Front-line service managers’ misbehaviour and disengagement: the elephant in the store?
| Published date | 02 August 2019 |
| Pages | 1015-1032 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-06-2018-0176 |
| Date | 02 August 2019 |
| Author | Anastasios Hadjisolomou |
| Subject Matter | Hr & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Front-line service managers’
misbehaviour and disengagement:
the elephant in the store?
Anastasios Hadjisolomou
Department of Work, Employment and Organization,
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this pape r is to revisit discussions on manageria l work, seeking to re-examine
the front-line service mana ger’s position within the service tr iangle, and bring forward questi ons of agency
that remain under-devel oped by scholars. Challeng ing the assumed unitarist and “consensus”standing
point in organization s it recognizes that front -line managers, simila rly to their subordinat es, resist
corporate demands and un veils stories of “battles”and disenga gement towards their role, providi ng a rich
empirical agenda reg arding managerial mis behaviour. In order to explore front-lin e managers’agency
issues, the paper adopts the fram ework of the dimensions of misbehaviour, as develope dby A ckroyd and
Thompson (1999), to capture and to better describe and understand the recalcitrant agential practices by
front-line managers.
Design/methodology/approach –The paper calls on qualitative data from two case study organizations
in the Cyprus food-retail sector. In total, 46 interviews took place with participants across different
departments and different management levels. This aimed for a better and deeper understanding of the
research problem through understanding of the different perspectives.
Findings –The evidence reveals the intensification of FLSMs’work and their feelings of pressure. FLSMs,
however, did not stay apathetic and have utilized tactics to oppose the increasing workload and the expansion
of their role. The paper classifies these tactics using the four dimensions of misbehaviour (Ackroyd and
Thompson, 1999), namely, appropriation of time; work, product and identity. It shows that FLSMs not only
resist corporate demands, like their subordinates, but also devised practices which are similar to workers. The
data also reveal a variety in actions of misbehaviour between FLSMs depending on the level of customer
interaction and their mobility on the shop floor.
Research limitations/implications –Students of managerial work overlooked the political realities of
management and the contested nature of ( front-line service) management work. As this study has shown
FLSMs across the shop floor strongly identify more with “front-line employees”than senior management,
protecting their own interests withi n the employment relationship via opp ositional actions and
disengagement. FLSM is, of course, in an agency relationship with capital; however, this neglects the
heterogeneity in interests at different levels of management. This paper shifts the focus of management
research away from the traditional agency argument and discusses FLSMs as “misbehaving agents”.It
challenges the assumed unitarist and “consensus”standing point for FLSMs in organizations and calls HRM
scholars to embrace a pluralist analysis in line management research.
Practical implications –This research shows that FLSMs misbehave as an expression of discontent
towards the expansion and intensification of their role. Yet, the data reveal variation in the organization of
FLSMs’work across the shop floor and consequently variation in their actions of misbehaviour. This
suggests that it is erroneous to presume a similar labour process for these managers and/or over-generalize
their battling actions. HR practitioners will need to re-examine the roles of FLSMs in organizations, recognize
the variety of interests within management, step away from rhetoric discourses of unproblematic
devolvement of HR and managerial tasks to the front-line and appropriately review, redesign and re-organize
front-line managerial work.
Social implications –Although research has fruitfully located the powerlessness of front-line managers as
a central theme in their analysis, the complexity of the front-line management position within the social
relations of interactive service work and their “logic of action”within their labour process remains a relatively
marginal theme in research. Indeed, FLSMs’position within the triangle, where managerial work is subject to
degradation and trilateral conflicting dynamics and their battles within their own labour process, still remains
under-explored. This study addresses this research lacuna focusing on the FLSMs’experiences on the front-
end and their actions of misbehaviour within their labour process. Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 41 No. 5, 2019
pp. 1015-1032
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-06-2018-0176
Received 29 June 2018
Revised 7 January 2019
18 January 2019
Accepted 18 January 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
The author would like to thank Prof. Paul Thompson and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable
comments. Also special thanks to Laura and Paul for their comments on this paper.
1015
FLSMs’
misbehaviour
and
disengagement
Originality/value –The paper bringsforward questions of agency that remainunder-developed by scholars
and unveils“stories of battles”. It discusses FLSMs a s “misbehavingagents”a questionthat is only superficially
addressedin resistance and managerialstudies. This paperchallenges the embeddedHRM unitarist assumption
that FLSMs areconscientiously agents of the capitaland reveals evidence suggestingthe plurality of interests
across management. HRM scholars, especially those discussed line managers as HRM partners, have
overestimated FLSMs’identification with senior management and the strategic goals of the organization.
As this study has shownFLSMs across the shop floor strongly identifywith “front-line employees”,protecting
their own interestswithin the employment relationshipvia oppositional actions and disengagement.
Keywords Line managers, Food retail
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
This paper builds on the extensive literature on sociology of service work and re-visits
discussions on managerial work, seeking to re-examine the front-line service manager’s
(FLSM henceforth) position within the service triangle, the organization of the ( front-line)
managerial labour process and to understand the power dynamics within this role. It seeks
to explore the FLSMs’experiences on the sharp-end, what they do and how they react
towards the triangular power structure in food retailing and to understand the “pragmatic
and contested realities of front-line customer service management”(Bolton and Houlihan,
2010, p. 399; Lloyd and Payne, 2014; Lopez, 2010). The paper challenges the assumed
unitarist and “consensus”standing point for FLSMs in organizations (Gilbert et al., 2015;
Van Waeyenberg and Decramer, 2018) and brings forward questions of agency that remain
under-developed by scholars, unveiling “stories of battles”(as Bolton and Houlihan (2010,
p. 397) call them). Calling on Geare et al.’s (2014) call for HRM research to embrace a pluralist
analysis, this study recognizes the plurality of interests within the employment relationship,
as well as across the different levels of management, placing emphasis on the importance of
FLSMs’insights. The paper examines FLSMs as “misbehaving agents”(Willmott, 1997,
p. 1338), a question that lacks empirical evidence as it is only superficially addressed in
resistance and managerial studies.
Following Bolton and Houlihan’s (2010, p. 379) influential account, this paper suggests
that the day-to-day managerial reality on the service front-line remains “ghostlike”in both
management and sociology of service work literature. Although research has widely
explored the front-line service worker, their labour process and the contested
worker–customer relationship (Bélanger and Edwards, 2013; Korczynski, 2013),
interestingly, little empirical attempt has examined the role of FLSM and their labour
process within this triangular relationship. This suggests that there is still an ongoing need
for theoretical and empirical development to understand the FLSMs’lived experience within
the complexity of service organizations (Bolton and Houlihan, 2010).
Some authors have usefully located the powerlessness of front-line managers as a central
theme in their analysis in relation to top-down centralized control systems and competing
demands within the service triangle (Bolton and Houlihan, 2010; Lloyd and Payne, 2014;
Lopez, 2010). Yet, the complexity of the front-line management position within the social
relations of interactive service work and their “logic of action”within their labour process
remains a relatively marginal theme in research. Indeed, FLSMs’position within the
triangle, where managerial work is subject to degradation and trilateral conflicting
dynamics (Lloyd and Payne, 2014) and their battles within their own labour process
(Bolton and Houlihan, 2010), still remains under-explored. To contribute to these two
theoretical and empirical lacunas, this study has two research objectives: to examine the
organization of front-line managerial service work and to understand how FLSMs express
agency over their intensified role in service organizations.
In order to explore FLSM agency issues, the framework of the dimensions of
misbehaviour, as developed by Ackroyd and Thompson (1999), is adopted. The concept of
1016
ER
41,5
To continue reading
Request your trial