LPT had already anticipated the idea of a shift to soft(er) controls. Burawoy
( 1985 ) argued that modern production regimes combined coercive mechanisms
with those directed at consent and limited forms of workplace citizenship. This was
followed by an inXuential paper by Ray ( 1986 ) that presented corporate culture as
the last frontier of control, enabling organizations to internalize controls and
generate emotional identiWcation—though she qualiWed this by admitting that
new controls operated alongside traditional ones, were internally contradictory,
and may not work or work outside particular contexts.
HRM propositions on changing controls have had wider resonance because they
share some characteristics with overlapping claims about the intent and outcomes
of new management practices made by some critical researchers with links to LPT
such as Willmott ( 1993 ) and Sewell ( 1998 ). Associated with ‘post-structuralist’ or
Foucauldian perspectives, the main argument sees corporate culture as an eVective
means of extending managerial control more congruent with postmodern times
and their emphasis on consumption and identity. Though the language of govern-
ance of the employee’s soul is critical, the HRM claim is repeated that modern
management focuses on the ‘insides’ or subjectivity of workers rather than their
manifest behaviors (Deetz 1992 ). Such arguments countered the optimistic gloss of
HRM notions of empowerment and teamwork, but reinforced the view that new
normative controls were seento work. Whilst, from Burawoy ( 1979 , 1985 ) onwards,
LPT recognized that consent can be generated from both worker and managerial
practices, what is implicitly shared across some HRM and post-structuralist com-
mentators is an assumption that management can shape identities in a way that
overcomes traditional bases of interest formation. Yet without an acknowledge-
ment of structured antagonism and divergent interests one is leftonlywith consent
and accommodation, and not control and resistance.
A double critique—of claims made on behalf of HRM and by post-structuralists—
was the explicit starting point of Thompson and Ackroyd’s ( 1995 )inXuential
article. But this critique developed into a more ambitious attempt to systematically
map contemporary worker actions across the domains of time, eVort, product, and
identity (Ackroyd and Thompson 1999 ). The concept of employee misbehavior,
though not without dispute within LPT, meant that LPT was better equipped to
address and move beyond the partial decline of formal organization and collectivist
industrial relations. Issues of culture and identity are not denied, but are seen as
new contested terrains, as illustrated in Taylor and Bain’s ( 2003 ) account of how
call center workers use humor and other informal action as a tool of resistance.
The conceptual weaknesses of soft control arguments have often been com-
pounded by a tendency to draw evidence primarily from managerial sources and to
confuse the formal capacities of technological and managerial systems with their
actual usage and eVectiveness. Such observations have been shared by a wide range
of more mainstream commentators on HRM. Survey and case study evidence
demonstrates limited attitudinal transformation and a predominance of behavioral
152 paul thompson and bill harley