Informality and Employment Relationships in Small Firms: Humour, Ambiguity and Straight‐talking
| Published date | 01 January 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00836.x |
| Author | Robert Wapshott,Oliver Mallett |
| Date | 01 January 2014 |
Informality and Employment Relationships
in Small Firms: Humour, Ambiguity and
Straight-talking*
Oliver Mallett and Robert Wapshott1
Durham Business School, Durham University, Ushaw College, Durham DH7 9RH, UK, and 1University of
Sheffield Management School, 9 Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 4DT, UK
Email: r.wapshott@sheffield.ac.uk
This paper presents in-depth qualitative research on three small professional service
firms whose owner-managers sought to introduce greater degrees of formality in their
firms’ working practices and employment relationships. We focus on humour as an
ambiguous medium of informality, yet viewed by owner-managers as a tool at their
disposal. However, while early studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises
support such a functionalist view, our findings indicate its significant limitations. We
argue that humour obscures but does not resolve disjunctive interests and it remains
stubbornly ambiguous and resistant to attempts to functionalize it. Our findings contrib-
ute to studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises by challenging its utility
as a means of managerial control or employee resistance. They also contribute to studies
of employment relationships by exploring humour’s potentially disruptive influence
within the formality–informality span, especially as small and medium-sized enterprises
seek greater degrees of formalization, with implications for how those relationships are
conducted and (re)negotiated on an ongoing basis.
Introduction
Employment relationships in small and medium-
sized enterprises (SMEs) are (re)negotiated in
contexts of greater spatial and social proximity
between owner-managers and employees and
greater degrees of informality than in large
organizations (Marlow and Patton, 2002;
Marlow, Taylor and Thompson, 2010). The
progress and development of relationships and
practices are not linear progressions of ongoing
negotiation but more ad hoc and improvisatory,
often renegotiating, altering course or shifting
focus. As SMEs grow in size and complexity,
owner-managers’ attempts to increase the degrees
of formality governing employment relationships
and working practices are therefore complex
processes with important implications for the
organizations (Bacon et al., 1996). The degrees of
formality and informality can affect not only the
policies and practices in operation but also the
ongoing, everyday social interactions and organi-
zational culture. This therefore has crucial impli-
cations for the development and relative success
of SMEs (Messersmith and Wales, 2011; Ver-
reynne, Parker and Wilson, 2011), which play a
significant role in the British economy and econo-
mies around the world (OECD, 2012).
We present longitudinal, ethnographic research
on three SMEs whose owner-managers sought to
‘formalize’ their businesses. Our findings suggest
humour as an ambiguous medium of informality
in ongoing, everyday employment relationships.
Humour represents an important feature of the
employment relationships in SMEs; it not only
*A free Teaching and Learning Guide to accompany this
article is available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-8551/homepage/teaching
___learning_guides.htm.
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 118–132 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00836.x
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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