What managers most often want to know about their organization's culture is how to change it......But what is recommended to managers on the basis of culture theory differs markedly according to the perspectives adopted' (Hatch and Cunliffe, 2013: 185).

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Document 1 of 1 Working at a cynical distance: Implications for power, subjectivity and resistance Author: Fleming, Peter; Spicer, Andre ProQuest document link Abstract: Subjectivity and power are important concepts for understanding corporate culture engineering in critical organization studies. Although recent research indicates that many workers do identify with the organization as a result of these management strategies, they have also shown that some workers resist through dis-identification, in particular cynicism. Managerial literature views cynicism as a psychological defect that needs to be "corrected," while a radical humanist approach constructs cynicism as a defense mechanism, a way of blocking the colonization of a pre-given self. This article highlights a third and increasingly dominant perspective that suggests cynicism is a process through which employees dis-identify with cultural prescriptions, yet often still perform them. Cynical employees have the impression that they are autonomous, but they still practice the corporate rituals nonetheless. This is labeled as the "ideology" interpretation because in dis- identifying with power, it is inadvertently reproduced at the same time. It is argued that this approach to cynicism raises significant implications for key concepts in organization studies: those of power, subjectivity and resistance. The implications pursued are that cultural power may work through dis-identification (rather than just identification), subjectivity may be radically "external" (rather than something "within") and thus what counts as disruptive resistance must be re-evaluated. Links: Linking Service Full text: Headnote organization Headnote articles Headnote Abstract. Subjectivity and power are important concepts for understanding corporate culture engineering in critical organization studies. Although recent research indicates that many workers do identify with the organization as a result of these management strategies, they have also shown that some workers resist through dis-identification, in particular cynicism. Managerialist literature views cynicism as a psychological defect that needs to be 'corrected', while a radical humanist approach constructs cynicism as a defence mechanism, a way of blocking the colonization of a pre-given self. We highlight a third and increasingly dominant perspective that suggests cynicism is a process through which employees dis-identify with cultural prescriptions, yet often still perform them. Cynical employees have the impression that they are autonomous, but they still practice the corporate rituals nonetheless. We label this the 'ideology' interpretation because in dis- identifying with power, it is inadvertently reproduced at the same time. We argue that this approach to cynicism raises significant implications for key concepts in organization studies: those of power, subjectivity and resistance. The implications we pursue are that cultural power may work through dis-identification (rather than just identification), subjectivity may be radically 'external' (rather than something 'within) and thus what counts as disruptive resistance must be re-evaluated. Key words. corporate culture; cynicism; power; resistance; subjectivity The dual concepts of subjectivity and power have established a prominent position in the field of organization studies. The analyses of Foucault (1977, 1980) and Althusser (1971) gave the field a more precise vocabulary with which to describe how corporate power and worker subjectivity intersect within social relations of organizational domination. One of the most important clarifications of this vocabulary can be found in Knights

and Willmott's (1989: 554) influential application of Foucault to labour process theory: 'Rejecting the essentialist view of human nature, subjectivity is understood as a product of disciplinary mechanisms, techniques of surveillance and power/knowledge strategies.' Here we see an explanation of how the subjectivity of workers and managers is inextricably entwined with relations of power and knowledge. What we take to be our most intimate and personal habits and dispositions cannot be separated from the political economy of the postindustrial labour process and late capitalism. Building on previous concerns with 'manufacturing consent' (Burawoy, 1979) and `ideological reproduction' (Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980) much of the research exploring the relationships between subjectivity and power has attempted to understand the ways workers inscribe themselves in power relations and become 'the principle of [their] own subjection' (Foucault, 1977: 203). In this literature there has been a preoccupation with surfacing unobtrusive control systems that work 'behind the back' of workers so that they unwittingly achieve the goals of superiors by their own volition (Jermier, 1998). Armed with the concepts of power and subjectivity there has been a veritable explosion of scholarship analysing corporate culture programmes and their effects on the selves of workers in contemporary organizations. Since the early 1980s organization culture (values, attitudes, beliefs, norms, myths and so on) has been absorbed into the instrumental logic of managerialism. A good deal of critical research has identified how culture building and similar technologies are simply systems of management control that aim intentionally to 'colonize' (Casey, 1995) the identities of workers so that they become more the kind of person the company would like them to be-more productive and less recalcitrant. An engineered culture attempts to manufacture positive sentiments (beyond consent) and reconcile workers to antagonistic employment relationships through creating particular types of personhood. Consequently, the emphasis has been on the cultural construction of 'engineered selves' (Kunda, 1992), 'designer selves' (Casey, 1995) and 'enterprise selves' (du Gay, 1996), that is, types of worker subjectivity that are compatible with the productive demands of the post-industrial organization and the maintenance of asymmetrical relations of power. Underlying many studies of culture engineering is the assumption that workers' selves are completely controlled by the organization. Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) point out that this has led to an almost complete absence of accounts of resistance in the context of new employment practices. There is, of course, a long tradition of research that highlights the many ways workers resist managerial control. These resistance strategies include collective resistance such as unions, strikes and coordinated output restrictions (Edwards, 1979; Friedman, 1977). Resistance has also been shown to operate in a more everyday and quotidian fashion (De Certeau, 1984) through sabotage (Mars, 1982), 'careful carelessness' (Prasad and Prasad, 1998), hidden transcripts (Scott, 1985), indirect resistance (Ong, 1987) and subjective resistance (Kondo, 1990). Recent research in organization studies has also focused on these more prosaic forms of workplace resistance in order to advance the previously absent question of how workers resist strategies of cultural control that target the very identities of employees (Jermier et al., 1993; Fournier and Grey, 1998; Gabriel, 1999). Some practices highlighted in the literature include irony (Trethewey, 1997), scepticism (Fleming and Sewell, 2002), humour (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999), alternative interpretative repertoires (Knights and McCabe, 2000), and cynicism (Fleming and Spicer, 2002). In this article, we concentrate on cynicism as one tactic of transgression employees use to thwart the cultural colonization of their identities. As we shall see, cynicism opens up a number of significant questions regarding power, subjectivity and workplace dissent that are of fundamental importance to organization studies. Although innumerable studies indicate that many workers do indeed identify with the organization as a result of culture management, a close reading also shows that some workers respond by actually dis-identifying with the culture and, in particular, are quite cynical about the whole affair. In the work of Kunda (1992), Collinson, (1992), Casey (1995) and du Gay (1996), for example, we meet a number of workers who secretly voice statements of disbelief about the official culture and are rather jaundice-eyed toward managerial exhortations. They could 'see through' the hollow promises of human resource departments and did not really 'buy into' the

hype of the corporate culture pundits. Kunda (1992) found employees calling the culture 'California bathtub crap'. Collinson (1992) records workers referring to the push to build a culture of excellence as 'Yankee propaganda' and the company newsletter became known as 'Goebbels' Gazette'. Casey (1995) observed workers discerning the gaping contradiction between the 'caring' values of the company philosophy and the ruthless reality of working life in a transnational corporation. Research investigating service organizations shows how employees sometimes 'surface act' the 'culture of the customer', rather than internalize it as their own because they are savvy about its instrumental nature as a form of managerial control (Hochschild, 1983; Sturdy, 1998). So amidst the frenetic attempts to colonize the subjectivity of workers through corporate culture, we find not only systems of identification with the company philosophy, but also practices of subjective distancing, incredulity and disbelief particularly manifest in the form of worker cynicism. The meaning and significance of such cynicism has been interpreted in different ways. Much of the literature seems to be managerially orientated, viewing cynicism as some sort of psychological 'defect' that needs to be 'corrected' if the organization is to succeed. The work of Kanter and Mirvis (1989), Anderson (1996), Dean et al. (1998) and Wanous et al. (2000), for example, construe worker cynicism as an impediment to the smooth functioning of culture, team affiliation and other 'soft' human resource management initiatives. Subsequently, it is claimed that 'research on cynicism should help us to better understand a phenomenon that is pervasive in modern organizations, and perhaps find better ways to manage or prevent it' (Dean et al., 1998: 350). Scholars with a more radical humanist slant have interpreted cynicism as a defence mechanism, a way of staving off the corporate colonization of identity. Echoing Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory of self, Kunda (1992) and Casey (1995) claim that workers use cynicism to protect their `backstage selves' from the ubiquitous culture machine when it gets a little too claustrophobic. Cynicism is a way of escaping the encroaching logic of managerialism and provides an inner 'free space' for workers when other avenues for opposition have dried up. In her book Work, Self and Society, Casey observed how a number of employees resisted the psychological 'siege and assault' of the culture through a cynical detachment: 'cynicism protects against both commitment to the company ... and its further encroachment into the private realm of (relative) individual choice and apparent self-determination' (1995: 175). This perspective, however, tends to rest upon an implicit humanism because the nature and constitution of the identity being protected is treated almost as if it is outside of power. In this article, we focus on an increasingly dominant third interpretation that views cynicism as a potentially conservative force in contemporary workplaces. Du Gay and Salaman (1992) and Willmott (1993), for example, interpret cynicism as an unplanned ideological phenomenon that unobtrusively reproduces relations of power because cynical employees are given (and give themselves) the impression that they are autonomous agents, but they still practise the corporate rituals nevertheless. When we dis-identify with our prescribed social roles we often still perform them-sometimes better, ironically, than if we did identify with them. This perspective represents cynicism as the inadvertent success of corporate power relations, rather than their failure. Although the term 'ideology' is not used explicitly by the aforementioned authors, we think this concept best captures their concerns and paths of interpretation. The term is not conceived in any vulgar sense whereby an all-knowing puppet-master intentionally dupes the unthinking masses, but in a more post-structuralist vein that points to the way everyday discourses, symbols and signs frame our subjectivity in ways favourable to dominant power relations (see Eagleton, 1991). This take on ideology seeks to explain why we sometimes collude in our own and others' domination, but without the economic essentialism and hubris positivism that dogged a particular Marxian tradition of thought (Li.ek, 1994). We argue that this interpretation of employee cynicism implicitly opens up some interesting problems with key concepts in organization studies: that of power, subjectivity and resistance. In explaining cynicism as a possible ideological phenomenon, we find that cultural power may work through dis-identification (rather than simply through identification) and subjectivity may be radically 'external' (rather than something 'inside' us). Moreover, such an approach requires us to rethink the concept of employee resistance. Is cynical resistance simply

selfdefeating or are there circumstances where it may be a disruptive force? And, do the implications for power and subjectivity identified above also change the way we view employee resistance in the context of corporate culture management? In the remainder of the article, we discuss the ideology approach to employee cynicism and evaluate its historical context and analytical claims. We then theorize the implications that this interpretation has for the concepts of power and subjectivity. In this section, our arguments draw extensively on the work of Slovenian social critic Slavoj Zizek (1989, 1997, 2000), who has made a number of important contributions regarding modern cynicism, subjectivity and power. Lastly, we turn to the task of rethinking employee resistance in light of the preceding analysis. The Ideology of Cynicism Oftentimes we intuitively feel that critical negativity toward domination is an inherently disruptive force that agitates rather than conserves particular relations of power. However, an interesting tradition of research in the sociology of work has identified the ways in which resistance and opposition (usually apropos of working-class counterculture) can sometimes become an integrative mechanism that reinforces the structures of domination that were the object of resistance in the first place. In North America, we can trace this line of analysis back to Paul Piccone's (1976, 1978) oft-cited concept of 'artificial negativity'. Although the term 'artificial' evokes an epistemological minefield, the general idea is that modernity systemically relies upon a degree of channelled criticism in order to avert stagnation. Middle-class radicalism, for example, is often absorbed by the state and corporate apparatuses so that an element of vitality is maintained without seriously threatening the foundations of these institutions. In the UK, Paul Willis's Learning to Labour (1977) explored a similar theme by showing how the astute criticisms of capitalism expressed by working-class 'lads' (what he called 'partial penetrations') created a set of low expectations that were ultimately selffulfilling and thus slotted them into an oppressive class structure. Willis's findings were confirmed to a large extent by Michael Burawoy's study of shop-floor workers at Allied in Manufacturing Consent (1979). Burawoy depicted the informal 'making-out' games workers used to resist the piecework bonus system orchestrated by management. Workers were suspicious and critical toward management and vented their grievances through output restriction and goldbricking-in much the same way Roy (1952, 1958) had recorded in the same factory some years before. But Burawoy's startling finding was that because workers gained a sense of freedom and relief from the intolerable boredom by participating in the games, they consented to being exploited by Allied's managerial elite. Their games of subversion actually adjusted them to their lack of privilege at work and thus functioned in an ideological manner. Burawoy draws the conclusion that some forms of resistance have the unintended consequence of maintaining domination because it is articulated in a way that undermines more meaningful and effective strategies of opposition. The idea that some forms of transgression can be a preserving force has informed a number of influential interpretations of employee cynicism in the context of culture engineering, arguing that it can potentially be performed as an ideological discourse incorporating the very subjects issuing the criticism. Rather than reading the deep-seated cynicism of employees as a successful strategy of resistance, they have pointed out how it may diminish the efficacy of more transformative workplace politics. Cynicism may accommodate workers to their subordinate position because they are given a specious sense of freedom ('I am not a dupe, I am outside of power') that allows them to cope with circumstances perceived to be out of their control. We want to focus specifically on the analyses of Willmott (1993) and du Gay and Salaman (1992), who interpret cynicism roughly from this perspective.1 In his article 'Strength is Ignorance; Slavery is Freedom', Willmott (1993) argues that although corporate culture does capture the souls of most employees, some are inevitably cynical: An unintended consequence of this kind of management theory is to raise expectations about self-determination without necessarily aligning its fulfilment to the realisation of corporate objectives. Instead of producing committed, enthusiastic, self-disciplining subjects, a possible effect of corporate culturist programmes is a

reinforcement of instrumentality among employees who comply with their demands without internalizing their values. (Willmott, 1993: 535) Willmott evokes Berger and Luckmann's (1966) notion of 'cool alternation' to explain the response where individuals subjectively 'distance' or dis-identify themselves from the roles they play, and then develops Kunda's (1992) findings to show how such a mode of cynical disidentification can actually incorporate workers into the relations of power they seek to escape. Cynicism at Tech allowed employees to resist naive seduction by the corporate culture, but a less obvious and perverse effect of playing the game of cool alternation was an undermining or numbing of a capacity to directly criticise or resist the cultural logic. Why so? Because the very possibility of engaging in the playful ironicizing of the culture was interpreted as evidence of Tech's commitment to openness, freedom of expression, etc.' (Willmott, 1993: 537). Because these employees had the ability to be cynical, Willmott maintains they invariably perceive this as a sign of the company's partial dedication to freedom, forestalling any initiative to organize more effective forms of resistance. The very capacity cynically to challenge the company culture provokes a counterfeit sense of self- determination that allows the corporate roles to be enacted without the friction that is usually present when one feels hard done by. Employees become trapped in a 'vicious circle of cynicism and dependence' (Willmott, 1993: 518) which disarms them of any staid ability to challenge the existing power structure. A similar reading of worker cynicism can be found in du Gay and Salaman's (1992) analysis of enterprise. They discuss how the recent push to build cultures of excellence in the UK guilefully transmogrifies workers into entrepreneurial, enterprising selves. In broaching the topic of worker resistance to enterprise in the organizations they studied, it is claimed that: Certainly the discourse of enterprise appears to have no serious rivals today ... even if people do not take enterprise seriously, even if they keep a certain cynical distance from its claims, they are still reproducing it through their involvement in everyday practices within which enterprise is inscribed. (du Gay and Salaman, 1992: 630) Like Willmott (1993), du Gay and Salaman insist that even though we may negatively distance ourselves from the dictates of enterprise culture, the discourse is reproduced nevertheless. In approaching cynicism in this way, du Gay and Salaman draw directly from the work of Zizek, who writes, 'cynical distance is just one way to blind ourselves to the structuring power of ideological fantasy: even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironical distance, we are still doing them' (Zizek, 1989: 32). According to Zizek, ideological indoctrination not only controls our ideas, but also what we do-indeed, the two provinces of human life cannot easily be separated. In an effort to dissolve the perennial mind/ body dualism he maintains that 'reality' itself is ideologically structured, imbued with phantasmagorical illusions, and this is what subjects do not see in their everyday lives: The illusion is not on the side of knowledge, it is already on the side of reality itself, of what the people are doing. What they do not know is that their social reality itself, their activity, is guided by an illusion ... what they overlook, what they misrecognise is not the reality but the illusion which is structuring their reality, their real social activity. (Gi.ek, 1989: 32) Cynicism becomes an ideological force, ironically, because we are under the illusion that we are not victims of ideological obfuscation. Expressions such as, 'I'm not a sucker, I have not bought into this rubbish' pervade contemporary social relations of work and seem to sit comfortably alongside obedient practices of arduous labour. But what we often do not realize is that cultural control is not only in our heads, but also in reality itself and this is how cynicism can lead to what Zizek paradoxically calls an 'enlightened false consciousness'.2 In being cynical, we are enlightened about the ways of the world, yet can still enact even the most boorish discourses because we fail to understand that the fantasy is ingrained in our modes of conduct. Such a consciousness is nowhere better explained than by Eagleton in relation to racist ideology: 'ideology is not just a matter of what I think about a situation; it is somehow inscribed in that situation itself. It is no good my reminding

myself that I am opposed to racism as I sit down on a park bench marked "Whites Only"; by the act of sitting on it, I have supported and perpetuated racist ideology. The ideology, so to speak, is in the bench, not in my head' (Eagleton, 1991: 40). If we go back to our cynical workers in Kunda's Engineering Culture (1992), we can see this process at work. Despite the humour, the mocking of pompous official rituals and sneering cynicism, employees performed their roles flawlessly and were highly productive. The ideology of cynicism ensures that Tech operates akin to a well- oiled machine because the corporate culture does not necessarily need to colonize employees' 'minds' (a concept not easily separated from our behaviour as we will see below shortly), only their discursive practices. Employees are cynically enlightened about the realities of corporate exploitation, but they act as if they are not. In fact, cynicism in a context like this may often lead us to feel that we are not fully reducible to the company line, but are `unique individuals': 'I may look like an IBM man, but under this blue suit and corporate lunches is a true giving human being'. Such ideational distancing gives workers an important sense of 'self-outside-power', allowing the corporate machine to get on with its job and commandeer the 'reality' of the organization's productive system. Having outlined the basic premises of this increasingly popular interpretation of employee cynicism, the remainder of this article explores some of the theoretical implications that it has for key concepts in critical organization theory. We do this by analysing how typical notions of subjectivity and power are significantly challenged by the ideology of cynicism thesis. The idea that cultural power only works through 'identification' and that subjectivity is only that which is 'inside' us will be turned on its head. And, in the last section of this article, we then bring employee resistance back into the picture, both as a criticism of the ideology approach and as a further implication of it. Implications for Power and Subjectivity Two of the most striking implications of the ideology of cynicism thesis concern the way we conceptualize subjectivity and power in critical organizational studies. Indeed, we aim to show that common understandings of cultural power and the effects it has on subjectivity in the workplace often rest upon simplistic assumptions and are in need of clarification. Given the popularity of interpreting cynicism as a reproductive mechanism, we will now build upon that approach to demonstrate how power can work through dis-identification (rather than simply through identification) and subjectivity may be radically 'external' (rather than something inside us). We now discuss each implication in turn. Power: From Identification to Dis-identification Narrating cultural power as a process that operates through identification still largely remains the accepted orthodoxy within organization studies. Interestingly, this assumption is probably most clearly spelt out in the managerialist literature. Working within the parameters of social and behavioural psychology much of the prescriptive literature maintains that cultural control elicits from workers a positive attachment to the company and its products. When organization members internalize the values and beliefs crafted by management they come to make sense of their self-esteem, confidence and well-being in those terms. Herbert Simon argued in Administrative Behaviour, for example, that managerial 'values gradually become "internalized" and are incorporated into the psychology and attitudes of the individual participant. He acquires an attachment or loyalty to the organization that automatically-i.e. without the necessity for external stimuli-guarantees that his decisions will be consistent with the organization objectives' (1961: 198). That is to say, when the goals of the organization (management) and workers are aligned, a positive identification process will ensue whereby subordinates invest their sense of self and personality in the motives and desires of superiors. More recently, this concern with the 'inculcation of motives' (Barnard, 1938) can be found in the rhetoric espoused by corporate culture gurus such as Peters and Waterman (1982), Senge (1990) and Schein (1997). The assumption that cultural power works via identification is often shared by much critical-oriented research as well. One of the major indictments launched at corporate culture programmes by critical scholars is that the

loyalties and commitments of workers are manipulated in such a way that they lose any desire to resist capitalism. What has been dubbed the 'last frontier of control' (Ray, 1986) penetrates the very desires of workers so that they cannot help but devote and dedicate themselves to the edicts of domination. Ray (1986) offered one of the first critical excursions into this more sinister side of corporate culture management. She claims that culture programmes 'have individuals possess direct ties to the values and goals of the dominant elites in order to activate the emotion and sentiment which might lead to devotion, loyalty and commitment to the company' (Ray, 1986: 294). Similarly, Deetz argues that new management control systems that target the very selves of workers attempt, and often succeed, in persuading workers to 'want on his or her own what the corporation wants' (1992: 42). This explicit identification apparently links workers' sense of dignity with accomplishing the goals of the organization and as a result they say 'yes!' to prevailing regimes of power. Barley and Kunda also make the point that under the ideological control of corporate culture, workers 'make no distinction between their own welfare and the welfare of the firm' (1992: 382). And, lastly, Casey (1995, 1996, 1999) in her analysis of the corporate fabrication of 'designer selves' has made repeated assertions about the identification mechanisms of team and cultural normalization. She remarks: Hephaestus Corporation designed its 'new culture program' with the principle objectives to gain employee involvement, to improve production and increase customer satisfaction... To achieve this a `new Hephaestus employee' was required, one who would believe that his or her selfdevelopment, source of fulfilment and identity are to be found working for Hephaestus. (Casey, 1999: 160) The interpretation of cynicism as ideology, however, unsettles the simplicity of the identification thesis. The cynical worker seems to be free from the clutches of cultural incorporation, but this semblance of freedom is the very stuff of integrative discourses-especially in the context where economic domination still evidently prevails. To take an example: instead of a McDonalds worker identifying with the values enshrined in the training programmes (quality, team work, cleanliness, efficiency and so on), she may be extremely cynical toward the company and see through to more base managerial motives (perhaps wearing a 'McShit' tee-shirt under her uniform in a clandestine fashion). Crucially, however, she performs as an efficient member of the team nevertheless. It appears that in cases where employees do not identify with the values and philosophy of the organization, a regime of ideology still seems to be at work. This is because even though our cynical McDonalds employee has transgressive tastes in clothing that dis-identify with her employer, she acts as if she believes in the prescribed values of the organization and it is at this level that cultural power is operating in its most potent form. The importance of understanding how ideological consent can be harnessed through dis- identification rather than simply through identification is underlined by Zizek: We are dealing here with what one is tempted to call the ideological practice of disidentification. That is to say, one should turn around the standard notion of ideology as providing a firm identification to its subjects, constraining them to their 'social roles': what if, on a differentbut no less irrevocable and structurally necessary- level, ideology is effective precisely by constructing a space of false disidentification, of false distance towards the actual co-ordinates of those subjects' social existence. (2000:103) To return once more to our cynical McDonalds worker, ideological power is present in the strategy of dis- identification because it creates a gap in which the subject feels relieved of the burden of committing to the social role as an active and participating employee. This relief allows the McDonalds worker to claim that 'even though I slave all day serving high fat, low fibre food to children... I am nonetheless free-just look at the McShit tee-shirt I wear underneath my uniform!' Realistically speaking, of course, our imaginary worker would probably not be absolutely against the organization as there are many shades between the poles of identification and dis- identification (for example, indifference, ambivalence, anxiety and so on) and seldom do we maintain one subjective stance over time and contexts. People are not simply cynics while others are optimists. Subjectivity is without a centre, inconsistent, contradictory and cannot be pinned down to one set of dispositions or characteristics. However, that does not detract from the argument that when the disidentification process is

enacted it can establish an alluring 'breathing space' where people feel untrammelled by the subjective demands of the organization, but which ironically permits them to behave as an efficient and meticulous member of team nevertheless. Research examining the training protocols of customer service workers supports this general idea. Studies conducted by Ashforth and Humphrey (1993), Leidner (1993) and Sturdy et al. (2001), for example, note that workers are actually advised not to identify with the routinized identity-script too much lest they suffer from 'burnout'. To avert the injuries of conformity they are told by trainers to retain some autonomy, use their own discretion and maintain a degree of subjective distance in order for the script to work properly. These 'indulgency patterns' (Gouldner, 1955; Mars, 1982) have long been recognized by researchers as an important part of maintaining workplace relations of power. In turning a blind eye to minor infringements such as petty pilfering and 'fiddling', for example, more consequential disruptions are avoided. The desirability for some sort of dis-identification for corporate power to sustain its machinations is illustrated by Zizek's analysis of the film and subsequent television series MASH: Contrary to its misleading appearance, Robert Altman's MASH is a perfectly conformist film-for all their mockery of authority, practical jokes and sexual escapades, the members of the MASH crew perform their jobs exemplarily, and thus present no threat to the smooth running of the military machine. In other words, the cliche which regards MASH as an anti-militarist film, depicting the horrors and meaningless military slaughter which can only be endured by a healthy measure of cynicism, practical jokes, laughing at pompous official rituals, and so on, misses the pointthis very distance is ideology. (1997: 20) Thus the cynical distance subjects feel toward their actions (their 'day jobs' if you will) often does not present an inherently seditious challenge to domination (as the identification thesis would lead us to believe), rather it can uphold the continued functioning of this very system because of the sense of freedom it provides. Subjectivity: From Internalization to the Objectivity of Belief Another prevalent theoretical approach to subjectivity and control we find in critical organization studies is that which examines how corporate identities are internalized by workers. The inside/outside spatial metaphor the term 'internalization' implies harks back to the equally pervasive subjective/objective distinction whereby people are seen to have an internal psychological realm that is some how divided from external reality (compare Burrell and Morgan, 1979). Moreover, in much critical research, the mind/body dualism is also an important assumption underlying the discourse of internalization because coercive control is seen to influence our behaviour, while cultural control manipulates our minds (Mitchel, 1990). It seems to us that the term 'subjectivity' is often erroneously used as a synonym for more traditional concepts such as personality or world-view, elements that are seen to reside 'within' rather than 'without'. At any rate, cultural indoctrination is construed as if power is 'poured into' the private recesses of the subject like liquid into a glass. Take Ray's (1986: 293) comments comparing bureaucratic and cultural control: 'while bureaucratic control may prompt individuals to act as if the company is their source of meaning and commitment that is an entirely different matter from seriously believing in it. In other words, control remains externalized rather than becoming internalized.' Ray makes a clear distinction between the internal and external spheres of human practice in order to analyse the novelty of cultural control. Control in the past governed our visible practices, but with the advent of culture and ideological management we are infected with power to our very soul.3 Another example of this internalization thesis can be found in Kunda's analysis of culture engineering in Tech corporation. For Kunda, the strategies of control and power implemented by corporate culture (what he calls 'normative control') were fundamentally different from external controls because the former endeavoured to manage the inner psyche of Tech workers: Under normative control, members act in the best interests of the company not because they are physically coerced, nor purely from an instrumental concern with economic rewards and sanctions. Rather they are driven by internal commitment, strong identification with company goals, intrinsic satisfaction from work. (1992: 11)

A common theme underlying these approaches and which continues to pervade critical organization studies is the idea that cultural power controls the subject by inducing them to absorb into their private and isolated interiority a set of ready-made beliefs. Although they disavow essentialism, a kind of essentialism continues to predominate in so far as a humanist concept (a private interiority) is maintained as if it was a natural predisposition of humankind. However, studies of the ideological aspects of cynicism draw upon a more (post-) structuralist tradition of thought that is suspicious of the notion of interiority and leads us to challenge the internalization thesis. It has been shown that in the case of cynicism some employees do not internalize the values and norms of the official culture. On the contrary, the cynic keeps the norms and values of the organization at a distance and makes an effort to ensure they are not internalized. However, the nub of the problem is the fact that they continue to act as if they believe in the culture of the organization. The question is why do we think belief is seated inside us, because it becomes patently clear that, although we do not internally believe in the values of the culture, we may still externally believe? A radically social understanding of subjectivity tells us that belief is not necessarily inside us-a rather psychologistic proposition-but somehow outside us, or as the Russian linguist Voloshinov (1973) more accurately puts it, in between us. Indeed, contra Ray (1986), we could make the claim that our (external) actions appear to believe for us. As Liz,ek explains: Contrary to the usual thesis that a belief is something interior and knowledge something exterior (in the sense that it can be verified through an external procedure) . . . it is belief that is radically exterior, embodied in the practical, effective procedures of people. It is similar to Tibetan prayer wheels: you write a prayer on a paper, put the rolled paper into the wheel, and turn it automatically without thinking ... In this way, the wheel itself is praying for me, instead of me-or, more precisely, I myself am praying through the medium of the wheel. The beauty of it all is that in my psychological interiority I can think about whatever I want, I can yield to the most dirty and obscene fantasies, and it does not matter because whatever I am thinking, objectively, I am praying. (1989: 34) An external theory of belief does not discount the fact that we often do experience a sense of interiority, a phenomenological space that we feel to be our very own. Indeed, as the above quotation alludes to, the feeling of interiority plays a vital role in the power network of particularespecially rampant-individualist social configurations. The radical suggestion we find here is that belief in 'the party line', corporate culture, and perhaps even late capitalism does not necessarily have to exist in the realm of interiority. Instead, systems of identification can be externalized, placed onto a series of objects and actions, so that our subjectivity is freed up to fantasize and think about anything we may wish (perhaps bombing our workplace, perhaps a sexual liaison with a co-worker, or perhaps what we need from the supermarket). In this sense, it is our social practices that believe in our place (one is reminded of Homer Simpson who points to the fact that he attends church every Sunday making him a good Christian-even though we know he sleeps through the entire proceeding). A similar line of reasoning can be found in the structuralism of Louis Althusser (1971). In his celebrated essay on ideology, he argues that our cultural investments in a system of power does not come from within us, but are manifest in our institutionalized rituals and practices. These practices are not to be conceived as different from belief, but as a more precise description of what the concept actually entails in a social setting. Althusser gives an example from Pascal where it is advised that if you do not believe in God, kneel down, begin moving your lips (act as if you are praying, even if you do not believe), and eventually you will believe. To be sure, it is in our habits, our everyday actions where belief, subjectivity and hence power resides. If belief can be posited as an uncannily objective phenomenon, we are then directed to a more profound and unsettling deduction: even our most intimate aspects of identity may not be experienced internally either, but are externalized and experienced for us. Zizek is fond of emphasizing just how radically exterior our most personally experienced sensations are. For instance, enjoyment and laughter is experienced for us by canned laughter on television sitcoms. When we slip over on a wet footpath, our companion exclaims 'Oops!' instead of us. In some cultures, mourners are hired to do the wailing for the bereaved at the funeral of a loved one. Elster provides yet

another example when discussing the outof-character 'mysticism' expressed by a renowned rationalist: 'Niels Bohr at one time is said to have had a horseshoe over his door. Upon being asked whether he really believed that it would bring him luck, he answered "no, but I am told that they bring luck even to those who do not believe in them" ' (1983: 5). Examples of this process in organizations abound. Public relations firms are hired by large petroleum companies to believe in the ethical propriety of their destructive oil explorations. Allegiance to corporate culture is enacted by simply letting the rituals experience commitment for us (a bumper sticker of the company on our car, the correct cap while playing golf, and feigned enthusiasm while participating in team- building activities), while we can 'personally' enjoy that space of freedom inside us. But if believing can be practised `for us', then is there really any escape from cultural colonization? Rethinking Resistance In the preceding sections, we have worked through the implications the ideology approach to cynicism has for the concepts of power and subjectivity in organization studies. We shall now focus on what these implications mean for how we conceive employee resistance. The reconceptualization of cultural power as a process that can operate through dis-identification and the notion that subjectivity is also external undoubtedly alters some of the more traditional ways of viewing employee resistance. But perhaps a pressing preliminary issue that such a rethinking raises is the question of whether cynicism in the face of cultural colonization has only conservative and self-defeating effects as suggested by a strong version of the ideology interpretation. Although this thesis does touch upon an important element of cynical resistance, it could be claimed that it offers an overly pessimistic and functional portrayal of power and conflict. Maybe this is because cynicism in the contemporary era has always been frowned upon as negative, unhelpful and symptomatic of a smug capitulation. As Sloterdijk (1987) points out, this kind of modern 'enlightened' cynicism is a far cry from what the ancient Greek and founder of philosophical cynicism, Diogenes of Sinope, had in mind. This ancient brand of cynicism was considered a `dog philosophy' by Plato (from the word 'Kynos' meaning dog in Greek), a radical approach to reflection that enlists the whole body and all its filthy secrets to highlight the pretences and hypocrisies of official power.4 It is the identity of the stray and unkempt dog that draws attention to the dirty reality behind and under the flimsy veneer of 'legitimate' authority. Perhaps there is something of this meaning in the cynicism that we have been discussing. When a central purpose of cultural control is to target the very selves of workers then cynicism could be a disruptive force (in a limited sense) because employees thwart the managerial demand to become the kind of people the company wants them to be. Such managerial injunctions-to subscribe positively to the corporate philosophy-are an important component of the employment contract in high-commitment organizations and cynicism may thus disrupt this particular symbolic economy of power at the level of identity. Moreover, cynicism may also be an important way of facilitating other forms of opposition rather than undermining them. For example, Rodriques and Collinson's (1995) study of Brazilian Telecom demonstrates how the cynical debunking of the engineered culture in the union newsletter helped to bolster traditional modalities of worker dissent. From this angle, the problem is to discern whether cynicism helps or hinders other modalities of resistance, which may be a formidable task due to the ambiguity and contradictory nature of many forms of dissent (Collinson, 1994). These points perhaps allow for a more sympathetic view of cynical resistance and it would be erroneous to reduce the phenomenon to one interpretation, namely, the ideology approach. However, by pursuing our reconceptualizations of power and subjectivity derived from the ideology interpretation of cynicism we can also open up some interesting additional possibilities for thinking about employee dissent. It will be noted that the growing literature on 'subjective resistance' is premised on the very concepts of subjectivity and power problematized in the previous section (for example, Knights and McCabe, 2000). So what exactly does worker resistance look like if we accept that cultural power may work through dis-identification and that subjectivity also resides in the `outside' sphere of objects and practice? Let us now look at resistance in terms of these two implications in more detail.

Believing Too Much If a possible outcome of cynical dis-identification is the inadvertent shoring up of cultural domination, then is the converse proposition also true-believing 'too much' may have the subversive effect of throwing the reproduction of cultural power into complete disarray? Although at first glance it seems counter-intuitive, it may be worth considering how employees oppose management by (either sincerely or insincerely) overidentifying with the culture programme. Take the example of the employee who affixes not one company sticker to his car, but hundreds and thereby ridicules the whole ritual by taking it far too seriously. Another worker may stuff hundreds of suggestions (that are not completely useless) in the suggestion box and burnout both the symbolic and administrative legitimacy of what employees often know to be bogus participation programmes. Indeed, the manoeuvre where subordinates can cunningly undermine the authority of the company by inordinately identifying with the orders of superiors is called 'flannelling'. This is a strategy of dissent that quietly subverts the rules of cultural control in such a manner that it is difficult for superiors directly to confront them because employees are technically doing what they have been asked to do. Fleming and Sewell (2002: 866) explain the logic of flannelling: . .unlike the 'arse-kisser', 'creep', or 'company suck' who displays a conspicuously devotional adherence to the organization's norms in the hope of gaining preferment, the flanneler does not wish to climb the greasy pole. On the contrary, through an elaborate, even exaggerated, display of deference, enthusiasm, or conformity, the flanneler signals the exact opposite, displaying contempt for those very norms. There are various other strategies of 'believing too much' that can disrupt relations of domination in contemporary organizations. The classic collective bargaining strategy of 'working to rule' can have a devastating impact on the smooth functioning of the work process. When employees disingenuously follow every single rule of the labour process or corporate philosophy, the work regime inevitably breaks down. Employees also often use the rhetoric of empowerment, equality and participation in a subversive way by taking it earnestly and demanding that the organization actually make it a reality (Mckinlay and Taylor, 1996). This is, of course, the crucial weakness of corporate culture management. If it actually delivered what it promised it would exact a fundamental challenge to the very foundations of the capitalist and patriarchal corporation. In a similar way, employees that take customer service too seriously resist the organization by putting the interests of customers above those of the organization-selling a cheaper product that is just as good as an expensive one or not pressuring potential customers into a sale even when the agent knows that they could probably close the deal if they did so (Sturdy, 1998). Externalizing the Pathology of Work How does the externality of subjectivity help us understand the way employee resistance to corporate culture may unfold in contemporary workplaces? The ideology approach makes the argument that cynicism may undermine effective resistance to corporate domination because even though the cynical worker disbelieves 'internally', their external actions believe for them. Given our argument that this external feature of subjectivity is very significant, the enactment of a non-functional resistance may mean externalizing that which was previously relegated by the cynical employee as something internal. In other words, resistance to corporate culture and its symbolic web of control calls for not only an internal practice of incredulity, but also an externalization of disbelief. One way we could examine this externalization of disbelief is through various forms of corporate 'culture jamming' and symbolic sabotage that is almost routinely enacted in organizations. Likewise, we could attempt to delineate an 'external' political economy of objects of disbelief such as cynically altered company slogans and cultural 'fiddling'. Externalizing disbelief through culture jamming has proved a favourite strategy of activists in the sphere of consumption who target the brands of large companies and subvert them by adding witty anti- corporate comments (see Klein, 2000). The best examples include the 'subvertisments' produced by the Canadian 'anti-media' group Adbusters. Their campaigns include Calvin Klein subvertisments that feature an

emaciated woman throwing up into a toilet and a new Marlboro man who is riddled with lung cancer. Similar strategies are obviously deployed in relation to corporate culture where corporate slogans, symbols and other forms of discourse are subverted, usually in the informal sphere of the organization (Collinson, 1992; Fleming and Spicer, 2002). Perhaps a less obvious connection between the process of externalization and resistance is indicated by the way workers often attempt to 'repathologize' the high-commitment workplace through externalizing that which was previously deemed to be internal by management. Corporate culture management is based upon the principle of situating the success or failure of the organization 'within' the identity and selves of individual workers, otherwise legitimate employee grievances tend to be psychologized by management (and peers) as an individual 'deficiency' or pathology (Hollway, 1991). Resistance in this context is not explained as something related to the inequality of the capitalist labour process, but rather a matter of personal problems within the worker-a negative attitude, an inability to be a team player or shirking one's duties. In other words, the pathologies of contemporary work are pushed onto employees themselves and are internalized as personal demeanours and characteristics that must be 'worked through' in team meetings, development assessment seminars and 'self-help' consumption in the private sphere. If subjectivity has an objective aspect, as was argued in the previous section, then the coordinates of employee resistance to culture management take on an interesting dimension. In this context, where the discourse of individuation is paramount, a degree of subversion may take place when what is constituted as inside workers by the managerial gaze is pushed back as a feature that is beyond individuals and part of the organization of work itself As Fleming and Sewell (forthcoming) intimate in their research of misbehaviour in high-commitment workplaces, this usually involves a strategic change in the discourse of workers that attempts to re-pathologize the organization by drawing attention to the externality of much that is taken to be a psychological 'defect' within employees. This kind of resistance literally involves talking about organizations in a manner that transforms what is supposed to be perceived as an internal entity into an external one. This is, of course, a common symbolic procedure in traditional collective action and unionism where the iniquities of the environment are laid bare. But under the normative rhetoric of unitary interests that pervades culture management, resistance through externalization can have extremely disruptive consequences. In emphasizing the external nature of subjectivity, the 'stressed worker' becomes the 'stressful workplace'. The 'tired employee' is now the 'exploitative organization'. Rather than perpetuating the myth of the 'negative employee', attention is instead placed upon the 'negative HRM categories' that stigmatize those who are simply 'realistic' given external circumstances. Conclusion In this article we have focused on employee cynicism as a way of opening up a discussion about how we construct the key concepts of power, subjectivity and resistance in organization studies. We have evaluated the various interpretations of employee cynicism in the critical literature and have highlighted a particularly dominant perspective that sees cynicism as a mode of distancing that can potentially reproduce the very power relations employees seek to escape. Although not all cynicism is selfdefeating or ideological, we have used this interpretation to draw out certain implications for the key concepts of power, subjectivity and resistance. Our contribution has been to challenge three core concepts in organization studies through a series of inversions: from identification to dis-identification (power), from internalization to externalization (subjectivity), and from disbelief to believing too much (resistance). In some ways, we have simply brought to light alternative conceptions of power, subjectivity and resistance from out of the shadow of the prevailing 'subjectification thesis' in organization studies. Studies of identification and belief have provided much insight into the subtle mechanisms of corporate culture control in late capitalist organizations. But there is now a pressing need to explore the many disidentifications that dwell in the prosaic spaces of organizational life. How we make sense of these everyday engagements not only has ramifications for our current theories (which we have endeavoured to discuss above), but also for the

abiding politics of social justice in the workplace. We therefore close with a sobering statement by Harry Braverman that is as germane today as it was when published in 1974: 'beneath this apparent habituation, the hostility of workers to degenerated forms of work which are forced upon them continues as a subterranean stream that makes its way to the surface when employment conditions permit ... it renews itself in new generations, expresses itself in the unbounded cynicism and revulsion which large numbers of workers feel about their work, and comes to the fore as a social issue demanding solution' (Braverman, 1974: 151). Footnote Notes Footnote 1 See Fournier (1998), Sturdy (1998) and Gabriel (1999) for similar arguments. 2 Zizek develops this idea from Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason (1987). Sloterdijk's fascinating book traces the historical antecedents of our 'cynical age', arguing that the optimism of the Enlightenment has collapsed into a pervasive cynicism because of the dismal devastations modernity has visited upon humans, animals and the environment during the 20th century. 3 This is, of course, a rather dubious version of the historical development of management controls. Ray subscribes to what we could call an 'evolutionary' theory, which assumes that the attempt to govern the 'souls' of workers is substantively new because only the behaviours of workers were targeted in the past. The idea that there has been a significant shift from obtrusive to unobtrusive control systems not only misses the point that the subjectivity of workers has been a managerial object of 'reform' ever since the industrial revolution (see Parker, 2000), but also gives the impression that coercive controls are absent in contemporary organizations, an obviously fallacious assumption. This is not to say there is nothing new about corporate culture management, but only to recognize its relationship to similar vocabularies of motive in the past. Footnote 4 Burrell (1993), for example, has pointed to the need for a 'kynical' engagement ('pissing in public') with organization studies as a discipline and the university. In a later work, Pandemonium (Burrell, 1997), he calls for a more serious acknowledgement of the unclean, marginalized and, indeed, 'kynical' aspects of organizational life. References References References Ackroyd, S. and Thompson, P. (1999) Organizational Misbehaviour. London: Sage. References Althusser, L. (1971) `Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)', in L. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays, trans. B. Brewster. London: New Left Books. Anderson, L. (1996) `Employee Cynicism: An Examination Using a Contract Violation Framework', Human Relations 49: 1395-418. Ashforth, B. and Humphrey, R. (1993) `Emotional Labour in Service Roles: The Influence of Identity', Academy of Management Review 18(1): 88-115. Barley, S.R. and Kunda, G. (1992) 'Design and Devotion: Surges of Rational and Normative Ideologies of Control in Managerial Discourse', Administrative Science Quarterly 37: 363-99. Barnard, C. (1938) The Functions of the Executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Berger, P and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press. References Burawoy, M. (1979) Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Victoria 3010, Australia. [email: [email protected]] AuthorAffiliation Andre Spicer's research interests focus on developing post-linguistic approaches to organization. He is currently involved in projects examining the role of discourse in industrial relations disputes, resistance and power in organizations, rethinking the entrepreneur, and the discourse of globalization in public broadcasting. He has recently joined the Warwick Business School as a lecturer. Address: Industrial Relations and Organisational Behaviour Group, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK. [email: andre_ [email protected]] Subject: Corporate culture; Employee attitude; Organizational behavior; Human resource management; Classification: 2500: Organizational behavior; 6100: Human resource planning Publication title: Organization Volume: 10 Issue: 1 Pages: 157-179 Number of pages: 23 Publication year: 2003 Publication date: Feb 2003 Year: 2003 Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd. Place of publication: London Country of publication: United Kingdom Publication subject: Business And Economics--Management ISSN: 13505084 Source type: Scholarly Journals Language of publication: English Document type: Feature ProQuest document ID: 218634391 Document URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/218634391?accountid=13552 Copyright: Copyright Sage Publications Ltd. Feb 2003 Last updated: 2014-04-30 Database: ProQuest Central

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