The habits of scoundrels

Abstract

Despite all the claims made about the complexity and chaos of modern organisational life, this age of the ubiquitous persuader whose job it is to get people to 'show commitment', to 'buy into' the company mission and embrace its values wholeheartedly is not so different from the Middle Ages. What was formerly offered by the church is now peddled by the modern corporation in the form of 'good practice', 'quality', 'excellence' and their opposites to be driven into darkness. But our labour no longer expresses God's will for men on earth; rather it is supposed to express the surrender of our hearts and minds to the corporation.In the summer of 1999 the supermarket store Asda was taken over by the American giant Walmart (such is the company's power and influence that Bill Gates's software package Word tells me how to spell the company name properly -with a hyphen and capital m as in Wal-Mart). Wal-Mart's men know a thing or two about lobbying and they had already smoothed their way into the UK by setting up a special meeting with Tony Blair. What they needed was an assurance that the model of the giant out-of-town superstore would not be obstructed by government, and it would seem that they got it. The lobbyists got to work and so did those whose task it was to persuade the workforce that it was a good thing to be taken over by a US multinational. Asda encourages its employees to watch videos -that is, videos about Asda -so what better opportunity for Wal-Mart than to get its own message across using Asda's video production and distribution system.At the headquarters in Leeds, Asda's office workers were rounded up to be publicly addressed by Don (aka Don Soderqvist, senior executive for Wal-Mart). This ritual was then videoed and watched by Asda employees throughout the UK. Don had been specially flown over from America to sign the deal. Just as with Chaucer's Pardoner, for Don the public address is an important means to an end and, though he too knows his text by heart, he presents it as though it were thought up off the cuff. In management discourse the extemporised talk (and this seems to be particularly American) has a special kind of 'authenticity'. One of Don's trademarks is familiarity, a