LEGITIMISING ARGUMENTS AND WORKER RESISTANCE
| Pages | 28-31 |
| Published date | 01 February 1988 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055122 |
| Date | 01 February 1988 |
| Author | Paul S. Kirkbride |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
LEGITIMISING ARGUMENTS AND
WORKER RESISTANCE
by
Paul
S.
Kirkbride
Department of
Business
and Management, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong
Processes of Worker Resistance
In previous articles
[1,
2, 3], it was argued that the management of Bettavalve Placid enjoyed a situation of
ideological domination over the workforce. This was characterised by a general acceptance of managerial
authority and by the prevalence of unilateral managerial rule making. This ideological hegemony was
demonstrated by reference to one of the few occasions when it was challenged. However, such challenges,
as illustrated in the previous article, were generally weak and ineffective. In that case, we saw how Mike Stokes,
one of the worker representatives, utilised a number of legitimising principles or arguments in an attempt
to prevent the loss of a day's holiday and failed, partly as a result of inferior rhetorical skills and partly as
a result of a lack of issue rehearsal by the worker representatives.
In this article, we shall focus directly on the range of arguments commonly used by workers in order to challenge
managerial authority.
Challenges to managerial prerogative and authority are
usually focused around an "issue", and the process
usually involves the deployment, by worker
representatives, of some legitimising arguments. As
Armstrong, Goodman and Hyman [4] suggest:
In any cultural setting there are certain acceptable motives
for action (what we call "legitimising principles") which
are,
in
turn,
embedded in the characteristic world view
(ideology) of that culture."
If the worker representatives are successfully to
challenge managerial hegemony, they need to combine
such linguistic resources with more tangible physical
resources in order to exercise transformative capacity.
Yet it may be suggested that it is the linguistic resources
which enable the deployment of physical resources in
specific situations. Given the reluctance or inability of
the workforce at Bettavalve Placid, or indeed many other
similar companies, to utilise whatever limited potential
physical resource power they might have, attention is
naturally drawn towards linguistic resources.
One further important point concerns the nature of the
"issues" that arise between the parties. Given the
dominance of management in this and other such
companies, "major" issues are relatively unlikely. The
worker representatives are unable directly to challenge
managerial authority, and therefore most issues appear
as "minor" or unimportant. However, it can be
suggested that this is precisely the mistake of much
previous research which has tended to assume that
power can only be studied in situations of a rough
balance of power resources and through the resolution
of major contentious issues. However, power can
equally, and more subtly, be observed in situations
characterised by an asymmetry of resources and a
relative absence of major issues. Thus the fact that only
minor issues emerged from the Works Committee
forum at Battavalve Placid can perhaps be explained
in two ways: firstly, because of the inability of the worker
representatives to mount resistance to management in
either ideological or physical terms and, secondly,
because it reflects the dominance of management and
its ability to prevent certain issues from arising or being
recognised.
Worker resistance to managerial domination can take
two distinct forms: firstly, workers can attempt to resist
or change a specific managerial decision or rule. We
have already seen how management had to defend its
decision to reduce the customary holiday differential
enjoyed by the workforce at Battavalve Placid [3].
Secondly, worker resistance can sometimes be simply
directed at refuting expressions of managerial authority.
Thus we have seen how John Allen attempted,
unsuccessfully, to refute the definition of organisational
reality that was being proposed by Bill Pearce [2]. As
we have suggested, worker resistance involves the
utilisation of linguistic resources in the form of
arguments and principles. These arguments may be
derived from elements of worker ideology, from societal
norms or from elements of the managerial ideology
itself.
Resistance Based on Legitimising
Principles
What forms and types of legitimising principle and
argument were used by the worker representatives at
Bettavalve Placid?
"Efficiency and Profitability"
A regular agenda item of the Works Committee was
health and safety matters, and, in fact, the committee
and its consultative members "doubled" as a Health
and Safety Committee and safety representatives.
Health and safety hazards generally were raised by the
ER 10,2
1988
28
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