Organizational Imaginaries

Tempering Capitalism and Tending to Communities through Cooperatives and Collectivist Democracy

Katherine K. Chen, Victor Tan Chen, Katherine K. Chen, Victor Tan Chen, Katherine K. Chen, Victor Tan Chen

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781838679910
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Development
• Index: Business

Winner of the inaugural 2022 Joyce Rothschild Book Prize from the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.

Our everyday lives are structured by the rhythms, values, and practices of various organizations, including schools, workplaces, and government agencies. These experiences shape common-sense understandings of how 'best' to organize and connect with others. Today, for-profit managerial firms dominate society, even though their practices often curtail information-sharing and experimentation, engender exploitation, and exclude the interests of stakeholders, particularly workers and the general public.

This Research in the Sociology of Organizations volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or conceptions of organizational possibilities, with a focus on collectivist-democratic organizations that operate in capitalist markets but place more authority and ownership in the hands of stakeholders other than shareholders. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees:

• Emphasize social values over profit
• Are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders
• Employ democratic forms of managing their operations
• Have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments

Organizational Imaginaries explores how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. By ensuring that organizations ultimately support and serve broader communities, collectivist-democratic organizing can move societies closer to hopeful 'what if' and 'if only' futures. This volume is essential for researchers and students seeking innovative and egalitarian approaches to business and management.

Part I

Working: Enacting Collectivist-Democratic Practices Through Everyday Interactions

The Emotional Dynamics of Workplace Democracy: Emotional Labor, Collective Effervescence, and Commitment at Work

Katherine Sobering

Abstract

Collectivist organizations like worker cooperatives are known for requiring high levels of participation, striving toward community, and making space for affective relationships among their members. The emotional intensity of such organizations has long been considered both an asset and a burden: while personal relationships may generate solidarity and sustain commitment, interpersonal interactions can be emotionally intense and, if left unmanaged, can even lead to organizational demise. How do collectivist-democratic organizations manage emotions to create and sustain member commitment? This study draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a worker-run, worker-recuperated business in Argentina to analyze the emotional dynamics of a democratic workplace. First, the author shows how members of the cooperative engage in emotional labor not only in their customer service, but also through their participation in lateral management and democratic governance. An analysis of individual feeling management, however, provides only a partial picture of emotional dynamics. Drawing on the theory of interaction ritual chains, the author argues that workplace practices like meetings and events can produce collective emotions that are critical to maintaining members’ commitment to the group. Finally, the author shows how interaction ritual chains operate in the BAUEN Cooperative, tracing how symbols of shared affiliation circulate through interactions and are reactivated through the confrontation of a common threat. The author concludes by reflecting on implications for future research on emotions in collectivist organizations and participatory workplaces more broadly.

Keywords: Emotions; emotional labor; collective effervescence; commitment; workplace democracy; worker-recuperated businesses

On a balmy day in November 2008, members of the BAUEN Cooperative busily prepared for an event. Just five years before, a small group of hospitality workers had occupied a 20-story hotel in downtown Buenos Aires after their employer filed for bankruptcy. They eventually formed a worker cooperative and reopened the hotel to the public, all while fighting to legalize their use of the property. In the years since, the BAUEN Cooperative had become one of the country’s most iconic “worker-recuperated businesses” – firms closed by their private owners, occupied by former workers, and restarted under worker control (Ruggeri, 2009).¹

Unlike the usual gatherings hosted in the hotel’s theater or ballrooms, workers had planned a mobilization that would fill the streets with supporters, inviting musicians, activists, and politicians to speak on behalf of the cooperative. After lunch, a group of workers walked into the busy street in front of the hotel and started to redirect traffic to make space for the students, workers, and sympathizers gathering on the sidewalk. Inside the hotel, members of the cooperative also mobilized, changing from their work uniforms into T-shirts emblazoned with the cooperative’s name and logo and various organizing slogans (“Struggle, culture, work,” “Yes to expropriation!”). Over the next five hours, a stage was constructed in the middle of the street, and people spilled out of the hotel’s lobby to watch musical acts that were punctuated by passionate speeches in support of the cooperative’s use of the downtown hotel. While a handful of members stayed inside to tend to guests and keep a watchful eye on the facilities, many others left their day jobs to participate in the rally.

The energy in the crowd that day was palpable, as members of the cooperative organized, participated, and observed the outpouring of support for their cause. As Los Incorrectos – a rock band made up of members of the cooperative – took the stage, I joined a small group to document the event, snapping photos of the growing crowd as rush hour traffic died down and the sun set over the urban skyline. During the last musical act, a famous Argentine singer pledged his support to the workers’ cause before performing a moving ballad about memories. Members of the cooperative were dotted throughout the crowd, surrounded by hundreds of coworkers, friends, family, and other supporters. Standing directly in front of the stage, a group of workers looked overcome by the outpouring of solidarity, holding each other’s hands as tears streamed down their faces.

With the growth of the service sector and the “emotional turn” in the social sciences, scholars of work and organizations have paid increasing attention to emotions (Bericat, 2016; Lively, 2006; Wharton, 2014). Much research on emotion focuses on how organizations manage individual feelings and the conditions and consequences of emotional labor, whereby workers manage their feelings according to an organization’s norms in exchange for pay (Hochschild, 2012; Wharton, 2009). Scholarship on team-based (Kunda, 2006) and worker-owned organizations (Hoffmann, 2016), however, suggest that a focus on individual emotions provides only partial view of these dynamics (Meanwell, Wolfe, & Hallett, 2008). Organizations also manage collective emotions through rituals that articulate what workers should think and feel (Van Maanen & Kunda, 1989). According to the theory of interaction rituals, organizations can use rituals to generate feelings of emotional resonance that create group solidarity, or what Durkheim (1912/1995) called “collective effervescence” (Collins, 2004).

Worker cooperatives – organizations owned and operated by their members to meet a common goal or need – offer an extreme case to examine the dynamics of individual and collective emotions at work. Typologized as “collectivist-democratic organizations” (Rothschild-Whitt, 1979), worker cooperatives require the participation of their members and often intentionally make space for affective relationships. This emotional intensity has long been considered both an asset and a burden. While personal relationships may be more authentic and satisfying in such workplaces, interpersonal tension can be emotionally draining and, when left unmanaged, can even lead members to exit the organization (Mansbridge, 1980). An organization’s ability to manage emotions is thus critical to maintaining commitment among its members (Jasper, 2011; Jussila, Byrne, & Tuominen, 2012; Kanter, 1968, 1972a, 1972b). We know very little, however, about how worker cooperatives support feelings of loyalty and approval that sustain commitment over time.

Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this study analyzes the emotional dynamics of workplace democracy in the BAUEN Cooperative, which operated a worker-run, worker-recuperated hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. First, I show how members of the cooperative managed their emotions not only in the labor process, but also through their participation in lateral management and democratic governance. Second, I examine how organizational practices like group meetings and events generated collective emotions. Viewing practices of workplace democracy as interaction rituals, I argue, helps explain how organizations can produce and sustain feelings that support commitment among members. Third, I show how interaction ritual chains operated in the BAUEN Cooperative, tracing how symbols of shared affiliation were produced and reactivated through the confrontation of a common threat.

The study of emotions at work has been dominated by research on emotional labor, which focuses on the management of individual feelings in organizations. This study examines not only how workers manage individual feelings, but also how organizations use rituals to produce collective emotions at work. It also contributes to research on organizations, showing how strong organizational cultures develop and operate in democratic contexts. Finally, it advances research on collectivist organizations by theorizing practices of workplace democracy as interaction rituals that can reframe the meanings of everyday work practices.

Emotions at Work

Emotions refer to “one’s personal expression of what one is feeling in a given moment, an expression that is structured by social convention, by culture” (Gould, 2009, p. 20; see also Goodwin & Pfaff, 2001). In contrast to affect, which “is unfixed, unstructured, noncoherent, and nonlinguistic,” emotions arise in the process of naming a feeling from an unstructured affective state (Gould, 2009, p. 20). In her landmark study of flight attendants, Hochschild (2012) argues that emotions are not simply the reflections of authentic feelings, but the managed expression of those feelings based on their social context. Emotional labor thus requires “the coordination of mind and feeling” as an individual works “to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others” (Hochschild, 2012, p. 7). Workers engage in emotional labor through “surface acting” – when they pretend to feel something they do not feel – and “deep acting” – when they induce themselves to change their feelings. Once evoked, emotions feedback into themselves and are amplified through interpersonal interactions (Hallett, 2003a).

Although few studies explicitly examine emotional dynamics in collectivist organizations, existing research suggests that these organizations have heightened demands for emotional labor. In worker cooperatives, for example, members are equal owners of the organization and participate in democratic decision-making. This shared governance requires them to engage in intra-organizational emotional labor that goes well beyond simply doing their jobs (Hoffmann, 2016). Such high levels of participation in decision-making can become “emotionally threatening” because of the potential for interpersonal conflict and face-to-face rejection (Rothschild-Whitt, 1979, p. 514; see also Mansbridge, 1980). While some members may exit the group as a result, others respond by exercising their voice and working for internal change through participation at work (Hirschman, 1970).

This social constructionist approach to emotion emphasizes the role of culture in understanding how people make sense of, and act on, unspecified affective states (Hochschild, 2012; Turner, 2009). In organizations, culture refers to the negotiated orders that emerge from interactions, which include “articulated rules for thoughts and feelings” (Hallett, 2003b; Kunda, 2006, p. 7). Feeling rules guide when, where, and how to feel emotions, while framing rules “ascribe definitions or meanings to situations” (Hochschild, 1979, p. 566). As workplaces that, in theory, adopt a value-rational orientation and make space for expanded emotional expression, collectivist organizations may redefine these rules. Research suggests that feeling rules can vary between different organizational cultures (Hallett, 2003b). In her study of four worker cooperatives in the UK, Hoffmann (2016) finds that members report the freedom to express emotions like anger and enthusiasm that are not allowed in conventional workplaces. If higher-status individuals in conventional organizations are protected from the negative emotions of their subordinates – benefiting from what Hochschild (2012) calls “status shields” – emotional feedback may be different in organizations like cooperatives that attempt to reduce status differentials (Sobering, 2019b).

Organizations also seek to elicit emotions to develop positive feelings that may increase worker efficiency, reduce turnover, and generally cultivate organizational “citizenship” behaviors (Hodson, 2001). Emotions are thus intimately linked to what Kunda (2006) calls the “age-old managerial dilemma: how to cause members to behave in ways compatible with organizational goals” (p. 11). Emotions play a key role in explaining how and why a person aligns their self with an organization (Jasper, 2011). In contrast to bureaucratic work organizations that use rules and rational authority to control workers, organizations with “strong cultures” rely on normative control through workers’ “internal commitment, strong identification with company goals, [and] the intrinsic satisfaction [of] work” (Kunda, 2006, p. 11).

Research on collectivist-democratic organizations suggests that the emotional ties that bind people together are crucial to maintaining commitment (Kanter, 1972b; Meyer & Allen, 1991). In her study of communes in the United States, Kanter (1972a) theorizes that commitment involves not only an instrumental link – a sense that the individual directly benefits from the organization – but also affective and moral connections that generate meaningful social relationships and reinforce the norms and values of group membership. In worker cooperatives, members invest in the organization not only because it is the source of their economic li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• “What If” and “If Only” Futures Beyond Conventional Capitalism and Bureaucracy: Imagining Collectivist and Democratic Possibilities for Organizing
• Part I Working: Enacting Collectivist-Democratic Practices Through Everyday Interactions
• Part II Networking: Connecting Communities through Collectivist-Democratic Practices
• Part III Reworking: Challenging and Transforming Capitalist Economies through Collectivist-Democratic Practices
• Index