Manufacturing Managerial Compliance: How Firms Align Managers with Corporate Interest

Abstract

Although the domain of labour process research is vast, few studies analyse compliance among managers. This article advances a neglected strand of analysis, focusing on how firms shape managerial actions. Organizational goals, such as downsizing, intensification, and reskilling, demand that professional managers cooperate and act in accordance with firm objectives, at times even at personal cost to themselves. To theorize this, I use the case of information technology (IT) firms in India that recently shed a large number of managerial jobs, fostering an environment of insecurity. Those who lost their jobs were positioned between lower-level employees and top management. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, I contribute a two-part framing that theorizes the dualities of the managerial subject position and how it is instrumentalized. The article foregrounds the intersection of managerial insecurity and managerial hierarchy, emphasizing how firms utilize these to meet organizational goals.

Book review: Who controls the future now?

“…Marxist readings of capitalist economic relations are predicated on firms behaving in particular ways and yet, we still do not have a sophisticated approach towards organisational strategy and managerial decision making. This is a critique I strongly agree with (Narayan, 2022). In addressing a significant gap, Vidal shows that the prime motive for adopting a new production model was not to intensify work, but to enhance organisational capability in the face of market uncertainties.…”

Monopolization and competition under platform capitalism: Analyzing transformations in the computing industry

“…Large white-collar workforces in low-cost regions like India came to offer post-sales support, integration, and customization services, thus bringing down the cost to the (global North) corporate customer. In this context, the software services industry in India exploded; soon most Fortune 500 firms had links to services firms in India (Balakrishnan, 2006; Peck, 2017; Narayan, 2022b).…”

“…Historically, India's IT industry has almost solely sold software services to Western client firms, rather than software products. The traditional software services industry in India has managed the in-house and individual data centers of American and European customer firms (Narayan, 2022a(Narayan, , 2022b, with Indian IT services firms supporting the in-house digital infrastructure of large corporations, including the majority of the Fortune 500s (Peck, 2017;Upadhya, 2016). These services include IT maintenance integration, and customization.…”

Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen. Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do About It

“…The authors draw out subjective experiences that help reframe how we think of work intensification, showing that the feeling of being overwhelmed is engendered by objective organizational practices and macro-economic shifts. Here, the authors analyze intensification in subjective and objective terms and, in doing so, help to redress the unhelpful bifurcation in scholarship on white-collar work between subjective experience and macro-structural shifts (McCann, Morris, and Hassard, 2008; Narayan, 2022). For instance, the authors trace a direct line between the experience of being overloaded, the economics of wage payment (i.e., firms are incentivized to overwork employees, as salaried workers are not paid for overtime), and structural changes in the American economy (financialization, offshoring, etc.…”

“…For example, the book includes an important discussion of employee concerns and skepticism about the redesign initiative, which further showcases the tensions pervading the workplace. Reading it alongside existing and emerging sociological research on white-collar precarity and work intensity is especially helpful (see Smith, 1992;Newman, 1999;Smith, 2002;Hassard, McCann, and Morris, 2009;Lane, 2011;Lopez and Phillips, 2019). Admittedly, this important literature leaves much to be said about how elite white-collar workers navigate the pressures and ambiguity of the contemporary workplace, given the dearth of in-depth organizational ethnographies.…”