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Alienation, Police Stories, and Percival

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  • John Luhman
  • Andy Nazario

Abstract

There are many people in organizations who have feelings of alienation; that is they feel they do not fit in, they get no meaning out of their work, they feel belittled or abused by their superiors or colleagues; they desire to break loose the masks they wear, or to find some sense of meaningfulness. In our paper, we demonstrate our assumption of alienation in the workplace by reviewing a collection of satirical and ironic organizational stories from police officers working at a county sheriff’s department. Our argument is that if it seems that alienation might not be resolved through organizational change efforts and interventions, or might not be resolved through radical change of the economic conditions of modern industrial life, then alienation might be changed through the aggregation of individual projects from below. We discuss the possibility of resolving alienation at the workplace by using the legend of Percival as an analogy. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Suggested Citation

  • John Luhman & Andy Nazario, 2015. "Alienation, Police Stories, and Percival," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 665-681, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:130:y:2015:i:3:p:665-681
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2264-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Banai, Moshe & Reisel, William D. & Probst, Tahira M., 2004. "A managerial and personal control model: predictions of work alienation and organizational commitment in Hungary," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 375-392.
    2. Gabriel, Yiannis, 2000. "Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198297062.
    3. Marjolein Lips-Wiersma & Lani Morris, 2009. "Discriminating Between ‘Meaningful Work’ and the ‘Management of Meaning’," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 88(3), pages 491-511, September.
    4. Macey, William H. & Schneider, Benjamin, 2008. "The Meaning of Employee Engagement," Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 3-30, March.
    5. Soane, Emma & Truss, Catherine & Alfes, Kerstin & Shantz, Amanda & Rees, Chris & Gatenby, Mark, 2012. "Development and application of a new measure of employee engagement: the ISA engagement scale," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 63486, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 1997. "New Directions for Organization Theory: Problems and Prospects," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195114348.
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    Cited by:

    1. Bailey, Catherine & Madden, Adrian, 2019. "“We’re not scum, we’re human”: Agential responses in the face of meaningless work," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 35(4).

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