Ambivalence and Resistance: A Study of Management in a Concertive Control System

Abstract

This research contributes to our understanding of control and resistance by demonstrating that managers may be constrained by the very concertive systems of control that they enact and that managers may subtly and indirectly support employee resistance to control. A study of an aerospace company finds concertive control acts as a barrier to management directed organizational change. In this case, managers subverted their own change efforts by communicating ambivalence about changes they introduced; this gave employees support in resisting the proposed changes. Despite clear material necessity and discursive ideologies supporting change, managers were bound by their identification with and devotion to the traditional value premises of the company.

Keywords:

• Concertive Control
• Identification
• Identity
• Resistance

Notes

Greg Larson (Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder) is Assistant Professor at the University of Montana. Phillip Tompkins (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This manuscript is based on the first author's dissertation research, directed by the second author. A previous version earned the Top Paper Award from the Organizational Communication Division at the 2003 meeting of the National Communication Association in Miami Beach, FL. The authors would like to thank Karen Ashcraft, Connie Bullis, Shiv Ganesh, Jerry Pepper, the editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this manuscript. Correspondence to: Gregory S. Larson, University of Montana, Department of Communication Studies, Missoula, MT 59812, USA. Tel: [phone];. Email: [email protected]

[1] JAR Technologies is a pseudonym for a real aerospace company. Because of the highly competitive and sometimes classified nature of their work, the organization asked that their name be kept confidential.

[2] Faster, better, cheaper was meant to apply only to “non-manned” spacecraft although reports analyzing the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy do suggest that the “Fasterbettercheaper” mentality did creep into the human space flight program (Tompkins, 2005, p. 176). A second, more conservative set of expectations still exists for “manned” space flight. JAR operated mostly outside of the human space program.

[3] It is a circular coincidence that the concepts of organizational identification and concertive control were inspired by empirical studies of NASA (Tompkins, 1977, 1978). The theory of concertive control was first articulated by Tompkins and Cheney (1985). This study revises the original theory on the basis of an empirical study of a NASA contractor. For a recent study of the Columbia disaster that reveals a somewhat different control-resistance dynamic between managers and engineers, see Tompkins (2005). Both studies do agree in the way that management culture at NASA has changed over the past 40 years.

[4] The International Organization for Standardization created a series of quality programs, called the ISO Standards for both production and service work. ISO 9000 is a quality system designed to provide detailed work procedures for the planning, implementation, and documentation of manufacturing and service work. Since 1987, ISO standards have been widely adopted by businesses around the world.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phillip K. Tompkins

Greg Larson (Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder) is Assistant Professor at the University of Montana. Phillip Tompkins (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This manuscript is based on the first author's dissertation research, directed by the second author. A previous version earned the Top Paper Award from the Organizational Communication Division at the 2003 meeting of the National Communication Association in Miami Beach, FL. The authors would like to thank Karen Ashcraft, Connie Bullis, Shiv Ganesh, Jerry Pepper, the editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this manuscript. Correspondence to: Gregory S. Larson, University of Montana, Department of Communication Studies, Missoula, MT 59812, USA. Tel: [phone];. Email: [email protected]