Control as Colonialism: Workplace Democracy and the Transfer of Managerial Practices within Multinational Corporations
Diana Rosemary Sharpe
Raza Mir
DOI: 10.2190/WR.14.1.c
Abstract
In this article, we draw upon extensive empirical research conducted at the UK subsidiary of a Japanese multinational corporation to foreground the tension between organizational productivity and worker autonomy, and between firm efficiency and workplace democracy. We use insights from studies of colonialism to illuminate different facets of this contested terrain. We argue that in the interaction between the gaze with which top management fixes the lower echelons of the corporation in time and space, and management's occasional attempts to embrace the lower echelons in a web of common purpose, the gaze inevitably wins. However, worker resistance is forever present, if ill-understood by mainstream organizational researchers. Our perspective helps us link microanalyses of the organizational control process to underlying institutional structures, and brings worker resistance and its minor victories to the forefront. This approach is especially important to researchers who are interested in bringing issues of workplace democracy to the forefront of organizational theory.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.