O. Mallett
Informality and employment relationships in small firms: humour, ambiguity and straight-talking
Mallett, O.; Wapshott, R.
Authors
R. Wapshott
Abstract
This paper presents in-depth qualitative research on three small professional service firms whose owner-managers sought to introduce greater degrees of formality in their firms’ working practices and employment relationships. We focus on humour as an ambiguous medium of informality, yet viewed by owner-managers as a tool at their disposal. However, while early studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises support such a functionalist view, our findings indicate its significant limitations. We argue that humour obscures but does not resolve disjunctive interests and it remains stubbornly ambiguous and resistant to attempts to functionalize it. Our findings contribute to studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises by challenging its utility as a means of managerial control or employee resistance. They also contribute to studies of employment relationships by exploring humour's potentially disruptive influence within the formality–informality span, especially as small and medium-sized enterprises seek greater degrees of formalization, with implications for how those relationships are conducted and (re)negotiated on an ongoing basis.
Citation
Mallett, O., & Wapshott, R. (2014). Informality and employment relationships in small firms: humour, ambiguity and straight-talking. British Journal of Management, 25(1), 118-132. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00836.x
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Publication Date | Jan 1, 2014 |
Deposit Date | May 8, 2012 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 14, 2014 |
Journal | British Journal of Management |
Print ISSN | 1045-3172 |
Electronic ISSN | 1467-8551 |
Publisher | Wiley |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 25 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 118-132 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00836.x |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1476894 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(187 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Mallett, O. and Wapshott, R. (2014), Informality and Employment Relationships in Small Firms: Humour, Ambiguity and Straight-talking. British Journal of Management, 25 (1): 118–132, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00836.x. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
You might also like
Self-employment
(2016)
Book Chapter
Freelance Work
(2016)
Book Chapter
From entrepreneur to owner-manager
(2015)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search