Looking for the Good Soldier, Švejk: Alternative Modalities of Resistance in the Contemporary Workplace

This article continues the current trend in Sociology of exploring and re-evaluating concepts of workplace resistance. We agree with Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) that much of the critical literature investigating managerial controls like selfregulating teams and corporate culture management have plac...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociology (Oxford) 2002-11, Vol.36 (4), p.857-873
Main Authors: Fleming, Peter, Sewell, Graham
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Capitalism
Corporate culture
Cynicism
Dissent
Employee attitude
Employees
Employment
Human resource management
Humor
Humour
Industrial management
Irony
Labour
Labour disputes
Management
Management Styles
Novels
Organizational Culture
Resistance
Sociology
Sociology of organizations and enterprises. Bureaucracy and administration
Sociology of work and sociology of organizations
Soldiers
Studies
Styles
Subjectivity
Work Environment
Work place
Workers
Workplaces
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article continues the current trend in Sociology of exploring and re-evaluating concepts of workplace resistance. We agree with Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) that much of the critical literature investigating managerial controls like selfregulating teams and corporate culture management have placed far too much emphasis on ideological incorporation and 'colonization' of subjectivity and not enough on employee recalcitrance and resistance. Rather than hastily blaming the 'Foucauldian turn' for this oversight, however; we argue instead that resistance is indeed difficult to see if thought of in purely traditional terms (e.g. strikes, sabotage, picketing). In the age of team normalization and 'cultural cleansing' we must look in less obvious places to see practices of dissent. Our article introduces the concept of 'švejkism', after the character in Jaroslav Hašek's novel, The Good Soldier, švejk. Švejkism is presented as an example of a modality of employee opposition that may have been missed in earlier evaluations of new work forms. We discuss the practice of švejkism and the implications it has for contemporary workplace politics.
ISSN:0038-0385
1469-8684
DOI:10.1177/003803850203600404