Abstract
Labour process approaches have extensively documented the impact of digitalisation and remote work on managerial control, though the role of managers has been less explored. This article fills that gap in the extant literature by examining how adopting remote work affects managerial compliance with corporate goals. Particularly, it shows that this development entails a process of de-institutionalisation and re-institutionalisation of the control regime operating over lower-level managers to act on behalf of companies. These processes are driven by corporate decisions but also by the managers’ attempts to negotiate this regime. Overall, the article claims the need to study managers as agents rather than as a mere extension of the management function or passive subjects of corporate restructurings. The arguments are based on a study conducted in a multinational mining company operating in Chile, which adopted a research-in-action approach and included interviews, document reviews and a survey of line managers.
Keywords
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic initially forced companies to promote employee home-based teleworking to keep their operations in business. While sanitary and social distancing measures have been lifting, remote work has remained for many companies (OECD, 2021). Indeed, the number of people using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to work outside traditional fixed workplaces will likely increase in the coming years (Forbes, 2022; ILO, 2021). The central debate regarding this development has been the extent to which it generates a win-win situation, as the enthusiastic management practitioners advocate, with workers gaining flexibility and well-being, and companies reducing costs and boosting productivity (Felstead and Henseke, 2017). In this vein, empirical research has shown that, while employees’ experiences of remote work depend on a broad set of socio-demographic and contextual variables, the way in which organisational control is exercised and supported by managers is crucial for the success of management strategies (e.g. Allen et al., 2015; Charalampous et al., 2019; Donnelly and Johns, 2021; Pianese et al., 2022).
Although this literature has been vital in understanding how management changes and affects employees with the introduction of remote work, the impact this innovation may have on managerial compliance, defined as alignment with corporate goals, has been much less discussed. Yet, managers are a socially heterogeneous group with an ambiguous position in the labour process (e.g. Armstrong, 1989; Hyman, 1987; Willmott, 1997). Therefore, the alignment between their actions and the management function is a point that needs exploration (Narayan, 2022). Moreover, some reasons make it likely that adopting remote work affects compliance among managers. First, managers are often beneficiaries of this work arrangement, with differing consequences on their degree of autonomy and other working conditions (e.g. Dimitrova, 2003; Noonan and Glass, 2012). Second, the physical and temporal distance between remote employees and between employees and managers poses new demands on the latter and may produce tensions (e.g. Dambrin, 2004; Kwon and Jeon, 2020). How these changes affect managerial compliance is an issue that remains poorly explored.
This article aims to fill the gap in the literature by examining how remote working affects compliance among line managers and the social dynamics underpinning the tension and the re-composition of this alignment. To understand these processes, it is proposed to revisit the literature on Labour Process Theory (LPT), which helps to situate the problem of managerial compliance and remote working within the control-resistance dynamics in the workplace and within broader socio-economic conflicts. Based on a case study carried out in a multinational mining company operating in Chile, the article shows that the adoption of remote working stresses and induces changes in the control regime operating over lower-level managers to ensure they act on behalf of corporate interests. It is argued that two main dynamics underpin the outcomes of this process: (i) the extent to which top and middle managers increase direct and more coercive control over lower-level managers, which undermines the perception of a trust-based relationship; and (ii) the line managers’ reactions and attempts to negotiate the rules and terms of the remote-work arrangement, which ultimately reshapes inter-managerial relations.
The contribution of this article is threefold. First, it integrates managers’ compliance with corporate goals as a dimension of interest in the study of remote working, an endeavour that has not been done comprehensively in the literature so far. Second, it contributes to better capturing how managers’ alignment with companies is produced in contemporary capitalism, where corporate restructurings and measures such as remote work have become common. In bringing to the forefront the negotiated nature of the control regime operating over managers, the article gives a more temporally dynamic and less structurally determined image than the one described by other studies on managers, as it will be argued later. Finally, it illustrates how LPT can provide an adequate set of concepts to understand this issue, despite criticisms claiming that this literature privileges a sharp distinction between management and labour and has neglected the study of managerial work (e.g. Narayan, 2022: 2; Szlechter, 2014).
The article is structured into five sections. The first section discusses, using the LPT framework, how to understand managers’ compliance with companies when remote work is adopted. The second section describes the case and the context under study, and the third section the methodology. The fourth section presents the main findings, followed by the last section with a discussion and conclusion.
Managerial compliance in the context of remote work
Remote work implies that employees use digital technologies and carry out their activity wholly or partly outside the traditional fixed workplace (Taskin and Devos, 2005: 16). Home-based telework, mobile work and virtual teams are some expressions of this type of flexible work arrangement (Pianese et al., 2022). Facilitated by the development of ICTs, adopting these various forms of remote work is part of the strategies companies have developed in the last decades to face the pressures of increasingly competitive international markets. Indeed, these pressures have forced firms to pursue a restructuring agenda towards more ‘agile’ (Darrell et al., 2016) and neo or post-bureaucratic organisational models (Alvesson and Thompson, 2006; Hassard et al., 2009), which have induced the fragmentation and re-contextualisation of work (Donnelly and Johns, 2021).
While, in principle, new flexibilities and opportunities are opening for remote workers to choose where and when to work, by placing the transformation of labour control management at the heart of the analysis, the LPT tradition has identified trends of recommodification that have also been observed in other current forms of corporate restructurings (e.g. Gandini, 2019; Newsome et al., 2015; Thompson and Smith, 2009). On the one hand, management emphasis on remote workers’ autonomy would be part of increasing ‘normative control’, which seeks to indoctrinate workers with shared corporate values and identity (Alvesson and Karreman, 2004; Bathini and Kandathil, 2020; Sewell and Taskin, 2015; Taskin and Devos, 2005). On the other hand, the expansion of the ICTs would create new possibilities for companies to easily monitor remote workers, which helps integrate forms of direct and technical control over labour (Bathini and Kandathil, 2020; Manuti and de Palma, 2017; Sewell and Taskin, 2015; Taskin and Devos, 2005). It is not, however, the technology per se that gives rise to these new control mechanisms, but the way in which it is embedded in specific organisational and societal contexts that impacts labour control regimes more generally (Wood, 2021).
Although these works have been key in advancing knowledge on the consequences of remote working on managerial control, it is still unclear how the observed changes impact managers’ compliance with corporate goals. Most of the LPT tradition’s empirical research has focused on remote workers without managerial responsibilities, giving little attention to how the changes observed in labour control apply in the same way to managers who work remotely. Moreover, some scholars have argued that to preserve a simplified distinction between capital and labour, managers have often been portrayed in the LPT tradition as ‘all-powerful agents of value extraction and labour control’ (Narayan, 2022: 2), and in consequence, their alignment with companies has been taken for granted (Armstrong, 1989; Hyman, 1987; Willmott, 1997).
The following subsections discuss how managerial compliance could be conceived from a labour process approach, as well as some scenarios regarding the possible impact of remote working on inter-managerial relations.
A result of the agency relationship
Braverman (1974) sets out the discussion on managerial compliance, arguing that management is itself a labour process. In his view, companies foster the division of managerial work, leading to an inevitable deskilling of lower-level managers. However, Armstrong (1989) criticises this conception by arguing that it contradicts Marxist theory where management is defined by its function of labour control rather than specific tasks or skills, having no relevance other than producing exchange value. Therefore, the problem for companies is what Armstrong labelled as the ‘agency relationship’, which is their ability to ensure managers act on behalf of their interests, in other words, managerial compliance, rather than controlling specific managerial tasks. The fundamental dilemma of companies to achieve this goal would be either trusting managers to encourage their spontaneous cooperation or searching for partial control alternatives that may eventually threaten this same end (1989: 314).
Armstrong’s proposition that managers’ compliance has its own logic has a limited echo in both the subsequent labour process discussions on the core theory (Thompson and van den Broek, 2010) and those few works on middle and line managers (e.g. Barton and van den Broek, 2011; McCann et al., 2008; Narayan, 2022). To study the consequences of remote work on managers’ compliance, this article proposes to adopt Armstrong’s distinction between labour process and agency relationship as necessary to maintain the consistency of LPT. However, this analysis reviews the trust-control dilemma and managers’ responses in this framework.
A hybrid control regime over managers
The trust-control dilemma, central to Armstrong’s approach, has proven to be a defining feature of all managerial labour control strategies and has been reframed in various terms as a balance between force and consent, despotism and hegemony and, more recently, coercion and legitimation (Burawoy, 1979, 1985; Thompson and van der Broek, 2010; Wood, 2021). This implies that the particular dilemma posed by managers’ compliance with companies is not the control-trust alternative but rather the greater intensity with which the need for trust is present. Moreover, the current LPT view acknowledges trust-control tension is more than a zero-sum problem. Different forms of control – less or more inclined to promote trust-based relations – coexist and may be ‘blended’ in specific organisations (e.g. Callaghan and Thompson, 2001).
This is in tune with what is observed in the literature on managers, where more extended use of hybrid control mechanisms over these groups is described. Recent corporate restructurings would cause, on the one hand, the expansion of managers’ responsibilities and margin of discretion (Hales, 2002; McCann et al., 2008; Narayan, 2022), and on the other hand, increased work pressure, job insecurity, career stagnation and ‘extensification’ of their work (Foster et al., 2019; Hassard and Morris, 2020, 2021; McCann et al., 2008). Some authors argue that companies promote job and career uncertainty purposefully to ensure manager productivity (Hassard and Morris, 2018, 2021; Narayan, 2022). ICTs, particularly mobile devices, seem to play a crucial role in this process. From the introduction of the ‘BlackBerry’, promoting the culture of ‘always available’, to the incorporation of communication tools such as WhatsApp, surveillance of managers’ work has expanded (Foster et al., 2019; Hassard and Morris, 2021; Mazmanian et al., 2013). Overall, this corporate control over managers contrasts with what was observed after the Second World War period, where companies protected managers from the labour market’s rigours in exchange for their loyalty (McCann et al., 2008).
These conclusions suggest that, while the trust-based relationship with managers is still in the forefront of companies’ narratives, a regime shift with stricter tutelage over lower-level managers is taking place, leading to the blurring of traditional boundaries between professional and managerial work (Hales, 2006; Littler and Innes, 2004; McGovern, 1996). Yet, contrary to Braverman’s deskilling thesis, this process would entail broader responsibilities for managers (McCann et al., 2008). Whether the adoption of remote working by companies – a particular expression of corporate restructuring – reinforces these tendencies is explored in this article.
The negotiated nature of managers’ control regime
Armstrong postulates that the agency relationship depends upon a complex political process relying on the preferences and definitions of different managerial groups (1989: 316). However, he does not deeply examine inter-managerial oppositional practices. The subsequent studies interested in control over managers have mostly seen the changes in this control as the aggrieved party of corporate restructurings (e.g. Gabriel et al., 2013; Hassard and Morris, 2020; Thomas and Dunkerley, 1999). When managers’ opposition to companies’ interests is addressed, the focus is put on ‘misbehaviours’, individual actions that do not conform to companies’ expectations (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999), such as the appropriation of time, work, identity and products (Hadjisolomou, 2019). In contrast, managers’ organised collective actions have attracted scarce attention, partly because of the scholarly assumption that managers have less interest in unions, and by legal prohibitions of manager trade unions in countries such as the United States (Barton and van den Broek, 2011). However, in certain institutional and organisational contexts, trade unions may be a powerful tool for managers to influence their labour conditions (e.g. Boltansky, 1982).
This article furthers Armstrong’s idea by emphasising the negotiated character of the control exerted by companies over lower-level managers. This has already been pointed out in LPT for management–labour relations in general, suggesting that there is a negotiation dynamic and a continuum of possible and overlapping worker responses that shape the workplace control regime (Burawoy, 1979; Edwards, 1987; Joyce and Stuart, 2021; Thompson and Ackroyd, 1995: 210; Thompson and van den Broek, 2010). This has also been observed in case studies focused on companies adopting remote working (e.g. Sewell and Taskin, 2015). However, the way negotiation of control operates in the case of inter-managerial relations is still under-examined (McCabe et al., 2022).
In conclusion, the theoretical and empirical debates on contemporary management call for more serious consideration of managerial compliance. Managers’ alignment with management imperatives is a problem to resolve and not a structurally determined behaviour. How is this compliance affected when companies adopt remote working? How does this work organisation influence the mechanisms that companies use to control managers and obtain their performance on behalf of company interests? How do managers react to these changes and contribute to reshaping inter-managerial relations? These are the research questions addressed in the following pages.
The case study: MiningCo and the Chilean mining sector
The argument is based on a case study at the Chilean headquarters of MiningCo, 1 a British multinational mining company. This case is of academic interest because it has followed the global tendency of large companies to implement significant restructurings during the past decade, including the adoption of remote work.
Being one of the most dynamic industrial sectors of the Chilean economy, currently contributing 11.2% of annual GDP (Sernageomin, 2020), the mining sector is at the forefront of automation, robotisation and digitalisation processes in the country (Carrion et al., 2021). Digital transformation has enabled the growth of Remote Operations Centres that integrate several technologies to control their operations remotely (Consejo de Competencias Mineras, 2019). These tendencies are pristinely manifested at MiningCo, one of the country’s biggest mining companies, which currently accounts for 11.2% of all national copper production, 2 and employs roughly 4000 people in the country.
MiningCo in Chile is headed by a Management Board, which is formed by an executive president, five vice presidents, and the top managers of the mining sites and operating centres. They are responsible for senior decisions in the company and are the representatives vis-a-vis the head office in the UK. The second line of command comprises those responsible for different company areas, who are identified in this article as middle managers and direct superiors of the line managers. The latter are the bottom line of MiningCo’s management structure, and are the group on which the analysis of this research is focused. They are directly responsible for overseeing mining operations, supervising and coordinating the activities of workers in the mines and offices.
The line manager position has considerably changed in the wake of technological developments, as their tasks have become more complex and strategic for the mining operations. Most line managers no longer exercised control directly at the site but monitored more impersonal, highly technological processes. Indeed, the Mining Skills Council (Consejo de Competencias Mineras, 2019) notes that the average number of monitored operators per line manager decreased in large-scale mining from 11 people to 9.3 between 2012 and 2019. This change in the line manager’s role was accompanied by a shift in their selection process, favouring a more highly educated profile (Consejo de Competencias Mineras, 2019).
Despite their key position in the mining operation, line managers did not see their labour conditions improve as their subordinated employees did during the mining ‘super-cycle’ (2004–2014), a period characterised by exceptional growth in the companies’ profits due to the increase of world copper prices (Poveda Bonilla, 2019). Initially, this economic bonanza boosted the mobilisation of blue-collar and contract workers, who achieved significant economic benefits in the period (Durán-Palma and López, 2009; Manky, 2018). With this in mind, MiningCo’s line managers created their union in 2013, as did their counterparts in other companies in the sector (Interview with the union leader). In 2019, the company’s line managers’ unionisation rate reached 17% (information retrieved from MiningCo’s Sustainability Report 2020).
The unionisation of mining line managers is an exceptional process in the Chilean context. Since 1979, successive governments have promoted neoliberal policies that discouraged unionisation and weakened unions by limiting collective bargaining to the company level, recognising the right of non-unionised groups of workers to bargain collectively, among other anti-union measures (Vejar, 2012; Winn, 2004). Moreover, the right of line managers to organise has been contested because the Chilean Labour Code explicitly prohibits ‘workers who have powers of representation of the employer and who are endowed with general powers of administration’ from exercising the right to bargain collectively (Art. 305). However, mining trade unions have historically been stronger than in other sectors (Barría, 1970) and have resisted better the onslaught of neoliberal policies (Duran-Palma and Lopez, 2009; Manky, 2018). In fact, the unionisation rate in this sector stands between 60% and 70%, much higher than the national average of 21.7% (Dirección del Trabajo, 2019). Moreover, mining line manager unions have obtained legal recognition and forced companies to bargain with them.
In this context of profound changes in line managers’ work and unionisation, MiningCo’s top management decided to implement a pilot phase of remote work in 2017. A new general manager promoted the idea from the British head office. According to the company’s internal reports, the main drivers for the decision were to improve the quality of life of line managers, retain talent and reduce accident rates at mine sites. The pilot involved 600 line managers and offered them the possibility of working remotely one workday per week (MSR, 2019). The company presents this arrangement as a ‘benefit’ for line managers to facilitate a work–life balance and improve their quality of life while also enhancing their motivation and productivity at work (MSR, 2019). Shortly after, in 2019, other innovations in regulating line managers’ work took place. For instance, the company replaced the old individual performance evaluation system with a team-based one, which associated incentives with collective results. It also started using SAP, an enterprise resource planning software, to centralise compliance planning and evaluation, primarily the responsibility of line managers (information retrieved from MiningCo’s Sustainability Report 2020).
The positive evaluation of the remote-work pilot phase convinced MiningCo’s top management to increase the number of beneficiaries and remote working days. However, social distancing measures implemented by the Chilean government in March 2020 to face the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated the company’s original plan, making it more radical. Line managers began to telework full-time from home, and this ‘benefit’ was extended to employees initially excluded from the plan. Moreover, the company had to adjust its practices to a new law regulating remote working (Law 21220, 2020), 3 which included the obligation for companies to provide remote workers with the necessary tools for doing their work and respect their ‘right to disconnect’ from their professional duties for 12 hours per day, among other rules. It is in this context that this research takes place.
Methodology
The study was conducted between May and October 2020 by invitation of the MiningCo line managers’ union, asking the research team to study the changes in their working conditions during the first year of the pandemic to inform the union’s future collective bargaining agenda on remote-work policies. Grounded in the epistemological principles of Critical Realism (CR) (Ackroyd, 2009), the researchers proposed to the union leaders a project aiming to co-produce knowledge that would be meaningful to the actors and, at the same time, provide a deep understanding of the causal mechanisms that transform the social context under study. Applied to this case, it meant exploring how the implementation of remote-work policies impacts the working conditions of line managers but also how this innovation transforms the control-resistance dynamics of their work. Consequently, the study adopted a ‘methodology of engagement’ between researchers and research subjects (Stewart and Martínez Lucio, 2011) and, thus, it is part of a long tradition of research in action in the sociology of work (Brook and Darlington, 2013).
In line with the assumptions of CR that recognise the layered nature of social reality, the research sought to gather information from diverse sources. The principle that oriented the researchers was to analyse the case study through a wide array of methods (Vincent and O’Mahoney, 2018; Zachariadis et al., 2013). Therefore, the study was divided into two phases.
The first phase collected the primary information for this project through 24 semi-structured interviews with line manager’s union members. A purposive sample was constructed according to three criteria (Table 1). The first was interviewing line managers in the company’s different departments. The second criterion was the work shift system. Unlike administrative shift line managers, rotating shift line managers usually have night shifts, supervised on-site workers, and were not included in the remote-work pilot prior to the pandemic. It was, therefore, predictable that these groups have different perceptions of remote work. The last criterion was gender, as previous evidence shows that remote work generates different experiences for men and women (Allen et al., 2015).
Line managers interviewed.
Note: CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility.
Source: Authors’ own elaboration.
The interview script included questions of primary interest to line managers, such as changes in working conditions and medium-term expectations about teleworking, including questions suggested by the researchers more focused on changes in inter-managerial control and forms of line manager resistance. All the interviews were held virtually, lasted an average of 60 minutes and were fully transcribed. They were analysed by the research team through content analysis, following first a deductive exercise of codification guided by the ideas outlined in the script and, subsequently, an inductive codification to identify emergent topics that were not covered by the original codes, and finally, an interpretation based on the previous literature review to relate with the different ideas seen in the literature.
The research team presented the results of these analyses and then discussed them in four official collective meetings organised by the line managers’ union. These presentations were to (1) the union leaders, (2) the union’s entire membership, (3) the company’s top management and (4) the national federation of mining line manager unions. In general, these preliminary results made sense to the various stakeholders, but they agreed that there was a need to collect additional information, as the researchers had suggested at the outset. However, a small survey was also suggested along with the sources previously contemplated by the research team. The rationale was to inform on the perceived changes in the telework experience among a wider group of line managers, not just those with union membership.
Thus, in the second phase of the research, three more sources of information were gathered: (1) semi-structured interviews with three middle managers and the top human resources manager; (2) a review of MiningCo’s annual public reports, National Mining Council reports and press reports on managers’ unions from 1979 to 2020, in the newspaper El Mercurio, one of the most recognised and widely circulated media sources at the national level. This was primarily to situate the analysis from a historical perspective; (3) a non-probabilistic survey, which was sent via mail to the universe of line managers in the company (N = 765). In total, 256 surveys were correctly completed and validated (response rate = 36.1%). The rate corresponds to roughly twice the line manager unionisation rate, so the survey met its objective of covering a broader universe of participants. As a non-probabilistic survey, it is not intended to be generalisable to all line managers, and therefore had no external validity. This is consistent with the CR approach, as it is understood that quantitative information provides only complementary information (Ackroyd, 2009). Table 2 summarises the characteristics of the final sample of respondents.
Characterisation of survey participants.
Source: Authors’ own elaboration.
The research team designed the instrument to cover similar topics as those included in the interview script. Therefore, it considers working conditions and control dynamics. In order to measure control dynamics, the survey asked line managers to assess to what extent the company’s control over their work had changed compared with the period before the implementation of permanent telework, distinguishing four domains. These domains draw on what the literature informs about the forms of control and degree of flexibility involved in remote working. These are (1) the degree of management control in defining tasks and objectives, or discretion over the content of the work (e.g. Gajendran et al., 2014), (2) management monitoring, or discretion over the rhythm of the work (e.g. Golden, 2006), (3) technology tracking (e.g. Abraham et al., 2019) and (4) peer pressure (e.g. Mazmanian et al., 2006). Answers represented a five-level scale, with the first being: decreased a lot, and the fifth: increased a lot. Also, questions were included to measure the frequency of out-of-hours calls, emails, and WhatsApp messages, in line with literature suggesting high pressure on managers through these channels (see e.g. Foster et al., 2019; Hassard and Morris, 2021).
Subsequently, updated results were presented to the union representatives, including the information sources from the research’s second phase. Although there was a great discussion with the line managers about the usefulness of these results, they decided to stick only to the technical report, which presented descriptive data and did not participate in the elaboration of this article or more extended discussions on control-resistance dynamics. This limitation will be revisited in the conclusions.
Results
From partial to permanent home-based telework: Increasing coercive control
During the pilot phase (2017–2019), the idea promoted by MiningCo that remote working was a ‘benefit’ was widely shared by line managers. This perception gave line managers a feeling of ‘indebtedness’ and of being ‘on trial’ that facilitated their self-control during the remote workday. Ultimately, line managers had to demonstrate that they were truly worthy of the benefit by meeting specific goals and objectives:
The message was that this is not a right, basically, but a benefit: ‘we are giving it the opportunity to make it work’, let’s say. That was at the beginning. [The boss] used to say: ‘this is not a right: when you can take it, you take it; if you can’t, don’t take it’. (Male 6, 40–49, 5×2, Planning)
Line managers widely valued remote work, and, to some extent, the policy’s success lies in the fact that it allowed them to recognise themselves as a managerial layer enjoying high levels of autonomy. This was certainly seen in concrete benefits. First, it saved them travel time – which, for those who had to travel to the mining sites, amounted to a gain of four to six hours a day. Second, it allowed paperwork to be completed and more time to be spent with the family or resting. Finally, it allowed better concentration due to avoided meetings or interruptions by the boss or colleagues. As one of the interviewees said:
More than being tied to a schedule, working towards a goal freed you up a lot to spend time with your family without detracting from the goal because the deliverable date was there, fixed, closed. You manage your time to be able to give everyone what they need. (Male 11, 40–49, 5×2, Planning)
However, the pandemic of 2020 forced a drastic change in MiningCo’s remote-work policy, which became mandatory and permanent for all line managers and was extended to all operational staff. In practice, this substantially changed how remote work was perceived and led to a widespread perception of increased control over line managers’ work. As shown in Table 3, 91.3% of line managers perceived the intensification of at least one dimension of control over their work during the pandemic (overall control); 43.12% agreed that middle and top managers had increased monitoring on them and 75.36% believed that this control had been conducted using ICTs. Likewise, most line managers (58.33%) identified increased pressure exerted by their colleagues. Less frequent was the perception that management increased the tasks and objectives defined for line managers (36.24%). Although there are differences in the percentages of the different groups in the sample, they were not statistically significant. 4
Perception of increased control.
Note: aLine managers who perceived an increase in at least one of the types of control shown in the table.
Source: Prepared by the authors based on the survey.
Once the pandemic forced permanent home-based telework, the personal control exercised by middle management – the direct superiors of line managers – became more visible than it was when all were working at the workplace or during the pilot remote workday. Virtual meetings, calls and messages to line managers multiplied:
Nowadays, they see your free agenda and they schedule you and you have meetings almost all day long. So, basically, in order to make progress administratively, you have to extend your working day, unfortunately. That’s what happens nowadays with remote work. (Male 23, 40–49, 5×2, Production)
Table 4 shows the percentage of line managers in administrative shifts that affirm having received frequent calls and messages related to work outside of official working hours. As observed, while this type of communication was relatively common before, it increased with permanent home-based teleworking.
Percentage of line managers who receive messages related to work, according to the type of messagea.
Note: aIndicates line managers who affirmed they receive messages sometimes, often and very often.
Source: Prepared by the authors based on the survey.
Excess communication has not been very productive because, as the interviewed line managers point out, it hinders the performance of duties, overloads schedules and exhausts them. In this sense, it seems more like an attempt by their superiors to maintain virtual surveillance, like when they all worked together at the company’s sites. The interviewees put it this way:
I find that there is no longer so much autonomy, more so because you cannot decide what work to do. It is because you are very dependent on the schedules of the meetings that you have planned or the meetings that you have on the calendar. Ultimately, all your work has to be based on your meetings and not your meetings based on your work. (Female 13, 30–39, 5×2, CSR) In confidence, I think the issue has to do with establishing a little more control over what we are doing, in general. (Male 24, 40–49, 5×2, Production)
The virtualisation of personnel surveillance brought to the fore the corporate distrust of the work performance of line managers. While distrust was already apparent before the pandemic, through some middle managers’ refusal to grant line managers the remote workday in certain areas, it became more visible and conflictive for line managers during the pandemic, hindering the day-to-day. In the words of one of the line managers interviewed:
You see this thing all the time, dude, right? The mistrust . . . of saying, ‘You know what . . . dammit dude, are you here or aren’t you?’. One day, my boss called me, and he asks me, ‘Are you working dude? Did I wake you up?’. It was something like that. (Male 6, 40–49, 5×2, Planning)
The discretionary power of middle managers was reinforced by the absence of clear top management guidelines on organising work in the new regime. Each middle manager set their own rules on rest time, days, communication, the frequency of meetings, flexibility in emergencies, among others. For example, while some began their meetings at 7:00 in the morning, time previously used by line managers to commute, other managers respected the previous hours and breaks.
Pressure on line managers also increased by expansion of the coverage of technical systems that facilitated coordination and technological surveillance of their work. All MiningCo employees were given an ID to use the Microsoft Teams platform and were trained to centralise communication and calendar data on this channel. After a few months with the excuse of avoiding a meeting overload, the company made an application available to line managers that generated productivity indicators such as meeting times and connection, among other functions (Interview with middle manager 1). Likewise, the company extended the coverage of the SAP system to improve virtual monitoring (Female 13, 30–39, 5×2, CSR).
As a result of increasing surveillance, line managers felt overloaded. This sentiment was stronger in women with children, not because of an overload of domestic practical tasks, which in these cases were shared with their male partners, but because of the emotional labour and feeling guilty because they ‘don’t have time to play, or be there for them [the children]’ (Female 18, 40–49, 5×2, CSR) in a stage of the pandemic where kids were also forced to be at home. Men with children, on the contrary, were ‘grateful to be present’ (Male 4, 50–59, 5×2, Support), even if they were not able to spend quality time with their kids.
The behaviour of top management towards line managers was contradictory. While they left middle managers to discretionarily conduct the situation and promote technological surveillance, they reinforced messages seeking to show the company’s understanding of the line managers’ situation and to promote corporate identity. As a result, the company succeeded in blurring part of its responsibility for the increasing pressures and work overload of line managers:
Workload has not decreased, in fact, it has increased. There is no understanding of that by the company, really. Or not the company, because the company is too big. [Rather] the upper management, but not so high up, the middle managers do not understand that the workload is heavy and that, in reality, they are busting everyone. (Male 11, 40–49, 5×2, Planning)
Overall, what is observed is that line managers were subjected to a more explicit exercise of personal and direct control. This clashes with upper management’s attempts to infuse trust and the idea that remote working was a benefit. As a union leader explains:
There was an expectation of greater freedom, and that was not fulfilled. In other words, since the schedules and times are the same [as a regular office day], you have to comply with them, you have to be at those three or four meetings [. . .] that is why people feel, perhaps, less freedom [. . .]. They need to coordinate time and space with others, so it is no longer that you think of working at 11 at night or that sort of thing that [the company] sold or promised.
Line managers’ reactions and the negotiation of the control regime
Work overload and loss of autonomy did not completely extinguish the engagement of line managers with their work or the company, but it created unrest and conditions for various forms of resistance. At the individual level, some line managers looked for ways to reappropriate time, like turning off cameras, doing other tasks during meetings or defining protected time blocks on their own.
At the collective level, the remote-work policy became an object of dispute for the line managers’ union. Before the pandemic, MiningCo managed to keep the union side-lined from the remote working implementation plan. The union had not done much to get involved in this plan, partly because its leaders also understood working remotely as a ‘benefit’. However, the shift towards permanent home-based telework during the pandemic and tightening controls motivated the union to take a side. The union struggled to obtain more clear rules and procedures to limit the arbitrariness of middle managers, with more or less acceptance by the company:
So, it is the same fight that we had last year, for instance with the [respect of the] time block for lunch, which many people still haven’t resolved. Now we still have a mess with the timetable, for that people can leave the house to clear their heads and not go crazy. (Union leader 1)
Moreover, although the Remote Working Act that took effect in April 2020 did not require union participation in the negotiation of teleworking conditions, it was a valid excuse for the MiningCo line manager union and a legal basis from which to advocate for greater involvement in the design of the new work regime. The union succeeded in this purpose. The technical report provided by the research team as part of this study was used by the union as a form of pressure and insight during negotiations with top management. The union agreed with the company on the amount for the expenses of each line manager to set up their physical workspace and acquire tools necessary to do their work remotely. It also won conservation of the transportation bonus for line managers to use on other expenses related with home-based telework (e.g. electricity). This process of union involvement in setting remote working policy strengthened the union’s position among line managers. As one union leader commented:
At the beginning of the pandemic, we had about 110 members; today we are at 168. There are several phenomena that help us, one of them was to enter into the issues of teleworking and to reorient the supervisors on the problems that were being generated.
Discussion
The case presented here shows that, in addition to studies that focus on the changes that remote work and other corporate restructurings entail in managerial control, it is also necessary to explore how these processes affect managers’ compliance with corporate goals. Most of the literature so far has tended to neglect this problem, either because it considers managers merely responsible for perpetrating the organisational control prescribed by upper management (Pianese et al., 2022) or because it has been more concerned with the organisational support that line managers may provide to their subordinates (Lautsch et al., 2009; Limburg and Jackson, 2007). These understandings, while analytically relevant for certain purposes, obscure the contradictory class position of managers and neglect the indeterminacy of their alignment with corporate mandates (e.g. Armstrong, 1989; Narayan, 2022). As it is shown, managers do not automatically act on behalf of corporate interests, and may even react against companies when they implement changes in work organisation that negatively affect their working conditions and career prospects.
Part of the literature adopting a labour process approach has generally been an example of the above-mentioned blindness, ‘presuming a natural overlap or synergy between managerial employees and the management function’ (Narayan, 2022: 2). However, this article brings to the forefront contributions in this tradition that give light on the processes by which managers’ compliance is manufactured, taking up the concept of agency relationship (Armstrong, 1989) but dialoguing it with the notion of hybrid control regimes and resistance (Callaghan and Thompson, 2001; Thompson and Smith, 2009).
Although scarce, the literature observes that recent corporate restructurings and the adoption of remote work have been accompanied by new responsibilities for managers and a narrative emphasising their autonomy (Hales, 2002; McCann et al., 2008). However, it has also entailed increasing technological surveillance (Foster et al., 2019; Hassard and Morris, 2021) and the instrumental use of work and career insecurity to ensure lower-level managers act on behalf of corporate goals (Hassard and Morris, 2018; Narayan, 2022). While this article partially confirms this tendency, it gives a more dynamic and less deterministic image of this process. Three main arguments support this idea.
First, the findings show that the adoption of remote work triggers processes of de-institutionalisation and re-institutionalisation of the control regime operating to ensure managers’ compliance. Similar processes have been observed in the analysis of contemporary labour control regimes (Callaghan and Thompson, 2001), but not regarding managers. Indeed, the policy of one day remote working implemented in MiningCo in 2017 was presented as a trust-based benefit aiming to give line managers more autonomy and allowed the company to reinforce normative control over these managers. Yet, with the transition to permanent home-based telework for all line managers during the pandemic, this normative control showed its limitations. Without face-to-face relationships where they could informally exercise personal control over their subordinates, middle managers sought to replicate this surveillance through technologies by imposing more frequent virtual communications with line managers during remote working days. Along with a reinforcement of impersonal technological monitoring through the expansion of SAP and implementation of other software, this increase of coercive control over line managers clashed head-on with the idea that remote working was a benefit.
Second, analysis of MiningCo’s case demonstrates that, when remote work is adopted, changes to the control regime over managers are not only driven by corporate decisions and economic pressures, as it has often been portrayed (e.g. Foster et al., 2019; Hassard and Morris, 2021; McCann et al., 2008). These transformations are also triggered by the managers themselves. In doing so, the article brings back the dialectical nature of the control-resistance dynamic, something that has tended to be neglected given the overemphasis on control in new technology studies based on labour process analysis (Joyce and Stuart, 2021). In other words, control is not an end, it is always an unfinished process, and tensions between different layers of managers can thwart control (McCabe et al., 2022). Motivated by dissatisfaction with increasing coercive control and the enactment of a new remote-work law, line managers demanded the company establish new rules to regulate the functioning of telework, from connection and disconnection hours to the frequency of meetings, among other topics. This attempt to gain control of the remote-work policy can be interpreted as an effort by line managers to enact a new hybrid regime, keeping at bay forms of personal and direct control that had been exacerbated in the first stage of the pandemic. This illustrates that managers should not be considered passive subjects of contemporary companies’ restructurings as they negotiate their embodiment in exchange for representing the firm’s interests in these processes by actively opposing and proposing control mechanisms that operate over them.
Finally, it follows from the case that the pre-existing inter-managerial relations, as well as economic pressures over the companies and state policies, are key to understanding the form and the outcomes of the conflict that remote work creates between managers. This is in line with recent LPT scholars who claim the need for moving beyond the firm, integrating workplace dynamics in the broader political economy (e.g. Baglioni, 2018; Newsome et al., 2015; Wood, 2021). As has been observed in the context section of this article, MiningCo line manager unionisation is exceptional in the Chilean context and reflects the increasing strategic position of this group in mining operations and the national economy, as well as to the economic bonanza in the Chilean mining sector in the recent past thanks to global copper prices. This process of unionisation may be interpreted as a sign of weakening in line managers’ compliance with the company, which precedes and shapes the implementation of the remote-work policy, as with other policies aiming to recompose the relationships with these managers. Moreover, along with the enactment of the law that regulates remote work in Chile, the associative power of MiningCo line managers might explain in part the coordinated and relatively successful negotiation of the control regime operating over these managers after the implementation of permanent home-based telework during the pandemic.
In sum, it is suggested that corporate restructuring does not impact the control regime operating over managers per se, but rather because these processes are embedded in concrete inter-managerial relations and social contexts.
Concluding remarks and future research
This article shows that remote working affects the control regime operating over lower-level managers, which seeks to make them act on behalf of corporate interests. The form and outcomes of this process depend on corporate decisions, lower-level managers’ actions and the broader social contexts in which these actions are embedded. Overall, the article reinforces the idea that managers are a heterogeneous group with agency, rather than simply extending the management function or a passive subject of corporate restructuring.
This work opens avenues for future research that explores different outcomes of corporate restructurings on managerial compliance. These developments may vary significantly across workplaces and countries as they are embedded in concrete social contexts. Future research may examine how managers’ alignment with corporate goals is shaped by differently weighted forces, including inter-managerial relations at the workplace, state policies and power relations between firms in global value chains.
To conclude, it is important to note the challenges derived from the participatory character of this research. While the MiningCo line manager union collaborated with this study and used some of the research findings for its negotiation with the company, a richer and more durable engagement would be desirable to promote more substantial changes for line managers and other employers in MiningCo. The different nature of the rules shaping the tasks and schedules of unions and researchers, as well as the intricate character of academic scholarly language, pose difficulties for this kind of collaboration and call for further debate on how to sustain participatory action research (Brook and Darlington, 2013). However, this study is an example of the opportunity that the involvement of the studied subjects opens to research. The collaboration helps deepen and validate scholarly understanding of social problems and ensures substantial impact beyond the limited circle of academics. The authors of this article believe that social sciences have a pending commitment in this regard and could benefit from promoting participatory research.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the valuable support and trust of the MiningCo Supervisors’ Union and the anonymous reviewers and editors for their constructive and thorough feedback.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research and preparation for this article were made possible by the support of grants from the Fondo de Financiamento de Centros de Investigación en Áreas Prioritarias (ANID-FONDAP 15130009) and the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT 1210338).
