Lucio 1997

Capital & Class http://cnc.sagepub.
com/
The Paradox of Contemporary Labour Process Theory: The Rediscovery

of Labour and the Disappearance of Collectivism
Miguel Martinez Lucio and Paul Stewart
Capital & Class 1997 21: 49
DOI: 10.1177/030981689706200104
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49
Recent commentators on the Labour Process Debate have

addressed the relationship between individualism, collectivism
and broader changes in management strategies through a focus
upon the absence of labour and the demise of collectivism. In this
critical response the authors argue that almost invariably, while
labour in some guise is rediscovered, this occurs at the expense
of collectivism.
The Paradox of Contemporary

Labour Process Theory: The
Rediscovery of Labour and the
Disappearance of Collectivism
by Miguel Martinez Lucio and Paul Stewart
I
N THE FOLLOWING DISCUSSION we argue that the manner Introduction
in which some social scientists seek to ‘return to the
employee’ exacerbates rather than resolves the problem of
‘absent labour’. We suggest that this shortcoming, though
intelligible in its own terms, is best understood against a wider
failure in the treatment of labour in the sociology of work,
including Industrial Relations and Human Resource
Management which in the main have worked on problematical
notions of the relationship between individualism and
collectivism. By contrast, we argue that the latter relationship
is better understood by rooting it within the problem of what
Marx termed the collective worker—the necessarily co-
operative character of the capitalist labour process in which
valorization depends upon collective functions of individuals
where ‘it is sufficient for [a worker] to be an organ of the
collective labourer, and to perform any one of its subordinate
functions’ (Marx, cited in Carter, 1985: 61). This structural
feature of the capitalist labour process always confronts
management and is addressed today through a range of
strategic alternatives exemplified by the individualizing
practices of, inter alia, HRM.
50 Capital & Class #62
However, we argue there is a need to avoid confusing the

context and substance of these various individualizing
strategies with the underlying nature of the labour process in
capitalism. Specifically, it is the contradiction between the
historical socialization of production and the management
strategies associated with the micro social and political
consequences of this which accounts for the changing
character of the relation between individualism and
collectivism. The mistake has been to assume either that this
couplet is logically contradictory, in consequence of which a
resolution can be sought, an assumption one could argue
which lies at the heart of the ‘success’ of HRM or, equally
misconstrued, to suppose that they operate in see-saw
fashion. The fundamental problem with either of these
positions is that they infer that the problem of conflict in the
labour process can be resolved. This is one implication for
Bacon and Storey’s oeuvre. Whilst Thompson and Ackroyd’s
research sensibly refutes the end of conflict scenario, since
they ignore the problematic of the collective worker and
because they identify collectivism with formal institutions of
regulation, the ‘rediscovery’ of opposition in terms of
individualistic practices undermines their broader project
which is to identify the origins as well as the mediation of
employee struggle.
This article addresses two themes. First it begins by
noting how the absence of labour and the collective worker
has been assumed within key studies (taking note of the
legitimate concerns of Nichols on the subject of labour’s
‘academic’ reformulation). Secondly, we are concerned with
the way stereotyped understandings of collectivism and its
‘demise’ have evolved and underpinned much of the analysis
of change in the labour process. Notions of individualization
are utilised to explain the supposed crisis of collective
institutions within a zero-sum framework. Notions of
management led change and worker fragmentation—even in
terms of worker struggles—have been reified due to these
twin developments: the ignoring of valorization and the
collective worker, on the one hand, and the denial of
collectivism as a complex mediating factor (and its limiting
to historically specific institutional relations) on the other.
The article then focuses on a highly significant intervention
by Thompson and Ackroyd (1995) that questions the thesis
The Paradox of Labour Process Theory 51
of individualisation of work and the assumed decline of

employee agitation. Accordingly, we examine this key
contribution to the current state of labour-in-work.
However, we believe that such an analysis needs to be
questioned since it does not adequately engage with the
problematic of collectivism in its various forms and also
because, ironically, it unintentionally reproduces some of the
characteristics of the school of so-called ‘Foucauldians’ that
it criticises. Moving on, we then engage with the insightful
work of Bacon and Storey (1993; 1995) who locate their
analysis of change from a perspective that views neo-
collectivist practices as key to the character of new
management strategies at work. This is indeed important,
although in their hands collectivism is denied any structural
or political character, being reduced to a set of micro-level
organisational arrangements, institutional processes and
matters of loyalty. At the same time they argue it is through
the novel articulation of collectivism and individualism,
together with an appreciation of the employment
relationship—rather than from any political conclusions
regarding union decline and collectivism—that alternative
understandings may be constructed. The article concludes
that we need to locate the debate on the nature of
individualism and collectivism not only in terms of the
contradictory developments emerging within the labour
process but also with respect to a wider, engaging view of
collectivism. The latter is premised upon the interplay
between the various social and political forces in and at work
which in turn are rooted in the fate of the collective worker in
the capitalist labour process today. Throughout we insist
that the question of declining collectivism is not sufficiently
explained in key texts and that these fail to confront the
political dynamics of collectivism and its social
characteristics—something which has concerned Marxists
since Lenin’s analysis of trade unionism. In our suggestions
for future research we attempt to locate some broader
questions in terms of the way new dynamics and conflicts can
be appreciated and understood without reference to a zero-
sum analysis. We need to begin to recontextualise the
employment relationship and understand the political
experience of labour in terms of emergent counter strategies
in the labour process.
Subjectivity, the employee and the collective worker.
A striking paradox is revealed today in the proliferation of

research into the nature of the workplace in general and the
labour process in particular. Just when radical agendas are
required to make sense of contemporary forms of inequality
and exploitation in the workplace, there is a yawning absence
of critique from labour process theorists writing from within
the tradition of radical political economy. Whilst there have
been important contributions dealing with this lacuna in
Capital & Class, specifically Carter (1995) and Rowlinson and
Hassard (1994), it is nevertheless the case that radical labour
process critiques have effectively been ceded to researchers
concerned more with the labour process as a site for the
production of relations of subjectivity. Many of the reasons for
this are well understood, not the least of them being the
general demoralisation of the left, including left academicians
who in former times would have been driven to develop a left
analysis of current labour process developments. Carter and
Rowlinson and Hassard are important because in daring to
raise unfashionable themes they are calling for a more realistic
account of labour process analysis which recognises the
centrality of class relations and politics in work. We concur
with Rowlinson and Hassard in so far as it is clear that labour
process analysis has become depoliticised, ‘Foucauldian’
appearances to the contrary.
Indeed, the cluster of researchers around the so-called
‘Foucauldians’ and centred upon the Labour Process
Conference in Britain have not so much abandoned politics as
forgotten that an understanding of the political economy of
paid and unpaid employment is central to the politics of work
in capitalist societies. Whilst this is also in part the judgment of
Carter and Rowlinson and Hassard, we are concerned to
uncover another aspect of the failure to grapple with the
current fate of labour in the labour process. The particular way
in which focus has been brought to bear upon the subjectivity
of the ‘employee’ in the Labour Process Conference has led to
the abandonment of ‘a politics of work’. If this is so, is it not
obvious that the solution lies in part with a recognition of the
relative autonomy of the employee, an individual with his or
her own specific agendas, sometimes of class, sometimes of a
whole host of other structural and non structural determinants?
Does the solution, in other words, not lie with a ‘return to the
employee’ in the workplace rather than an emphasis upon
subjectivity? This is the view put forward by Thompson and
Ackroyd (1995), which we examine below.
It is our contention that the problem of the disappearing
worker in labour process debate is to be located (following
Carter, 1995) in the problem of absent labour in the guise of
the collective worker. By collective worker we mean the
conditions and circumstances of workers producing surplus
value in the context of the ‘real subsumption of labour under
capital’ (Marx, cited in Carter, 1995: 60). Under these
determinate conditions of the capitalist mode of production
work is never an individual process despite worker
experiences to the contrary. It is the appearance of
individualism, given precedence over the realty of collective
participation in the capitalist labour process, which often leads
to confusion regarding cause and effect. Moreover, this
confusion could be said to lie at the root of the accounts we
examine below where individualized employee experience is
mirrored in new managerial strategies which are driven into
the workplace—viz., individual experience is taken as the
starting point in the assault upon collectivism. Citing Marx,
Carter points out that since all value is determined collectively,
work is correspondingly defined collectively even whilst,
paradoxically, employees may understand their individual
contribution as sufficient unto itself (ibid: 60-1). 1 This is
important because it allows us to shift the discussion about
individualism versus collectivism (in the accounts below) from
an exposition of management/ trade union strategies aimed at
substituting the former for the latter as if the problem of the
indeterminacy of labour can be resolved to management’s
satisfaction through the reduction of worker collective action.
This certainly helps capital in a limited historical sense but the
broader problem for capital is how to deal with the
consequences, in Marx’s terms, of collective work processes
and specifically the typically unforeseen counter-politics and
ideologies, not to say new progressive gender and ethnic
relations between workers, which arise out of the changing
conditions of the collective worker. The broader problem for
capital is to develop strategic workplace identities and
alliances which seek to mitigate the consequences of the
structural nature of the capitalist labour process—for sure,
capital can address these consequences, but to assume it might

be possible to resolve the contradictions of the collective
worker (of individual experience and collective endeavour) is
implausible. In other words, just as readily as these alliances
are forged, often of course, involving trade unions in the guise
of ‘new trade unionism’, they are bound to come unstuck. The
shift to individualized trade union politics today, including the
particular way in which these are made sense of by some
researchers, is to misunderstand that the relation between
individualism and collectivism is determined at a level which
the strategies of particular agencies cannot resolve (or should
we say dissolve?).
However, whilst it is reasonable to argue, as Carter does, that
the failure to adequately conceptualize labour derives from
epistemological misunderstandings, we are more concerned with
the methodological consequences of this. It is not only that an
interest in the problematic and realities of the collective worker
and collectivism has become unfashionable. The point is that
theories of work and the labour process (outside of radical or
Marxist traditions) are effectively unable to perceive of the
practices and politics relating to the collective worker today. This
is particularly so with respect to an understanding of the
complexity of collective politics and the economic and social
contexts of the employment relationship. This weakness can be
identified most obviously in the one-dimensional treatment of
the themes of individualism and collectivism where it would seem
that management are now the only agents able to effect change.
THE LOSS OF THE LABOUR PROCESS AND THE REDISCOVERY

OF THE EMPLOYEE?
Despite Nichols’ (1991) oft-cited judgement that labour

process debates have become distinguished by their dis-
inclination to understand ‘labour’, it is only recently that
sociologists of work have begun to pose the question as to the
reasons for the ‘absent centre’ of the labour process. Never-
theless, Nichol’s call has largely gone unheeded and it is our
contention, some notable exceptions notwithstanding, that this
remains the case today. Nichols’ injunction to bring labour
back into the labour process has largely fallen upon deaf ears,
in part for the professional and ideological reasons he was at
pains to point out, but also, as he recognised, due to the

dominant interpretation in the 1980’s of social and economic
changes (which we discuss below). It was certainly reasonable
to argue that now, perhaps more than ever, labour process
theorists needed to be cognisant of the problems faced by wage
labour and that the retreat from a concern with wage labour
was tied to a wider intellectual disengagement with the
collective worker (Carter, 1995) and the complexity of
collective mediation within and beyond the labour process.
Far from avoiding the issue of subjectivity and agency,
Nichols was concerned to raise the question of the relationship
between (working class) subordination, the original focus of
labour process debate, and the new orientation to subjectivity
as prosecuted by one particular current within the ambit of the
Labour Process conference in Britain (Nichols, 1991: 10-13). It
seems to us that perhaps the most significant of the ironies in
contemporary labour process debates (and which Nichols
assessment allows for) remains to be examined, that is, the
contrast between the increasing concern within the field with
the sublimation of questions of structure to themes of
subjectivity, precisely at a moment when an understanding of
the latter can best be had by way of a structural analysis of
capitalist production relations. The problem is not that labour
process theorists outside the broad Marxist tradition fail to
recognise the significance of subjectivity but rather that they
attempt to talk about subjectivity by way of Marxist vocabulary
without Marxist discourse (ibid: 13) and without appreciation
of the complex trajectories and narratives that constitute the
Marxist tradition. The central issue for Nichols lies in the fact
that shorn of their original content, labour process concepts,
such as control, intensification and resistance, fail to go beyond
the answers given in the traditional canon of industrial
sociology. Speaking directly to his misgivings, Nichols says:
…in so far as the ‘labour process’ has been colonised from the
shores of subjects like organisational behaviour and
management studies it is not [surprising] that it should have
been exploited… selectively. As is well known colonialists often
do develop peculiar views of the countries that they invade. A
token of this is perhaps that references to ‘the capitalist labour
process’ threaten to become nothing other than an intellectually
pretentious way of saying ‘work’. (1991: 12-3)
In this respect, Thompson and Ackroyd’s contribution is

crucial because of their claim to bring back the employee into
the labour process debate. However important their
intervention may be, which we recognise below, it still leaves
us with a puzzle, created by Nichols and so far less than
satisfactorily solved in the literature—how do we bring living
labour back into the labour process? Our argument is that an
inability to articulate the theme of the fate of ‘labour’ within
contemporary labour process debate is symptomatic of a more
general abandonment by disciplines concerned with work and
employment and specifically by those researchers of industrial
relations and human resource management who have located
themselves in the much narrower institutional relationships of
work at the expense of the social and political context and its
complexities. In addition, contemporary analysis in certain
circumstances appears to function on the basis of a simplistic
understanding of the collectivist dimension of labour.
THE ‘DECLINE OF COLLECTIVISM’ IN THE ANALYSIS OF CHANGE
We now turn to the question of the way in which a particular

conception of collectivism has come to dominate research on
the nature of new management strategies and underpinned
the conceptualization of individualisation practices (both
managerial and employee). Specifically, we focus on how a
questioning of the concept of collectivism has evolved, how it
has been interpreted and used within key studies of change at
work, and how subsequently the emerging concept of
individualisation is itself fraught with difficulties in any
attempt to explain the political dynamics in and at work
because it is premised upon a simplistic notion of declining
collectivism.
The concept of collectivism raises many questions and
doubts for social scientists, especially in the way that it has been
used in some of the more reductionist contributions to the
labour process debate (Burrell, 1989). According to some it has
been imbued with meanings that now appear irrelevant in the
face of structural and strategic changes that are underpinning
contemporary capitalism and in particular the ‘disappearing
proletariat’ (Gorz, 1983). For Lash and Urry (1987 and 1994),
previous forms of collective identity and regulation have been
eroded by developments at all levels in society. First,

globalization and internationalisation have supposedly
hollowed out the collectivist, regulatory role of the post-war
state (Lash and Urry, 1987; Jessop, 1994: Held and McGrew,
1994). In addition, labour market developments have led to the
diminution of collective constituencies within labour. The
consequences of this are not solely to be found in the pressures
placed upon collective organisational identities. The point is
that the regulatory structures which emerged as a response by
the state and capital to the post war balance of forces are being
fundamentally undermined.
Furthermore, alongside the concerns regarding the
usefulness of the term for comprehending economic changes
there is a general political concern with approaches that
continue to assume preconstituted consciousness and interests
in the areas of the economy and production (Laclau and
Mouffe, 1984). Such concerns with the political construction
of collective identity are not always at the centre of the
ambivalence surrounding the continued efficacy of collective
interests. Others have preferred to counter the question of
collectivism by focusing upon the problem of the relationship
between subjectivity and ‘individualisation’ (Knights, 1989;
Willmott, 1989). These authors see contemporary managerial
practices which depend upon the individualisation of the
subject as providing the basis for contemporary power
relations. It has been argued that post-structuralist approaches
to questions of power and resistance, particularly true of
Foucault, allow for a greater appreciation of the way in which
matters of identity are drawn upon within the workplace
(Knights and Vurdubakis, 1994). This emphasises the
redundancy of approaches anchored in the metanarrative of
collectivism:
If a materialist analysis of social relations is to remain (or

become?) a guiding light for labour process analysis, it must
be informed by the practical, critical intent of revealing how
the individualising tendencies of capitalist relations of
production can accentuate existential insecurity to a point
where privatized efforts to gain a secure identity take
precedence over collective efforts to transform the historical
conditions that promote such self-defeating tendencies
(Willmott, 1989: 371).
Whilst these approaches attempt to show how the individual

is actually inscribed into the process of his or her exploitation,
workplace relations, in a seemingly paradoxical way, can be
manipulated by a preconstituted subject, in the form of
management (or capital), standing outside of the constitutive
processes and effects of power. The end of history seems to be
acceptable as a point of reference for some ‘subjects’ but not for
others! These slippages are particularly apparent in the less
systematic and theoretical approaches to the question.
The use of various practices that contribute to the individual-
isation of the subject in the form of surveillance mechanisms
(Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992), recruitment and career progres-
sion, and forms of involvement, for example, are seen to be
particular objects of scrutiny and perhaps even ‘levers’, within
contemporary managerialism (Storey, 1992). Although Storey
introduces the notion of levers to explain the way management
can utilise new employment practices he is very aware of the
limitations of management in the present phase (Storey, 1992
and 1994). In this respect there is an uneven account of the
process of individualisation which appears to be focused on the
question of labour in the form of the employee and less so on the
question of capital or management (where objective processes
still have a greater role in determining their power resources).
This question of individualisation has therefore emerged as a
major theme within IR/HRM in terms of the perception of the
way previous forms of collectivism have been undermined. For
example, one highly transparent current within the Japanisation
school has been resolute in emphasising the organised and
systematic qualities of such new developments. In the view of
Oliver and Wilkinson (1992) and Morris, Munday and
Wilkinson (1994) these can be considered neither as uneven
developments in the sphere of labour-management relations
nor as partial responses to external exigencies (regardless of
textual caveats that recognise the ad hoc qualities of particular
developments). Theoretically assuming the demise of collectiv-
ist ‘metanarratives’ and the organisational capacity of the labour
movement, this ideological current has presented a model of
such developments that reify the strategic capacity of capital and
the control functions of management (Morris, 1991; Morris et
al, 1994; Delbridge and Turnbull, 1992; and others).
In this somewhat uncomplicated view, the decline in
collective labour is synonymous with a decline in the role of
traditional institutional regulatory practices (Morris et al,

1993). Instead, organised labour is forced to find more
conciliatory strategies which concede on key questions of
worker autonomy. Simplicities notwithstanding, such
accounts should not be underestimated as others have more
recently demonstrated by emphasising instead the contingent
qualities of such strategies and the different configurations that
emerge as a consequence of the competing social, political and
economic environments in which they are constituted
(Danford, 1997; Palmer, 1996; Stephenson, 1995; Stewart and
Garrahan, 1995; Elger and Smith, 1994). Nevertheless, with
regards to the labour movement the consequences are
portrayed as being largely negative.
Paradoxically, within this school of thought, the geo-
economic dimension, in the form of investment strategies,
reinforce the power of capital in extracting such changes within
the workplace (Morris, 1991; Mueller and Purcell, 1992). Once
again, the context of ‘disorganisation’ appears to have mainly a
negative effect on labour but not capital and management
structures (see also Lash and Urry, 1994). Ironically, a very
economistic strand appears to run through this analysis of
‘individualisation’ which implicitly draws on some of the
conclusions, if not analysis, of a body of labour process
theorists concerned with the question of individualisation.
Clearly, from what we have argued, there are a variety of uses
of the term ‘individualisation’ but what is becoming apparent,
and is ignored by Thompson and Ackroyd, is that for certain
readings within the new management practices debate there is
an inherent negation of an ideal typical understanding of the
‘collective’ and its decline in political, social and economic
terms. To use Laclau and Mouffe’s methodology (1984: 127-
134) ‘individualisation’ is constructed through a discourse of
equivalence whereby its character is constituted ideologically
and intellectually on the basis of a negation of its ‘opposite’, in
this case ‘collectivism’. Conceptions of individualism and
collectivism therefore depend on a stereotypical understanding
of the ‘other’ as opposed to being studied and understood in
their political and social contexts (let alone by way of an
appreciation of the complex relation between the two). This
binary approach is especially prevalent in recent interventions
on individualisation which function on the basis of a stereotype
of traditional notions of collective labour solidarity:
Individualization undermines traditional views of solidarity and

trade union democracy. According to the traditional viewpoint,
solidarity is based on interests that are supposed to be objective
and common. Solidarity means that trade unionists perceive
these common interests as such, that the unions embody them
in a collective policy, and that this policy directs the actions of
all involved. To put it concisely: solidarity means to think and do
the same (our emphasis) (Valkenburg, 1995).
However, this question of articulation and the political

construction of collective identities and interests has always
been a complex issue:
The notion of a working class was always an abstraction (and a

rallying cry, in some cases perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy),
never a mere sociological description or generalisation.
Differentiation, division, and disunity have been omnipresent
features of trade union development. Solidarity is never a
natural or fixed quality, always a goal which is at best illusive
and ephemeral… (therefore) A mythical belief in some golden
age of proletarian unity and unproblematic trade union
solidarity distorts our perception of current labour movement
dynamics (Hyman, 1993: 165-6).
Whilst a recognition of this complexity has not been at the

centre of labour process debate (as Nichols recognized) it has
been treated more sensitively in debates concerning the
attempted reconceptualisation of the ‘golden age’ of industrial
relations (Heery and Kelly, 1994; Smith, 1995; Ackers, 1995;
Heery and Kelly, 1995). If we are to evaluate change then we
must have an historical understanding of what came before
and an appreciation of the fact that collective traditions and
mediations are likely to develop in more complex ways.
From the discourse of the subject to the materiality of the

employee: Thompson and Ackroyd.
The most significant shift within the ambit of the Labour

Process conference has come from Thompson and Ackroyd
(1995) in their contribution in Sociology which criticizes the
‘Foucauldian’ response to the question of subjectivity and the
attempt to ignore the responses of employees to new forms of
control. Thompson and Ackroyd seek to demonstrate that the

limitations of new wave labour process analysis are neither
simply methodological nor substantive but rather stem from
an ontological misconception of the relationship between
agency and social structure. The ‘Foucauldians’, amongst
whom are included commentators as diverse as Willmott and
Knights (1989) and Sewell and Wilkinson (1992), not only
over-estimate the power of management (‘The gaze has been
internalised’ (ibid: 624)) but they also underestimate the
autonomy of the individual. In the end, the individual qua, the
subject, disappears (ibid: 625) to be replaced by discourse
(pace Thompson and Ackroyd, Foucault himself maintained
the notion of an extra-discursive reality). It is argued that the
idea of an all-powerful management is inconceivable in theory
and practice because in the first instance, this emphasis derives
from a mis-emphasis in the reading of Foucault (ibid: 624) and
in the second, research highlights the reproduction of a
culture, or cultures, of difference and opposition between
management and employees, even, paradoxically they point
out in reference to Collinson’s work, within the orbit of the
Foucauldian school itself (ibid: 628).
This ‘Foucauldian’ misconception is nowhere more
obvious, according to Thompson and Ackroyd, than in the
assumption that resistance is good for management (ibid: 625).
However, it is precisely in respect of the concept of ‘resistance’
that redemption for sociology is to be sought. The concept of
resistance is the fulcrum around which the weakness of the
‘Foucauldians’ and their nemesis, the autonomy of the real,
living subject rotates. It is this concept that serves as the device
by means of which sociologists can ‘put labour back in’
(ibid: 629). However, the methodological and substantive
device used by Thompson and Ackroyd to advance their case is
the concept of ‘misbehaviour’ rather than resistance per se.
For Thompson and Ackroyd, the ‘Foucauldians’ have made
a fundamental ontological mistake where they assume agency
is entirely framed by the exigencies of management initiatives,
assuming at one and the same time the contradictory stance of
the triumph of thought over action (ie., management ideology
as omnipotent and unassailable) and the all determining
domination of managerial structures (team working, customer
quality initiatives, for example) over radical oppositional
alternatives—indeed, alternatives by definition cannot exist:
‘Labour disappears from the process partly because of the

tendency to believe that there is a monopoly of knowledge by
management and its agents, a form of discursive closure
marginalises other representations and identities.’ (ibid: 624)
Thompson and Ackroyd might have added that the
consequence of this leads to the contradiction that whilst this
intellectual current reject the possibility of employee meta-
narratives, they readily assume the grounds for a management
driven agenda—collective identities for some but not others?
In Thompson and Ackroyd’s frame of reference, it can be
demonstrated that employees not only have their own
agenda, but that this very fact invalidates (since it derives
from the nature of work itself (ibid: 625)) the ontological
claims of the ‘Focauldians’ in so far as individual activity
obtains from the experience of the individual at work, rather
than simply from the effects of the ideas of management,
whether ‘in one’s head’ (Knights and Willmott and the
notion of internalised surveillance) in the organisation of the
factory, or both (Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992). Quoting
Knights and Vurdubakis (1994), Thompson and Ackroyd
make the case that the ‘Foucauldians’ are concerned with the
idea of an employee centred agenda merely to highlight the
fact that this is an indispensable feature for employer power
and control—(managerial) power needs opposition, as the
basis of self reference and as the definitional counterpoint to
the employee (ie., the other) (p.624). For Thompson and
Ackroyd this paradox invalidates the strategic research
agenda of the ‘Foucauldians’ and demands a return to some
past verities in industrial sociology.
For us, this shift away from an interest in the characteristics
of labour amongst labour process, industrial relations and
human resource management theorists alike, identified by
Thompson and Ackroyd as symptomatic of a fixation with the
power of management, derives from a particular conception of
the relationship between individualism and collectivism.
Collectivism, probably is dead—long live individual(ist)
responses.
Bacon and Storey, from within the IR/HRM tradition, (see
below, 1995) are amongst the more interesting advocates of the
conceptual shift towards this new articulation of individualism
and collectivism. Although at root they share with Thompson
and Ackroyd an assumption that ‘traditionalism’ has declined
and/or will disappear, the consequences of this are for Bacon

and Storey quite distinct. For Thompson and Ackroyd, whose
substantive agenda is concerned to invalidate the perceived
consequences of the ‘Foucauldian’ elevation of managerial
control, the fact that collectivism is seen to be in decline cannot
be taken to imply the end of conflict: quite the contrary. The
persistence of what they term “misbehaviour” reinforces both
the survival of the latter and, in consequence, a particular
ontological character of employee existence. Reminding us of
the work of post war industrial sociologists in Britain and the
US, the concept of misbehaviour is designed to draw our
attention to what we might describe as the irrepressible
interests and needs of employees. In short, whatever may be
management’s agenda and however well the work place has
been coordinated and controlled, the fact that employees can
and often do “misbehave” indicates that whether or not
autonomy exists by systemic design or accident, employees will
strive to create their own. Thus for Thompson and Ackroyd,
conflict exists as a cipher for individual autonomy. This
linguistic device—“misbehaviour”—serves to function both as
a means by which the employee is brought back and as the
research agenda in which this goal can be pursued. For sure,
the ‘subject’ has been restored to the place of industrial
sociology: as an ‘employee’ but not as ‘labour’.
Their response to the theme of absent labour comes close
to the concerns of the ‘Foucauldians’ in locating the identity of
the employee in the ensemble of relations of misbehaviour and
resistance. However, the problem with this is that whilst we
can once again refer to the employee as having been at least
constituted as an existential being, the notions of
misbehaviour and resistance cannot perform the trick for both
theoretical and empirical reasons—the return of the employee
is not the same as the return of labour.
The fundamental flaw with the conception of ‘misbehaviour’
and ‘resistance’ is that they immediately give ground to the
‘Foucauldians’ in that the former serves as a normative account
of behaviour imputing ‘wrongness’ or ‘badness’ to employee
actions. It is then axiomatic for Thompson and Ackroyd that
these ‘bad’ actions represent forms of resistance, yet, is not this
precisely the basis of the empirical plausibility of the
‘Foucauldians’ case. There is nothing in the account of the
contours of misbehaviour that would lead us to suppose that it
will lead into resistance, or indeed that it could be construed as

de facto resistance. Neither could it be suggested that within
such categories there are radical, pro-active agendas emerging
within worker constituencies.2 The fundamental problem with
those delineated ‘Foucauldians’ in Thompson and Ackroyd’s
careful selection is not so much that they ignore the autonomy
of the subject or the employee so much as they reject the
automatic link between structure and action, or in our case, the
relationship between individual practice and the collective
worker. There is some easy talk of ‘management’ and defining
worker activity in management terms.
For example, if we look at activities such as sabotage on the
assembly line, or pilfering, it is not clear from Thompson and
Ackroyd’s injunction that by defining these as forms of
misbehaviour and resistance, rather than as employee activities
which function to reinforce management’s omnipotence, we
would conclude that a blow has been struck for the autonomous
worker so-beloved of Dalton (1948) and Lupton (1963). In fact,
it is perfectly possible, not to say plausible, that these activities,
far from making sense as forms of behaviour which lead to
misbehaviour as a site of employee autonomy, are entirely
meaningful within the ‘Foucauldian’ paradigm as forms of
employee autonomy. By contrast, the benefit to be had from the
position of the Thompson and Ackroyd’s ‘Foucauldians’ is that
they allow us to highlight the extent to which activities which
seem, at first glance to lead to autonomy are, by other terms,
enfeebling. This is a significant feature, indeed strength, which
the former are somewhat slow to acknowledge. We can take
away two distinct messages from the adversaries: whilst the
‘Foucauldians’ could be said to underestimate the ability of
individuals to ever achieve autonomy—every game is self-
referential and is ultimately defeated by its own mirror image of
power entrapment—for Thompson and Ackroyd, by contrast,
every action of misbehaviour gives us the scent of resistance and
hence autonomy. Alas, for both camps, in their distinctive ways,
the problem of absent labour remains, sublimated in the
emphasis upon the individualised role and the character of
employee practice.
However, the past decade has witnessed another response
to the question of the relationship between individualism and
collectivism. In this alternative response it is not the
individual-as-absent-employee but rather the individual in the
context of the ‘collective’ who needs to be accounted for. In

contrast to the concern of Nichols and Thompson and
Ackroyd it is not a problem of absent labour that has to be
resolved but the problem of the role of the employee after the
supposed ‘failure of labour’. In the next section we consider
this treatment of the relationship between individualism and
collectivism. Notions of change in new management practices
and new organisational analysis have been premised as much
on a stereotyping of the notion of the collective and
collectivism and not solely, as Thompson and Ackroyd
maintain, on a reifying of management’s strategy to
individualise. This substantive concern is symptomatic of a
wider interest amongst researchers of industrial relations in
the last ten years who have sought to explain the shift in
management-employee relations.
Nevertheless, bringing labour back is more problematical
than it might appear. By focusing on the subject in terms of the
employee, Thompson and Ackroyd do go beyond the
reification of management as constituted by the so-called
‘Foucauldian’ agenda, but they are nonetheless constrained by
a predisposition, stemming from a common assumption
amongst their protagonists, to see collective labour and in
consequence, collectivism per se, as having been broken by
nearly two decades of a market oriented, authoritarian
economic and political context. (Gamble, 1988). What is
important here is the way they achieve this. It is not labour as
subordinated by relations of social class which is involved in
an antagonistic relation with management but the individual
employee concerned with the effort-reward bargain in its
various forms. There is no balance between individualism and
collectivism, rather the supercession of the conditions of the
former over the latter. That is to say, individualised relations
of conflict at work triumph over ‘collective’ relations of
conflict in work. It is not clear why this strictly one-
dimensional (individualistic) account of the possibilities for
industrial conflict should be emphasised in quite the way that
it is. Far from ‘bending the stick’ back towards the individual
in our pursuit of the employee, it seems to us impossible to
understand the basis of his or her sense of difference,
opposition and dissonance, as rooted in the social relations of
the employment relationship and the political complexities of
collectivism.
‘Collectivism’ in the process of ‘Individualisation’
So, whilst Thompson and Ackroyd have provided us with a

fundamental questioning of contemporary departures in the
labour process debate their intervention has not concerned
itself with the problematic of collectivism as a mediating
factor in the labour process. However, recently, others have
preferred to understand the changes by focusing on the way
collectivism and individualism vary in terms of their
meaning. Change is to be seen as the way collectivism and
individualism become sites of struggle in their own right
within the politics of work. Bacon and Storey (1995) display
greater sensitivity than authors such as Valkenburg and those
in the Japanisation school, for example, regarding the
strategic choices being made within the context of
organisational change—along with the complex meanings of
both individualism and collectivism. In this vein, Bacon and
Storey have insisted on emphasising distinct conceptions of
individualism and collectivism in their work on unions and
human resource management (Storey and Bacon, 1993). They
argue that collectivism and individualism have to be
understood as being different at varying organisational levels:
industrial relations, work organisation and personnel/ human
resources (the external, macro dimension is assumed).
Their argument, broadly speaking, is that the fundamental
features of new management practices appear to be individual-
istic but that they emerge within a broad framework based on
an emphasis upon new forms of corporate and plant/office
‘collective identification’ and team based work organisation
(Bacon and Storey, 1995). This, they argue, allows for the
appropriation of collectivism on management terms. Thus,
whereas in certain sectors in the past ‘gang systems’, for
example, were based on cooperative relations between
employees as part of the collective worker, teamworking
redefines collectivism on management terms through the
competitive relations between individuals within and between
teams. Japanese firms in the UK are seen as a prime example of
combining weak collectivised industrial relations with
‘collectivised’ work organisation and individualistic personnel
practices. In respect of our overall concern it is important to
notice that the ‘collective worker’ has not disappeared in this
redefinition of individualism in ‘collective terms’. What is
changing, according to Bacon and Storey, is that the formal

relationship between individual employees has been re-
structured in order to undermine autonomous collective
identities, viz trade unionism, through their rearticulation.
This is an compelling idea which clearly shows how collective
mechanisms and identities can still be considered of use to
what is clearly a more assertive management. The latter is not
so much individualising as rearticulating collectivism, even if
these authors are more than aware of the contingent qualities
within management itself (Storey, 1985 and 1992). However, it
appears that Bacon and Storey ultimately subscribe to the
thesis that the prevalent threat to the labour movement is one
of fragmentation—not just at the organisational level but also
in terms of the collectivised tradition of the worker. They
argue that:
The challenge employers are now making to trade unions as the

source of collective loyalty has gained a new vigour through
quality programmes, direct communication methods,
management delayering and teamworking. However, where
jointist models of industrial relations have been developed we
would suggest that this has eased one of the difficulties of
collective action for unions. If a ‘shared objective’ can be
developed between management and unions then the tendency
for workers to identify their interests as identical to those of
capital (Offe and Weisenthal, 1979) is less of a challenge for the
unions. … It would seem that without a social relationship for
cooperation that trade unions will be unable to effectively
pursue the interests of their members without management
sponsorship (Bacon and Storey, 1995: 72).
Afterall, management itself works within the context of a

recognition of the articulation of individualism and collectiv-
ism. Implicitly, for Bacon and Storey, any guarding or even
widening of the industrial relations agenda can only emerge
with a reconsideration of union autonomy and ‘traditional’
collectivist positions. This is because the new management
strategies rest upon the novel articulation of conceptions of the
individual and the collective which denies employee originated
collectivism. Curiously, for Bacon and Storey the latter can
only be understood in terms of a stereotypical notion of
traditional collectivism and solidaristic practices. Management
can be dynamic and innovative with regard to the mediation of

collectivist processes, but labour are left responding to
management’s initiatives. Hence, only management can in the
present circumstances effectively articulate collectivism and
individualism. Thus, whereas Thompson and Ackroyd restore
the worker as an individual employee, Bacon and Storey
restore the notion of collectivism without the collective worker
and without the complex and autonomous articulations of
collectivism within the labour movement. But what are the new
contradictions that emerge as a consequence of management’s
engagement with ‘collectivism’ where value has to be extracted
from the collective worker? And what of the Nichols’ puzzle—
whither labour in the labour process?
THE NEW POLITICS OF THE COLLECTIVE WORKER: BEYOND

MISBEHAVIOUR
Given the social, political and economic transformation of the

last fifteen years or so, specifically with respect to new
management practices, how do we address the problem of the
rearticulation of individualism and collectivism in ways which
allow us to ‘bring back’ the employee in the form of the
collective worker? Following Thompson and Ackroyd, this
needs to be addressed both at the conceptual level and in
terms of a research agenda.
Firstly, new management practices have been questioned in
terms of the extent of their implementation (Storey, 1992) and as
a consequence of the new contradictions that they give rise to
(Blyton and Turnbull, 1992; Storey, 1994). Moreover, such
developments will be unevenly experienced and the material
basis of such developments is not secure and stable. The
economic context exposes management to the limits of its own
strategies. New management practices are therefore contra-
dictory in the way that they combine forms of collectivism and
individualism. They may, and sometimes do, expose the control
of the labour process to points of intervention that are collective
in various ways and not just based on misbehaviour and other
minimalist notions of resistance. New management practices
also create new types of contradictory and ambiguous relations
in that unions find that they can broaden the remit of their role
albeit at the cost of organisational cooption in certain cases
(Pollert, 1995). Cooption may not be inevitable though

depending on the way such roles are articulated and employee
interests represented and acted upon (Fitzgerald, et al, 1996).
Thompson and Ackroyd utilize McKinlay and Taylor’s (1994)
work on workers’ counter-planning without emphasising its
potentially transformative character. Yet when we think about it,
this is because the latter cannot be explained in terms of the
‘individual employee’ alone but rather by the circumstances and
the forms of experience of the collective worker. The experiences
of individual employees working together, whether spatially
contiguous or not, ensure, in addition to individual meanings,
that these experiences can lead to a spectrum of collectively held
orientations and narratives. The content of the ideological
framework of worker identity may not be deduced from these
structures but there is nevertheless a common basis that emerges
from the experience of wage labour and labour market relations.
Secondly, and in consequence, within distinct communities
and collectivities of work (regional, sectoral, for example)
there are novel collective points of reference (social, political
and economic) being established with specific experiences
such as the development of new management practices and
organisational developments in sectors as diverse as postal
services, teaching, banking and finance, retail and distribution,
transport, social services, hospitals and automotives. For sure,
they are not be experienced across the totality of the workforce
in an even manner, but new issues are emerging with regards
to these developments that are being witnessed and discussed
by employees within and between workplaces (Martinez Lucio
and Weston, 1995; Stewart, 1994; TIE, 1992; Altmann, 1994).
The language of work evolves due to these strategic
connections and diverse collective relations. These
developments emphasise both the control element within new
management practices (Garrahan and Stewart, 1992) and its
effects on the working environment and the body of worker
rights. Such changes can only be understood therefore in
terms of the structural location of labour and the strategic
orientation and history of its struggles and rights.
Thirdly, these developments give rise to a whole new set of
effects on workers in terms of their health, their safety and their
historic rights and demands for a more meaningful, just and
coherent working life and these are only partly crystallized by
economic and political institutions. (Ironically, there is not a
textbook on Human Resource Management that does not in

one way or another dwell on this dilemma of increasing
demands amongst the workforce.) Even if Thompson and
Ackroyd are right to emphasise new individual types of conflict
they do so by ignoring the collective relationships in economic
and political terms which they seem to consider as at best
unimportant or worse, as having been eclipsed. However, we
still need to ask what it is that people are doing about new
management practices at work, how are they interpreting them
and how are new political and bargaining agendas emerging?
Although in our separate research projects such concerns do
not emerge in any preconstituted manner—they are issues
which depend upon external factors for their mediation and
interpretation—the workplace agenda, in the broader sense of
the term, is imbued with a whole new range of diverse
collectivist issues. Whilst employees may often report these
(new practices) in an ‘individualist’ way (inter-employee
competition) they are nevertheless equally concerned to give
them a collectivist significance (and sometimes maybe more
so). Such developments are located within the spatial,
economic, social and political context of the employment
relation. Sensitivity to this allows the dynamics of collectivism
and its distinct trajectories to be understood as both a positive
and even (as feminists would remind us) a problematical
aspect—but nevertheless, it remains a mediating factor in work.
It is in this sense that we believe that collectivism should not
be merely stereotyped linguistically and analytically. The
politics of the labour process requires a constant realisation of
the structural constraints and experience of work and
employment, including the ways in which the labour process is
premised historically on distinct types of micro-collective
structures such as gang work or crew work (see Stewart, 1997),
which emerge out of the social and collective nature of the
capitalist labour process as identified by Marx (above) in his
account of the character of the collective worker. The
combination of these distinct levels contributes to the social and
political experience of collectivism which feeds into different
organisational forms (union and worker practices) which in
turn accommodate varying political practices (Martinez Lucio,
1989). Our conclusion is that the nature of the employment
relation and the increasingly complex nature of collectivist
politics provide management with a greater challenge than
many observers would have us believe. And in terms of conflict,

new agendas (below) are emerging that are difficult to locate
within an individualised understanding of employee practice.
‘AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’: RESEARCH AGENDAS, LABOUR AND

NEW MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
The effects of new management practices are testing the

traditional form and content of industrial relations with its
much narrower focus and definition of the employment
relationship. These new practices, more properly understood
as the new politics of production, are constituted around an
understanding of the relationship between individualism and
collectivism. To pursue this locus of interest, we suggest that
the restoration of labour as historically constituted by the
conditions and characteristics of the collective worker, and in
terms of the complexity of its political character, requires a
radical research agenda to address the following themes:
(i) Understanding the contradictions that emerge from the

construction of management-centred notions of collective
interests and points of identification through social
institutions such as teamworking.
However, research suggests that these are contested through

employee definitions of the relationship between the
individual and the collective. (Danford, 1997; Palmer, 1996;
Stephenson, 1996) The case of teamwork is one where the
construction of collective loyalties is seen to be premised on
individual competition internally between team members. In a
range of manufacturing and service industries (for example)
there is clear evidence indicating that employees perceive these
workplace institutions and their internal structures in different
(and collective) ways from management. For example, the
question of the social function of the team including issues of
health and safety, work intensification and its impact on home
life and the workplace environment generally—issues which
focus on questions of the production of surplus value—are
often understood by employees as addressing collectivist
concerns. Another key example is to be seen in the increasing
interest in forms of involvement that intensify auto-
surveillance through individuals and team-based structures.
(ii) The content of collective responses needs to be studied and

understood.
The sites of conflict, as a consequence of work intensification,

through the rearticulation of collectivism and individualism,
give rise to new types of worker responses that emerge through,
for example, the way effort is displayed and used, the way
competitive relations are established between workers, and the
contradictory nature of management’s ‘collectivist’ rhetoric.
How are these mechanisms of exploitation understood and
responded to?
(iii) Inter-workplace collectivity and worker dynamics following

the construction of competitive relations between workers at
different levels of the organisation on the basis of collective
units (teams, offices, and national boundaries for example).
This new development in worker collectivism around inter alia

networking, has been facilitated, unintentionally in some cases,
by management strategies which appear to be organised around
a new common set of practices and points of references. The
most sophisticated forms of this can be seen amongst auto-
motive workers for example in General Motors. The manner in
which competitive relations between plants, offices and units
within the workplace itself are being developed, along with
management’s cross-referencing on performance which is
subsequently emerging, is leading to an increasing degree of
worker interest in the need to discuss and exchange these
experiences (Stewart, 1994: Martinez Lucio and Weston, 1992
and 1995). In many cases (inter alia, automotives, postal services
and the NHS) new solidaristic structures are emerging aimed at
monitoring developments in the workplace and beyond. Much
of this ‘monitoring’ occurs through a range of new and old
collective structures and processes and not solely through the
individual ‘self-monitoring’ of the contemporary epoch of ‘dis-
organisation’ implied by Lash and Urry (Lash and Urry, 1994).
(iv) Such ‘new agendas’ within the workforce are giving rise to,
albeit as yet uneven, dialogue within industrial relations
generally concerning the experience and effects of new
management practices together with the limits of traditional
regulation.
These new agendas represent new points of antagonism within

the labour process and arise, in part, from the articulation of
individualism and collectivism established by a less than
omnipotent management. This is apparent in sectors as
diverse as health services, social services, commercial public
services, education and manufacturing. The experience of
increasing stress levels, new forms of industrial injury and
illness, and new types of antagonistic workplace behaviour are
increasingly being experienced and discussed as are the
problems associated with the utilization of traditional methods
for their regulation within the workplace. The framework of
regulation is itself the subject of discussion as seen with the
significant changes in the politics of health and safety during
the last decade.
(v) New collectivist agendas emerge in respect to themes of

gender and ethnicity.
The relations within and between distinct constituencies of

workers give rise to distinct collective interests and collective
identities. If anything, one can argue that the collectivist-
individualist articulation is constructed through different
social configurations within the workforce (Collinson, 1992).
Hence, the question of worker responses must be scrutinised
in a broader social and political manner beyond the limited
remit of the individual employee’s individual(ised) ‘mis-
behaviour’.
vi) The relationships being established between the spheres of

production consumption and distribution within and
beyond the circuit of capital by different collective interests
within the labour movement must be addressed by labour
process researchers.

Perhaps the truly ironic consequence of the rediscovery of the Conclusion
employee is that we end up with the tragedy of absent labour. It
is surely just as important that radical social scientists, as much
as management, retain an analysis of the dynamism of the
distinctive articulation of individualism-collectivism! In the
pursuit of the employee many seem to lose sight of this—and at
a moment when social exclusion and social closure remind us
that the problem of modernity is alive and well in the daily lives
of many people. Furthermore, the identification of
collectivism/collectivist identities with organised collectivist
institutions, in the form of trade unions, leads to a reduction-
ism that fails to account for the new collectivist discourses at
work and their evolution as sites of struggle. For Thompson
and Ackroyd, the origins of this lie in the leitmotif of
‘misbehaviour’—their device for restoring the employee as the
proper object of analysis in labour process debate. However,
the consequence of this is to make it virtually impossible to
locate individual action, in an era of innovatory management
practices, as anything other than the outcome of individual
employee responses to the exigencies and rigours of the new
workplace. In short, Thompson and Ackroyd rediscover the
employee but at the expense of labour in the form of the
collective worker. In our view it becomes very difficult to
account for the complexities of employee collectivism whose
origins lie in the social relations of the capitalist labour process.
______________________________
Acknowledgments We would like to thank Bob Carter, Sarah Jenkins, Rob MacKenzie and the
three anonymous referees for their critical and helpful comments in the
preparation of this article.
______________________________
Notes 1. According to Marx, the collective worker is constituted by the capitalist
labour process in the following manner:
With the progressive accentuation of the co-operative character

of the labour process, there necessarily occurs a progressive
extension of the concept of the bearer of that labour, the
productive worker. In order to work productively, it is no longer
necessary for the individual himself to put his hand on the object,
it is sufficient for him to be an organ of the collective labourer,
and to perform any one of its subordinate functions (Marx,
Capital Vol.I, cited in Carter, 1985:60–61).
2. Hamper’s account of automotive assembly work, Rivethead: Tales

From the Assembly Line (1992) in addressing, inter alia, the different
forms of autonomy which employees contrive could also be said to
highlight both the double-sided character and the ‘layered’ nature of
activities which presumably might be deemed as forms of misbehaviour
by Thompson and Ackroyd. Thus, for example in one instance a woman
assembly line worker (Janice) becomes ‘one of the boys—a description
she felt utterly comfortable with’ (ibid: 187) via her participation in game
playing rituals. Although becoming ‘one of the boys’ allowed Janice to

become acceptable to her co-workers and thus defy some aspects of
management’s game plan, at another more obvious level, it also allowed
for collusion on male terms, but then this kind of double-sidedness was
pointed to over ten years ago by Westwood (1984). One of the compelling
aspects of Hamper’s narrative is the way it revolves around the play
between themes of incorporation and insubordination, highlighting the
extent to which the condition of the collective worker always run the risk
of upsetting the best laid plans of management and ‘cats’! (ibid: ch.6) See
his account of the inherently flawed Total Quality programme instituted
by General Motors in the early 1980s.
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Capital & Class http://cnc.sagepub.

The Paradox of Contemporary Labour Process Theory: The Rediscovery

The online version of this article can be found at:

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>> Version of Record - Jan 1, 1997

Recent commentators on the Labour Process Debate have

The Paradox of Contemporary

However, we argue there is a need to avoid confusing the

of individualisation of work and the assumed decline of

Subjectivity, the employee and the collective worker.

A striking paradox is revealed today in the proliferation of

capital can address these consequences, but to assume it might

THE LOSS OF THE LABOUR PROCESS AND THE REDISCOVERY

Despite Nichols’ (1991) oft-cited judgement that labour

pains to point out, but also, as he recognised, due to the

In this respect, Thompson and Ackroyd’s contribution is

THE ‘DECLINE OF COLLECTIVISM’ IN THE ANALYSIS OF CHANGE

We now turn to the question of the way in which a particular

eroded by developments at all levels in society. First,

If a materialist analysis of social relations is to remain (or

Whilst these approaches attempt to show how the individual

traditional institutional regulatory practices (Morris et al,

Individualization undermines traditional views of solidarity and

However, this question of articulation and the political

The notion of a working class was always an abstraction (and a

Whilst a recognition of this complexity has not been at the

From the discourse of the subject to the materiality of the

The most significant shift within the ambit of the Labour

control. Thompson and Ackroyd seek to demonstrate that the

‘Labour disappears from the process partly because of the

and/or will disappear, the consequences of this are for Bacon

will lead into resistance, or indeed that it could be construed as

context of the ‘collective’ who needs to be accounted for. In

‘Collectivism’ in the process of ‘Individualisation’

So, whilst Thompson and Ackroyd have provided us with a

changing, according to Bacon and Storey, is that the formal

The challenge employers are now making to trade unions as the

Afterall, management itself works within the context of a

can be dynamic and innovative with regard to the mediation of

THE NEW POLITICS OF THE COLLECTIVE WORKER: BEYOND

Given the social, political and economic transformation of the

(Pollert, 1995). Cooption may not be inevitable though

textbook on Human Resource Management that does not in

many observers would have us believe. And in terms of conflict,

‘AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’: RESEARCH AGENDAS, LABOUR AND

The effects of new management practices are testing the

(i) Understanding the contradictions that emerge from the

However, research suggests that these are contested through

(ii) The content of collective responses needs to be studied and

The sites of conflict, as a consequence of work intensification,

(iii) Inter-workplace collectivity and worker dynamics following

This new development in worker collectivism around inter alia

These new agendas represent new points of antagonism within

(v) New collectivist agendas emerge in respect to themes of

The relations within and between distinct constituencies of

vi) The relationships being established between the spheres of

With the progressive accentuation of the co-operative character

2. Hamper’s account of automotive assembly work, Rivethead: Tales

playing rituals. Although becoming ‘one of the boys’ allowed Janice to

__________ (1995) ‘Conservative Radicalism and Nostalgia: A Reply to

Sewell, G., and B. Wilkinson (1992) ‘Employment or Emasculation?

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