Abstract
This article explores how a strategy discourse in a UK bank reproduced a managerial preoccupation with costs, control and numbers that was grounded in the extant culture. Through engaging with this discourse, strategists displayed numerical ways of thinking, which suggested that they did not ‘see’ those on the receiving end of the strategy as human beings. The article contributes to the strategy literature first by exploring how ‘strategists’ are constituted and how they forge themselves as particular types of subject through participating in strategy discourses. Second, it examines the consequences of numericalization for those on the receiving end of strategic discourses. It is argued that the accountability that numbers seek to generate can undermine accountability, and so numbers are not entirely the servant of strategists or frontline staff but instead reflect and contribute to ongoing workplace struggles. Finally, it is argued that both strategists and academics need to reflect on the discourses that they (we) employ because otherwise we risk further numericalizing the other.
Introduction
Through charting the translation of strategic commands into new working practices, this article explores how strategists engaged with and reproduced a strategy discourse in a UK bank in ways that numericalized frontline staff or, in other words, defined them as numbers. The article draws on and contributes to a ‘critical’ approach towards strategy (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 1995; Carter et al., 2010; Clegg et al., 2004; Ezzamel and Willmott, 2008; Grandy and Mills, 2004; Knights and McCabe,1998; Knights and Morgan, 1990, 1991; Levy et al., 2003; McCabe, 2007, 2010; McKinlay et al., 2010; Samra-Fredericks, 2005; Shrivastava, 1987) by considering how strategists are constituted and produce themselves as particular types of subject when they wield strategic discourses that numericalize others. We know relatively little about the subjectivity of strategists and how their designs are translated and impact upon the lives of others, and so this is an important empirical gap that this article seeks to fill.
The article explores a strategy discourse that was initially outlined in strategy statements and it considers how this ‘dominant discourse’ (Heracleous, 2006: 1068), which prioritized ‘control, jobs and costs’ (Watson, 1995: 817) numericalized frontline employees such that they were defined as numbers, costs, objects (Cheney and Carroll, 1997: 595; Shahinpoor and Matt, 2007: 43) and ‘heads’ (see Watson, 1995: 813) to be cut. It elucidates the discourse and subjectivity through which this numericalization and dehumanization occurs. Dehumanization is understood ‘as the denial of humanness to others’ (Moller and Deci, 2009: 43), and it can be distinguished from numericalization because although numericalization implies dehumanization, the opposite does not necessarily follow. Hence, dehumanization involves seeing others as less than human, but this may not involve strategically defining them as numbers, creating work as if people are walking digits and monitoring or disciplining them as numbers. Dehumanization, then, is a broader term, whereas numericalization is grounded in discourses and disciplines such as accounting, operations, technology and strategy.
Haslam (2006) makes the point that dehumanization is not a ‘unitary’ concept, and it has been discussed in different ways, for example, in relation to ethnicity/race; gender; disability and medicine. He makes a distinction between ‘animalistic dehumanization’ whereby others are regarded with ‘contempt and disgust’ (Haslam, 2006: 262) and ‘mechanistic dehumanization’, which involves ‘taking an indifferent, instrumental, distancing, and objectifying orientation toward’ (Haslam, 2006: 261) others. Similarly, Nisim and Benjamin (2010) distinguish between two processes of dehumanization: one based on ‘close interaction and familiarity’ such that one defines the ‘other’ as lazy, inferior or stupid; the second is linked to distance whereby employees are equated with ‘de-humanized objects’ (Nisim and Benjamin, 2010: 225). In both cases, it is the latter which resonates with the way in which dehumanization is used in this article.
The use of the term ‘dehumanization’ is not meant to imply ‘alienation’ (Cheney and Carroll, 1997: 600) whereby one’s essential self is repressed (Marx, 1844). Instead, it is understood in relation to an absence of what it means to be human. According to Kelman (1973), to be human means that one accords individual’s ‘identity’ and ‘community’ or, more expansively, perceiving others as being ‘capable of making choices’, caring ‘for each other’ and recognizing ‘each other’s individuality’ as ‘part of an interconnected network of individuals’ (pp. 48–9). This article considers how strategists embraced and reproduced a strategy discourse that disavowed this understanding of being human both for frontline staff and to a lesser extent for the strategists themselves. Instead, it served to numericalize others, which is linked to a loss of empathy among strategists for frontline staff for through defining others as numbers, their ‘identity’ and place in ‘our community’ (Kelman, 1973: 49) is denied. 1
Nisim and Benjamin (2010) have highlighted ‘the lack of studies on the institutional role of dehumanizing language’ (p. 222), although they only considered this in relation to frontline workers. By contrast, this article contributes to our understanding of strategy and dehumanization because it argues that those who wield strategic discourses (not just employees) are fabricated as particular types of subject through engaging with them. This is important for a number of reasons. First, it led to dehumanizing ways of working. Second, through embracing this strategy discourse, strategists exhibited an ‘objectivist’ subjectivity whereby they appeared to see others as numbers and talked/acted in such a way that displayed little compassion for them. Finally, it reinforced hierarchical divisions and inequalities.
The article shares affinities with, but is distinct from, earlier Foucauldian studies (e.g. Hoskin and Macve, 1986; Knights and Morgan, 1990, 1991; Miller, 2001, 2004; Miller and O’Leary, 1987, 1993; Rose, 1991; Rose and Miller, 1992) because it empirically drills down through an organization to explore the way in which strategic discourses constitute working life. It does so through examining the discourse and the subjectivity of strategists and frontline employees, which is missing from the Foucauldian (e.g. Hoskin and Macve, 1986; Knights and Morgan, 1990, 1991; Miller, 2001, 2004; Miller and O’Leary, 1987, 1993; Rose, 1991; Rose and Miller, 1992), strategy-as-practice (s-a-p) (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007) and accounting (see Ahrens and Chapman, 2007: 5; Justesen and Mouritsen, 2009; Qu and Cooper, 2011; Skaerbaek and Tryggestad, 2010; Whittle and Mueller, 2010) 2 literatures.
Reflecting the practice turn, Ahrens and Chapman (2007) focused on action and practice in the belief that this defines the social, whereas this article attends to discourse or how language is embedded in practice (Foucault, 1977, 1982). In common with much of the above work, Ahrens and Chapman (2007) examined practice to avoid ‘guessing subjective meanings’ because ‘We cannot look into people’s hearts and minds’ (Ahrens, 2008: 295). This echoes Rose and Miller (1992) who stated that ‘we do not seek to penetrate the surfaces of what people said to discover what they meant’ and yet, while it is problematic to try to glean ‘real motives or interests’, this does not mean that we have to abandon subjectivity as a focus for study (p. 177). Instead, if we attend to both practice and subjectivity or what people do and say, this can help us to understand how social reality becomes objectified because how people subjectively understand the world and act within it are deeply entwined. This is consistent with the argument that ‘social reality is emergent, subjectively created, and objectified through human interaction’ (Chua, 1986: 615).
Although Foucault’s legacy is ‘a certain spirit of critique: a reflexive, permanently self-critical, present relevant and politicized practice’ (Barratt, 2008: 534), reflexivity is often absent in Foucauldian and other critical scholarship especially in relation to strategy. Hence, their (our) representations scarcely consider the ‘limitations’ (Hardy et al., 2001: 532) of the accounts provided or our role in ‘socially constructing’ (Chia, 1996: 84) them. Nor do they (we) reveal their (our) subjectivity in the accounts provided as will be attempted here. My concern to initiate a more reflexive approach towards strategy reflects that many scholars and more importantly practitioners of strategy tend not to reflect on the discourses that they (we) deploy, which has potentially debilitating consequences for those who are numericalized through them.
Strategists are often remote from those on the frontline, and Collinson (2005) argues ‘that distance remains a “leading question” for contemporary leadership and organization’ (p. 244). The case study to follow therefore explores how distance reflects and arises through the numericalization of others. There is a long history of scholars arguing that work is dehumanizing (see Braverman, 1974; Cheney and Carroll, 1997; Marx, 1844; Ritzer, 2008). Nevertheless, as critical scholars, it is incumbent upon us not to simply accept that this is the case but rather to try to understand how this remains the case in many contemporary workplaces. We need to consider the discourses and the subjectivity that contributes to such ways of working.
Hoskin and Macve (1986) argued that Foucault ‘theorised power as something positive: not as repression or suppression’ (p. 106; see also Ahrens and Chapman, 2007). In view of this, to talk of ‘dehumanization’ may appear to be inconsistent with Foucault (1977) as it suggests that subjectivity is repressed through strategic discourses. Yet Foucault’s theorizing implies that power is simultaneously productive and repressive: rewarding and punishing as subjects engage or disengage with disparate discourses. The strategic discourse explored below is bound up with producing dehumanized, numerical subjects, and so there is a strong element of suppression. Yet, even if a strategic discourse was pursued that constituted ‘enterprising’ subjects, repression would still be evident. This is because each discourse specifies what we are and can be, thereby creating templates against which we are observed, measured, compared, contrasted, judged, rewarded or punished (Foucault, 1977). In this way, we are simultaneously produced and repressed as particular types of subject as we engage with particular discourses such as strategy.
This article has three main concerns. The first is to explore how strategists are constituted and how they mould themselves as particular types of subject when they engage with certain strategic discourses, which has been neglected to-date (see Ezzamel and Willmott, 2008; Rasche and Chia, 2009). Second, it considers the implications of strategic discourses for frontline staff. The third concern is to represent strategy in a critical, reflexive way, so as to avoid reproducing an objectivist account. It is organized into three sections. The first explains the meaning of key terms and the theoretical position of the article. The methods and case study are then presented and finally the key insights of the article are drawn out in a discussion and conclusion.
Critically analysing strategy and its discourses
It is certainly correct that ‘strategizing’ should not be ‘restricted’ to a focus on ‘top management or “strategists”’ (Ezzamel and Willmott, 2008: 191) but it also needs to go beyond the ‘roles that accounting devices adopt vis-a-vis strategy’ (Skaerbaek and Tryggestad, 2010: 111) for this would only tell part of the story. To understand the impact of strategizing for frontline staff, we need to consider how strategy is interwoven with culture, operations, technology and accounting. Strategy has been criticized for being ‘ubiquitous’ (Grandy and Mills, 2004: 1163) or ‘a tool for all organizational problems’ (p. 1167) and yet strategy is becoming increasingly pervasive, for ‘we live in a world saturated by strategy’ (Carter et al., 2010: 573). In this article, strategists are understood to be those managers who seek to shape the future direction of a firm, and so strategy is whatever they contrive and do to achieve this end. Strategy is understood, therefore, to take ‘its meaning from the social context in which it evolves’ which is, ‘at any time, whatever people make of it’ (Hendry, 2000: 970).
There is an established literature that focuses on s-a-p, and this article also seeks to comprehend the ‘doing’ (Jarzabkowski et al., 2007: 8; Whittington, 1996: 732) and the ‘messiness’ (Johnson et al., 2007: 5) of strategy along with its ‘socio-cultural embeddedness’ (Regner, 2008: 576). According to Jarzabkowski et al. (2007), s-a-p scholars have paid insufficient attention to employees, and so this article contributes to knowledge through considering how the forging of strategists as particular types of subject serves to numericalize others. Much of the s-a-p literature explicitly follows a ‘managerial agenda’ (Whittington, 2004: 62), for example, by considering whether strategy contributes to ‘competitive advantage’ (Regner, 2008: 582). By contrast, this article is concerned with how strategic discourses contribute to the reproduction of extant inequalities (see also McCabe, 2007, 2010).
The article follows the Foucauldian position that through discourses such as strategy, ‘our sense of ourselves as distinct subjectivities is constituted’ (Clegg, 1989: 151) albeit not in a deterministic way because power is never totalizing in its effects (see Foucault, 1977). The power effects of a given discourse are understood to be achieved through bureaucratic regulation or ‘discursive practices’, and so there is a materiality to discourse. This approach can be contrasted with Zanoni and Janssens’ (2007) ‘analytical distinction between identity regulation [via discursive structures] and bureaucratic control [via material structures]’ for this rubs out the materiality of discourse or how discourse is embedded in practice (p. 1375). It represents discourse in a dualistic way as texts and talk, whereas this article considers discourse to be inseparable from the material world.
The assumption underpinning this article is that we can only access the ‘social’ or ‘outer world’ (Leitch and Palmer, 2010: 1200) through discourse and that our understanding of the world and ourselves is produced through power/knowledge relations (Foucault, 1982). From this perspective, the material and the discursive are ‘inextricably entangled’ (Brown et al., 1998: 79). This means that we must attend to ‘real-world issues’ (Potter, 1998: 35) such as how we construct and produce discourse recognizing that how we ‘see’ the world and how we ‘represent’ it is imbued with power/knowledge relations. The recognition that discourse serves to construct rather than mirror the world raises the issue of reflexivity, which questions whether ‘researchers can speak authentically of the experience of the Other’ (Alvesson et al., 2008: 483). Reflexivity has largely been neglected in the strategy literature, and to adopt a more reflexive approach, we must first avoid taking ‘the accounts of research participants … at face value’ as if ‘the account given is a representation of an objective reality’ (Dick and Cassell, 2002: 957). Second, we must avoid presenting ‘the researcher’s view or opinion of the status of an account as “the authoritative view”’ (Dick and Cassell, 2002). This does not mean that we cannot attempt to represent a given situation or comment upon it, only that we must acknowledge that our account is but one representation of it; for example, research concerned with enhancing competitiveness would have produced an entirely different account than the one to follow.
This article makes no distinction between discourse ‘as local achievements’ (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000: 1126) and ‘Discourse’, which ‘assumes that discourse, subjectivity and practice are densely interwoven’. Nor does it see them as separate from ‘Grand Discourse’ (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000: 1133) or, what is understood here, as a sensitivity towards the inequality, which strategies often serve to reproduce. Alvesson and Karreman (2000) categorized discourse using the dichotomies of determinism versus autonomy and close-range versus long-range studies. Recently, they have defended this classification due to the need for a ‘much more disciplined and careful use of discourse vocabulary’ (Alvesson and Karreman, 2013: 1355). Although there is a need for clarity, for me, to use these categories makes it difficult to grasp or represent, albeit partially and in a way that is inseparable from discourse, the interconnectedness and complexity of everyday life. For example, one may believe that power is exercised through discourse in ways that shape our subjectivity, which Alvesson and Karreman (2000) link with determinism and ‘Grand Discourse’. Yet, contra these authors and Heracleous (2006: 1061), such a position is only deterministic if we adopt a ‘propertied’ (Foucault, 1977) concept of power and assume that we are passive recipients of Grand Discourses. If, by contrast, one assumes that power is ‘relational’ (Foucault, 1977) and is not, therefore, the possession of any single individual or group, then a deterministic analysis can be avoided. This distinction is important because if strategic discourses are deterministic, then there is no space in which to change or challenge them. Yet, if power is regarded as ‘relational’ (Foucault, 1977), then, although power is exercised through discourse so as to constitute subjectivity, it is understood that this is not simply done to others because they (we) actively participate in such processes. Moreover, it follows that strategists and others are able to resist the Discourses that, in part, produce their sense of self.
Through highlighting how strategists are, in part, shaped through strategic discourses, this article aims to encourage strategists to reflect, think, talk and act in different ways. It attempts to analyse discourse (texts and practice) while seeking to understand how power is exercised through them (Discourse) in ways that reproduce broader inequalities (Grand Discourse). In order to fully engage with and realize this approach towards discourse, it is believed that it is necessary to adopt an ethnographic orientation. That is to say, although valuable insights can be gleaned through the micro-analysis of single documents or one-off interviews, a de-contextualized approach is less likely than ethnography to be able to provide insights into discourse as it works over time at multiple levels, and so in this sense, my approach has some sympathy with Alvesson and Karreman’s (2013) concerns.
A reflexive approach
The mainstream strategy literature tends to present an objective account of strategy and the following analysis aims to elucidate how we can all be caught up in producing objective representations. It has been noted that reflexivity rarely occurs ‘spontaneously’ (Schippers et al., 2008: 1594), and so the concern of this article is to encourage practitioners and scholars of strategy to reflect on their assumptions. To be consistent with this concern, it is also necessary to avoid representing this account as ‘objective’ or ‘neutral’. Rather than presenting bankers/strategists as ‘villains’ (see Whittle and Mueller, 2012: 124), my concern is to elucidate how ‘wrong doing’ (Whittle and Mueller, 2012: 124) in terms of numericalizing others comes about. Instead of helping leaders to encourage others ‘to become more reflexive’ (Schippers et al., 2008: 1594), my concern is to urge leaders to ‘see things in a new light’ and thereby ‘question the status quo’ (p. 1597).
Denis et al. (2006) have explored strategic decision making in the Canadian public health-care sector. They asserted that ‘Numbers as a technology produce a representation that seems independent of the person that applies them’ (Denis et al., 2006: 355). Echoing Miller and O’Leary’s (1993) concerns, they speculate that this is potentially dangerous when ‘Numbers take on their own power’ and ‘become more and more detached from actors’ with the result that organizations can become ‘controlled by their systems of rules and numbers rather than by the people within them’ (p. 356). The case study to follow explores these concerns but it also considers how strategic discourses work through subjectivity so as to constitute numericalized ways of working and being.
One of the aims of a reflexive approach is to recognize that we, as academics, as much as practitioners, can construct a ‘claim of objectivity’ (Denis et al., 2006: 364). It is not only others then who construct their accounts ‘to appear factual’ as Whittle and Mueller’s (2012) analysis suggests because this also applies to us (p. 132). Hence, it needs to be understood that ‘discourses, are not objective—they, themselves, are socially constructed’ (Hardy et al., 2000: 1233). As researchers who attempt to convey our empirical findings, we can easily fall into the trap of presenting our research in an objective way and ourselves as ‘neutral’ observers. Indeed, journal editors and reviewers often insist that we adopt such a position, and so we risk mimicking the way in which strategists represent their strategies. The danger as Oswick et al. (2000) put it is one of presenting ‘language as a means of directly representing and mirroring social reality’ (p. 1118). To avoid this, no matter how rigorously we analyse our data, it has to be acknowledged that we cannot stand outside of discourse because we are all ‘entangled in discursive webs’ (Levy et al., 2003: 97; see also Hoskin and Macve, 1986: 134).
This article therefore seeks to encourage scholars to indicate how they are ‘thoroughly implicated in the production of research’ (Rasche and Chia, 2009: 725) so as to avoid replicating the type of situation where strategists refer to ‘facts’ (Ezzamel and Willmott, 2008: 205) to justify a given strategy as if there is no alternative to what they propose. We run the risk of making similar claims and of reproducing similar thinking, if we represent our data as ‘raw’, which implies that it is untouched or unmediated by humans and their particular perspectives. Instead, ‘raw data’ needs to be understood as reflecting the questions we ask, the issues we focus on, those we exclude, our theoretical approach and the assumptions underpinning it (see Bedeian, 1997; Rashce and Chia, 2009). Walcott (1994) puts it like this, ‘nothing becomes data without the intervention of a researcher’ (p. 4) while Rose (1991) asserts that ‘Social conditions are never active in human affairs as raw experiences but only in and through certain systems of meaning and value’ (p. 681).
A reflexive approach has ‘various meanings’ (Alvesson and Karreman, 2013: 1360) and one of them is to include ourselves ‘in the subject matter’ we are ‘trying to understand’ (Hardy et al., 2001: 532) thereby revealing our hand or ‘authorial personality’ (Alvesson et al., 2008: 484). This helps to avoid reproducing the objectivist subjectivity that many strategists take-for-granted by highlighting that data does not speak for itself because it is the analyst that selects, decides, excludes and constructs the account. In this article, I have attempted to avoid presenting an objective representation through situating myself within the empirical data thereby revealing how it emerged through the questions that I asked. Reflexivity also imbues my analysis of the extant literature and how I represent my methods; it also involves raising ‘doubts’ (Alvesson and Karreman, 2013: 1360) about the inferences that can be drawn from empirical research and pointing towards the ‘limitations’ (Hardy et al., 2001: 532) of the material that is presented, which will be attempted throughout the article.
In the following study, strategists emphasized numbers, figures, ratios, models that appeared objective to them, which Rose and Miller (1992), borrowing from Latour (1987), describe as ‘inscription devices’. Strategy, like government, ‘inspires and depends upon a huge labour of inscription’ (Rose and Miller, 1992: 185) that serves to ‘mobilise particular actions and move people in certain directions’ (Boedker and Chua, 2013: 246). In this way, inscription devices can be understood as allies that render ‘reality into a calculable form’ (Rose and Miller, 1992: 185). Strategists generate and act upon the information produced through these devices, which they believe to be logical and objective. These allies aid the exercise of power through management ‘at a distance’, but the information generated through them ‘is not the outcome of a neutral recording function’ (Rose and Miller, 1992) because through such processes strategists advance certain interests while silencing others. This article is therefore concerned to criticize both the claim to ‘objectivity’ enshrined in strategy discourses and the consequences of it.
The case study in context
Britlay Bank is a retail bank that has 1700 branches across the United Kingdom. In common with other banks, it once offered ‘life time employment, structured careers, and paternalistic, welfare-oriented policies’ (Storey et al., 1999: 129). In 1986, deregulation through the Financial Services Act spawned an era of intense competition between banks, building societies and insurance companies further heightened by new entrants such as Marks and Spencer, First Direct and Virgin. A sea change occurred, from organizations which traded on the image of being a ‘respectable institution’ where managers made ‘a virtue of stability, security and moderation’ (Morgan and Sturdy, 2000: 64), to an age of constant change and transformation.
In this context, banks closed branches, made staff redundant and introduced new information and communication technologies (ICTs), which have transformed the financial services landscape. Across the industry, ‘new competitive, sales-oriented policies’ (Storey et al., 1999: 129) emerged along with a host of change initiatives. The 2008 global financial crisis has further intensified competition with many British banks being nationalized in all but name. Now there is continual change and reengineering, which has presided over the ‘withering’ of the ‘career discourse’ of secure jobs and promotion (see McKinlay, 2002).
At Britlay Bank, this context gave rise to the centralization and reengineering of branch processes. This began with the creation of Call Centres (CCs) followed by Cheque Processing Centres (CPCs), which was facilitated through innovations in ICT such as Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) systems. Sue Eagles, the bank’s Planning, Control and Design manager, stated that ‘the next logical step’ was to create back-office Processing Centres (PCs), which will be explored below. Irrespective of the intense competitive pressures outlined above, the following case study questions the naturalization and inevitability of dehumanizing ways of working. It seeks ‘to disrupt contemporary managerial commonsense’ (Barratt, 2008: 518) because, as will be pointed out, dehumanization reflected the taken-for-granted assumptions and ‘conscious choices’ (Cheney and Carroll, 1997: 600) of strategists, who appeared unable to see any alternative to the machine metaphor (Ritzer, 2008).
Research methods
The research initially set out to understand the human implications of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and the aim was to get inside so as to say something about the culture of the bank, recognizing that ‘Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete’ (Geertz, 1973: 29) and ‘that there is no such thing as “pure” description’ (Walcott, 1994: 13). The focus was on exploring the way of life in the bank, which one has to first grasp and then represent albeit in a partial way. The empirical research was conducted over a 6-month period, which included 10 visits to three branches, 5 visits to the Head Office and 10 visits to a back-office PC. Different aspects of this material have already been examined in relation to branch employees (McCabe, 2011) and back-office middle managers (McCabe, 2014). It has also been drawn upon in a book-length study (McCabe, 2007), but the following empirical material is distinctive given its focus on strategists, its emphasis on reflexivity and the ways in which power is exercised through numbers. A promise of confidentiality was made while conducting the research, and so certain information has been concealed and all of the names used in the case have been changed to preserve the anonymity of those participating in the research.
Data were collected in three ways. The first method of collection included 54, 45- to 60-minute tape-recorded, semi-structured interviews. These included individual and group interviews with, in total, 81 employees, including 10 senior and middle managers who were directly involved in creating and implementing the strategy; 6 back-office managers; 6 branch managers; 6 supervisors; 5 team leaders; 17 branch staff and 31 back-office staff. Each interview began with a promise of confidentiality both in relation to the organization and the individual. Open-ended questions were initially asked of senior and middle managers as a means to understand the structure and culture of the organization, recent changes/innovations and the strategic thinking behind them. Copious notes were written during the interviews that helped to identify key themes. Analysis began immediately and involved identifying key words, writing notes in the margin and expanding notes as ideas emerged and connections were made. This was the first stage of the analysis, but one has to recognize that this involves the ‘production’ of an account that is ineluctably bound up with how one views the world.
The second method of data collection involved reading and re-reading corporate documents, including strategy statements, training materials, staff briefings, minutes of meetings, change documents and watching corporate videos. This gave rise to the second stage of the analysis whereby these materials were analysed to provide insights into the planned programme of change and its operation and they were used to chronologically reconstruct the change programme over a period of 5 years. The third method of data collection was through observation. During the 25 visits to the bank, observational field notes were written before, in-between and after each interview, recording the decor, first impressions, office layout, passing conversations and the architecture of buildings.
The strategy discourse that emerged from this analysis, which was articulated by strategists during the interviews and in business case documents, represented the staff as costs, heads and numbers to be cut. This article aims to confront the ‘passivity’ and ‘thoughtlessness’ of strategists who reproduce such discourses, for otherwise ‘we resign ourselves to the use of corporate power for reprehensible ends’ (Srinivas, 1999: 621–2). I found the lack of concern for others evident in the interviews, corporate documents and ways of working, disturbing. The following empirical material has been selected to represent both the condition and consequences of this lack of concern. In contrast to an ethnomethodological approach, where researchers purport ‘not to bring with them … theoretical objects/issues’ (Rawls, 2008: 724), the following account reflects my theoretical interest in post-structuralism and labour process theory, which informed the research focus, interpretation, analysis and representation of the empirical materials. It is necessary to state this as ‘an important function of reflexive analysis is to expose the underlying assumptions on which arguments and stances are built’ (Holland, 1999: 467) as this helps to avoid reproducing an objectivist discourse.
My theoretical interests have shaped my subjectivity in terms of how I interpret events, the issues I focus on and those that I do not ‘see’ in ways that I may not fully comprehend. For me, to acknowledge this subjectivity is not to abandon objectivity but to strive for it because if we present ourselves as neutral, apolitical observers, we are hiding behind a cloak of objectivity. As Watson (1994) puts it, ‘Management researchers select, interpret, colour, emphasize, shape their research findings’ (p. 106), and so we need to account for our focus and selection. To acknowledge and reflect on the limitations of, and influences on, our accounts, serves to enhance the representations of ‘our experience of the world in as comprehensive and inclusive a way as possible’ for ‘in that effort we seek a maximal intersubjectivity [or shared understanding]’ (Keller, 1983: 135).
To try to understand how strategists created a way of working that employees considered dehumanizing, tape-recorded interviews were analysed through a ‘fine-grained, line-by-line analysis’ (Emerson et al., 1995: 160). I explored the ways in which strategists used the term ‘head’ or ‘headcount’ when referring to employees and the consideration that was given to employees in terms of their quality of working life (QWL) when designing new work practices. The process of data collection, analysis and writing did not ‘occur as discrete, sequential, hierarchical steps’; instead, it was ‘iterative, interactive and non-linear’ (Baptiste, 2001: 2). The process of conducting and writing research is, for me, a creative process that requires ‘permanent reflexivity’ (Barratt, 2008: 530). Rather than ‘step-like processes’ (Baptiste, 2001: 2) as described elsewhere (Maitlis and Lawrence, 2007), it is an imaginative, interweaving and fluid process as data and theory merge.
The empirical material is organized into four sections. The first section explores how the strategy discourse drew upon and reproduced extant ‘cultural phenomenon’ (Rasche and Chia, 2009: 723) in ways that numericalized and dehumanized others. The second examines how this strategy discourse imbued the creation and design of the back-office PCs. The third section considers how the strategy discourse dehumanized others through representing them as disembodied ‘heads’. The final section explores the impact of the strategy discourse on the back-office staff and the struggles that ensued due to the numericalization of others.
A strategy discourse
As part of the bank’s strategic plan, a Service Delivery Strategy was developed, which according to a Human Resource Change document, demonstrates ‘an assured quality of service and is cost effective’. This document states that ‘The strategy includes’ the ‘removal of selected branch processes’ through creating seven PCs. The objective of the strategy was to reduce the ‘cost-income’ ratio—a key indicator of ‘financial performance’ (Justesen and Mouritsen, 2009: 979). John Pike, Head of Centralization Design, stated that ‘A new CEO came in and said: “I want the cost-income ratio down” … and this was the route we went’. To this end, Sue Eagles, the bank’s ‘Planning, control and design’ manager, explained that due to her experience of researching and writing business cases during earlier centralization programmes, she was asked by the Head of Retail banking to write the case for the new strategy.
As part of the ‘analysis’ for the ‘main business case’, an interim ‘pilot business case’ was produced through setting up a pilot back office. This handled processes for a few branches on a manual, paper-based basis before it was extended to include 49 branches. A series of check points were established to monitor progress before technology was introduced that would enable each back office to handle processes for up to 200 branches. The pilot was integral to rendering the strategy calculable, and Sue’s comments indicate how strategists can become absorbed by the minutiae of planning rather than outcomes for employees, for example, each process such as a standing order had to be analysed: Standing order on average takes two minutes to process and within it there are six steps. What we did was we took all that information and there was something like 99 measured processes in the branches and we analysed them right down to task level.
The pilot was followed by a post-implementation review, and Sue explained that she then ‘built a model basically’ for the ‘main business case’, which demonstrated how (1) centralization, (2) automation and (3) imaging technology would impact on each task. It was remarked that ‘The model actually covered all three scenarios and actually showed the progressive headcount [savings] and incremental headcounts [savings] you could expect from each one’.
The full strategy began to be rolled out 5 months after the pilot study began, and half way through there was a ‘check point’ to evaluate progress. Numerical norms were reinforced each month as branches were required to ‘report how it was using its headcount’. Each step allowed strategists to calibrate themselves and others in relation to ‘where they should be’ with the aim of getting ‘from one state to another’ (Rose and Miller, 1992: 187). The process reflected and reproduced the extant hierarchical, control-oriented and numericalizing culture for it excluded and silenced the voices of frontline staff and others: The culture has been built up over 100–150 years of hierarchical shouting and demanding … the CEO … asks for a cup of tea and 58 tea plantations in Sri Lanka jump into action because everybody worries … guys at the top have been God, the people at the bottom have been nobodies and we’ve reinforced that culture all the time. (Bob Miles, Head of Processing Centres)
The above extract highlights the obstacles to a more reflexive approach because extant conditions are often taken-for-granted (see Schippers et al., 2008: 1610). The cost–income ratio as an ‘inscription’ device (Qu and Cooper, 2011: 347) transformed the staff into numbers rendering them ‘psychologically invisible’ (Bauman, 1990: 492) to the strategists. The command to reduce the ‘cost-income ratio’ was not ‘merely technical’ (Rose, 1991: 680) because it urged strategists to focus on some issues while excluding others (see Miller, 2004: 180). The ratio and the subsequent strategy were inseparable (see Skaerbaek and Tryggestad, 2010: 108), which highlights the dominance of accounting in this organization. 3
The success of the strategy was narrowly determined and measured in relation to reducing ‘costs’. As human beings, as opposed to numbers, the staff were not part of the strategy discourse in any meaningful way. Through rendering employees visible as numbers, the strategy simultaneously made ‘the very humanity’ of the staff ‘invisible’ (Bauman, 1990: 493), thereby obscuring uncomfortable moral questions or feelings of empathy. Critically, such thinking and calculations are the means through which corporate strategies reproduce the inequalities that imbue them. The insights of Kate Finch, a senior IT Analyst, underline how culture, finance and strategy are interwoven for she remarked that ‘At a high-level the reason why these business cases get signed off is because they are going to cut a headcount from X to Y’. This reduces choice and illustrates how ‘Strategy frames agendas’ (Carter et al., 2010: 585) by prioritizing job cuts and keeping issues such as QWL off the agenda.
The Business Case document’s stated intention was ‘to achieve maximum possible headcount savings’ (emphasis added). As an inscription device, it specified what was required of strategists; it devalued the staff and numericalized them, disconnecting strategists from those on the frontline while making the strategy operational (see Qu and Cooper, 2011: 353). Approximately 4000 staff, or a fifth of the branch network, lost their jobs through the subsequent centralization and reengineering of branch processes. The intervention removed 21% of the clerical workload from the branch network and sought to increase profits by over a third. Rather than people, these abstract targets reinforced the view that strategists are trading in numbers, figures and costs. These tangible objectives are central to the strategy discourse, which was mute with regard to its human costs. One can understand how strategists who are judged, rewarded, disciplined and ‘normalized’ (Foucault, 1977) through such criteria can become blind to the human in the equation.
During the interviews, none of the interviewees questioned the need to reduce the cost–income ratio or the means to achieve it. It saturated their subjectivity, saturated their being. The instruction to improve the cost–income ratio was issued with an expectation of absolute obedience and it was implemented ruthlessly. This is consistent with the corporate culture, and so the strategy discourse reinforced extant dogmatism. Bob Miles, the Head of Processing Centres, explained the CEO’s approach: Colin Whitman (CEO) was the man responsible for turning us round. He didn’t do it by being nice. He basically said, you know, ‘Fox Trot Oscar or do it my way’ … Colin is focused on cost. I mean, I’ve got to say that the share price rose, so he did a lot of things right, but it wasn’t a pretty sight, and I think I did my share to making it not as pretty as it might have been and I spilt a bit of blood as well.
Through the strategy discourse, the CEO exercised power in a way that ‘disciplined’ strategists whereby dissenters left and conformers or supporters remained. This ‘normalization’ (Foucault, 1977) entrenched the cost-focused and top-down culture of the bank. Bob ascribed ‘heroic’ qualities to the CEO for having turned ‘us round’, which suggests that he is distant from those whose jobs were lost or dehumanized as a consequence of the strategy. The CEO was deemed a success in numerical terms because the ‘share price rose’, and this underlines how a preoccupation with figures can rub out human consequences.
The strategy discourse did not obliterate reflexivity; hence, Bob Miles remarked that management ‘need to listen to what the staff say’. Nevertheless, this sensitivity was absent from the strategy discourse and as Bob admitted: ‘I’m no better for this’, and so he lived the discourse by engaging in bloodletting himself. This section has highlighted the fusion between the strategy discourse, embedded cultural norms and practices such as top-down decision making, writing business cases and cost–income ratios that served to numericalize the staff and reproduce extant hierarchical inequalities.
Operationalizing the strategy discourse
This section considers how the strategy discourse permeated the design of the PCs. The strategy’s numerical objective of achieving ‘maximum headcount savings’ infused ways of thinking and acting that were divorced from the concerns of frontline staff. The following extract, from the Business Case Document, highlights the thinking that flowed from the CEO’s demands, which bled into the strategy discourse and the lives of strategists and staff. Hence, priority was given to limiting employee autonomy so that there would be ‘no opportunity for staff to invent local practices’. This statement reflects a concern to erase staff agency and creativity, and it exerted a normalizing impact on strategists so that they became blind to ways of working that might be rewarding for frontline staff.
Document Image Processing (DIP) technology was introduced in the PCs, which allows documents to be scanned and manipulated electronically. Technology becomes ‘strategic’ (Skaerbaek and Tryggestad, 2010: 121) when it is crucial to enacting strategy and due to the volume of paper work, the strategy was deemed untenable without DIP. Sue Eagles, the Planning, Control and Design manager, explained that We didn’t feel that we could run these centres supporting anything up to 200 branches without having a very slick system … We needed something that would give us total control over the work in the centre, where it was and at what stage it was. (Emphasis added)
According to Sue, the motive for using DIP was ‘control over the work’ rather than ‘labour’ as in traditional labour process theory (e.g. Braverman, 1974), but control over work and labour presents something of a Gordian knot. Hence, through DIP, the work was divided into finite tasks and this led to repetitive, monotonous, working conditions. Discretion, autonomy and creativity that are taken-for-granted by strategists, were stifled for employees. The strategy discourse therefore imbued DIP whereby its human outcomes were not considered.
The comments of John Pike, Head of Centralization Design, underline how DIP was filtered through the strategy discourse, for it was employed ‘to reduce our processing costs by getting specialization of labour in our processing centres’. Task specialization was seen as the only means to reduce costs and it resulted in an extreme division of labour. This was not an inevitable outcome of DIP or the pursuit of ‘shareholder value’ (Ezzamel et al., 2008: 137) but reflected the numerical, control and cost-driven imperatives of this strategy discourse:
Was it thought that the work would be low discretion versus high discretion?
It was very much a piece of work will be presented to you … So yes, certainly on some sections, it would become very repetitive … a lot of the work, there was no thought in terms of ‘What do I do with this piece of work? Do I have any discretion to do anything different?’
How was it thought that you’d keep staff motivated or?
Yes, I can’t recall us having a specific conversation about that, or having a specific plan that said ‘This is how we’re going to motivate people’. (Sue, Planning, Control and Design Manager)
The strategy discourse is reproduced through Sue’s subjectivity and the work practices that she helped to design as she sought to create work that required ‘no thought’. Sue could not remember a ‘conversation’ about employee motivation, and this reflects that numbers were the guiding star. John Pike, Head of Centralization Design, who helped to create the PCs, elaborated upon the thinking that went into designing them: It’s all about clinical, head down, professional, don’t get disturbances to the operators. Let them concentrate on their work, measuring their productivity, measuring their accuracy, reporting back errors, analysing why errors. So very much clinical … and we chose the culture. (Emphasis added)
Through this strategy discourse, employees became soldier ants, who must not be disturbed from processing. In the process, strategists are constituted and constitute themselves as hierarchical, distant subjects who trade in numbers. This is inferred from what these strategists said and did not say in relation to the staff and also from what they did. Hence, work was designed and implemented as if those who were tasked to carry out the work were merely calculating machines. Employees were dehumanized through this discourse that regarded them as untrustworthy because their work was mapped out for them in advance thereby mitigating deviation from corporate instructions. Strategists were also dehumanized because they expressed no sympathy for the plight of those on the receiving end of the strategy. Choice was not absent from this because as John stated, ‘we chose the culture’, which illuminates that these strategists were not simply determined by the strategy discourse but actively reproduced it. In the process, they forged themselves and others as numericalized subjects.
The insights of James Jones, the Head of IT, also indicate an element of choice in terms of the type of work that the strategists opted to design: It’s people head down working, phones not ringing, not being distracted environment, which is one we wanted to create there.
Rather than passive recipients of the demand for cost reduction, the strategists embraced it. This maintained and reflected the culture that these individuals are a part of and so, perhaps, they could ‘see’ no alternative to it. The strategic thinking, according to John Pike, was ‘really, really logical, very logical’. Yet this logic reflects a particular discourse and subjectivity whereby strategists visualize workers only as vessels for their mechanistic designs.
This section has considered how the strategy discourse and the subjectivity of strategists were rooted together and how this flowed into the design of the PCs. The next section attends to the dehumanizing consequences of the strategy discourse for strategists, which is evident in how they constituted frontline staff as dehumanized ‘heads’.
Talking heads: dehumanizing strategists and frontline staff
Peter Stewart, the Head of the bank’s Change and Transformation team, asserted that some branch managers resisted change by refusing to release ‘quality’ staff for the PCs, an attitude he explained by saying: ‘People are not objective’. By this he meant that they did not share the logic of the strategy discourse which he views as ‘objectivity’. It needs to be noted, however, that this strategy discourse is not neutral but reflects a narrow focus on numbers and costs. Imbibing this discourse that reflected and reproduced the corporate culture appeared to have dehumanizing consequences for the strategists because, as their comments and actions illustrate, they did not seem to see humans but only numbers:
In terms of the nature of work that was going to be created for the people in the Centres. What sort of thought was?
To take out the opportunity for human error. So wherever possible we wanted to make it as simple as possible, as automated as possible and also to create specialists. (Sue Eagles, Planning, Control and Design manager)
Sue was asked about the nature of work that she helped to create and its implications for employees. As these and her previous remarks illustrate, there was no consideration of people in terms of their QWL or motivation—the focus was purely on the need to remove ‘human error’. This is also evident in the concern to simplify work and to automate it wherever possible. Strategists were repeatedly asked about the human implications of the strategy, and they appeared unable to comprehend the meaning of the questions. After expressing the question in different ways, Kelly, a senior IT manager who was responsible for transferring manual processes onto the DIP system, eventually grasped what was being asked and her response suggests that she has been constituted through the strategy discourse as a numerical subject herself:
Could you have used the technology to design different work processes so that the work was less repetitive?
Oh yes, I’m sure we could have done that.
How would you have done that?
I don’t know. (laughter) Well, you would look upon it differently wouldn’t you … and turn the process upside down.
If humans could not be eliminated, then, through specialization, they were disciplined via standardization (Miller and O’Leary, 1987: 239). The human, it seemed, was considered only as a potential source of error. In practice, however, DIP allowed for far more diverse work than was planned. Thus, in each PC, there are approximately 50 different types of work and the staff can be rapidly switched from one electronic work queue to another. This potential for varied work was stifled, however, through the strategy discourse as the comments of Mike Butcher, a member of the Change and Transformation team, reveal: We try and keep them [staff] on one or two [queues] most of the time because they actually become quite competent at it very quickly … although it’s exciting for them to move from one queue to the next you end up with an inefficient centre … different types of work hitting you one after the other and that actually slows people down.
The assumption is that task variety will slow ‘people down’ leading to inefficiencies, but this numerical rationality ignores the potentially deleterious impact of repetitive work on staff morale, turnover and error rates. These strategists may have considered that they had ‘no choice’ (Kelman, 1973: 44) other than to pursue this approach but, as discussed above, they emphasized that they chose to design this way of working. They could have resigned or articulated a different approach; they could have expressed concerns about the work they designed or pity for those on the receiving end of it. Yet, as elsewhere, there appeared to be ‘no dispute, hesitation or questioning around what they were doing or why’ (Samra-Fredericks, 2005: 834). This is not to suggest an absence of emotions but rather that these strategists did not feel emotional about those they numericalized. Of course, my inability to identify such emotions may reflect the limitations of the research in that I was not privy to private conversations in work or elsewhere. Nevertheless, cutting costs through task specialization and reducing staff numbers appeared to be the taken-for-granted, ‘natural’ order that the strategy discourse reflected and perpetuated. It rendered employees invisible other than as numbers: each branch was assessed and, as a result of the work that was coming out of the branch, that branches headcount was reduced. (James Jones; Head of IT)
In the above extract, James used the term ‘headcount’ when referring to the staff, which was widespread. He articulated that the ‘benefits’ of the strategy were assessed through branch ‘headcount’ reductions. Kate Finch, a Senior IT analyst, voiced a similar discourse but abbreviated the term: ‘all we were trying to do was cut heads’. Strategizing is perhaps easier if one thinks about ‘numbers’ or ‘heads’ rather than the ‘lives’ or ‘feelings’ of others. Numerical thinking then becomes part of the taken-for-granted, ‘objective’ worldview. This does not mean that James, Kate or the other strategists are unfeeling machines, but it does suggest that they embraced a strategy discourse that allowed them to talk and act as if those on the receiving end of it were less than human.
John Pike, Head of Centralization Design, considered that through the strategy ‘we have gained in our ability to design and implement change relatively painlessly despite significant losses of headcount’. He appeared not to register the pain of the staff and presumably assesses pain only in relation to corporate performance. He voiced a ‘desire’ to continually centralize because ‘If you stop then people go galloping past you … we must keep charging forward’, and so he appeared locked into a subjectivity that looks forward but never downwards at those crushed in the charge. ‘Androidization’ refers to the ‘transformation of human beings into machines’ (Srinivas, 1999: 609), and androids supposedly ‘differ from humans’ in that they are ‘unable to distinguish the effects of their actions, whether they cause pain or happiness’ (p. 615). Yet these strategists, like androids, seemed unable to see the human impact of their actions.
We have retraced some of ‘the steps’ made by the strategists as they transformed ‘texts, drafts, and projects into things’ (Latour, 1987: 233). Power was exercised in a numerical way through calculations, models and ratios that disciplined both strategists and staff, enabling strategists to manage ‘at a distance’ (Latour, 1987: 223). The following extract sheds some light on the routines of how this happens: everything we did was on a cost-benefit analysis. … We reduced the headcount … So we justified it on that basis simply because that’s how the bank’s systems are set up. You have to justify on a financial basis. (Sue Eagles, the Planning, Control and Design manager)
In contrast to other organizations (see Morales and Lambert, 2013), a unified accounting discourse permeated the strategy discourse, shaping its content, priorities and language. An alternative strategy, that could not produce measurable, economic benefits was seemingly unthinkable (see Hohnen and Hasle, 2011: 1025; Hoskin and Macve, 1986: 130; Miller, 2004: 182) because that is not how ‘the bank’s financial system works’ (Sue Eagles). This ‘routinization’ helps to reduce decision making and focuses strategists on the means not the ends of what they are doing (Kelman, 1973: 40). Nevertheless, as has already been indicated, the potential remained for improved QWL through increased task variety.
Numericalizing and dehumanizing the back-office staff
This final empirical section considers the impact of the strategy discourse on the staff who worked in the back offices. Each back office is organized around seven specialist functions and this reflects the strategic emphasis on task specialization and repetition. Work for the majority of the staff is queue based whereby they sit in front of a VDU screen processing work. Each member of staff is allocated 30 minutes of ‘603 time’ each day for natural breaks, drinks and exercises so as to avoid repetitive stress disorders, the potential for which was designed into the system of working. Simon, who works on the pre-authorized payments or PAPS section, which processes direct debits and standing orders commented that this time is necessary ‘to relax your eyes away from that bloody screen’. There is a heavy emphasis on numbers and checking; hence, 25% of every member of staff’s work is checked twice each month, which increases if errors increase. The staff have monthly reviews and annual appraisals when their performance is assessed largely on the basis of numbers (error rates and output).
In contrast to research that has pointed towards employee support for standardizing corporate discourses (Hohnen and Hasle, 2011: 1027), the majority of the staff that were interviewed were critical of the task specialization and repetition. The staff from the account maintenance section, that deals with opening and closing accounts, explained that you have to ‘get used to’ the repetitive ‘routine’, which is difficult because ‘it’s like being a robot’ (Linda). Sarah remarked that ‘we’re numbers’ while Joyce stated that ‘you just sit there and your number goes in and up comes your next piece of work, you know, so it is a bit sort of robotic in that sense’. These comments question whether inscription devices have the ‘powers to convince’ (Qu and Cooper, 2011: 359) frontline employees of the merit of corporate discourses. Hence, even staff from the less repetitive enquiries section, discussed their work in the following way:
Yer just a number
A bit more like robots here aren’t you really
It’s all timed here. You’re all worried to death about your queues, getting your timings done
Dave remarked that he had been admonished for ‘talking too much’, which he said ‘disturbed me a bit’, and so contrary to Hohnen and Hasle’s (2011) findings, employees did not take ‘the logic of this discourse for granted’ (p. 1027). The strategy discourse implicitly defined workers as robots or numbers and through making this explicit, the staff can be said to be resisting numericalization through a ‘subtle subversion’ (Prasad and Prasad, 1998: 236) of the strategy discourse. In short, by saying that the work regime defines them as robots or numbers, the staff defied this definition of themselves. Nevertheless, the case illustrates that there does not have to be a consensus for inscription devices to exert a powerful influence over others.
The strategic emphasis on there being ‘no opportunity for staff to invent local practices’ (Business Case Document) impinged upon everyday life because autonomy was constrained through ‘guidelines’, whereby ‘you can’t make decisions for yourself because woe betides if it goes wrong’ (Lorraine, Enquiries). Judy, who works in the mandate maintenance section, which processes some of the more complex jobs in the back office, made a similar point: On the positive side it’s extremely efficient. Every action that’s taken is accountable by the audit and the audit trail … the other thing is making my own decisions. You can’t do that here. You cannot make a decision on a pure common sense basis you’ve got to have everything backed up by procedures and paperwork.
Judy acknowledged the efficiency of accountability but she was also critical of it for curtailing her ability to make decisions. Simon, from the PAPS section, was also critical of the way of working and referred to the inefficiencies that arise from the strategic emphasis on numbers and the attempt to render staff accountable through repetition and limiting discretion: The next item appears and there’s nothing left on your screen of the previous item. So if you drop [complete] something and go ‘No’ you might have realised you’ve done something wrong, or a customer wanted confirmation, and I’ve not routed it or anything. It’s gone off your screen and you’ve got no recollection of what that item was.
Accountability is enforced through requiring staff to check each other’s work. This is supposed to be anonymous, but the staff penetrated the numerical veil and subverted accountability by learning each other’s number. As a consequence, some staff felt that ‘error rates are amorphous’ for ‘some people are not being error logged for things that they would have been error logged for if somebody else had checked it’ (Andrew, PAPS). This and other fiddles (see McCabe, 2007) highlighted the ‘uncertain effects’ (Qu and Cooper, 2011: 359) of strategy discourses because frontline staff are also able to enrol ‘powerful allies’ (each other) to resist numericalization. The lives of the staff are nonetheless dominated by numbers: I get my monthly figures back, you know, I’m waiting for them I have to say. I mean everyone’s different aren’t they? Erm yer, I dread me monthly figures. (Sarah, PAPS)
The strategy discourse numericalized the staff to such an extent that they began to view their lives and the customers in a numerical and evidence-based way. A conversation between Louise, Sue and Greg all from the ‘Stops and Statements’ section, indicate how numbers seep into both employee subjectivity and actions:
In terms of assessing your performance what sort of things are they looking at?
figures
figures aren’t they yer
If you’ve had any errors that gets noted down and hopefully you’re supposed to add on if you’ve done anything extra …
Like I’ve had this fraud case that lasted me three hours I want that marking down, which is awful really
But you’ve got to have this evidence … It just pays you to record. I’m learning now you record everything
The staff are required to make a numerical project of themselves through documenting and recording ‘everything’ that they do. The numbers are a source of contention because when the staff encountered a problem, which prevented them from processing an item, they were not allocated any time for the additional work that the problem generated such as phoning a branch. In effect, a problem detracts from their performance, and so in this situation, the numbers work to their disadvantage:
I make a note. I put a line down to say that I’ve done one [a problem job] but I don’t know whether it’s counted
I was told whatever extras you put down unless there’s some spectacular reason for why you’ve done it, it won’t be counted
with change of address, if there’s a change of title it’s got to go back [to the branch]. It can take 5 minutes but you might as well have not done anything. (PAPS section)
The intensity surrounding numbers led to struggles over ‘minutes’ during each working day, which reflects the degree to which processes were broken down at the strategic level. On the mandate maintenance section, the staff are required to complete 90 signature card checks or cancel 125 cheques an hour. Although the strategists regarded this as an efficient way of working, it is problematic because as Andrew explained, the volume of work means that you cannot monitor your performance. This generates anxiety because ‘You think, am I going fast? Well, I’ve just spent 10 minutes staring out into space’ (PAPS). Andrew’s ‘daydreaming’ can be seen as a form of resistance through ‘disengagement’ (Prasad and Prasad, 1998: 237), and yet whether this is resistance is difficult to discern because the mundane nature of the work makes it hard to concentrate. The propensity to induce daydreaming can be seen as another inefficiency generated through the strategy discourse that viewed ‘human’ considerations ‘as being more or less outside strategic action and intervention’ (Skaebeak and Tryggestad, 2010: 119). These dynamics question the efficiency, objectivity and neutrality of the strategic discourse because it generated inefficiencies due to lost output and errors due to people switching off through boredom.
The emphasis on numbers can work against the staff, but it can also be used to their advantage as Kelly, from the mandate section explained, if you have ‘hit all your targets’ and ‘the manager doesn’t like yer, well you can just say look “I’m over 100%” and there’s nothing he can say about it’. In this sense, the numbers can be used to resist favouritism and work intensification. Numericalization does not simply serve management because both managers and staff sought to work the numbers to their advantage. Hence, the staff juggled figures when completing time-sheets, and so if they performed badly on one job, recorded less time against it. This supports the ‘indeterminacy of inscriptions’ (Qu and Cooper, 2011: 359) revealing that frontline staff are not passive recipients of strategy discourses. The staff used the ‘603 time’ allocated for toilet breaks and exercises to manipulate their performance, for instance, by not taking these breaks, which, of course, intensified their workload. Many staff allocated 5 minutes of ‘603 time’ to each hour of work time. This was preferred to recording every break (i.e. trip to the photo-copier) because this made it more difficult/timely to complete their time-sheets. If the staff spent too much time recording their activities, it reduced their productivity, and so it was not the case that ‘they did not want to report’ (Hohnen and Hasle, 2011: 1027) but more that they were constrained from doing so. As Nicky, from the Account Maintenance section put it, ‘You haven’t got the time to do it. They don’t allow you that time to write down the extra you are doing. So in a way they basically don’t really want to know’.
Numbers carry a disciplinary force because if targets are not met, the staff can lose their grades, which impacts on their pay. Nevertheless, there is a complex dynamic of control, consent and resistance at work, which calls into question the supposed objectivity and efficiency of a numbers-driven strategy discourse. It is these subtleties and inefficiencies which may be missed if the outcomes of strategic discourses for frontline employees are not considered: The system is going to be exploited. I mean it is by management because they will quote figures verbatim at us and then tell you it’s not important after they’ve hammered you into the ground. (Andrew, PAPS section)
Discussion and conclusion
This article has provided a number of insights into a particular strategy discourse. It has combined an analysis of ‘discourse’ in terms of localized discursive exchanges with an understanding of how strategic ‘Discourses’ serve to reproduce hierarchical inequalities (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000). It has sought to avoid a deterministic understanding of Discourse through de-naturalizing the language of strategy and by highlighting the lack of inevitability surrounding both strategic intentions and outcomes. That is to say, strategists did not have to see employees as numbers; different objectives could have produced different outcomes and post-implementation, QWL could still have been considered. Drawing on Foucauldian scholarship, I have focused on how some strategic discourses constitute strategists as dehumanized subjects who numericalize frontline staff and also how strategists dehumanize themselves through reproducing such discourses.
A condition and outcome of the asymmetrical power relations that the strategy discourse reproduced is managing ‘at a distance’ (Latour, 1987: 232) whereby strategists do not ‘see’ the staff that their strategies impinge upon or only see them as numbers rather than human beings. Latour (1987) did not refer to strategists but to scientists and navigators and largely focused on scientific knowledge and the processes, rather than the subjectivity, through which managing ‘at a distance’ occurs. By contrast, this article has applied such thinking to a work setting and it has sought to understand the implications of managing at a distance for strategists and employees. Numericalizing the other occurs through inscription devices such as ratios, writing business cases, modelling, scenario planning, plotting work flows that in isolation seem innocuous and yet in ‘combination’ (Justesen and Mouritsen, 2009: 987) exercise considerable power. They are the ‘micro-level features of financialization’ and, according to Cushen (2013: 315), debate around financialization has neglected frontline employees, so this article makes a contribution to that literature.
As we have seen, ‘discursive practices’ (Foucault, 1977) can be damaging because employees and strategists can be dehumanized through them. Nevertheless, as Ahrens and Chapman’s (2007) insights suggest, ‘control at a distance’ has to be ‘continually reworked’ (p. 14). In the case of Britlay Bank, this reworking did not occur through ‘ongoing debate’ as in a pluralistic setting because struggles over numbers reflected and reproduced the inequalities and antagonisms between managers and workers that were perpetuated through the strategy discourse. As we have seen, struggle is not just related to ‘how to generate the “numbers”’ (Whittle and Mueller, 2010: 641) but also to their impact on working lives. Nisim and Benjamin (2010) used the term ‘dehumanization’ to discuss the outsourcing of cleaning services; they argued that cleaners are transformed through outsourcing into a numerical value which is paid for ‘per area, per kilometre, per cleaned floor’ (p. 228). I have argued that it is the transformation of people into digits, which is critical to understanding the debilitating consequences of certain management discourses, hence the term ‘numericalization’.
Friere (1970) argued that ‘As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized … For the oppressors, “human beings” refers only to themselves; other people are “things”’ (pp. 38–40). This resonates with the findings of this case study; hence, we observed strategists referring to and representing employees as dehumanized ‘heads’ or numbers. The implication of Kelman’s (1973) theorizing is that through their ‘obedience’, strategists become bound by the routines of strategizing and so, like victimizers, they diminish what they could be as agents who can decide to do otherwise (p. 51). In the process, their membership of the community of work and indeed of humanity is stifled through their absence of care for others. According to Shahinpoor and Matt (2007), ‘suppressing dissent’ disavows the ‘dignity’ and ‘conscience’ of individuals, and so through their obedience to corporate norms, strategists not only dehumanized employees but also themselves (p. 42). One can clearly see how such cultures of conformity contributed to the 2008 global financial crisis for ‘one is either subtly or overtly forced to leave one’s conscience behind and become the organization man/woman’ (Shahinpoor and Matt, 2007: 43). A central concern of this article has been to provide strategists with insights into their actions and consciousness of the paths they tread so that they might submit their ‘convictions to close scrutiny and ongoing questioning’ (Barratt, 2008: 525). Alternative humanistic discourses are available and one was evident in this case study (see McCabe, 2007) but, as elsewhere (Cushen, 2013), it was a poor second and was contradicted by the strategy discourse.
The strategy discourse ‘produced’ (Foucault, 1977) strategists in a numerical way and Bauman (1990) identified similar dynamics in relation to the perpetrators of the Holocaust (p. 488) while Kelman (1973) referring to other massacres argues that bureaucrats ‘come to see their victims as bodies to count and enter into their reports, as faceless figures that will determine their productivity rates and promotions’ (p. 50). In the case of Britlay Bank, commands were issued in numerical, cost-based terms, which were absorbed and reproduced by strategists, who appeared not to see the human in the calculations. Watson’s (1995) findings partly refute this, for as a manager in his case study put it, ‘I talk about heads’ but ‘I know’ that ‘it’s people I’m talking about’ (p. 813). One could conclude, therefore, that to refer to people as ‘heads’ is simply part of management speak or the ‘normal discourse’ (Dick and Cassell, 2002: 968) that strategists engage in. In this sense, strategists may not be dehumanized but reproduce this discourse because it is part of the accepted mores of the business world. Nevertheless, the strategists still created working conditions that were dehumanizing for others and these actions reflected and reproduced a numericalized subjectivity in the sense that they acted and talked as if employees were numbers or costs rather than human beings.
Rose (1991) suggests that numbers confer ‘certainty’ and foster ‘detachment from feelings, passions and tumults’ (p. 682), while Denis et al. (2006) argued that it becomes ‘not they, but the numbers’ that are ‘responsible’ for the final decision (p. 368). Bauman (1990) made an additional point that through bureaucratic mechanisms, it is one’s ‘superiors’ that are believed to bear ‘the responsibility for’ their ‘subordinates’ actions’ (p. 488; see also Kelman, 1973: 39). These points and the process of numericalization help to explain why otherwise loving, caring people see only ‘heads’ or numbers when they engage with certain strategy discourses. Of course, economic vulnerabilities, career ambitions and professional managerial identities also play a role in this. Bauman (1990) argued that the ‘ideal of discipline’ is ‘total identification with the organization—which, in its turn, cannot but mean readiness to obliterate one’s own separate identity’ (p. 488). The strategists in this case, given their language and actions, appeared to have achieved total identification with the bank and its cost cutting priorities at least while enacting the strategy. In doing so, they distanced themselves from others, their humanity and the possibility of different business models. As Bauman (1990) argued, this is achieved through (1) the acceptance of orders, (2) participation in routine bureaucratic administration and (3) the dehumanizing or, what has been described here, as the numericalizing of others. It is important to recognize, however, that this is not an inevitable outcome as strategists have ‘choices’ to make, and so they can resist numericalization. Indeed, I have argued that the existing strategy could have been very different in terms of its implications for employees had the strategists reflected and acted upon its potentially debilitating impact on employees (i.e. low motivation, high error rates, resistance). There is then an economic justification aside from a humanistic one for alternative approaches and, in pursuing them, strategists can both humanize employees and themselves.
The obstacles to this are, however, considerable because strategists face pressures from each other over ‘resources’ and from investors whose preoccupation with ‘share price’ and ‘financial returns’ (see Cushen, 2013: 315) numericalizes strategists. Reflecting such pressures, Britlay’s CEO ‘authorized’ (Kelman, 1973: 30) a reduction in the cost–income ratio, and this became a ‘transcendent mission’ (p. 40) which elevated a numerical as opposed to human focused strategy. The bank’s routine systems and processes provided ‘repeated authorization’ (Kelman, 1973) to ensure that cost reduction remained the principle measure of success. To do otherwise, strategists would need to argue against established norms and authorities that they may regard as ‘legitimate’ (Kelman, 1973: 30) and through which they are normalized, rewarded and promoted. To do so is likely to prove problematic when strategists do not ‘see’ these norms due to normalization, become lost in micro-level ‘operational’ decisions (Kelman, 1973: 47) or reside in organizations where the ‘culture resists critique’ (see Shahinpoor and Matt, 2007: 41).
In these conditions, strategists’ ‘experience of being controlled may lead’ them ‘to feel less human themselves, and as a consequence see both themselves and other human beings as objects or machines’ (Moller and Deci, 2009: 44–45). Strategists are often distanced from those whom their strategies impact upon, and so they may see no reason to adopt a different approach. To do so may also prove difficult when strategists believe that they are fulfilling their contractual obligations, are acting efficiently and meeting their responsibilities to shareholders (see Bird, 1989: 80). These arguments only hold, however, if it is believed that F.W. Taylor or Henry Ford offer the best and only models that business can pursue. This article has indicated that even if this is believed to be the case, there are still choices to be made that can modify such models because aside from their inhumanity, inefficiencies, resistance and errors flow from them. To pursue another approach, strategists need to be able to see alternatives and to make the case for them or to be willing to listen to, and accommodate, different narratives.
During the fieldwork, interviewees were encouraged to engage in frank and open discussions, but as I worked at a business school, the interviewees may have represented themselves and their strategy in an impersonal way, thereby disguising any misgivings they may have had about its impact on employees. They may have preferred to keep to themselves any emotions or concerns they experienced while strategizing. They were, however, given ample opportunity to express them and what leapt out was that they appeared not to have considered the implications of the strategy in terms of its impact upon QWL. Nevertheless, it has to be recognized that ‘the real motivations of actors’ or their subjectivity ‘cannot be known’ (Rawls, 2008: 719). No doubt, strategists will deny that they are uncaring or unfeeling about frontline employees. In this sense, as one of the reviewers pointed out, it could be argued that I have constituted these strategists in a particular way through my representation of them. I would not deny this because all empirical accounts are partial constructions of a complex world. It could be argued that I have dehumanized strategists and yet I do not regard strategists as anything other than human nor did I enter the field with a view to classifying strategists as this or that type of subject.
Instead, I sought to understand what they were doing and how they accounted for their actions. The criticisms raised in this article are not just about what the strategists said but also about what they did; hence, they designed work that numericalized others and this was reflected in the experiences of frontline staff. It has to be acknowledged, however, that my reading of this is influenced by the post-structuralism of Foucault and labour process theory that surfaces certain issues and occludes others. Moreover, it is not possible to be everywhere at all times, and so one can only produce an incomplete account of any given setting. This highlights the limitations of this study, and it elucidates the need for detailed, longitudinal, observational, ethnographic research especially during strategic decision making processes. This may reveal that strategists are far less homogeneous (see Morales and Lambert, 2013) and more emotional (see Boedker and Chua, 2013) than I have represented them here; hence, they may anguish over decisions and privately lament the suffering that their strategies cause to others.
In terms of future research, it would be useful to focus in greater detail on the discursive practices through which people are transformed into numbers and the subjectivity of those who do the calculations. Ethnographic research would facilitate access to the language, emotions, discourses and conflicts surrounding the numericalizing of others. In Watson’s (1995) ethnographic research, the term ‘heads’ was sometimes used in an ironic way when managers ‘were clearly very unhappy and even hurt about making people redundant’ (p. 813). It would be illuminating, therefore, to explore instances where strategists have sought to avoid treating others as numbers. Future research could explore how strategists have sought to engage with those on the receiving end of strategy; it could follow different approaches over time to understand what strategists learn or fail to learn from the consequences of numericalization. We need to understand how strategic discourses can be resisted and although this study has considered some instances of resistance it would be useful to identify examples that challenge numericalization in a more fundamental way. This could help strategists to consider different options and those on the receiving end of strategy to mobilize so as to secure those options. There is some limited evidence which highlights such possibilities; hence, Morales and Lambert (2013) identified resistance among operations managers to accountants and even the ‘anticipation’ (see Skaerbaek and Tryggestad, 2010: 115) of resistance has been found to impinge upon strategic priorities.
To conclude, this article has explored a strategy discourse that dehumanized strategists and frontline staff and it has suggested that conditions could have been otherwise in relation to this strategy. One way to achieve this would be through strategists reflecting and acting upon the ends to which their endeavours are directed in human rather than just numerical terms. I have sought to instigate a more reflexive approach towards strategy for both practitioners and scholars. Many strategy scholars, like strategists, present their accounts as objective without reflecting upon or being open about the ends to which their accounts are directed. It is as if their accounts exclude nothing and provide a neutral/impartial representation of the world whereby a ‘business first’ orientation is equated with objectivity. Yet, if we are to avoid numericalizing others, it is necessary to reflect upon and be open about our own assumptions and the ends to which our research is directed.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The empirical research upon which this paper is based was part funded by the ESRC, grant number L125251061 – The Implementation of BPR in Financial Services.