria (e.g. Grote and Guest, 2017) are coloured by subjective expectations and social processes (see Brown et al., 2012) to produce nuanced and indeed unanticipated outcomes.

Routinised managerial work and job quality: The fast-food sector

The notion of job quality includes a number of characteristics including fair pay, skills development and opportunities for employee representation (Grote and Guest, 2017). Fast-food work with its inevitable ‘McJob’ (Etzioni, 1986) connotations sits uneasily with this construct. More recently there has been an acceptance that ostensibly ‘bad jobs’ can possess a mixture of good and bad characteristics (e.g. Sengupta et al., 2009). Sengupta et al. (2009: 49), for example, observe how discrete product and labour market influences can produce variegated outcomes, for example job security allied to low pay in food manufacturing. Consistent with this more sensitive approach Gould (2010: 780) usefully cautions, ‘fast-food work is a more nuanced phenomenon than has been previously suggested’. This work highlights the need to disentangle the dimensions of work organisation and human resource management as such jobs may have repressive task features allied nonetheless to supportive human resource management (HRM) practices, for example flexible working hours and opportunities for training. Of course, there are limits to this ‘modular’ (Gould, 2010: 784) view of jobs. Almost any work will have certain redeeming features and there is a danger of resorting to a crude reductionism via a ‘fragmented perspective’ (Grote and Guest, 2017: 155) at the expense of a more holistic analysis. The above body of work is nonetheless useful in cautioning that the QWL phenomenon needs to be operationalised as a multi-faceted construct – an approach this article responds to.

Models exploring the characteristics of job quality (e.g. Grote and Guest, 2017; Walton, 1973) stress a number of factors. A common denominator is the development of human capacities, for example through jobs that promote skills development and decision latitude (Grote and Guest, 2017: 156). This aligns with sociological theory (e.g. Marx and later Braverman) which has long emphasised the importance of non-economic aspects of work (Kalleberg, 2016: 113). Such attributes are perforce not typically associated with routinised front-line managerial service sector work. Grugulis et al.’s (2011: 203–209) study of retail managers, for example, points to ‘small discretionary spaces’ and ‘trivial freedoms’. Lloyd and Payne’s (2014: 475) investigation into the UK cafe sector echoes this and similarly highlights how a significant part of the managerial function involved the performance of ‘routine tasks’. QSR managerial work offers an extreme example of such shortcomings given the activities of line management have been documented as being heavily regimented through bureaucratic mechanisms (Royle, 2002: 65) that, for example, set detailed standards for each task and criteria for evaluating workers (Leidner, 1993: 133). It would nonetheless be disingenuous to suggest this necessarily gives rise to ‘an arena of arid, impersonal, formal rationality’ á la Weber (Korczynski et al., 2006: 16). As Leidner (1993: 29–30) has convincingly argued, there are limits to routinisation; not least because this ‘requires stable and predictable working conditions that cannot be guaranteed when people are the raw materials’. That is, managers in such settings ultimately have to ‘manage’, that is coax workers into an optimum level of performance within a finite budget. The demands are acute because the workforce will often comprise employees with very limited skills, qualifications and overall employability ‘washed up’ (Royle, 2000: 82) by the local labour market. The challenges and complexities of regulating effort, that is transforming erstwhile ‘sullen’ and ‘listless’ (Leidner, 1993: 80) recruits into an ‘enthusiastic energized group’ should not be underestimated.

Studies routinely paint this aspect of the QSR managerial function in negative, ‘hard’ HRM terms. Allan et al. (2006: 411; see also Leidner, 1993: 78) note how fast-food managers ‘hustled’ front-line workers ‘to make them work faster’ and expected employees to work unpaid overtime. Royle (2000: 72) similarly refers to managers cutting back on employees’ hours as a standard way of demonstrating displeasure for poor performance and ‘negative’ attitudes. Parallel research, often by the same authors, however, suggests a ‘softer’, more developmental managerial role, stressing the importance inter alia of communication, recognition (e.g. Royle, 2000: 66) and advancement opportunities (Gould, 2010: 799). These varied findings indicate managers ultimately possess a degree of agency and ‘operative control’ (Reed, cited in Bolton and Houlihan, 2010: 383) within a wider framework of centralised ‘allocative control’, which can be used discretionally to shape the nature of the managerial role. The key issue here is whether the scope for personal initiative is sufficient to drive a sense of well-being, meaning (e.g. Bailey and Madden, 2017) and indeed dignity (e.g. Hodson, 2001). Research in this area is under-developed (Rosso et al., 2010: 92) and the extent to which those working in highly routinised (Brannan et al., 2015) and stigmatised (e.g. Bailey and Madden, 2017: 4) occupations can derive meaning remains controversial. Meaning is acquired in a number of ways, for example the perception that work invokes the provision of the greater good and temporal autonomy within the labour process (Bailey and Madden, 2017: 4–12). There are long-standing concerns regarding the compatibility of meaning and dignity with the rigid bureaucratisation that accompanies routinised work (e.g. Beynon, 1973: 187). The realisation of meaning under inhospitable structural conditions will depend at least partly on the creative agentive activity of the workers under consideration (Hodson, 2001: 4) – a proposition the current study is well placed to explore.

It is generally established that job quality is a complex, multidimensional construct (Kalleberg, 2016: 123). It has accordingly been acknowledged that the experience of low discretion work depends on a range of factors including how such work is supported (Houlihan, 2002: 70). That is, any evaluation of job quality needs to consider the characteristics of the organisation in which the tasks are performed as well as the intrinsic nature of the job. Developing this line of analysis, Grote and Guest (2017: 156) list a range of QWL criteria derived from HRM supports, for example fair compensation and opportunities for flexible working and representation. At an operational level there is evidence of organisations seeking to ameliorate certain problems of routinised work through the ‘co-mingling of control and HRM commitment strategies’ – the low discretion high commitment (LDHC) phenomenon (Houlihan, 2002: 68). Such an observation appears paradoxical given high commitment management (HCM) is typically associated with high-scope flexibility work environments (Houlihan, 2002: 68). However, as Houlihan (2002: 69) advises, commitment strategies (strategic recruitment and selection, performance-based pay, training, communication and so forth) can be implemented in both a comprehensive and superficial manner. The utilisation of an approach skewed towards the latter has been identified in the fast-food sector aligning with Houlihan’s (2002: 75) notion of a LDHC ‘containment’ orientation involving a ‘patchy’ ‘overlay’ of HCM practices. Gould’s (2010) study of McDonalds (Australia) indicated aspects of job security via the use of an internally skewed labour market, a rudimentary system of performance management and aspects of workplace flexibility. Studies similarly point to opportunities for advancement (Royle, 2002: 64) and the possibility of career (Gould, 2010: 799) for those with poor academic backgrounds (Gould, 2010: 799; Royle, 2002: 64). The issue of occupational mobility is especially pertinent to the managerial population – a theme developed in the findings.

Job quality assessments do not solely reflect formally imposed managerial job and working conditions. Sociological analysis highlights the need to explore agential capacity and its role within the structural constraints (Jenkins and Delbridge, 2014: 871) imposed. Sociologists have similarly long noted the role social processes and conventions play in influencing the experience of work (see, for example, Brown et al., 2012: 1013). Ethnographic studies have highlighted how fellow workers and occupational communities provide the ‘social fabric’ that is often crucial for the derivation of meaning in ostensibly challenging conditions (e.g. Hodson, 2001: 18). This may involve social diversions, friendship or the provision of a bulwark against managerial fiat (Hodson, 2001: 18). It is likewise important to note that job quality is a construct that contains subjective aspects (Kalleberg, 2016: 123) and workers’ expectations thus play a crucial role (Alvarez-Galván, 2012: 173). Any credible examination needs to consider the characteristics of the worker highlighting the salience of class and a socio-demographic line of analysis. There is of course a danger in relying too heavily on subjective interpretations (see Brown et al., 2012: 1011) – the realm of psychological theorists. Job satisfaction ratings say little about the quality of jobs (Perales and Tomaszewski, 2016: 701) and the fact that disadvantaged workers may become habituated to injurious job characteristics does not render ‘bad’ jobs ‘good’. Kalleberg (2016: 124) usefully reminds us that while it is clear job quality depends on the characteristics of both jobs and people, we do not yet have unanimity on a model of what comprises good jobs. What is thus crucial is how the subjective data are interpreted and this requires an analysis of the full social context that shapes attitudes (Brown et al., 2012: 1015–1016). Drawing on such insights, and using fast-food as the empirical platform, this article systematically dissects the nature of managerial job quality in front-line service sector work. The central issue addressed is whether such highly routinised work can deliver a positive QWL experience. The remainder of this article is structured as follows: initially a synopsis is provided of the means of data capture. The main body of the article then explores the job attributes of the managerial function. Context is provided via a discussion of salient workplace features vis-a-vis HR processes, the individual characteristics of the managerial respondents and the social setting of work. In the concluding section the various empirical observations are afforded theoretical scrutiny.

Research strategy

This article is concerned with the theme of job quality in an ostensibly inhospitable environment. There are subtle social processes at work and the study accordingly adopted an in-depth, qualitative approach to extract intricate details about important phenomena including agential capacity, work expectations and social ties. The extraction of such data concerning ‘feelings’ and ‘thought processes’ lends itself naturally to a qualitative approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 11) given its sensitivity to the lived experience of individuals. The subsequent presentation and analysis of data draws on conversations with 39 managers and support staff in ‘QSRco’, a fast-food organisation employing over 10,000 UK workers – further contextual information is provided in the empirical section. The data were gathered via a combination of one-on-one semi-structured interviews, joint interviews and small focus group discussions (three to five respondents) held between August 2015 and April 2017. The spacing of the sessions over a two-year period lent itself to an iterative approach which involved the checking and building of knowledge in key areas, for example work processes, relationships and HR systems. The sessions – 23 in total – took place at various locations including the UK head office and a recently opened ‘drive-thru’ restaurant. The vast majority, however, were convened at an off-site training venue operated by an independent third party. Email addresses were provided by the organisers and the respondents were selected through a form of random sampling. All interviews/focus group sessions were conducted by one or other of the research team. Given the highly sensitive nature of the material, standard British Sociological Association ethical guidelines were adhered to regarding informed consent, voluntary participation, anonymity and data security.

The respondents comprised a vertical slice of the restaurant management hierarchy, that is representatives of the team leader, assistant manager, manager and area manager grades (demographic information is provided in the next section). The vast majority worked in the ‘corporate’ division of the business, that is restaurants owned and operated by QSRco. This article draws on responses from those in franchised units where they refer to matters determined centrally, for example training and health and safety (H&S). Testimony was also gathered from staff providing a local support function (mostly training) all of whom had recent restaurant managerial experience. The interview/focus group sessions were wide ranging. Questions related to personal characteristics, job content (e.g. the pace and intensity of work and areas of autonomy), HR support (terms and conditions, training and development opportunities, voice and so forth) and organisational culture. That is, a combination of the objective, subjective and social influences that have been identified as influencing the experience of work (e.g. Alvarez-Galván, 2012; Brown et al., 2012). To further probe emergent themes additional discussions were held with senior HR managers in various functional areas, that is staff development, reward and resourcing. These were used to verify important details relating to performance management, communication, organisational structure and so on. The discussions varied in length from 40 minutes to 1 hour 26 minutes.

Epistemologically, this article falls within the sphere of inductive theory building research. Consistent with this, there was a need for fine-grained data analysis. Accordingly, the interview/focus group sessions were recorded and transcribed verbatim. An amalgamation of a priori and emergent codes was utilised to scrutinise the transcriptions. Because elements of extant output (e.g. Grote and Guest, 2017) were used to guide the initial research, certain of its constructs were adopted as a priori codes (e.g. ‘decision latitude’). As analysis progressed inevitably certain categories and descriptors could not be readily categorised into the coding system and emergent codes were explored and added. There was thus an iterative relationship between data analysis and theory.

Findings

Discussion

While academic research into job quality has waxed and waned (Grote and Guest, 2017: 150–151) recent years have witnessed a renaissance of interest in this field. In the title to a recent text, Warhurst et al. (2012) provocatively pose the question, ‘Are Bad Jobs Inevitable?’. The current article has sought to address the closely related issue of whether highly routinised front-line managerial work can deliver – on balance – a positive work experience. The answer would appear to be a qualified yes. The data suggest the relationship between job quality and routinised work is complex. Notwithstanding significant bureaucratic rigidities, fast-food managerial work was viewed as both interesting and indeed meaningful for some. Kalleberg (2016: 112) usefully reminds us that ‘job quality is a multidimensional phenomenon’. Accordingly, any attempt at explanation for this apparent disjuncture needs to consider objective job characteristics and organisational supports as well as subjective expectations and the social milieu within which these sit.

Objectively, the constraining influence of myriad processes and procedures and limitations around the scope of decision making were clearly evident. Managers were frustrated in their powerlessness to influence the nature of the food offering and in this sense they were classically alienated from the products of their labour. There were also frustrations around work processes. Certainly, the rational efficiency of the system was accepted but the labour budget nourishing this was viewed as blunt and overly restrictive. Managerial work in QSRco nonetheless cohered positively with several other QWL attributes (e.g. Grote and Guest, 2017: 156) – not least adequate and fair compensation and opportunities for career mobility (see below). This juxtaposition opens up the possibility of ‘compensating differentials’ (see Kalleberg, 2016: 114), the ‘summative view’ of job quality being that a job can be good on some dimensions but not on others. Certainly in this respect objectively bad task-related characteristics were at least partially offset by aspects of the HR system as reported in other studies (e.g. Gould, 2010).

Beyond work organisation and HR supports there is a need to consider the full range of objective organisational factors that may influence job quality. Fast-food appears to offer distinct career advantages when contrasted with routinised work in other sectors. In Lloyd and Payne’s (2014) study of the UK cafe industry, for example, salary levels were significantly lower and little evidence is provided of internal occupational mobility. Importantly, the restaurants of the major fast-food players are heterogenous in their spatial layout, size, revenue and numbers employed. These vary significantly depending on the specific ‘asset type’, for example food court, high street location and out-of-town ‘drive thru’ and so on. This variability and layering appears to facilitate systematic career progression, for example via movement between different brand concepts. Similarly, the size and dominance of the global brands affords myriad career opportunities including lateral moves into support functions which may not be evident in less concentrated sectors. In sum, work design and HR supports are of course crucial but contextual influences, that is the size (e.g. Sengupta et al., 2009: 49) and structure of a firm (and sector) ultimately exert an important mediating influence on job quality.

As Kalleberg (2016: 123) acknowledges, job quality includes both objective and subjective aspects of work. The latter line of analysis calls for an evaluation of expectations and experiences (Grote and Guest, 2017: 157). A good job for workers is partially about how job characteristics stack up against alternatives (Alvarez-Galván, 2012: 173) and the concept of class can accordingly aid understanding. Crucially, in labour market terms, most of the sample were disadvantaged in at least one of several respects, for example lacking experience of higher education, a propensity for job hopping or, in the case of migrants, limited English language abilities on entry. For such workers high routinisation allied to physically demanding, long-hours work plausibly represented an acceptable trade-off for the relatively high material rewards. The above is a partial and simplistic re-statement of Goldthorpe et al.’s (1967) affluent worker thesis where for working class manual workers high material rewards were compensation for long working hours in unpleasant circumstances. Contra Goldthorpe et al.’s (1967) study, however, there were overtures of ‘embourgeoisement’ in that QSRco provided an unexcepted point of entry into front-line managerial work and hence the semblance of an aura of professional status along with opportunities for personal development and career. A notable feature was the systematic use of training feeding into a regime of deep succession planning which afforded a high degree of internal career mobility and pay progression within both managerial and support functions. While these were regarded overall as good jobs, the managers’ initial restricted field of possibilities (Bourdieu, 1984) in terms of their labour market position plausibly coloured attitudes to this type of work. Certainly, they were employed in a stigmatised sector of the economy and the work had various negative intrinsic traits not inconsistent with their socio-demographic backgrounds. However, this was counterbalanced by generous material benefits and opportunities for social mobility not originally envisaged.

Any systematic and sociological analysis of job quality also calls for consideration of the opportunities for agential capacity. At one level the earlier analysis of job characteristics suggests the omnipresence of micro management through processes, procedures and performance management tools. The structural conditions the managers faced while pervasive were not however totally determinate. The respondents acknowledged the day-to-day constraints but they similarly suggested space was ceded for autonomous and deliberate action. In this regard the very indeterminacy and daily challenge of the people aspect of the job was the key attraction, that is eliciting a high degree of customer service from a young, often transient, minimum wage workforce, engaged in a low-status occupation. Certainly, the managers lacked ‘allocative control’ (Reed, cited in Bolton and Houlihan, 2010: 383) and were frustrated by the strictures of the labour budget and shortcomings vis-a-vis voice. Nonetheless, contra studies of front-line managers in other service sector settings they were not totally ‘locked in by procedures and targets’ (Bolton and Houlihan, 2010: 398; see also Grugulis et al., 2011; Lloyd and Payne, 2014). That is, the parameters of ‘operative control’ around the orchestration of people issues including recruitment, training, leadership and so forth were not inconsiderable and actually viewed as sufficiently capacious to facilitate the emergence of individual managerial styles, suggesting some potential for an element of agency through ‘job crafting’ (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001). The belief that the managerial role encompassed the provision of a social good beyond the needs of the firm and the aptitude some displayed in purposively (re)conceptualising their function in broader societal terms was especially striking. Several highlighted their role in affording disadvantaged young workers with basic, transferable workplace skills. In this regard they were creative in seeking to recast work in a stigmatised sector as meaningful through the provision of extra-organisation, that is societal benefits (Bailey and Madden, 2017: 4). These intrinsic rewards may be modest by other occupational standards but in this setting for these workers they were a source of pride and even dignity.

Such findings chime with the emphasis the major fast-food employers have placed on their role as providers of generic competences, for example reliability, punctuality and diligence (Allan et al., 2006: 413). A critical reading of the data might conjecture managers were not engaged in any significant job shaping; rather they were buying into the corporate brand as a distraction from the realities of mundane work (Brannan et al., 2015: 29). At an empirical level this is disingenuous because the improved material position of most of the managers was – at least in part – a function of their acquisition of such competencies when occupying entry-level positions. A more sympathetic reading might conceive of this is in terms of ‘use values’ (Belanger and Edwards, 2013), that is the extent to which workers generate value for the users of the services they provide. Within the context of front-line service sector work Belanger and Edwards (2013) discuss this in terms of the relationship between workers and consumers. In settings where work is highly routinised, such as fast-food and call centres, use values (and by implication job quality) are likely to be low because workers are not engaged with customers on a continuing basis reducing the degree of rapport. Interestingly, in the current study several managers believed they were generating use values from their interactions with subordinates, not least in terms of developmental opportunities and the provision of societal benefits. One implication hitherto overlooked is that the management of highly routinised work can offer meaning from the creation of ‘use values’ providing the conception of this is expanded beyond the confining consumer nexus.

A final empirical issue that warrants comment is consideration of co-worker relations. Internal labour markets are a long-standing feature of the fast-food sector (e.g. Gould, 2010: 795) and QSCco was unexceptional in this regard. The resultant informal social ties appeared to foster a significant degree of camaraderie which was an important mechanism through which structural pressures were attenuated. The affinity between restaurant managers and their direct reports served as a crucial support mechanism. There were no reported examples of outright opposition to centrally imposed processes and procedures. Nonetheless, the lenient attitude taken by area managers to short-term deficiencies acted as a partial bulwark against invasive performance management and as such the social climate was an important factor rendering the experience of work broadly positive.

Conclusion

The findings suggest routinised front-line managerial work can under certain circumstances be both materially rewarding and indeed meaningful notwithstanding the bureaucratic rigidities that are a feature of this type of work (Grugulis et al., 2011; Lloyd and Payne, 2014). There is thus a need to recognise the substantial variability that exists within such roles. The variegated data outlined in the study have important theoretical implications beyond their immediate context and echo Sengupta et al.’s (2009: 49) observations regarding the multifaceted nature of job quality and the potential coexistence of ‘good and bad features’ (Sengupta et al., 2009: 51). The data similarly lend support to Grote and Guest’s (2017: 160) assertion that less skilled work can have positive QWL attributes. This sociologically based approach needs to be contrasted with psychologically orientated analyses of job satisfaction (and by inference job quality) that rely on purely subjective evaluation of jobs rather than the capability workers possess to meet work-related needs (see Brown et al., 2012). Evaluations of the quality of working life clearly require consideration of multiple criteria. Indeed, the findings indicate desirable and positive work experiences can be derived even within an ostensibly inhospitable context. Scholars could usefully turn their attention to examining more closely the trade-off ratios (Cotti et al., 2014) or weightings that exist between job characteristics as some attributes appear more important than others for certain groups of workers. Indeed, the recent Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices (Taylor et al., 2017: 15) highlights the need to understand such trade-offs, noting ‘people value different facets of work’. Further sociological analysis of how objective work characteristics intersect with subjective expectations and the social climate of work will further aid understanding.