Introduction

This chapter is the first of four chapters to put empirical flesh on the contextual skeleton outlined so far. Primary data drawn from a qualitative study of the service economy on Teesside will highlight the relationship between work and harm. Labour market restructure over the last four decades belongs to a clear political economic rationale; the imperative and priority afforded to growth and profitability via the neoliberal dispensation. Pemberton (2016) notes neoliberal capitalism to be more harmful than other ‘varieties of capitalism’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001) yet acknowledges that capitalism itself generates a particularly problematic set of social relations. The previous chapter identified capitalism unencumbered by its regulatory sleeve, reflected in macro-level shifts towards consumer markets and more recently debt consolidation (Streeck, 2016). In this context, consumer spending is expected to continue as services, jobs and public spending suffering death by a thousand cuts. While the underlying logic of capitalism and its ‘coercive laws of competition’ (Marx, 1990 [1867]) endure, its neoliberal ‘spirit’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005) continues to seek growth above all else; released from the regulatory sleeve of post-war ‘embedded liberalism’, the hegemonic political economic force in contemporary society sustains an emphasis on profitability, competition and freedom of choice. This systemic violence is underpinned by a willingness to inflict harm, directly or indirectly, through often entirely legal processes. We have seen what this means for labour markets at an abstract level: a reconfiguration away from manufacturing and industry in favour of service and consumer markets; a dynamic shift from security to flexibility; the reduction of employee protections; low pay; insecurity; and growth in ‘non-standard’ forms of work, including on-demand work.

At the meso level, organisations and management structures exist within a competitive market place typified by low-growth. The coercive laws of competition compel firms to seek growth and profit at all costs otherwise rivals will eat up market share and threaten their survival. Transcendental materialism suggests that the subject, in search of fixity in the world, is shaped by the prevailing culture and values of society, and then acts in the world to subsequently shape and influence the attendant Symbolic Order. In this sense, organisational culture shapes and is in turn moulded by those individuals and companies that seek to compete and survive in precarious circumstances.