I’ve had a conceptual paper accepted for the International Labour Process Conference (ILPC) in Glasgow in April. The last time I attended ILPC was in Buenos Aires in 2018, another continent and indeed another epoch of humanity.
My paper is about mobster behaviour and mob mentalities amongst management and managerial actors. Our expectation of civility and professionalism is so often confounded by managers acting like petty thugs or office cutthroats. Legal protections that barely exist outside statute books innevitably lead to wild west type lawlessness within UK workplaces. It’s all very Lord of the Flies as a consequence of the deliberate undermining of institutions that maintain checks and balances.
Violence breeds violence, and “modern” offices are often far from safe spaces. Seeing violence as a physical thing masks the sheer extent of institutionalised non-physical violence that we’ve become numb to.
These are some of the broad strokes, I look forward to fleshing them out in Glasgow!
Dr Martin James 