Spaces of active disengagement across the food retail shop floor
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-03-2021-0096 |
| Published date | 22 August 2022 |
| Date | 22 August 2022 |
| Pages | 140-155 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Anastasios Hadjisolomou |
Spaces of active disengagement
across the food retail shop floor
Anastasios Hadjisolomou
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The article challenges the narrow view in scholarship which presents disengagement as passive
and simply the absence of condition of engagement and explores how food retail employees articulate their
disengagement within the intensified customer-centric service work. The article adopts the term “active
disengagement”, as presented by Ackroyd and Thompson (2016) and empirically examines this as a form of
oppositional voice towards managerial norms and behavioural expectations.
Design/methodology/approach –The article draws on qualitative data from two case study organisations
in the Cypriot food retail sector. Forty-six interviews took place with participants across different departments,
including front-line employees and front-line and senior managers, to better understand the research problem
through different perspectives.
Findings–The data show that disengagementis an integralpart of organisationallife and it is expressed in an
individual and less-risky way. The data also reveal a variation in disengagement actions across departments,
depending on employees’mobility on the shop floor and the intensity of interaction with the customers and the
line manager. Shop floor employees enjoyed a wider “space of disengagement”, in comparison to those working
on the front-end/checkouts. Nevertheless, checkout employees have developedsophisticated actions to express
disengagement.
Research limitations/impli cations –This research provides a refined understanding of activ e
disengagement in organisations. It empirically contributes to the existence of a spectrum of engagement
and expands Ackroyd and Thompson’s (2016) “active disengagement”framework, discussing it as a form of
oppositional voice towards corporate values and the customer-centric work intensification.
Practical implications –The research provides empirical evidence that employee disengagement is not
merely the absence of engagement, as HRM scholars and practitioners have argued, but entails further social
meanings. This article will be useful for practitioners to rethink, revisit and revise employee engagement
programmes in organisations, as well as to re-write corporate values, mission and vision, to also consider
employees’experiences within the workplace. This will allow the provision of social support by management to
address active disengagement in service organisations.
Originality/value –The study provides an important insight in employees’individual actions to express
disengagement towards corporate values and managerial expectations related to customer service. It highlights
the variation of dynamics across the food retail shop floor, which has been treated as a contextual periphery within
the disengagement debate. Applying a broader lens on retail work heterogeneity, it provides further understanding
of the diversity of how frontline service workers express disengagement within the triadic employment
relationship. This study offers ground for future research to examine active disengagement in various contexts for
better conceptual and practical understanding of this behaviour in organisations.
Keywords Customer service, Food retail, Service work, Active disengagement, Employee engagement,
Organisational misbehaviour
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Employee engagement is a key concept in HRM literature and practice (Afrahi et al., 2022).
Less attention has been given to employee disengagement which, although it is an issue of
concern for the business world and is increasing across different national and sectoral
contexts (see Aslam et al., 2018;Rastogi et al., 2018a,b;Purcell, 2014;Wollard, 2011), remains
thin and atheoretical in academic scholarship. Disengagement is often presented as passive
and simply the absence of the condition of engagement (Afrahi et al., 2022). This is a
theoretically and empirically unsupported argument, as employees stand along a spectrum of
engagement, from actively engaged to actively disengaged (Hejjas et al., 2019;Dawsey and
Taylor, 2011). Focusing on the latter end of the engagement spectrum, this article expands
ER
45,1
140
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 5 March 2021
Revised 21 December 2021
12 April 2022
27 July 2022
Accepted 3 August 2022
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 45 No. 1, 2023
pp. 140-155
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-03-2021-0096
Ackroyd and Thompson’s (2016) “active disengagement”framework, discussing active
disengagement as a form of oppositional voice that underpins actions of active resistance to
managerial norms, corporate values and behavioural expectations (Ackroyd and Thompson,
2022;Thompson et al., 2020). This illustrates that disengagement is not merely a behavioural
element, as the HRM scholarship suggests (Sutherland, 2018;Purcell, 2014;Rastogi et al.,
2018a,b;Afrahi et al., 2022), but a broader sociological issue that underpins active resistance
in organisations (Bhebhe, 2020).
B
elanger and Thuderoz (2010) note that research should go beyond simply
identifying the types and forms of oppositional action and should focus on their
meanings and actors’rationales. In order to understand the meanings and rationale of
the oppositional actions and therefore the social meanings of active disengagement, we
also need to understand the capacity, space and context for the action to take place.
Employee disengagement is a context-related phenomenon and further research is
necessary to examine it in its organisational context (Valentin, 2014;Afrahi et al., 2022).
Along similar lines, Thompson (2016) argues that to evaluate the content of oppositional
practices, including active disengagement, researchers need to refer to the empirical
object and the subjective motives and rationales of the oppositional actors. Giving
emphasis to appropriation of time and effort (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999,2022), this
article examines the triangular manager-worker-customer relationship in food retail,
within which tensions (Korczynski and Evans, 2013) and disengagement (Auh et al.,
2016;Bhebhe, 2020) are likely to emerge.
Additionally, calling upon Lemmon et al.’s (2020) proposition to select a diverse sample
in (dis)engagement research, this study highlights the variation of dynamics across the
food retail shop floor, which has been treated as a contextual periphery within the service
work literature. Scholars tend not to recognise or conceptualise the heterogeneity of (food)
retail work. It cannot be assumed that those working on the frontline (e.g. checkouts) and
thosewhoaremoredistantfromthecustomer(e.g. shop floor aisles), experience the same
pressures; neither express the same levels - or forms - of (dis)engagement. It is argued that
the resources and the spaces of disengagement vary across cross-institutional as well as
inter-institutional contexts. This article fills this theoretical and empirical lacuna by
applying broader lenses, recognising and exploring the heterogeneity of service work
when discussing disengagement, even within the same organisation. This is necessary in
order to apprehend the drivers for employees’(dis)engagement (Lemmon et al., 2020)and
further understand the variety in how this is expressed across and within organisational
contexts.
Overall, this article responds to authors’calls to put the context back at the centre of the
analysis when researching (dis)engagement (Ackroyd and Thompson, 2016,2022;Afrahi
et al., 2022). It discusses food retail employees’active disengagement actions and argues that
their decision to utilise these is hinged on the level and intensity of interaction with the
frontline manager and the customer, as well as the employees’mobility on the shop floor. It
concludes that the structural conditions on the front-end are catalysts to how, why and when
active disengagement emerges.
The article is organised as follows. First, an overview of the literature is presented,
providing a discussion on theoretical debates on employee (dis)engagement and active
disengagement in service work. Next, the methodology is outlined, with the findings
presented in the following section. Finally, the article discusses the theoretical and practical
implications of the research.
(Dis)engagement and active disengagement
Employee engagement has become a fashionable HRM discourse and an “up-to-the-minute”
trend within corporate and consultancy circles, aiming to develop and sell, a narrative of
Spaces of
active
disengagement
141
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