Leading Strategic Management

Hegemonic Power of Management

Case 9.1: The Hegemonic Power of Management and the Sacking of the Night

Shift: Power-Coercive Strategies or Machiavellian Management?

Management at the plant were aware that there was something amiss with operating

practices on the night shift (due to the high incidence of machine breakdowns), but

they were uncertain about the cause of these problems. For them, cellular

manufacture provided a useful opportunity to reassess night-shift operations. At this

stage, they did not realize that night-shift operators had modified their work patterns

to enable some ‘sleep time’ prior to the arrival of the morning shift. This behaviour

became part of the custom and practice of night-shift operations and, hence, there was

considerable group pressure for new members to conform to this method of

organizing work which, as one employee recounted, ‘made life easier for all’. As a

consequence of working the machines as hard as possible for the first part of the shift,

there was a higher incidence of machine breakdown on the night shift than at any

other time. Aware that something was going on, management decided to install a

system to monitor machine cycle times. As a manager recalled:

When we looked at it there was a question of what the night shift were actually doing.

They were making the numbers but things just didn’t really gel. So we actually put read-

outs on the main circuit board so that every time there’s a machine cycle of course you

get a little blip, so you can actually count the cycles, how many they do and all that sort

of thing. They were actually manipulating the controller and speeding up the cycle – we

were having a lot of maintenance on the machines and that was one of the reasons,

they were running them too hard. We were having a lot of breakdowns on the circuit

boards and things. They were actually speeding up the cycle that fast and then there

were these long gaps from about two o’clock to about five o’clock. There was this long

gap of nothing and yet the next day they had the numbers there. You know, how can

they do that? So we checked it for a while and there was a definite pattern. The same

time every night nothing was happening and the next day they had the product.

Although management remained in the dark for a number of years, other operators

were well aware that their night-shift colleagues were working machines beyond their

limit in order to meet their targets as fast as possible so that they could create a ‘sleep-

space’ during the shift. By investigating the problems on the night shift (in terms of

machine breakdowns and productivity), the local management team became aware of

the regular stops in production and decided to pursue the matter further. From their

perspective, an absence of supervision and management control on the night shift was

the probable cause of these difficulties and so they decided to find out for themselves

what was going on:

We came in one night about midnight, sat up in the office and did a few things. The

machine shop was working and then about two o’clock there was no one. You know,

we left it for a while, wandered down, no one around. We went into the lunchroom and

we had to wake them up. So yeah, we don’t have a night shift anymore. Their first

response was, ‘Well, we’re just having a break,’ they didn’t know that we’d been

watching them for the whole shift. And this wasn’t a one off they’d been doing it for

years. They had makeshift beds and little alarm clocks to make sure they’d wake up

before the day shift people came in and all that sort of thing. The amazing thing about

it was, because we were here, when people from day shift started rocking-in they think:

‘Gee, what are they doing here at this hour,’ you know. And when word spreads around

what has happened, and these people are in the office and they’re on the mat, staring

down the barrel. The response from the people out there in the machine shop and

that: ‘You beauty, about time they did something about that. About time you fixed

those guys doing that.’ And you say, ‘Well, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say?’

‘Ah, no, couldn’t do that.’ They wouldn’t tell the boss and dob them in, but they were

glad to see that someone had finally done something about these people bludging on

the night shift… Yeah, they left the company. (Manager, Washdale Manufacturing)

This precursor to the introduction of a major change programme provided a clear

signal to employees about the position of management and how they were not going

to tolerate ‘inappropriate’ behaviour. Their strategic intention centred on improving

operational efficiency through the restructuring of workplace arrangements. For many

on the night shift, peer group pressure and the local night-shift culture did not allow

them to do anything other than adopt standard practice. In this example, work routines

and expectations had become reinforced over time through the development of group

values and beliefs which support certain behaviours and prevent or discourage others.

These ‘controls’ emerge and are developed within groups and are not simply a

reflection of the systems developed and implemented in the design of work but, rather,

reflect the mutual shaping of structure and action within the context of a working

environment. Given that night-shift employees had little choice but to adopt common

practices, it could be argued that many of these ‘victims’ of change were treated

harshly in not being given a second chance under different contextual conditions.

Interestingly, day-shift operators showed little concern over this outcome (viewing the

night shift as an easy option that had been going on for too many years) and generally

supported the hard-line stance taken by management. Local management also

commented on the positive feedback they received from employees working on the

day shift. Paradoxically, through disciplining the non-compliance of night-shift

employees, management were able to raise morale among other members of the

workforce. This not only highlights how different groups of employees may respond

differently to management strategy but, also, the importance of context in making

sense of employee attitudes and behaviour.

Postscript: This hard-line (power-coercive) approach was used by management to

overcome factions of resistance that emerged during the main change initiative,

although it should be noted that management combined this approach with the

development of a programme for employee involvement which had the support and

backing of the union.

Questions

1. Explain why, or why not, you feel that management were justified in their

decision to sack the night shift?

2. What are the ethical issues that arise from this brief example?

3. Do you agree with Buchanan and Badham (2008) that managing change is a

‘blood sport’ and that change agents should shed any pretence of innocence,

‘play the turf game’ and aim to win on their own terms?