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The ascension of Kafkaesque bureaucracy in private sector organizations

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human relations

The ascension of Kafkaesque bureaucracy in private sector organizations

Randy HodsonOhio State University, USA

Vincent J RoscignoOhio State University, USA

Andrew MartinOhio State University, USA

Steven H LopezOhio State University, USA

AbstractAlthough Weber’s ideal typical model of bureaucracy was developed primarily in relation to the state, studies of private sector organizations typically adhere to its formal-rational conceptions with little adjustment. This is unfortunate since bureaucracy in private sector economic organizations has many elements that are poorly captured by and potentially significantly at odds with Weber’s thinking. Most notable in this regard is the pervasiveness of particularistic and often informal, emergent arrangements − arrangements well documented for many decades by workplace ethnographers. This has significant implications for the conception of modern private sector organizations and indeed offers a picture that is more Kafkaesque than Weberian. Significant support for this point is provided by an analysis of content coded organizational ethnographies. Weberian dimensions of bureaucracy − most notably coordinated and specialized organization and training − are predominant in public institutions; private

Corresponding author:Randy Hodson, Department of Sociology, Townshend Hall, Room 238, 1885 Neil Avenue, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Email: [email protected]

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1250 Human Relations 66(9)

sector establishments, in contrast, witness significantly more particularism as well as uncertainty and fear as core organizing principles. Importantly, and as delineated in our over-time comparisons, such Kafkaesque elements of bureaucracy and organization appear to be increasingly prevalent.

Keywordsbureaucracy, Kafka, organizational theory, public management, Weber

Max Weber and those who have built on his work have done much to identify bureau-cracy as a fundamental societal trend, indeed establishing it as an essential starting point for social science analysis of organizations (Jacoby, 1973: 147). Formal-rational bureau-cracy, in the sense of predictable and efficient mechanisms for attaining socially agreed upon goals, is not, however, as forthcoming in private sector organizations as scholarship has postulated and continues to assume (see Clegg and Lounsbury, 2009; Perrow, 2007). Rather, mock compliance and even flagrant rule breaking often seem pervasive (Hynes and Prasad, 1997: 606). Global financial giants that take extraordinary risks and then peddle the resulting products to trusted and trusting customers (Partnoy, 2003), medical providers that exclude sick people (Starr, 1992), and energy companies that generate environmental disasters (Prechel and Morris, 2010) are all too common reminders of the limitations and disappointments of formal-rational bureaucracy (see Warner, 2007: 1027; Zald and Lounsbury, 2010).

Despite obvious improvements in efficiency over pre-modern forms of organization, bureaucracy has obvious faults. ‘Audit cultures,’ for instance, may emerge wherein ‘accountability metrics’ are given priority over substantive goals, resulting in inefficiency in the attainment of the actual organizational goals (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Merton, 1940; Morrill, 2008). Bureaucracies are also seen as inflexible, while bureaucrats are often criticized for acquiring ‘bureaucratic personalities’ that value rigid adherence to rules over substantive goals. ‘Trained expertise’ can also produce ‘trained incapacity’ to see options outside the current set of rules. Finally, formal rationality also encourages ‘rule proliferation’ in response to emergent problems and exceptions − proliferation that can undermine rather than facilitate effective action by creating contradictory and poten-tially mutually exclusive expectations for action (March et al., 2000).

Organizational and industrial sociologists, of course, have long been cognizant of the limits of Weberian formal-rational models of bureaucracy for understanding the daily fabric and texture of organizational life. The writings of Blau (1955), Gouldner (1954), and Selznick (1949) on particularistic power behind universalistic rules, the writings of Crozier (1964) and Roy (1954) on the creation of alternative and negotiated meanings, and the writings of Beynon (1975), Burawoy (1979), and Jackall (1978) on contested goals in organizational life give testimony to the richness of this body of work (see Scott, 2008, for an overview of this literature). Yet, few if any integrated, alternative conceptu-alizations have emerged to challenge or to complement the underlying Weberian formal-rational model.

In this article, we offer such a conceptualization, rooted in the writings of Franz Kafka, which draws together five well-documented facets of real-world bureaucratic




Hodson et al. 1251

life not theorized in Weber’s formal-rational model − particularism, chaos, contested goals, abuse of power, and a climate of uncertainty and fear. We then analyze com-paratively the prevalence of Weberian and Kafkan elements in public and private sector bureaucracies. Findings reveal that bureaucratic elements articulated by Weber are more central to understanding the public sector. Predictive leverage for under-standing the operation of private sector corporations, in contrast, is significantly bol-stered by considering Kafkaesque dimensions. No less noteworthy, as denoted in our temporal comparisons, Kafkan rather than Weberian aspects of bureaucracy appear to be increasingly prevalent. Our results suggest that formal-rational approaches to bureaucratic functioning, and their application to private sector dynamics especially, warrant reconsideration. We do so in our concluding discussion by addressing how and why an integration of Weberian and Kafkaesque elements is essential to theoriz-ing and research on bureaucracies in general and private sector corporations in particular.

Weberian bureaucracy

Weber’s model of bureaucracy views formality and rationality (logically consistent rules) as replacing arbitrary and capricious decisions by traditional elites. Five key ele-ments in particular distinguish modern formal-rational bureaucracy from older tradi-tional forms of authority: (i) exhaustive written rules covering all regular operations; (ii) specialized departments, fundamentally important for technical efficiency; (iii) a clearly ordered and integrated system of hierarchy with higher offices supervising lower ones; (iv) formal training for bureaucrats both in their special area of expertise and in the prin-ciples of management; and (v) official duties that require the full capacity of the official so that bureaucratic duties are not a side activity subordinate to some other source of income (Weber, 1968: 956−958).

The five elements above − elements that serve as an underlying theoretical foundation for such broad areas of study as contemporary organizational theory (Perrow, 1986), administrative science (Page, 1985), and international development (Evans and Rauch, 1999) − are specifications of the basic theoretical premise that formal-rational bureau-cratic operations are both efficient and predictable. Indeed, such assumptions regarding bureaucracy and its core elements underlie the general conviction that bureaucracy pro-vides comparative advantages relative to the accomplishment of both politically derived goals and private economic activity (Gajduschek, 2003).

Weber’s vision of bureaucracy was, of course, significantly influenced by his position during the First World War as Director of nine army hospitals in Heidelberg. This high-ranking station, in combination with his previous positions, gave him an excellent van-tage point for observing a large public bureaucracy from the top down (Warner, 2007: 1023). This position, however, may also have produced a keener awareness of bureau-cracy as a set of formal rules than as a set of operational rules − rules sometimes far removed from official versions of protocol. The resulting model thus explicitly down-plays the personal, the capricious, and the abusive in preference for official versions of procedures. Front-line realities are largely invisible to those who hold power, yet are experienced intensely by those who are the object of that power.





The historic backdrop and contrast for Weber’s appreciation for the rationality and formality of modern bureaucratic organization was the unilateral Bismarkian form of rule by fiat that preceded it. Indeed, for organizations operating under tradi-tional authority, personal and capricious decision-making are the norm. This charac-terized small privately owned enterprises and even larger establishments under the ‘drive system’ well into the 20th century (Stinchcombe, 1965). Such systems entail ‘close supervision, abuse, profanity, and threats [and] arbitrary and harsh enforce-ment’, with fear of immediate firing as the prevailing motivator (Jacoby, 2004:15). Notably Weber clearly describes bureaucracy as also being a structure of ‘domina-tion’ (Weber, 1968: 978), yet power dimensions of his model have been less well developed and certainly less theoretically explicit relative to descriptions of the for-mal-rational structure of rules. The resulting theoretical prioritization of formality over domination has been incorporated and reproduced in and across social science disciplines.

The crucial distinction between public and private sector organizations provides important opportunities and, in our view, much needed contextual leverage for refining Weber’s model and for understanding the functioning and limitations of contemporary bureaucracy (Zald and Lounsbury, 2010). As a starting point, we build upon the literary works of Franz Kafka and the rich insights they afford regarding bureaucracy and five undertheorized yet commonplace features of modern complex organizations: particular-ism, chaos, contested goals, the abuse of power, and fear. Such aspects of modern organi-zations are not easily approached through Weber’s formal-rational model. We argue, however, that their systematic consideration is essential for a comprehensive and fully integrated model of organizational functioning. This is especially true when considering private sector organizations − organizations that appear very much bureaucratic, in the Weberian sense, yet operate with much greater autonomy and significantly less oversight and accountability than public sector organizations.

Kafkaesque bureaucracy

The core of Kafka’s contribution to understanding contemporary bureaucracy can be gleaned from three central pieces that speak to the internal character of organizational life: The Trial, The Kastle, and In the Penal Colony. In The Trial, Kafka probes the opaqueness and lack of accountability of modern bureaucracies as the protagonist ‘K’ is accused and eventually executed for a crime that remains unknown. In The Kastle, ‘K’ is hired as a land surveyor even though no such position exists. His life spirals downward through a series of contacts with ever more powerless and peripheral officials. Finally, in In the Penal Colony, Kafka depicts a cruel execution device that is simultaneously highly complex and in disarray − symbolic of the merger of complexity and dysfunction of bureaucracy so central to his writings. Though literary rather than analytic, these pieces of literature offer a compelling counter-image to the formal-rational model derived from Weber. The insights provided from Kafka, which directly inform our analyses, can be viewed as part of an emerging critical consensus on the enigmatic, contradictory, and dystrophic aspects of modern bureaucracy (see also Beck Jørgensen, 2012; Munro and Huber, 2012; Warner, 2007).




Hodson et al. 1253

In contrast to the more elevated positions in which Weber sat, Kafka was a low-level official at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Board of Bohemia. The employer machinations, bureaucratic façades, and worker injury and misery he witnessed are clearly visible in the images of bureaucracy portrayed in his novels (Warner, 2007). Indeed, and unlike Weber, Kafka’s view of bureaucracy is from the bottom up. Although the portrait he paints is not easily reduced to a set of theoretical postulates, the core elements emphasized do present a coherent picture − a fact highlighted by the elevation of ‘Kafkaesque’ as a widely used adjective. Kafka’s bottom-up view of bureaucracy captures important dynamics that Weber’s more top down formal-rational model does not. Moreover, the deviations from formal rationality he identifies differ from those identified by academic critiques of bureaucratic failings (e.g. bureaucratic rigidity, which has its origins in formal rationality). Instead, we argue that Kafkaesque elements represent forces in direct tension with core Weberian bureaucratic values of rationality and meritocracy and, in fact, often pervert seemingly formal-rational bureaucracy toward more narrow subordination to the interests of those at the top of organizations.

Particularism

For Weber, the movement away from patrimonialism and particularism was a defining characteristic of modern formal-rational bureaucracy. For Kafka, in contrast, particular-ism permeates and persists in organizational relationships as a means of assuring elite control. The emergent nature of covert, shifting coalitions relative to organizational power is illustrated in Kafka’s short story, In the Penal Colony. Here, the controller of the torturous execution machine describes how sentiment has turned against his prize device since a new warden has come to power:

This procedure and method of execution, which you are now having the opportunity to admire, has at the moment no longer any open adherents in our colony. I am its sole advocate … The adherents have skulked out of sight, there are still many of them but none of them will admit it. If you were to go into the teahouse today, on execution day, and listen to what is being said, you would perhaps hear only ambiguous remarks … An attack of some kind is impending on my function as judge; conferences are already being held in the Commandant’s office from which I am excluded. (Kafka, 1971: 153)

Kafka offers a profound observation here: the official meanings of bureaucratic acts are often secondary to private, personal meanings, and actions. Throughout Kafka’s writing we see an awareness of such infusion and prevalence of ‘tyrannical, personal power of a pre-modern type’ within − and through the very mechanisms of − bureaucratic organiza-tions (Löwy, 2004: 53). Weber, to be sure, acknowledged that real-world organizations might mix traditional and modern elements. Yet, he also assumed that rational elements would increasingly dominate modern bureaucratic life. Moreover, he never explicitly considered the possibility that seemingly rational elements (like official, written com-munications within bureaucracies) could, in fact, enable more personalized abuses of power (Scott, 2008).





In Kafka’s bureaucracy, informal and formal power cannot be parsed neatly, even conceptually. Such enigmatic truths about bureaucracy are useful for making sense of many common organizational patterns that are hard to interpret within a Weberian frame-work (Beck Jørgensen, 2012). For example, ‘mentorship’ is broadly promoted in organi-zations as a mechanism for effective transfer of in-house knowledge and development of social and human capital. In addition, as Kanter (1977) noted over three decades ago, informal relations based on homogamy are a foundation for uncertainty reduction and the development of trust in organizational relations. Yet, as Kanter also notes, the very same mentoring relations can also be a foundation for the maintenance, reproduction, and hording of power (see also Jackman, 2003; Tilly, 1998). From a Kafkan perspective, particularism is not just a sort of impurity − a carryover of traditional authority relations into modern formal-rational settings − but rather is actively reproduced in and through formal bureaucratic procedures themselves. More broadly, and extending beyond the context of mentoring and homogamy, ‘only the most rigid bureaucracies treat their inter-action partners truly universalistically, and even in those situations only a few unimpor-tant or powerless ones’ (Heimer, 1992: 146).

Chaos

Formal-rational bureaucracy is based on clear rules, consistently applied, and real world exceptions entailing less coherent and integrated applications are considered ‘not a valid objection’ to this general description (Weber, 1968: 216, fn 2). In contrast, Kafkan bureaucracies seem rife with chaos, contradiction, ambiguity, and unpredictability, and these attributes, rather than being theoretically irrelevant exceptions, are defining char-acteristics (Kafka, 1937).

Consistent with Kafka’s insights, the organizational literature since Weber routinely reports chaos, contradiction, and ambiguity in organizational behavior. Scholars have often noted, for instance, increasing complexity in organizational fields, including regu-latory bodies, competitors and collaborators, and unions and other professional interest groups (Selznick, 1949). Competing and even contradictory goals sought by these actors allow us to understand the endemic nature of apparent (and actual) chaos in organiza-tions as rules arising from different actors and enunciating different goals often collide. Complexity, as an emergent bureaucratic reality, thus inevitably produces chaos − an insight well developed in the literature on organizational disasters (Perrow, 2007; Vaughan, 1999).

Ironically, the proliferation of rules to resolve every ambiguous case can, in and of itself, lead to greater contradiction and inconsistency as concrete cases are caught between a variety of competing rules. Thus, formal-rational solutions to ambiguity through rule proliferation may exacerbate uncertainty and chaos (Gajduschek, 2003). The pervasiveness of such contradictory claims throughout society – including formal organizations – has been a principal inspiration behind theories of post-modern chaos and contradiction (Hoogenboom and Ossewaarde, 2005: 605). Within organization stud-ies, the repeated observation of contradiction has given birth to theories of ‘loose cou-pling’ (Meyer and Rowan, 1977) and ‘turbulent unpredictability’ (Smith, 2010) as strategic responses to chaos. Importantly, however, such observations have not resulted




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in systematic challenges or coherent alternatives to the underlying Weberian assumption of formal-rationality.

Contested goals

The pervasiveness of contested goals, as opposed to normative and procedural consensus in organizations, is fundamental in Kafka’s work but also to Gouldner’s (1954) classic analysis of punishment-centered, mock, and representative bureaucracy. What appears to be a formal-rational script for behavior within an organization is often found, on closer inspection, to reflect a ‘negotiated order’ of covert understandings − understandings wherein actual behaviors are guided by ongoing compromises among relevant actors with competing goals (Fine, 1984; Selznick, 1996). For example, in The Kastle, K (the protagonist) verbalizes his interpretation of a recent phone contact with an official con-cerning the confusion about his employment status as a land surveyor:

Those telephone answers are of ‘real significance,’ how could it be otherwise? How could the information supplied by a Castle official be meaningless? I said so already in relation to Klamm’s letter. All these statements have no official meaning; if you attach official meaning to them, you’re quite mistaken, though their private meaning as expressions of friendship or hostility is very great, usually greater than any official meaning could ever be. (Kafka, 1998/1926: 72−73)

In this passage, Kafka clearly conveys the widely shared experience of informal negotia-tion that pervades many encounters people have with formal-rational bureaucracies, sup-posedly organized on the basis of clearly and consistently applied rules.

Decades of empirical observation of contested goals and negotiated orders within organizations have given momentum to a resurgent focus on organizations as ‘inhabited’ institutions, perhaps better conceived of as battlefields of competing logics and ration-ales (Hallett and Ventresca, 2006: 221; Scott, 2008). The ‘neo-institutional’ literature further suggests that such battles will be most intense where more formal mechanisms of negotiated power and checks and balances are absent (Selznick, 1996: 272). Weber pos-tulated that, at least in public sector bureaucracies, consensus would be realized primar-ily through political debate and, secondarily, through a bureaucratic ethos (Weber, 1968: 959, 995). The primary manifestation of bureaucracy today, however, is in the private sector, where negotiations among stakeholders regarding goals are broadly deemed as an impediment to the primary goal of profit maximization and increased shareholder value and are thus typically minimal or even absent.

Power and abuse

Weber understood bureaucracy as a form of power whose legitimacy rested on its ability to apply rules to cases predictably in the pursuit of agreed upon goals (Weber, 1968: 974−975). But self-serving or abusive actions by superordinates are commonplace in bureaucracies, fueling concepts like ‘coercive bureaucracy’ and ‘supervisory abuse’ (Adler and Boyrs, 1996; Ashforth, 1994). Kafka’s writings are explicit in this regard,





repeatedly highlighting the capricious, coercive, even violent aspects of bureaucracy. A clear example of this is afforded by the torturous execution machine of In the Penal Colony or in the following episode from The Trial:

K discovers in a closet of his bank the two deputies who picked him up initially and offered to take possession of his good clothes (ostensibly to protect them, but really to sell them). ‘Sir! We’re to be flogged because you complained about us to the Examining Magistrate.’ ‘We are only being punished because you accused us; if you hadn’t, nothing would have happened, not even if they had discovered what we did. Did you call that justice?’ (Kafka, 1937: 84−85)

Organizational elites are often cognizant of and complicit in abuses of legitimate power, especially when they privilege particularistic concerns over universalistic ones, including selective enforcement of rules (Marx, 1981: 226; Salin, 2003). The continuing reproduction of racial and gender inequalities within organizations despite formal, anti-discrimination mandates has reignited an interest in the enduring nature of abuse and exclusion in organizations based on particularistic characteristics. Early enthusiasm for the effectiveness of anti-discrimination legislation in reducing dis-crimination in large private sector corporations has given way to the observation that powerful organizational actors can be quite effective in juggling the appearance of compliance and the reality of subterfuge (Dobbin, 2009; Jackman, 2003; Vallas, 2003; Wilson et al., 2013).

Fear

For those who live under abusive (and often unpredictable) power, fear can become a fact of life. The organizational literature subsequent to Weber generally argues that such an experience most often emerges under traditional patriarchal systems and that one of the chief benefits of bureaucracy, even when its informal side is on display (see Burawoy, 1979), is the elimination of the capriciousness of rule by fiat. Yet, as already noted, capri-cious power and fear may be quite pervasive especially where organizational goals are not negotiated and power cleavages are pronounced (Coupland et al., 2008; Scott, 2008). A compelling example is offered in The Trial, where K find himself in a such a state of utter despair and agitation that he is unable to return to work after the following oration by his lawyer:

The whole dossier continues to circulate, as the regular official routine demands, passing on to the higher Courts, being referred to the lower ones again, and thus swinging backwards and forwards with greater or smaller oscillations, longer or shorter delays. These peregrinations are incalculable … No document is ever lost, the Court never forgets anything. One day – quite unexpectedly – some Judge will take up the documents and look at them attentively, recognize that in this case the charge is still valid, and order an immediate arrest. (Kafka, The Trial, 1937: 158−159)

What officials experience as rule-following can produce outcomes better characterized as capriciousness from the standpoint of the recipient − the sort of intermittent reinforce-ment schedule that shortens the lives of laboratory rats (see also Pelzer, 2002).




Hodson et al. 1257

Bureaucracy revisited

The five Kafkaesque elements of bureaucracy just described (Table 1) have been recog-nized in the organizational literatures, to be sure. Yet, they tend to be treated as either anomalies or viewed as relatively minor exceptions to the Weberian formal-rational model. Consequently, their identification has not been considered a fundamental chal-lenge to notions of rationality sufficient to warrant major revisions in how we understand bureaucracy. We hope to provoke such reconsideration.

Our central argument is that the five features of organizational life discussed above are as much regular features of bureaucracy as are formal-rational elements. Weber sought to highlight what was new about bureaucracy, omitting dimensions carried for-ward from prior forms of authority. This is particularly true with particularism as a basis for association, decisions, and reward distribution. Such omission, in our view, results in the oversight of a fundamental characteristic of bureaucracy – even if that characteristic also characterizes past organizational formations. Weber was also perhaps inadequately dialectic in his approach to bureaucracy, paying too little attention to emergent properties that routinely arise in response to ongoing tensions and contradictions generated by more formalized elements. Such emergent properties include the pervasiveness of informal relations and solidarities in organizations (Blau, 1955: 2) as well as contested goals (Hallett and Ventresca, 2006) − two fundamental constants of modern organizational life that are widely acknowledged by contemporary organizational analyses the recognition of which has done little to challenge the underlying formal-rational model. We argue, in contrast, that full consideration of such inherent features of bureaucracy fundamentally challenges the Weberian model; it is difficult to rectify meritocracy with patrimonialism, professionalization with abuse, and widely agreed-upon rules with contested goals. Perhaps a more adequate portrayal would be one in which Weberian elements of bureau-cracy are seen as a means of legitimating more informal procedures undertaken in the course of organizational goal attainment.

One useful strategy for deepening current theories of bureaucracy is to consider the organizational venues in which more Weberian and more Kafkaesque bureaucratic ele-ments are found. Weber presented the goals of bureaucracy as derived from a process of political negotiation. Kafka presented a world in which the goals, along with being capri-cious, were also unilateral. In the following sections, we distinguish between public and private bureaucratic settings as a useful approximation of these distinctions. No less

Table 1. Weber and Kafka on bureaucracy.

Major Weberian elements of bureaucracy

Major Kafkaesque elements of bureaucracy

Written rules ParticularismDepartments ChaosHierarchy Contested goalsFormal training AbuseFull capacity Fear





important, we consider trends across time to assess the extent to which Weberian or Kafkan elements of organizational and bureaucratic life are ascendant.

The public sector and negotiated goals

The public sector, at least in democratic nations, operates on the basis of negotiated goals. Distinct actors of varying authority and power vie for input, with the process of negotiation involving multiple voices. The public sector was, to a considerable extent and as noted at the outset, Weber’s template for the development of his bureaucratic model, and it was the basis of his argument about how formal-rational means are used to realize negotiated goals − goals that correspondingly come to be seen as legitimate. Given such politically accepted and legitimated channels for voice, the state is arguably more visible and more accountable than private sector corporations.

The greater visibility, accountability and need to accommodate competing pressures often provokes criticisms of state bureaucracy as inefficient and clumsy. The state also, however, has fewer incentives, and greater costs, if it avoids laws and regulations, and can thus be expected to more closely follow a formal-rational behavioral script. A well-known example of the greater fidelity to regulatory structure in the state is its more pro-nounced commitment to labor protections, non-discrimination laws, and affirmative action goals, which historically has resulted in a greater public-sector prevalence and mobility for women and minorities (Wilson et al., 2013). In the state sector, informal and formal relations are more likely to move toward the sort of symbiosis described by Barnard (1950) as essential for organizational functioning rather than retaining deeply conflictual antagonisms (see also Drucker, 2003).

The private sector and unilateral goals

Perhaps the most serious and limiting consequences of focusing exclusively on the for-mal-rational features of bureaucracy are realized when one considers bureaucracy’s potential metamorphosis as it moves from the public to the private sector. Indeed, Weber’s brief statements on public and private bureaucracy often equate the two: ‘Historical examples … of clearly developed bureaucracies [include] the large modern capitalist enterprise, proportional to its size and complexity’ (Weber, 1968: 964). ‘It does not matter for the character of bureaucracy whether its authority is called ‘private’ or ‘public’ (Weber, 1968: 957). These assumptions, however, neglect not only key differ-ences in the implications of shareholder hegemony versus democratic process but also the persistence of relational processes in the private sector spurred by deeply conflicted self-interests unresolved by political processes as in the public sector.

The absence of widespread stakeholder participation in setting goals reflects a core attribute of the private sector and a fundamental difference between public and private bureaucracies. Weber did not develop this theme because in public bureaucracies goals are set by politics and are supported by the ethos of the civil servant (Weber, 1968: 975). This model of goal setting and goal attainment, however, does not hold for private sector bureaucracies where the primary goal is the unnegotiated pursuit of profit (Edwards and Wajcman, 2005). To compound matters further, much of the subsequent groundwork for




Hodson et al. 1259

formal organizational theory was developed through the study of public sector organiza-tions (Selznick, 1949). Unfortunately, as bureaucracy (and its study) has migrated to the private sector, issues of translation have remained submerged and subordinate. The standard, and largely inadequate, interpretation is that public bureaucracies are subject to culture (negotiation) but private sector bureaucracies operate according to technical con-siderations governed by rational profit-oriented action (see the critique of this position by Dobbin, 2009).

In the private sector, the central goal is profit maximization for owners and sharehold-ers. Under the ascendance of neoliberal ideologies − ideologies that stress private sector profit maximization as the only route to societal goals − such goal setting has, if any-thing, become even more unilateral. Relatedly, the private sector seeks to avoid all ‘rents,’ such as those negotiated by unions and, importantly, to externalize costs of pro-duction such as environmental degradation and occupational diseases and accidents. Such a narrow, self-serving logic underscores the ‘irrationality of the rational,’ particu-larly in contexts where the ‘rational goals’ have been unilaterally selected (Bauman, 2000; Warner, 2007: 1024). In pre-modern organizations, elites used a variety of tools, including patrimonialism, fear, and abuse, to maintain control and to ensure their own ends. In private sector bureaucracies, one should expect similar motivations of personal enrichment to undercut Weberian ideals of meritocracy and consensus. We formalize this expectation in the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Private sector bureaucracy will be distinguished from public sector bureaucracy by a greater reliance on the organizational characteristics described by Kafka: particularism, chaos, contested goals, abuse, and fear.

Is Weberian or Kafkan bureaucracy ascendant?

There is broad consensus in the social sciences that the historic expansion of human rela-tions departments, especially in large bureaucratic organizations, and the infusion of equal employment legislation into their mandates have resulted in bending the formal rationality of private sector organizations toward greater respect for employees and their rights (Dobbin, 2009). The growth of employee participation is viewed as a complemen-tary development, allowing for additional negotiated goals with bilateral support (Adler and Boyrs, 1996). A corollary of these visions is that the formal-rational character of bureaucracy should increasingly characterize private sector corporations with more and more aspects of employment relations coming under the domain of negotiated rules.

Alternatively, because of more recent developments, particularly the rise and spread of neoliberal ideologies, the decline of union power on the shop floor and the winnowing of regulatory oversight, private sector bureaucracies may very well have become both more ruthless and avoidant of living up to externally imposed rules. Concepts such as ‘stressed production’ (Berggren, 2001; Delbridge et al., 2000) capture the image of increasingly narrow adherence to profit goals and the sweeping away of other mandates, even formally negotiated ones. The result is private sector bureaucracies with only sur-face adherence to any formal-rational rules that might slow profit maximization. In such a context, abuse and particularism can be expected to reemerge as elites maximize their





control over the organization. Growing cleavages between the goals of owners and work-ers, along with greater inequality, should also spur greater abuses of power and the growth of fear as a motivating device. Weber’s vision of formal-rational bureaucracy may remain relevant, but in this scenario serves mainly as a legitimizing smokescreen for, and a means of carrying out, more rapacious behavior (Jackman, 2003) − a theme to which we return in the conclusions. We formalize this expectation in the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: The organizational characteristics described by Kafka, i.e. particularism, chaos, contested goals, abuse, and fear, will have become more prevalent in organizations across time.

Data and case selection

Our analyses − analyses that evaluate key features of the alternative perspectives above, and across public sector and private sector organizations − draw on the content coding of bureaucratic attributes as observed in the large body of organizational ethnographies covering the last half century. This period is generally viewed as representing the culmi-nation of the transformation of organizations to formal-rational principles. The organiza-tional ethnographies themselves were selected in a two-part procedure. First, the full population of organizational ethnographies was identified via computer-assisted searches of archives and examination of the bibliographies of located ethnographies. The search ended when no new titles were generated for review. We also utilized a team of 20 experts to review our lists and suggest new titles.

The second phase of selection involved examining each book in detail. The final pool for coding conformed to three criteria: (i) data collection extending over a period of at least six months; (ii) a focus on a single organizational setting; and (iii) a focus on at least one clearly identifiable occupational group. The result is a set of cases (N = 197) with basic coverage of organizational characteristics and managerial and employee behavior for a particular work group in a particular organization.1 Both industrial and service set-tings are well represented; occupational groups include manual labor and service work, as well as a range of white-collar occupations including clerical, managerial, and profes-sional work. Example cases representing private and public organizational settings are reported in Table 2. The distribution of the cases across industries, occupational focus, and organizational size is detailed in Table 3.

Measurement

A team of four researchers developed the coding instrument for the ethnographies. First, we generated a list of variables and preliminary response categories representing core concepts in the literature. Second, each individually read and coded a common ethnog-raphy, and then met to discuss consistencies and inconsistencies in their respective cod-ings, the retention or removal of items, and the refinement of variables, response categories, and coding protocols. This process of reading, coding, and refinement was repeated for eight representative ethnographies. The goal was to create an instrument that trained coders could complete for each of the ethnographies with maximum reliability.




Hodson et al. 1261

Where coders found contradictory information for particular variables, they discussed relevant passages with the team, which determined as a group how to code the item. To evaluate the reliability of the content coding process, 13 per cent of the cases were coded

Table 2. Example organizational ethnographies for private and public sector settings.

Private ownership

Fink D (1998) Cutting into the Meatpacking Line: Workers and Change in the Rural Midwest. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. (Pork processing workers)

Gouldner AW (1964) Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy. New York: Free Press. (Gypsum plant workers)

Milkman R (1997) Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. (General Motors assembly workers)

Sherman R (2007) Class Acts: Work in Luxury Hotels. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Front desk workers in two luxury hotels)

Smith V (1990) Managing in the Corporate Interest: Control and Resistance in an American Bank. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Branch bank managers)

Public sector

Blau PM (1955) The Dynamics of Bureaucracy: The Study of Interpersonal Relations in Two Government Agencies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Federal Bureau of Investigation and state job training employees)

Miller G (1991) Enforcing the Work Ethic: Rhetoric and Everyday Life in a Work Incentive Program. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. (State employment agency employees)

Ospina S (1996) Illusions of Opportunity: Employee Expectations and Workplace Inequality. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. (Systems analysts for large urban sanitation department)

Table 3. Industrial, occupational locus, and employment size of organizational ethnographies (N = 197).

Industry Percent-age

Occupation Percent-age

Employment size

Percentage

Extractive and construction 5.6 Professional 20.5 <50 17.7Non-durable manufacturing 15.2 Managerial 7.6 50 to 99 9.0Durable manufacturing 19.9 Clerical 6.2 100 to 499 22.7Transportation equipment 9.4 Sales 3.3 500 to 999 15.6Transportation, communication, and utilities

8.5 Skilled Assembly

9.5 28.1

1000 to 4999 5000 or more

20.3 14.7

Wholesale and retail trade 10.4 Labor 7.6Fire, insurance, real estate, and business services

8.5 Service Farm

15.7 1.5

Personal services 5.1 Professional and related services

13.6

Public administration 3.8 Total 100 100 100





a second time. The average intercorrelation between codings was .79, indicating a rela-tively high degree of intercoder agreement.2

The variable codings, means, and standard deviations are reported in Appendix A. Many of the variables are widely used in human relations research and are coded in a straightforward manner. It will be useful, however to elaborate how the various aspects of Kafkaesque bureaucracy were coded and measured.

An example of abuse of power is provided within an ethnography of paralegals:

The impatient client began to wander the halls and happened into the attorney’s office. The attorney immediately got off the phone, welcomed the client, and commenced their business. After the client left, Chris yelled at the paralegal for leaving the client by himself. Greg explained what had happened. Rather than apologizing for her outburst, the attorney angrily replied: ‘Well, I just had to yell at someone, and you were there.’ (Pierce, 1995: 91−92)

Particularism is evidenced in the following observations by an ethnographer working in a unionized grocery store that was part a large national chain:

This free discretion to schedule shifts, in fact, allows Box Hill grocery managers … to play favorites regularly by rewarding preferred employees with optimal weekly shifts and schedules … ‘You have to suck up to the manager to avoid getting stuck with crappy hours,’ a young bagger in Box Hill explains matter-of-factly. Over the long run, such scheduling insecurities and the resulting worker-on-worker competition can be draining … ‘I just can’t stand having to be ‘Angel of the Week’ all the time so you can get rewarded with the best schedule.’ (Tannock, 2001: 189)

Other examples are provided in the results section in conjunction with specific findings of our analyses.

Analytic strategy and limitations

Our analytic strategy relies on ordinary least squares regression (and logistic regression for binary variables) to evaluate the association of public and private organizational set-tings with Weberian and Kafkan aspects of bureaucracy. We also consider a secular time trend as an additional explanatory variable. We then use guided re-immersion into the primary narrative accounts to help identify the mechanisms underlying the quantitative associations revealed. The organizational ethnographies analyzed do not represent a ran-dom sample of all organizations. Rather, they are the full set of available book-length organizational accounts. Accordingly, tests of statistical significance based on sampling probabilities are not appropriate for this analysis. We nevertheless present such statistics because they are conventional evaluations of the strength of relationships and may also reflect other aspects of research design, such as measurement error. Since there is no sampling error in the analysis (the cases constitute the full population of available organ-izational ethnographies), it would be equally appropriate to consider the statistical rela-tionships reported as the exact relationships between variables as represented in available cases – to the extent that these underlying characteristics are measured appropriately. Accordingly, in interpreting the findings, we give weight not only to statistical signifi-cance, but also to the overall pattern and direction of effects.




Hodson et al. 1263

Results

Variation across public and private organizational realms

The associations of the Weberian and Kafkan dimensions of bureaucracy across public and private bureaucratic settings are evaluated in Table 4. The public sector serves as a baseline for this evaluation. The associations reveal a consistent pattern: all five of the Weberian dimensions of bureaucracy are less prevalent in the private sector, and one of these associa-tions is individually significant. Conversely, all five of the Kafkan elements of bureaucracy are more prevalent in the private sector and one of these associations is individually signifi-cant. The largest contrasts have to do with the greater prevalence of fear characteristic of the private sector in combination with less training in the private sector.

The patterns reported in the ethnographic record thus suggest a better fit with a Weberian model of bureaucracy for public sector organizations. In contrast, Kafkaesque dimensions are more clearly predominant in private sector organizations. Thus, although Weber may have been generally correct in contrasting pre-modern organizational forms with modern bureaucratic organizations, he missed a key distinction and a noteworthy gap between public bureaucracies − bureaucracies around which his model was devel-oped − and private sector bureaucracies. In private sector settings, formal-rational dynamics are less evident and even superseded by less formalized approaches to organi-zational functioning.

Notably, the secular time trend evidenced in the ethnographies suggests that Weberian elements of bureaucracy are relatively stable across time (i.e. across the last half of the 20th century): the time trend for the Weberian elements is mixed and statistical signifi-cance is not evidenced for any element of Weberian bureaucracy. In contrast, Kafkan aspects of bureaucracy appear to be ascendant − all of the time trend effects are positive, although none is individually significant. This pattern of the ascension of Kafkan ele-ments is not currently acknowledged in mainstream social science accounts of contem-porary bureaucracy, although it has been alluded to by some critical accounts of work life in ‘post-bureaucratic’ settings (Clegg and Lounsbury, 2009; Vallas, 2003).

Meanings and mechanisms

The statistical results have provided a stable, interpretable, and consistent picture of the relative prevalence of Weberian bureaucracy in the public sector in contrast with a more Kafkan bureaucracy in the private sector. Two findings highlighted by these results are worthy of further elaboration, and thus prodded us to return to the narrative accounts for the purpose of explication. The first involves the prevalence of fear as a widespread phe-nomenon in private bureaucracies. The second involves the ascension of Kafkan ele-ments across the last half century.

The prevalence of fear. Reading narrative accounts of workplace lives, one cannot but be taken by how widespread and prevalent fear is as a daily experience in private sector organizations. Perhaps the most prominent insight arising from our reimmersion is the absence of the job protections found in the public sector − protections, for instance, apparent in Blau’s classic study of a public sector employment agency. In this setting





Tabl

e 4.

Reg

ress

ion

of b

urea

ucra

tic e

lem

ents

on

priv

ate

vs p

ublic

sec

tor

and

time,

org

aniz

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nal e

thno

grap

hies

(N

= 1

97).

Web

er b

urea

ucra

tic e

lem

ents

Kaf

ka b

urea

ucra

tic e

lem

ents

Var

iabl

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ules

1D

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tmen

tsH

iera

rchy

Tra

inin

gC

apac

ity1

Part

icul

aris

ticC

haos

Con

test

edA

buse

Fear

Priv

ate

−.7

48−

.069

−.0

42−

.347

*−

.539

.124

.007

.078

.125

.271

*Pu

blic

se

ctor

2.0

00.0

00.0

00.0

00.0

00.0

00.0

00.0

00.0

00.0

00

Tim

e−

.010

−.1

29.0

60.0

84−

.015

.078

.114

.115

.085

.044

R-sq

uare

d.0

19.0

22.0

05.1

26*

.023

.022

.013

.020

.023

.076

*

Not

es: T

able

rep

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sta

ndar

dize

d re

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coe

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ents

. Sig

nific

ance

den

oted

by

* =

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(2-

taile

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test

s).

1 The

mod

els

for ‘

rule

s’ a

nd ‘c

apac

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ere

estim

ated

with

logi

stic

reg

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ion

beca

use

thes

e tw

o va

riab

les

are

mea

sure

d w

ith b

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dica

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. Coe

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are

logi

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s an

d th

e R-

squa

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is a

‘pse

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2 Pub

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the

ref

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ce c

ateg

ory

for

the

cont

rast

with

the

pri

vate

sec

tor.




Hodson et al. 1265

seniority protected workers from management scrutiny and facilitated a more coopera-tive (and productive) workplace:

All but one member [in the section] were veterans, whose employment could not be terminated except for cause. They could more easily afford to co-operate with one another in disregard of official production records, since, as one envious colleague put it, ‘they felt that nothing could happen to them, because they were veterans and had superseniority.’ (Blau, 1955 Dynamics of Bureaucracy: 67)

In contrast, the following episode from a Toyota engineering group in Japan is typical of the pattern of routine bullying and fear-drenched environments frequently reported in ethnographies of private sector corporations. The following exchange follows a regular team meeting to report progress on a project to management:

‘He’s such a bully!’ interjected Erberto. ‘When we don’t have the right answers to technical questions, he just yells at us, saying we’re stupid.’

‘So why do you always laugh during meetings?’, I asked. ‘It seems like your group is having such fun.’

Chen smiled, his pudgy face bulging at the sides. ‘It’s because we’re afraid,’ he said. ‘When Oda tells a joke, we all feel we must laugh along with him.’ (Mehri, 2005: 141)

Ascendant Kafkan bureaucracy. An especially notable and concerning pattern in our find-ings centers on the increased prevalence of Kafkan elements of bureaucracy across time, especially particularism, chaos, abuse, and fear. Re-immersion in the narrative accounts to explore these effects further uncovers three discrete mechanisms underlying the pat-tern: (i) a decline of ‘Fordism’ and erosion of the post-Second World War ‘great compro-mise’ between capital and labor; (ii) the rise of service work; and (iii) increase in female participation in the workplace.

The organizational ethnographies to which we returned clearly evidence the decline in commitment and respect by organizations for their labor forces in the past few dec-ades. From an ethnography in the early post-Second World years, a manager in a manu-facturing establishment reports, ‘You can’t have industrial relations without giving and taking on both sides. You’ll always win more cases by getting along … than by getting tough’ (Dalton, 1959: 116). From a steel mill of the same period, ‘Supervisors above the foreman level often consulted with individual men, especially the key workers, on pro-duction problems, since the judgment of the individual worker was important’ (Walker and Guest, 1952: 94).

More recent ethnographies increasingly feature subcontracted work where chaos pre-vails and efficiency is accomplished more often by understaffing, yelling, and bullying than by carefully planned and executed production protocols or by any version of stake-holder involvement. At these plants, managers and supervisors often make reference to ‘Japanese style’ production. Yet, they incorporate it very selectively, focusing most often on ‘full utilization of time’ without attendant engineering, supervisory, or management efforts to make the most effective use of that time. Investments in workers and concern for their well-being are minimal. The result is high turnover, which further aggravates the





chaos that often prevails in these plants. The outcome is what many observers have called ‘stressed production’ (Berggren, 2001).

A related feature is the greater prevalence in subcontracting firms of strapped budgets and sharply constrained investment. The following example from an automobile wiring harness subcontractor illustrates the role of underfunding and ill-repair in disorganized and chaotic production:

The lack of spare parts coupled with the general disrepair of the machines (and Bobby's very general knowledge) made it impossible to keep the SELMs running for any length of time. As two weeks turned into a month, this situation became maddening … The machinery had three major problems. First most of it was outdated for the kind of operation we were running, and it had been badly maintained over the years. Second, management refused to stock either enough spare parts or the tools necessary to repair the machines. Third, management refused to hire or keep trained personnel to maintain the machines. Instead, they hired a series of young inexperienced mechanics (some better, some worse) who, if they were lucky, managed to keep the deteriorating equipment patched together. (Juravich, 1985: 37, 39−40)

The organization of the workplace into team structures, as an alternative to greater capital investment, is also regularly evidenced in the more recent ethnographies. The proponents of such team organization often refer to the creation of teams as ‘post-bureaucratic,’ with the assumption that inefficiencies of Weberian formal-rational bureaucracy with its strict rules and excessive divisions and departments will be cir-cumvented by team organizations (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012; Sewell et al., 2012). In actual implementation, however, team coordination often entails the replacement of Weberian bureaucracy with particularism, chaos, and abuse. Such is the case in the following account from a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in the American Southwest:

There isn’t much about our team meetings to like … Many workers refer to the team system as the rat system … If a worker is lucky, discussions during meetings will restrict themselves to work-related issues … However, private matters have a way of becoming very much public at team meetings. One facilitator […] held two-hour meetings in which he apparently enjoyed picking away at people. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another; something always managed to drive some poor soul into tears … Managers seemed intent on creating little cliques, little factions of workers that fight each other … while managers and facilitators stand back and watch the fireworks. (Grenier, 1988: 30−31)

The rise of more Kafkaesque-like workplaces also appears to be a function of the growth in service work within the contemporary economy. Organizational ethnogra-phers have followed the labor force from the factory to smaller service establish-ments, such as restaurants and hotels, where particularism, chaos, and abuse are much more prevalent. In such contexts, elements of traditional authority often combine with selectively implemented formal rules. The shift to the service sector is also implicated in the increased employment of women and other lower-paid workers such as immi-grants. Women and recent immigrants, as socially less powerful, are often the primary victims of ill-planned and chaotic work arrangements as well as being explicit targets of abuse and bullying.




Hodson et al. 1267

Discussion and conclusion

The ascension of particularism, chaos, contested goals abuse, and fear represents a fundamental challenge to the formal-rational model of organizational life − a model that posits rationality as the core organizational imperative in the contemporary era. Private sector bureaucracies have become the dominant context in which people experience their work lives. These bureaucracies are especially vulnerable to bureau-cratic characteristics other than formal rationality. There are formal-rational elements to private sector organization, to be sure, yet constraining our understanding to such singular theoretical lenses results in myopia relative to the day-to-day workings of contemporary organizations.

A fundamental flaw in the application of the formal-rational model to the private sector is the assumption that politically negotiated goals exist, as in the public sector, and that these goals are then dutifully fulfilled. In fact, at least in the Anglo-American world, there are relatively few externally negotiated goals in the private sector. Rather, the profit motive and the agendas of the powerful prevail as defining forces. When formal-rational procedures advance these goals, they are utilized. When for-mal-rational procedures impede profits, in contrast, they are discarded or circum-vented. Of course, some procedures cannot be discarded wholesale, as they are often demanded by external actors (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and thus are allowed, though often decoupled from actual organizational behaviors (Dobbin, 2009; Meyer and Rowan, 1977).

A more realistic framework of organizational behavior in our view requires more explicit consideration and centrality of power as a construct. Perspectives on maxi-mally maintained inequality and power, for instance, developed initially to explain why the expansion of higher education did not seem to benefit disadvantaged classes as much as expected, suggesting that elites have the ability to change the rules as needed to maintain their relative position and its associated advantages (Lucas, 2001; Tilly, 1998). In organizational terms, maximally maintained power means that if for-mal-rational rules maximize profit, they are used. If not, they will be circumvented (e.g. regulatory agencies will be captured and/or rules will be rewritten with sufficient vagueness to not impede profits). Organizational theory, as it strives to understand private sector corporations as the primary embodiment of bureaucracy in the modern world, needs to front-stage such power-based theories rather than adding them as addendums to a formal-rational conception of organizational functioning (see Scott, 2008).

Bureaucracy is hardly an iron cage for private sector corporations, as is often assumed. Rather, it is one tool among many that may be adopted or disowned as needed for the pursuit of other goals. In this sense, private organizations are fundamentally political actors, not just economic actors, because they decide both their own goals and the means of achieving them (Courpasson and Clegg, 2006; Hoogenboom and Ossewaarde, 2005; Kalev et al., 2008). The fact that individual ‘whistle-blowers,’ operating after the fact and at great personal risk, are too often the front-line defense against corporate malfeasance should tell us that there are fundamental failures in society’s understanding of and ability to regulate private sector organizational behavior.





The fact that private sector bureaucracies operate with their own internally deter-mined goals and rules produces strong pressures toward deceit, duplicity, bad faith, and non-accountability − pressures that cannot necessarily be fixed by more rules. Rules in and of themselves may simply create more contradictions and opportunities for discretion, interpretation, and selective enforcement (Evans and Harris, 2004). The problem is not, then, an absence of rules as much as it is a lack of accountability and compliance (McGoey, 2007). Successfully regulating organizations may require a certain degree of internal democracy, not just externally imposed rules (Braithwaite, 2008). State regulation of private sector bureaucracies may not be adequate in and of itself. More proximate representative democracy within organizations may be required to avoid the particularism, chaos, abuse, manipulation, and fear so widely evidenced in ethnographies of private sector organizations. This call is not new − see Gouldner’s (1954) discussion of the need for participatory bureaucracy − it simply remains unfulfilled.

To be clear, our claim is not that capriciousness, particularism, chaos, and con-tested goals were completely overlooked by earlier students of the workplace. Organizational observers have noted these features as common, to be sure, but have largely failed to give them adequate theoretical weight. In addition, such features of bureaucratic life seem to have increased in the 21st century workplace, making Kafka’s insights more relevant than ever. Employees are now more vulnerable to the whims of capricious superiors. Chaos does not simply reflect micro-level cracks in Fordist production, but rather a bewildering Kafkaesque world in which much deci-sion-making is arbitrary, less that happens on the shop floor makes sense, and yet employees are still expected to somehow make it all work. No longer are divergent interests reconciled by negotiations between somewhat evenly matched management and employees who share at least some common interests, but are instead increasingly one-sided contests in which the goals of management are exclusively profit maximi-zation, above even the survival of the organization.

The implication of applying a formal-rational model of bureaucracy developed for the public sector to private sector corporations without adjustments such as those we are suggesting is that social scientists have profoundly misunderstood and are continuing to misunderstand and misinterpret private sector bureaucracy. A more comprehensive and indeed accurate understanding, in our view, rests on elevating the weight of power and its attendant particularism, discretion, chaos, and abuse in our theoretical discussions, frameworks, and empirical examinations, especially within the private sector context. An important corollary is the insight that successful regulation of private sector bureaucracies cannot rest solely on external rules. It must also include internal political negotiations among all stakeholders to derive goals that the organization can support without evasion and subterfuge. In short, more rules will not successfully leash private sector bureaucracies. Only empowered stakeholders and sustained internal debate about organizational goals is capable of such a feat.




Hodson et al. 1269

Appendix A.Means, standard deviations and scales, organizational ethnographies (N = 197).

Variables Coding Factor scores

Mean Standard deviation

Economic sectorPrivate ownership Private companies .83 .42Public sector Public and non-profit organizations .17 .35Weber bureaucratic elementsWritten rules 0, no; 1, yes .69 .42Departments Sum of number present (1−5) 1.64 .95 Quality control 0, no; 1, yes .30 .44 Grievance system 0, no; 1, yes .75 .41 Union partnership 0, no; 1, yes .15 .35 Divisional status 0, no; 1, yes .53 .50 Headquarters 0, no; 1, yes .37 .48Hierarchy of offices Steps in internal labor market, 1 thru 8 3.36 2.82Formal training Standardized scale, 1st eigenvalue =

1.88; 2nd eigenvalue = .75; alpha = .71.00 1.00

Education 1, grade school; 2, secondary school; 3, 2-year degree; 4, bachelor's; 5, graduate

.823 2.64 1.24

OJT 1, none; 2, very little; 3, average; 4, more than average; 5, extensive

.641 3.25 1.31

Skill 1, speed and dexterity only; 2, some complexity; 3, highly complex

.856 2.12 .77

Full capacity few if any temporary or part-time workers in focal group (<5%)

.29 .45

Kafka bureaucratic elementsParticularistic sum of paternalistic (0,1) and loyalty to

a particular manager (0,1)1.07 .76

Chaos 1, exceptional; 2, good; 3, adequate; 4, marginal; 5, catastrophic

2.78 1.01

Contested goals Sum of two components 5.82 2.04 Mgt leadership 1, exceptional; 2, good; 3, adequate; 4,

marginal; 5, catastrophic2.98 .95

Solicit employee input

1, never asked; 3, informal; 5, formal 2.85 1.61

Abuse 1, never; 2, rarely; 3, sometimes; 4, frequently; 5, constantly

2.41 1.15

Fear Standardized scale, 1st eigenvalue = 1.98; 2nd eigenvalue = .94; alpha = .66

.00 1.00

Capricious firings 0, no; 1, yes .640 .37 .49 Job security 1, high; 2, average; 3, minimal; 4, none .731 2.11 .97 Layoffs 1, never; 2, seldom; 3, sometimes;

4, frequent.785 1.78 1.14

Economic necessity 0, no; 1, yes .479 .14 .35

Time trend Year ethnography completed 1980 12.85





Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Tom Maher for lending us Kafka’s In the Penal Colony, which was an important catalyst for this project.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

1. A list of the organizational ethnographies included and those considered but excluded is avail-able from the senior author on request and at http://intra.sociology.ohio-state.edu/people/rdh/Workplace-Ethnography-Project.html

2. The codesheet, coding protocol, and data are available at http://intra.sociology.ohio-state.edu/people/rdh/Workplace-Ethnography-Project.html. As with any content analysis project, we may have made errors in the interpretation of the texts or in the coding of the data. The data, however, are available for public scrutiny and reanalysis and we welcome suggestions, criticisms, and alternative views on the recorded data.

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Randy Hodson is Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Ohio State Uni-versity, USA. His recent books include Dignity at Work (2001, Cambridge) and Social Theory at Work (with Mareck Korczynski and PK Edwards, 2006, Oxford). His articles on work appear in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Organization Science, British Journal of Sociology and other journals. He is co-author with Teresa A Sullivan of The Social Organization of Work (5th edn, 2012, Cengage) and is past-editor of the American Sociological Review. [Email: [email protected]]

Vincent J Roscigno is Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University, USA. His recent books include The Voice of Southern Labor (2004, Minnesota) and The Face of Discrimination (2007, Rowman & Littlefield). His articles on inequality and work appear in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Work and Occupations, and Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. He is past-editor of American Sociological Review and past President of the Southern Sociological Society. [Email: [email protected]]

Andrew Martin is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Ohio State University, USA. His primary research interests focus on the organizational dynamics of social protest. He is currently analyzing how American labor unions have begun to employ social movement style tactics to organize new workers. Additionally, he is interested in US strike activity, particularly how this form of collective action has changed over time. His recent articles appear in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces and Social Problems. [Email: [email protected]]

Steven H Lopez is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University, USA. He is the author of Reorganizing the Rust Belt (2004, California), winner of the 2005 Distinguished Book Award given by the Labor Section of the American Sociological Association. His articles on nurs-ing home work appear in Work and Occupations, Politics and Society, and Qualitative Sociology. He is currently writing a book about the work of nursing home aides. [Email: [email protected]]




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