Productive Resistance within the Korean Public Sector: Exploring Organisational Culture

Abstract

The article examines how South Korean civil servants responded to the introduction of pay for performance. Drawing upon 31 in-depth interviews with career civil servants, it identifies what became known as 1/n, a form of 'discreet resistance' that emerged and evolved. The analytical framework allows productive resistance to be seen as ebbing and flowing during organisational change that sees institutionalisation, deinstitutionalisation and re-institutionalisation. In understanding the cultural context of organisational resistance the contribution is three-fold. First, a nuanced definition and understanding of productive resistance. Second, it argues that productive resistance must be seen as part of a process that does not simply reflect 'offer and counter-offer' within the change management process. Thirdly, it identifies differences within groups and sub-cultures concerning commitment towards resistance and how these fissures contribute towards change as new interpretive schemes and justifications are presented in light of policy reformulations.

Structural relationships among transformational leadership, affective organizational commitment, and job performance: the mediating role of employee engagement

“…When it comes to the JD-R model, we also confirmed that transformational leadership is one of the important job resources that can positively affect employees’ attitudes and behaviors (Kim et al , 2018a, 2018b). Particularly, the findings of this study indicated that a transformational leader’ behaviors were considered as supportive job resources for employees in Korean organizations where they put more emphasis on the relationship between leaders and members (Park and Lunt, 2018; Park et al , 2017). Interdependency between leaders and members may result in positive and significant relationships between leadership and employee outcomes in our structural model.…”

Does Citizens’ Self-Identification of Their Public Role Affect Their Satisfaction with Public Services?*

“…This result supports the idea that Anglo-American-style NPM reform cannot be a onesize-fits-all solution (Ho, De Jong, & Zhao, 2019), especially in East Asian culture. Many previous studies have raised the issue of Confucian culture in the expansion of the NPM doctrines in the East Asian context (Im, 2014;Park & Lunt, 2018;Park& Joo, 2010;Boo, 2010). The second interesting result is that there is a significant difference between the customer and partner groups regarding expectations and satisfaction with respect to the quality of maintained living area but not regarding performance.…”

‘Evolution from the inside out’: Revisiting the impact of (re)productive resistance among ultra-orthodox female entrepreneurs

“…Exploring its impactful outcomes, resistance was claimed to be potentially efficacious for management in promoting organizational change (Ford, Ford, & D’Amelio, 2008; McDermott, Fitzgerald, & Buchanan, 2013). For example, ‘facilitative resistance’ was argued to enable organizational change processes based on the transformation of knowledge (Thomas & Hardy, 2011) or on strong networks of relations and reciprocity (Park & Lunt, 2018). Thus, rather than a hindrance to change, resistance was integrated into organizational change processes, thereby enhancing the organization (Erwin & Garman, 2010).…”