Changing Work Experiences and Practices: From Black Coats to Service Smiles

In this chapter, we explore the ways in which companies have sought to reshape and control employees in accordance with strategic and consumer discourses. Some observers have linked these changes to certain dimensions of the discourse of ‘strategic HRM (human resource management)’ (e.g. Storey, 1995; Cressey and Scott, 1992). Indeed, Personnel practitioners in the industry have, like those in IT and marketing discussed earlier, sought to transform themselves into ‘strategic’ (HRM) actors. However, this is not our main focus here (see Boxall, 1996; Purcell, 1995; Watson, 1995). Rather, we wish to draw out in more detail the organizational changes discussed in the previous two chapters and what they mean for the nature and experience of employment in financial service companies. In doing so, we consider the ways in which subjects respond to new and emerging discourses. In particular, we explore what is probably the main aspect of change and, given some variation across organizations and sectors in the field (Egan and Shipley, 1995; Storey et al., 1997), one that appears to be more or less common – the shift to the employee as market/consumer-oriented and associated changes in forms of management control.