Shopfloor Cultures: The Idioculture of Production in Operational Meteorology

Abstract

Each workplace operates within a cultural context in which local features of interaction influence how employees conceptualize their workplace self. Building on small-group research, I argue that understanding these idiocultures as action arenas helps to specify how group knowledge, practices, and beliefs are expressed and affect occupational identity. To demonstrate the power of microcultures, I analyzed local offices of the National Weather Service (NWS) through ethnographic methods. I focused on the Chicago office, demonstrating how its culture, which emphasizes autonomy and resistance to authority, shapes the staff's images of scientific practice and the contours of being a scientist. The culture is revealed in their joking relations as well as in other office traditions. I then compared this culture with that of Flowerland, a spin-up office established in the 1990s. These two offices use their cultures to differentiate themselves, creating distinct work practices. As all work groups have local cultures, giving greater attention to small-group dynamics helps us understand how workers define themselves, how cultures differ, and how the effects of these differences shape the experience of work.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Daniel Cornfield, Tim Hallett, Randy Hodson, Michael Lynch, and Lucy Suchman for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

ENDNOTES

Notes

¹ Some offices, although not those that I studied, are referred to as “glitter offices.” They receive new technology first, are better staffed, have nicer furnishings, and are seen as being favored by the national headquarters.

² This is a point made by students of organizational culture (e.g., Peters and Waterman 1982; Fine 1984; Ouchi and Wilkins 1985; Weeks 2004), although there is still a need for comparative ethnographic analyses of organizations.

³ The process is recursive. Identities and work practices shape culture and generate history, although this is not my focus.

⁴ The MIC tried, upon arriving, to institute a dress code, but this was resisted by the staff. It became a union issue, and eventually the MIC retreated after he was not supported by higher-ranking administrators. The dress code at the Chicago office, while not sloppy, is looser than at other offices, where jeans are not worn on day shifts and button-down shirts are required.

⁵ Each office has something like this, but the Chicago office's was by far the most extensive.

⁶ One Chicago forecaster described the well-liked MIC at Belvedere as a “little dictator,” and described the Flowerland office as being in a “lock-down” (Interview).

⁷ A similar pattern, although not quite as dramatic, was evident between Belvedere and one of its neighboring spin-up offices. One of Belvedere's administrators noted, “They like to go for the home run, but they strike out a lot. They swing for the fences.” He indicated that the neighbor often forecasts heavy snow that, in general, does not materialize, but for which the office gets considerable media attention. I was told that the spin-up offices desire to demonstrate their independence from the older offices by these forecasts, transforming the forecasting process into a means of social differentiation.

⁸ This Flowerland forecaster told me that he used to write Area Forecast Discussions that were a page and a half long, sharing all of his meteorological knowledge: “I started on a planetary scale. That really annoyed Chicago. They said, ‘Why don't you start with a galactic scale?’” (Field notes).