Objective Autonomy

Autonomy and control over the organisation of work and its content are paramount for human flourishing and meaningful work, as passionately argued by the classical social and economic theorists, such as Karl Marx and Adam Smith, and modern sociologists, like Axel Honneth and Richard Sennett. Defining the parameters of objective autonomy as an integral part of meaningful waged work under capitalism is an ambitious, potentially ambiguous, undertaking if we continue to follow the politics of working life path that we have set out in the first part of this book. Indeed, the celebration of autonomy by the aforementioned authors comes with the important caveat that work under capitalism offers no ground for experiencing autonomy as freedom from domination. On the contrary, the social structure of waged work, the prevalent division of labour and capitalist companies’ instrumental means and ends subjugate the interests, knowledge and needs of the worker. From this perspective it is coercion and lack of freedom, and not autonomy, that manifest themselves in the distinct objective dimensions of wage labour.

This section argues that even though autonomy as ‘substantial freedom, independence, and discretion’ at work (Hackman and Oldham, Reference Hackman and Oldham1975:162) does not exist in the capitalist labour process, a relative, bounded form of autonomy may. It is relative because it emerges from the formal organisation of work and is therefore a consciously designed feature of the labour process that is delegated by management with the purpose of enhancing profitability and efficiency. Thus, objective autonomy is not the opposite of control and coercion. It is, indeed, never far from the reach of managerial control and is at the heart of management’s interest in enhancing efficiency and profitability. This is illustrated by the concept of the indeterminacy of labour, a term that is at the core of Labour Process Theory. Generally, the indeterminacy of labour captures the contingency and variability of labour power, pointing towards the challenges the employer faces when aiming to transform raw labour power into ‘labour profitable production’ (Thompson, Reference Thompson1989:242). The transformation is a challenge as the precise quantity and quality of effort to be extracted from workers in the labour process cannot be determined before workers are contracted by the employer. This is why a work–effort bargain between the employer, workers and other corporate agents, such as unions and employer associations, establishes binding ‘standards of efforts’ (Smith, Reference Smith2006:390). These standards of efforts are subject to ongoing negotiations and, indeed, conflicts in the light of the dynamic relationship between capital and labour and their embeddedness in the changing political, economic and technological contexts. In order to ensure that ‘standards of efforts’ are met by workers, organisations design an array of managerial control practices. It could be argued that since it is of the utmost importance to capitalist organisations that workers meet the performance criteria, it is less important whether they do so because they are closely monitored via direct control or incentivised by rules and norms of bureaucratic control. As important as this point is, it does, admittedly, simplify the matter. Managerial control forms are not all-encompassing; they shift and turn with the interactions of Corporate Agents. The finding that the most common goals of organisations, such as efficiency and commitment, profitability and motivation, and innovation and predictability are not compatible with each other further complicates this. The incompatibility trickles down into the widely discussed contradiction management inevitably faces when managing workers. The contradiction encodes the tension-ridden exercise of displaying authority and applying control over workers, while also relying on their cooperation and motivation to meet work–effort targets. Clearly, the intensity of the contradiction varies, depending on the supply and demand dynamics in product and labour markets, industrial relations and the skills, processes and qualifications involved in the labour process

The indeterminacy of labour and the contradictions that are tacitly recognised in managerial control regimes exercise a profound influence on the control–autonomy paradox. One implication of this for the dimension of objective autonomy is that eliminating any form of decision-making and independent activity on the shop floor is neither possible nor in the best interest of work organisations. In line with Friedman’s (Reference Friedman1977) notion of ‘responsible autonomy’, objective autonomy reflects managers’ awareness of the potential benefits, and for some positions and occupations necessity, of granting workers enhanced responsibilities, opportunities for self-initiative, task autonomy and so on. In this respect objective autonomy is not a distinct managerial strategy in its own right that opposes managerial control techniques per se, but rather a complementary feature that stands in contrast to direct control, but not necessarily to bureaucratic or normative control. In this respect, objective autonomy emerges out of the inherent contradictions and tensions of the capitalist labour process. In fact, the contradictions and tensions are translated into the nature and character of objective autonomy. They come to the fore in Friedman’s (Reference Friedman1977) and Fox’s (Reference Fox1974) observation that in times of tight labour markets, high product demand and strong Corporate Agents representing worker interests, management tends to loosen direct and technological control practices and offer more positions with ‘high discretion’ work patterns. Both authors suggest that management decides to enhance workers’ autonomy primarily in order to co-opt workers and thereby avoid worker resistance and maintain, as a consequence, control over the labour process. This culminates in the thesis that the management of Corporate Agents’ resistance in the labour process by increasing autonomy at work is a central strategy of the managerial control regime. It is debateable whether management prioritises control over efficiency, so that control trumps autonomy regardless of whether such decisions cause decreasing levels of labour efficiency, or whether choices about intensifying control or granting autonomy are not based on alleged efficiency criteria alone, but are also about increasing options for organising work in the interest of capital (Thompson and Laaser, Reference Thompson and Laaser2021; Vidal, Reference Vidal2020). Friedman (Reference Friedman1977:78) takes the middle way, suggesting that responsible autonomy is not an integral part of a humanisation of work philosophy, but aims to ‘harness the adaptability of labour power by giving workers leeway and encouraging them to adapt to changing situations in a manner beneficial to the firm. To do this top managers give workers status, authority and responsibility. Top managers try to win their loyalty, and co-opt their organisations to the firm’s ideals (that is, the competitive struggle) ideologically’. In a similar vein, we conceptualise objective autonomy as encompassing strategies, practices and relations that management consciously designs and integrates into the formal organisation of work with the aim to secure and obscure surplus value. The more detailed features of objective autonomy at the workplace are influenced by the dynamics that emerge from the relationship between capital and labour more broadly and the work effort bargain at the workplace level between formal Corporate Agents. Yet, we suggest that many occupations, especially professional jobs, feature significant levels of objective autonomy, even though those who perform it are not formal or informal Corporate Agents and are not threatening the employer with resistance. Rather, as Goldthorpe (Reference Goldthorpe2000) has contended in reference to professional and administrative roles, job autonomy is an inevitable feature of occupations that are difficult for management to monitor and assess. Nevertheless, this does not change the character and orientation of objective autonomy, which remains an organisational attempt to organise a labour process in which workers meet the performance expectations of the owner of production, do not challenge the legitimacy of management or even question their ownership over the product and process.

In order to capture objective autonomy in a variety of jobs and sectors, we distinguish between two different types of objective autonomy, namely: autonomy at the job control level and autonomy at the level of having voice over working conditions. At the job control level, autonomy entails opportunities for workers to independently exercise skill and judgement throughout the different stages of production or service creation (Gallie, Reference Gallie, Yeoman, Bailey, Madden and Thompson2019; Hodson, Reference Hodson2001). In particular, this rests on degrees of freedom workers have in making choices, on their own or as part of self-directed work teams, about the tools and methods for their work, the sequence of the necessary processes involved, as well as the rhythm and pace of work (Breaugh, Reference Breaugh1999; Felstead et al., Reference Felstead, Fuller, Jewson and Unwin2009). The reference to ‘degrees’ of freedom and choice denotes that objective autonomy is designed and situated within the confines of the instrumental logic of capitalist organisations. This is why objective autonomy does not represent freedom from domination.

Nevertheless, autonomy at the job control level is an essential source of meaningful work, as it allows workers to exercise authority over their work and the discretion to combine planning and execution in a way that permits them to apply their capacity for autonomous judgment and decision-making. Consequently, these discretionary methods offer opportunities for the development of intellectual capacities and technical skills (Yeoman, Reference Yeoman2014b). Or, as Edwards (Reference Edwards1979:147) puts it: ‘It is not immaterial, however, in deciding whether workers have autonomy in their jobs. Alienated labor – workers forced to work according to the capitalist’s criteria – is alienated no less because it has internalized these criteria, and its consequences are no less damaging to the workers.’

Certainly, features of objective autonomy are at the heart of so-called post-Fordist managerial strategies, such as ‘high commitment work practices’ (Walton, Reference Walton, Walton and Lawrence1985) or ‘flexible specialization’ (Piore and Sabel, Reference Piore and Sabel1984) frameworks that aim to establish high trust and high commitment work environments. Yet, work organisations that are characterised by a high level of objective autonomy at the job control level can nevertheless exercise a range of indirect constraints on workers’ freedom. Examples are the controls that are inscribed in technology that narrow down the options available to workers and performance management systems that incentivise certain working practices and approaches. However, these indirect constraints can be addressed by objective autonomy at the level of labour voice. This is visible in the relation between performance and pay, staffing, the workings of the internal labour market, working time, work–life balance dimensions as well as training and learning opportunities. If and how objective autonomy manifests itself at the level of worker voice depends to a significant degree on the institutional context in which the workplace regime is embedded. In coordinated and regulated market economies, Corporate Agents representing labour tend to be more widespread and dominant, pushing for the implementation of and adherence to worker voice. This endeavour tends to be supported by labour laws and systems of collective bargaining that protect workers to some degrees and institutionalise worker voice. In turn, in liberal market economies, where voice and choice in working arrangements is less supported at the regulatory level, and where labour is less strongly organised, autonomy in the form of having a voice over working conditions is fragile. Having a voice over working conditions contributes to meaningful work, as it offers opportunities for workers within the realm of necessity, coercion and strain, to express their vested interests by having a say over how, when and to what degree their capacities are deployed at work. It integrates a degree of self-determination and authority in the labour process and sets barriers to employers’ appropriation of their labour power.

Identifying job control and worker voice as two dimensions of objective autonomy allows us to understand these dimensions as connected, but essentially independent layers of meaningfulness that are shaped by different managerial decisions. For objective autonomy to be intact and strong, both dimensions of autonomy need to be present, but the components are not of equal importance: If workers have a voice over employment conditions but lack autonomy at the job control level, then objective autonomy is nevertheless considered absent. This is because having a voice over particular working conditions does not make up for the lack of space for self-determination and independent thinking.

Subjective Autonomy

The notion of subjective autonomy rests on the assumption that the formal organisation and the managerial control strategies it utilises are far from being an all-encompassing regime. The indeterminacy of labour, as elaborated in the discussion about objective autonomy, opens up opportunities for workers to appropriate dimensions of the formal organisation and the labour process and to pursue their vested interests as informal Corporate Agents. The tension between the power of the owners of production and the agentic powers of workers features strongly in Braverman’s thesis (1974:96) that worker’s ‘critical, intelligent and conceptual faculties, no matter how deadened or diminished, always remain in some degree’. Braverman claims that workers’ agentic powers are so strong that even though the capitalist mode of production is consistently extended to habituate and subordinate the worker, the ‘hostility of workers to the degenerated forms of work which are forced upon them continues as a subterranean stream [and …] expresses itself in the unbounded cynicism and revulsion which large numbers of workers feel about their work’ (1974:104). It is the idea of employees’ agentic powers as an irresistible core that forms the backbone of subjective autonomy. But whereas Braverman understands workers’ critical faculties, if activated and organised, as pathways to workplace conflicts between capital and labour that will eventually shake the foundations of the capitalist labour process, the dimension of subjective autonomy is open in terms of the direction worker actions and relationships can take. Based on the differentiation between formal and informal Corporate Agency, we argue that the strength and direction subjective autonomy can take at work depends on the particular workplace regime it is situated in, on the relationship between the relevant formal Corporate Agents and whether workers have organised as informal Corporate Agents. In this respect, subjective autonomy is home to a wide range of interests that can be located along the control-oriented resistance–consent continuum. Nevertheless, considering the nature of waged work under capitalism and its embeddedness in the structured antagonism between capital and labour, subjective autonomy has the strong tendency to be in opposition to the formal organisation and managerial interests.

In this vein, subjective autonomy requires that workers overcome their status as Primary Agents and develop, as well as subscribe to, the principles of mutuality and solidarity that characterise the ‘We’ of (in)formal Corporate Agents. Corporate Agency is essential for the realisation of subjective autonomy as it bundles workers’ agentic powers, enabling them to develop and follow their own rules and values, creating a protected, self-regulated space within the formal organisation that buffers the instrumental demands of the formal organisation. Therein, subjective autonomy rests on powers that are the workers’ own. And yet, the subjective autonomy in the realm of waged work stands in a dialectical relationship to the formal organisation of work. It emerges from a multi-layered process between employees that encompasses their interaction, identification and interpretation of their work and its conditions as Corporate Agents. In parallel to Lysgaard’s (2001) concept of worker collectivity, subjective autonomy rests on workers reaching similar conclusions about their work and their situatedness in the labour process. This process represents the ground on which employees’ vested interests flourish and activities become co-ordinated. If these conditions persist over time, a state of subjective autonomy emerges that reverses the original causality by shaping the formal organisation and the process that gave rise to it. Through subjective autonomy that represents, essentially, the ‘thick cultural ensembles of their own making’ (Vallas, Reference Vallas2006:1709), workers can not only gain protection from the one-sided demands of the formal organisation, but also appropriate organisational processes and spaces and push back their subordination and objectification. In this vein, subjective autonomy can positively influence the workers’ position in the formal work–effort bargain struggle that takes place at the level of objective autonomy by representing an informal force that the employer needs to engage with, particularly if workers’ interests and identities are opposed to employers’ demands and expectations. Subjective autonomy, therefore, is driven by employees’ positive impulse to appropriate their work and its social relationships by the construction of an independent system of social meaning. The latter grants them opportunities for defending and extending their material and social interests vis-à-vis Formal Corporate Agents that represent the interests of the employer. Consequently, subjective autonomy includes, but also goes beyond, the idea of an implicit stream of oppositional resources. It delineates a form of self-organisation that is independent from, but not unaffected by, the formal organisation and its demands.

Clearly, the power of subjective autonomy depends on the formal organisation of work and if, as well as how, objective autonomy is structured within the labour process. This position is clarified with the distinction that Ackroyd and Thompson (Reference Ackroyd and Thompson2022) make between outward- and inward-looking self-organisations. As discussed in Chapter 4, when interests dominate meaning, the outcome is an outward-looking self-organisation that establishes autonomy by pursuing material interests and focussing on self-protection against managerial abuse, while also opposing other informal Corporate Agents that could challenge the structure of the self-organisation. Following on, informal practices and relations of workers that are externally directed extend workers’ autonomy by establishing, and respectively enhancing, the degree of control they have over the pace, content and structure of work activities, their conditions and wider relations. In this way, externally directed practices include a wide range of practices that often have an oppositional, and sometimes consensual, character. These practices include internal work-rate setting, encoded for example in shop floor games that contribute to an informal bargaining between work groups and management over material rewards, but also practices of time-wasting, pilferage and soldiering. In this way, outward-looking practices seek to informally transform the formal conditions of work, whether it is by taking more or longer breaks, slowing down the pace in order to avoid exhaustion or to pursue non-work related activities at work. The sense of self-determination that employees seek to gain in the process can contribute to their experience of meaningful work as it combats the experience of self-estrangement through control. At the same time, externally oriented practices can also feature conflicts between co-workers over the pace of work, extension of oppositional practices, such as pilferage, and can in this way work against the more solidarity-inspired understanding of the worker collectivity. A prominent illustration of this comes from the aforementioned Michael Burawoy (Reference Burawoy1979), whose Manufacturing Consent illustrates the meaning workers derive from shop floor games that they create as a response to the organisation of factory work as piecework. However, these shop floor games do not prioritise the social interaction between co-workers over the actual work, but structure the game around the productivity of groups of workers and individuals with the competition for financial rewards at its heart. The title Manufacturing Consent encodes how subjective autonomy can be achieved through informal self-organisation, while also generating compliance with management’s performance expectations.

Inward-looking self-organisations, on the other hand, place meaning over interests and engage in rites and rituals that enhance group identity, foster integration in self-organisations, emphasise internal norms and hierarchies and establish principles of mutuality. Here, subjective autonomy is established through the ongoing identification and monitoring of Informal Corporate Agents’ norms, values and behaviour. A wide range of ethnographic workplace research demonstrates how work groups experience autonomy within their restrictive roles in the workplace, dulling routines and otherwise mentally exhausting practices by developing and infusing ritualised social interactions into the labour process that provide distinct meanings to the work group. Donald Roy’s (Reference Roy1960) celebrated research on ‘Banana time’ in the routine work of a factory illustrates how the work group informally separates the working day into periods that each contain a specific set of behaviour and attitudes that evolve around jokes, teasing, eating and drinking. Overcoming thereby ‘the beast of monotony’, these practices also establish rules for engaging with work in the workers’ own way and create an informal social order at work. Another case in point are the actions of employees that enhance the experience of the meaning of their work while also benefiting the job itself. Arguably, this offers parallels to the concept of job crafting, which has gained prominence in the meaningful work discourse. Referring broadly to worker-initiated changes to the job that benefit the worker as well as the work (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, Reference Wrzesniewski and Dutton2001), job crafting operates at the level of the job task and is not motivated by the politics of working life. Here, workers prioritise, add, modify, eliminate or enrich job tasks based on their personal desires and interests. We agree that employees have a strong interest in enhancing subjective autonomy at work through modifying, inventing and abandoning work tasks, but emphasise that it is a political and collective act (Hodson, Reference Hodson2001; Karlsson Reference Karlsson2012). Indeed, research on the appropriation of work tasks has a long-standing tradition in the sociology of work that puts the spotlight on how workers become socialised at the workplace, learning how to adapt to the environment and their work (Ackroyd and Thompson, Reference Ackroyd and Thompson2022). This process includes learning from each other how to bend and alter tasks, prioritise practices that are experienced as more interesting and purposeful than others and derive meaningfulness from these work activities. Clearly, inward-oriented practices are not meaningful for all workers, particularly when they involve violent and degrading habits, such as humiliating new recruits or discriminating against the characteristics of individuals for the sake of the group’s identity. This informs the qualification that subjective autonomy contributes to meaningful work only when employees are Informal Corporate Agents by their own choice and consider it a positive force. We concur with Ackroyd and Thompson (Reference Ackroyd and Thompson2022) that subjective autonomy is at its strongest when workers’ self-organisation is both inward- and outward-looking. This allows them to negotiate the material conditions of their work, distinguish themselves as a group with distinct vested interests, enhance their agentic powers in the process and establish the principles of mutuality and solidarity. The combination of both orientations serves to build a strong and balanced form of subjective autonomy. Consequently, it is through self-organisation that workers exercise their agentic powers and assert their autonomy in opposition to the control-oriented and instrumental nature of the formal organisation.

Objective Dignity

The previous discussion presents dignity as having normative, political and social aspects. A conceptualisation of the objective dimension of dignity in relation to meaningful waged work needs to bring these aspects together. Karl Polanyi’s influential The Great Transformation (1985) offers an important step in that direction. Even though dignity is not an overriding analytical category in Polanyi’s work, it is implicitly interwoven into his exploration of the construction of a market society. Indeed, in The Great Transformation and selected essays an understanding of dignity as an essential human value that amplifies the worth of each individual, the essence of ‘brotherhood’, democratic participation and the irrefutable right for livelihood shine through (1985:176). Arguably, aspects of the dignity concepts of Collier, Bieri and Mann are bundled in these descriptions. Polanyi understands the dignity of people to be in tension with the principles of a market society. In brief, he asserts that ever since the early years of capitalism political and economic forces push for a liberalisation of capitalist markets and an extension of market logics into social, that is, non-market, areas. A consequence of this is that labour is treated as if it were a commodity that can be bought and sold on markets.

Polanyi famously captures this destructive dogma by rendering labour, together with land and money, as a ‘fictitious commodity’ that cannot be exchanged on a self-regulated market without violating the dignity of its bearers and destroying them in the process. Therein, labour markets and the labour process, in order to be sustainable, must be subordinated to politics and social relations and, essentially, respect and foster the dignity of labour. Yet, the owners of production and the powerful ideology of laissez-fair capitalism threaten this embeddedness of the economy in society. This is why, as Polanyi illustrates, throughout the history of capitalism protective ‘counter movements’ emerge that aim to protect the fictitious commodities from the tentacles of the laissez-faire market and buffer the objectification of labour in order to safeguard their dignity. What Polanyi refers to as a ‘double movement’ is the ongoing tension between a market society, which pushes for an objectification of the fictitious commodities, and protective counter movements that embed the market in society and its norms. Surely, counter movements, as Polanyi (Reference Polanyi1985) acknowledges, are not per se positive forces. In the long run they can also be destructive for people and their dignity, as was Fascism.

What is pivotal about Polanyi’s thesis for formulating the objective dimension of dignity is its illustration of the partial autonomy of market forces, their inclination to jeopardise worker’s dignity and the necessity of a counter movement that pushes for the social protection of workers and the safeguarding of their dignity. Thus, the dignity of waged work is interwoven with so-called counter movements at the regulatory level that exercise their influence on a society’s industrial relations and feature a wide range of practices and strategies that regulate wage labour to varying degrees and limit the objectification of labour. Nevertheless, industrial relations are dynamic, context- and path-dependent in accordance with the power and vested interests of the Formal, and to a degree Informal Corporate Agents and the characteristics of the market economy they are unfolding in which frame the nature and conditions of waged work.

However, due to the relative autonomy of the labour process from the regulatory and accumulation regime, and hence from Industrial Relations, they do not determine the organisation of work and the dignity of the job in a particular workplace. Consequently, organisations need to strike a balance between their drive for efficiency, profitability and control and workers’ demands for dignity at work. It is out of this balancing act that objective dignity crystallises into job and working conditions. In general terms, the structure and organisation of work offers objective dignity when it contributes positively to the flourishing of the worker who is performing it (Donati, Reference Donati2020). This is the case when the work is tailored towards the skills and potentials of workers and grants them sufficient opportunities to apply and enhance their practical and technical knowledge in a self-determined and responsible manner. The work itself needs to be appropriately complex, variable and cooperative and offer opportunities to participate in decision-making processes with respect to the job and its conditions. These practices represent objective dignity in the realm of waged work because they embrace workers as co-authorities in the labour process and values them as trustworthy, responsible and competent persons that are capable of deliberating about their work and make difficult decisions. It is no surprise that organisational practices that lack these characteristics produce indignities by casting doubt on the ability, potential and trustworthiness of the worker. In other words, objective dignity manifests itself when organisational policies and practices value workers and their capacities for self-command, reflexivity and creativity in their own right and respect them as co-authorities in the labour process (Sayer, Reference Sayer2007:569). Collier’s and Bieri’s position on dignity as encapsulated in the idea of the workers being valued as ends in themselves, in an environment that grants the agent self-command, is central to the dimension of objective dignity. A concomitant feature of this non-instrumental valuation of workers is that organisations provide enablers for workers to become valuers, so that they can identify with and commit to work practices and outcomes as worthy objects.

Admittedly, objective dignity is an ambitious good under the conditions of the capitalist labour process. However, it is not just a meaningful work dimension that is achievable in well protected professions whose Corporate Agents are particularly powerful. Objective dignity can also be realised in semi- and low-skilled work when tasks are varied, fairly distributed according to existent skills and interests, respectfully rewarded and recognised by others as socially useful. Nevertheless, if and how objective dignity emerges in low-skilled and routine work is highly dependent on the institutional and political context in which it is embedded. As Thompson (Reference Thompson, Yeoman, Bailey, Madden and Thompson2019) asserts, semi- and low-skilled work in social democratic countries is more likely to feature enablers for objective dignity thanks to their embeddedness in a wider vocational system that institutionalises opportunities for skill development, horizontal career mobility and non-instrumental valuations of work. In this respect, even though capitalist organisations are inherently instrumental, this ought not to be the prime and exclusive orientation that informs how labour is treated and valued. It is of vital importance that the principles of respect and worth also translate into material employment conditions, such as job security, just rewards, equal opportunity and occupational health and safety policies. These conditions represent another significant facet of the non-instrumental valuation of workers by respecting their ambition to secure their livelihood, that is, the desire for security, stable and lasting relationships and, in Polanyi’s words, ‘brotherhood’. In this respect, Donati (Reference Donati2020) argues that objective dignity has a relational dimension that flourishes or declines within stable and respectful social relations. These conditions become all the more important when the impact of insecure employment, such as the prevalence of short-term or zero-hour contracts, is considered. Social science research provides ample evidence that insecure employment undermines workers’ dignity by exploiting their precarious position in the labour market, treating them as replaceable commodities and second-class workers (Bolton et al., Reference Bolton, Houlihan and Laaser2012; Kalleberg, Reference Kalleberg2011). From another angle, an upsurge of work intensity that is perceived by workers as unreasonable is likely to be experienced as an exploitation of their vulnerability as human resources (Gallie, Reference Gallie, Yeoman, Bailey, Madden and Thompson2019; Hodson, Reference Hodson2001; Lysgaard, Reference Lysgaard2001). In sum, wage labour possesses objective dignity when the capacities of the worker as a self-responsible, relational and reflective, yet dependent, person within the structured necessity of waged work are respected and supported in such a way that human capacities can be developed.

Subjective Dignity

Subjective dignity is an intersubjective dimension that emerges at the level of Formal and Informal labour-led Corporate Agency that enables agential activities, such as solidarity and resistance, to establish, defend or rescue dignity in the labour process. Concepts such as workplace collectivism, worker collectivity and employee self-organisation amplify not only the centrality of Corporate Agents for creating protected spaces and membership in workers’ organisations, but also for contributing to a ‘deeper human dignity’ (Axelsson et al., Reference Axelsson, Karlsson and Skorstad2019:125) than the formal organisation of work, even when the objective dimension of dignity is met. Consequently, subjective dignity possesses a relational dimension in two respects. Firstly, it is relational because it is about securing and manifesting workers’ dignity within the social structure of waged work and vis-à-vis the pressures of capitalist organisations in instrumentalising and objectifying workers as far as possible. Secondly, it is relational because it emerges from the collective agentic power of Corporate Agents that rests on the identification of vested interests with respect to dignity at work and leads workers to engage in organised or spontaneous actions that establish horizontal relations of mutual respect, pride, integrity, trust and worth. The collectivity concepts illuminate these characteristics and promote their importance for understanding the nature of work. Indeed, each one provides its own account of the importance of labour-led Corporate Agency for creating protected spaces and membership in workers’ organisations. This is because the underlying premise of subjective dignity is not coupled with productivity and profitability motives, as in the case of objective dignity. Instead, it is associated with a collective effort that establishes a mutual web of social, technical and emotional support that buffers the instrumentalisation of its Agents in the labour process. If bonds between workers are particularly thick and vested interests particularly strong, but nevertheless contested by the formal organisation, they can take the form of a brother- and sisterhood, to modify Polanyi’s words, in which workers can experience comradeship, connectedness and, essentially, a stable belonging that allows them to develop oppositional identities.

All of this points to the fact that the channels and webs from which subjective dignity emerge cannot be structured and built ad hoc. They require informal social structures and, to last, a stringent social order that provides, as Lysgaard with reference to worker collectives demonstrates, behavioural guidelines for its members, such as whom to identify with and how to understand their situatedness in the formal organisation. This social order can be more or less explicit and more or less strict in the enforcement of norms and values, while possessing the potential to bend the technical-economic system of the formal organisation towards workers’ interests with respect to protection, belonging and mutuality. Collective efforts from which subjective dignity emerges do not exclusively focus on job conditions and the social relations at the workplace but also includes attempts to buffer the indignities employees experience when performing a job that is perceived by the wider population as possessing little value or is stigmatised as dirty.

For example, in The Dignity of Working Men, Lamont (Reference Lamont2000) shows how working class men experience dignity by embracing and defending their moral standards at and through work. These moral standards are wide-ranging and include the pride of being the breadwinner, enduring physical work in a self-disciplined way and being a self-reliant and committed member of the society (Sennett and Cobb, Reference Sennett and Cobb1973). Framing and experiencing dignity in this way enables working class men to mediate the stigma of hard, physical and low-paid work as unworthy low-status jobs. They do so by creating relations and practices through which they articulate and celebrate their occupational identity and experience respect and worth in the process. This powerful agential re-framing process is not an exclusive feature of low-skilled physical and industrial work. Indeed, there is a rich variety of case studies about workers’ oppositional practices and their experience of dignity in contemporary workplaces (e.g. Karlsson, Reference Karlsson2012), including teaching assistants (Bolton and Laaser, Reference Bolton, Laaser and Gall2019), bank workers (Laaser, Reference Laaser2016), waitresses (Paules, Reference Paules1991) and hotel workers (Bolton et al., Reference Bolton, Laaser, McGuire and Duncan2019). The case studies richly illustrate how workers’ values and norms concerning the worth of their work and the irrefutable pride taken in resisting actions by others which pose a threat to their dignity are carried from social communities outside the workplace into the labour process by workers. Notions of worth, pride and respect become manifested in, albeit hidden and informal, structures and relations. Even though the character of these collective efforts varies depending on the particularities of the workplace and the nature of work and the relations between Corporate Agents, they do follow Polanyi’s counter movement logic at a micro scale.

For example, Darr (Reference Darr2011) demonstrates how workers in customer-oriented service jobs do not follow the organisational demand to prioritise selling over advising. Instead, they embed the interaction with customers in a social and moral context that constitutes a legitimate and dignified economic and social relationship. In a similar vein, Bolton and Boyd (Reference Bolton and Boyd2003) suggest that cabin crew workers invoke moral standards with respect to maintaining dignified relationships with customers, creating an ethical surplus when dealing with elderly passengers who need more assistance. This allows them to prevent violations of dignity when passengers demand intimacy that defy contemporary social norms. These examples emphasise the importance employees place on work that meets their wider lay notions of justice, worth and fairness. As a tension exists between the capitalist labour process and its attempt to purify operations and relations for profit maximisation and workers’ demand for dignified work, subjective dignity spills over the instrumental frame of the labour process and informs practices and relationships that ‘may vary considerably in how far they conform to the organisation’s priorities’ (Sayer, Reference Sayer, Stehr, Henning and Weiler2006:206). Consequently, subjective dignity, as Ackroyd and Thompson (Reference Ackroyd and Thompson2022) discuss, can also be restored and defended by informally organised oppositional practices that buffer and limit the disrespect workers experience through management abuse. The authors identify a wide range of oppositional practices, such as working to rule, sabotage of products or services, satirical humour, pilferage, time wasting and whistle-blowing that differ in their intensity and radicalism, but are nonetheless effective in pushing back managerial abuse. Some of these practices refer to oppositional acts that are performed by an individual and not a collective. A case in point is whistle-blowing. Individual resistant acts can buffer and restore the dignity of the individual worker, and in some cases of a group of workers, but it is a relief that is relatively short-lived, less impactful and leaves the individual vulnerable if it is not part of a collective effort by Corporate Agents to mediate and change the conditions and relations from which indignities emerge. Even though workplace collectivism and forms of self-organisation are endemic to all workplaces (Ackroyd and Thompson, Reference Ackroyd and Thompson2022), if and how they establish, defend and enhance subjective dignity depends on their strength and relative power vis-à-vis competing Corporate Agents, such as management. Thus, subjective dignity is not an inevitable feature of the labour process. It needs to be fought for and invested in. It demands the sharing of experiences over time to form social bonds that are needed to buffer the demands of the formal organisation. As Hodson’s (Reference Hodson2001) seminal work on dignity and resistance stresses, achieving and securing dignity is one of the main drivers for worker behaviour and is coupled with their interest in meaningful work. Jobs that lack meaning are also low on dignity and vice versa, so that subjective dignity also strives to increase the worth and meaning of tasks, workplace relations and conditions.

Objective Recognition

The dimension of objective recognition captures the socially and legally organised and institutionalised relations of recognition in the realm of waged work that recognise the equality of the worker with respect to the other members of the organisation, while also esteeming particular qualities of a worker. It thereby encompasses practices and relations at work that treat the worker as worthy of respect, as an autonomous, morally responsible Actor who deserves esteem and who possesses the agentic powers to engage in participatory practices at work. In the following we analytically separate three aspects of objective recognition: Legal recognition as the social protection of equality of rights, social freedom as the opportunity for workers to engage in participatory practices and esteem as mode of recognition that enhances worker’s self-esteem.

First, legal recognition is a cornerstone of objective recognition in the way it enables the worker to experience and enhance their self-respect at work. This position diverges from Honneth’s perspective that exclusively locates legal recognition in the sphere of the civil society, while identifying waged work as a potential sphere for the esteem type of recognition. Nevertheless, we consider legal recognition at work as a crucial driver for meaningful work that establishes the worker as a bearer of rights who can raise claims that are acknowledged by others independent of the hierarchical and social status of the worker. Legal recognition thus represents a vertical form of recognition that is constituted at the meso-level of the regulatory and legal system and refined, translated and enhanced for the sphere of wage labour at the micro-level of the organisation. And yet, for legal recognition to embrace worker’s self-respect at work and contribute to meaningful work it needs to be mutually esteemed by the members of the organisation in such a way that each member feels entitled to make claims, while also recognising the entitlement of others to this right. From this shared value horizon the experience emerges that ‘one is able to view oneself as a person who shares with all other members of one’s community the qualities that make participation in discursive will-formation possible’ (Honneth, Reference Honneth1995:120). Even though legal recognition is one part of what Bhaskar (Reference Bhaskar1989) calls a position in a ‘mediating system’ that lays out duties, rights and functions for Agents to engage in practices, it is essential for the structuring of the internal and necessary relations between Agents. The formal equality of Agents to engage in interest-defining discourses is a key enabler for the formulation of self-declared goals on which the formation and maintenance of Formal Corporate Agency rests.

Employment contracts and other forms of formalised workplace or industry-specific rights are the most explicit manifestations of legal recognition that constitute workers as equal bearers of rights and responsibilities. In such a way, contractually defined terms and conditions, ranging from working hours to pay, entitlements to annual leave and sick pay and so on, represent the foundations of legal recognition to which employees can take recourse. However, these employment terms and conditions become powerful enablers for objective recognition only if they do not exclusively represent the interests of the employer. Thus, it is a vital condition of this dimension that the interest and needs of workers are genuinely acknowledged and the mutual dependency between the employer and workers is formalised. A promising context for this is given in countries and industries whose industrial relations feature traditional collective bargaining relationships that give labour a strong voice in negotiations over conditions and structures. In relation to Honneth’s mode of legal recognition, Tweedie (Reference Tweedie, Bagusat, Keenan and Sedmak2010:209) reinforces this position in his analysis of the recognition of skills and capacities in the sphere of work and employment. Here he states that ‘mutually agreed industry procedures for complaints, dismissals or redundancies’ operate as a mechanism that enables workers to ‘face their employer knowing themselves to be the proper subject of basic forms of respect’, while enhancing workers’ choice and options for Corporate Agency. Transferring Walzer’s (Reference Walzer1983:310) reflections on the importance of legal recognition for the sphere of justice to the workplace, legal recognition can be perceived as a steppingstone towards an environment for workers in which the employee listens and is listened to, ‘take responsibility for what he says and does. Ready and able: not only in state, cities, and towns but wherever power is exercised, in companies and factories’.

Democratic and participatory practices at work, the foundation of social freedom in the sphere of wage labour, can emerge from legal recognition. This is most likely to be the case in regulated labour markets in which institutional settings support the cooperation between employers, workers, trade unions and employer associations. In fact, Thompson (Reference Thompson, Yeoman, Bailey, Madden and Thompson2019) and Keat (Reference Keat2009) suggest that countries whose regulatory regimes treats the labour market as a social and economic institution that is not guided by economic rationality alone, but aims to strike a balance between the interests of employers and workers, are more likely to have workplaces that offer sufficient legal recognition and participatory practices. A strong expression of this are workplace consultative bodies, most prominently represented by work councils, and to a lesser degree by joint consultative committees. To illustrate the potential power of workplace consultative bodies for building objective recognition, we focus on work councils, which in many institutional settings tend to have legal support that guarantees ‘informational, consultative and codetermination rights’ (Brewster et al., Reference Brewster, Wood, Croucher and Brookes2007:50). Clearly, work councils vary significantly between industries and countries. Indeed, while in some countries they are chaired by the employer, in others they act exclusively as worker representation bodies (Streeck, Reference Streeck, Rogers and Streeck1995). Furthermore, some critical voices see work councils as employer-friendly institutions that hamper unionisation. Nevertheless, international research provides ample evidence that in the majority of workplaces they tend to strengthen worker voice, enhance information flow within the workplace, contribute positively to union association and enhance participatory and democratic practices at work (Streeck and Rogers, Reference Streeck and Rogers1995). In this light, they tend to act as a force at work that operates hand in hand with legal recognition and enhances workers’ self-respect. Furthermore, work councils can also contribute to social freedom at work by aggregating workers’ interests into a collective voice, thereby building essential structures for Corporate Agency to flourish at work. Without doubt, the highest form of social freedom at work is guaranteed by a democratic work organisation that is grounded in mutual ownership, placing workers as co-authorities in the labour process who can deliberate about decisions concerning their work in respectful relations with co-workers and people in power. Social freedom, then, expresses a form of social compromise between the employer and workers that goes beyond the manifestation of mutual dependency in wage labour and enables workers to acquire capabilities that are necessary for becoming valuers, that is, ‘co-authorities in the realm of value’ (Yeoman, Reference Yeoman2014a:97). Borrowing from Sennett and Cobb (Reference Sennett and Cobb1973:149), legal recognition and social freedom meet workers desire ‘to get those who are in higher social positions to admit the worthiness you share with them’.

In line with Smith’s (2009:82) notion that ‘whatever appears to be the proper object of gratitude, appears to deserve reward’, the third pillar of objective recognition adds the formalised recognition pattern of esteem to legal recognition and social freedom. More broadly, formalised esteem identifies and celebrates particular work activities, achievements or services that are valued by the organisation, its members or the society (Honneth, Reference Honneth1995; 2012). Voswinkel (Reference Voswinkel2012) offers a helpful differentiation of recognition as esteem, subdividing it into the dimensions of appreciation and admiration. Esteem as appreciation in organisations tends to be anchored in workplace rules and rituals that express gratitude for behaviour and attitudes that workers display over a long period of time and that benefit the organisation and its stakeholders. A case in point are formal mechanisms that appreciate, often financially but also with non-financial tokens, the service and loyalty of long-term workers. We suggest that appreciation is an important contributor to meaningful wage labour in the way it embodies a less instrumental recognition of workers that moves away from monetary and direct transactional reward exchanges for desired actions. Instead, formalised appreciation schemes can value a wider set of characteristics and behaviours that are, nonetheless, important for the social relations at work. Surely, as Voswinkel argues, appreciation can also contribute to the experience of disrespect when it is deployed as a substitute for prestige and allocated to ‘agents with little power, success or prestige’ (2012:279). This is why it needs to go in tandem with admiration.

In fact, admiration grants workers prestige by singling out individual employees, emphasising particular achievements of the worker that stand out. Admiration often rests on performance management systems in which work effort evaluations become ‘proxy judgements about the value of workers’ social contribution’ (Tweedie et al., Reference Tweedie, Wild, Rhodes and Martinov-Bennie2019:85). Widely shared organisational expressions of admiration are manifested in promotion to desired positions, financial rewards, horizontal moves into positions or projects that grant more autonomy and responsibility, but also certificates and badges. Certainly, organisational forms of admiration can take the form of ‘ritualised admiration’ (Holtgrewe, Reference Holtgrewe2001:40) that manufactures admiration on the assembly line of an all-encompassing performance management system. Consequently, organisational admiration needs to go beyond window dressing and offer rewards that are genuinely valued by workers. Furthermore, as Sayer (Reference Sayer, Thompson and Yar2011b) highlights, admiration needs to create a buffer between a distinguished performance and its reward in order to avoid coupling recognition patterns with an instrumental, transactional mode of managing people. Appreciation and admiration are also part and parcel of subjective recognition, albeit in different shapes and forms as the next section will illustrate.

Subjective Recognition

The subjective dimensions of autonomy and dignity characterise workers’ self-organisation as a separate and distinct social structure from which forms of self-regulation can emerge that represent workers’ vested interests in appropriating their work and its relations. If intact and strong, the self-organisation operates as an architecture that embeds workers’ social relations at work and their work activities in relations of mutual recognition. These recognition relations define behaviour and attitudes worthy of esteem and respect, as well as patterns and rules for their exchange. Consequently, at the heart of subjective recognition there is a social structure, developed by the self-organisation in order to interweave appreciation as a mode of respect with the everyday labour process and its social relations, while developing rules for the allocation of admiration for particular traits, abilities and contributions. Essentially, both forms of subjective recognition need to be functional for the self-organisation and aligned with the vested interests of the Corporate Agent.

Appreciation as a driver of subjective recognition displays gratitude to the employee for belonging to the self-organisation and contributing to the mutual web of obligations and commitments that underwrite the norms and values of the collective. Indeed, even though concrete interests, strategies and practices of workers’ self-organisations differ between workplace regimes and industries, they have the strong tendency to be framed by identical norms and values. The latter encompass the mutual expectation that members will watch out for each other, have confidence in each other’s knowledge, skills and judgement, and support each other practically and emotionally. What is appreciated, then, is the contribution to the collective effort of strengthening the self-organisation by establishing a collective discipline from which solidarity can emerge, while also creating rituals at work that tighten the bonds between workers. Appreciation carries, consequently, a moral texture that endorses relations and behaviour that conform to the values of reciprocity, cooperation and solidarity, while making the un-prescribed support, the daily gift-giving and give and take between workers, visible to the members of the self-organisation. Hand in hand with the moral grammar of appreciation goes its political nature, to the effect that while the self-organisation may complement the formal organisation in a way that oils the wheels of the labour process, deep down it is an oppositional force that is likely to be the spark of organisational misbehaviour (Karlsson, Reference Karlsson2012). Ackroyd and Thompson (Reference Ackroyd and Thompson2022) identify the variety of oppositional collective practices that are appreciated by the self-organisation because they are perceived to express labour agency, push back managerial agendas and offer pathways for re-appropriating work and its conditions. In this way, work limitation, systematic fiddling, sabotage, pilferage and time wasting, even the sabotage of specific services or products, are practices that can be collectively endorsed and thus the object of appreciation, depending on the workplace and its relations.

The moral and political grammar of appreciation is necessarily embedded in a set of collectively held rules that the self-organisation formulates, implements and enforces and which translate into shared understandings of what counts as worthy of appreciation among waged workers (Axelsson et al., Reference Axelsson, Karlsson and Skorstad2019). Workplace ethnographies give evidence of the dynamic, lengthy and complicated social process that is at the heart of the formulation and formation of workers’ collective understandings. Lysgaard’s (2001) research on the nature of the worker collectivity in a pulp and paper mill in Norway provides a detailed account of this process. The workplace ethnography puts the spotlight on how the self-organisation rests on the workers’ shared identity as a knowledgeable, skilled, but dependent, and thus subordinate collective which is attached to the work and its purpose, but opposes managers at the mill and what they represent. The force of distinction that the worker collectivity establishes fosters a socialisation which generates work effort bargain norms and identified behaviour and attitudes that benefit solidarity and mutual defence vis-à-vis managerial agents which are considered worthy of peer appreciation. The importance of collective appreciation is also manifested in research on service work and knowledge work (Hodson, Reference Hodson2001). For example, Bolton and Boyd (Reference Bolton and Boyd2003) pinpoint the many ways in which airline cabin crews go beyond the formal requirements of their job role to offer care and constraint to passengers who demand both positive and negative attention. To cope with the physically and emotionally demanding nature of their work, the authors describe how the cabin crew develop rules of social commitment that guide their care for each other and their passengers. In this way, they show appreciation for the implicit mutual support, the give and take that accompanies each other’s refusal to be objectified by the exploitation of their embodied capacities and affirm, instead, their status as professionals who hold the safety and well-being of passengers in their hands. Against this backdrop, appreciation and the collective understanding of workers offer an important pathway into understanding the ‘meaningful pattern of workplace relations’ (Korczynski, Reference Korczynski2023:125).

Admiration in the self-organisation expresses esteem for a worker’s special achievement or talent (Voswinkel, Reference Voswinkel2012). This raises the question as to whether admiration is compatible with the paradigm of mutual reciprocity and contributes to the vested interests of the self-organisation, even though it endorses individual workers. Voswinkel argues against this by conceptualising admiration as a celebration of the singularity of the worker that finds its expression in monetary or professional reward. From this perspective admiration is inevitably interwoven with objective recognition and the formal organisation that establishes verticality among workers. While we agree that admiration in the realm of objective recognition carries this risk, admiration by peers is capable of expressing esteem for outstanding skills and the achievements of a worker without separating them from the collective. What distinguishes admiration in the self-organisation from admiration in the formal organisation is that it celebrates skills, achievements and traits that are considered by the internal standards of the self-organisation as praiseworthy internal goods. Borrowing the concept of internal goods from MacIntyre allows us to emphasise that admiration in the field of subjective recognition esteems the ‘intrinsic performance’ (Breen, Reference Breen, Yeoman, Bailey, Madden and Thompson2019), the mastering of the craft (Tweedie and Holley, Reference Tweedie and Holley2016) and the ‘beauty’ (Dejours, Reference Dejours, Smith and Deranty2012) of the work performed.

There is a strong tendency in virtue ethics-inspired approaches to suggest that skilled and complex work tends to offer opportunities for workers to excel at their job and enjoy the processes that it involves as a good in itself, decoupling its enjoyment from external gratification. Here, the worker receives admiration from their peers who, based on their shared internal judgments as practitioners and experts themselves, evaluate whether the individual excels at their work and achieves something praiseworthy. Thus, even though admiration esteems the individual, granting and receiving admiration is embedded in the self-organisation that is strengthened in the process. However, a wide range of workplace ethnographies conclude that self-organisations in non-craftwork settings also possess internalised standards of excellence for evaluating the quality of work. In their research on cleaners, Tweedie and Holley (Reference Tweedie and Holley2016:1893) indicate that experienced cleaners are constantly evaluating ‘the quality of their work according to internalized professional standards’, which leads them to admire the unique skills of cleaners. This admiration not only serves the individual worker but also strengthens the collective as it ‘reinforces to workers the value of their work because their contribution cannot be easily replicated’ (2016:1892). As a consequence, admiration as subjective recognition needs the self-organisation and the shared standards that Corporate Agents set, as it is they who do the work, are knowledgeable about the skills it requires and the relations it is embedded in. Dejours et al.’s (Reference Dejours, Deranty, Renaut and Smith2018:100) research supports this perspective by stating that legitimate recognition of the technical aspect of work can only be granted by workers who ‘are actually engaged in the effort, [who] are able to say what physical, mental, and emotional effort, what manual, intellectual, emotional skills went into the performance of the real work’. The internal standards that are anchored in the expertise of peers allow them to express admiration for fellow workers, reinforcing the sense of community. Indeed, this is what makes subjective recognition overall so meaningful. It is a non-instrumental social process that grants respect and esteem based on shared understandings.