Illicit Practices and ‘Fiddles’ in the Contemporary World of Work: Mars-ism Revisited
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چکیده
The period since 2000 has been marked by numerous scandals in the corporate and political worlds. Dubious accounting practices and the illicit claiming of expenses by British MPs have become daily stories. At the same time, there has been growing scholarly interest in work practices at the other end of the business world, as in studies of various forms of worker 'resistance' (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999). This paper does three things. First, the list of forms of resistance has been extended to embrace 'cynicism' as well as more active forms (Fleming and Spicer, 2007). But is the list simply being extended endlessly, reflecting Kerr's (1954) despairing remark that means of resistance are as unlimited as the 'ingenuity of man'? We develop an organizing framework to categorize different types of workplace behaviour. In doing so, second, we return to the work of Gerald Mars (1982). Mars made an initial effort at categorization on which we build. Third we offer empirical illustration of contemporary practices to show that the analytical ideas forged by Mars have stood the test of time. As Mars (1982: 1) began by pointing out, the great majority of people – on his figures 75-92% – admit to adding to their incomes in ways that are technically illegal. A more recent estimate of 'service sabotage' (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002) produces a similar number. Mars distinguished between formal and informal rewards and between those that are legal from the extra-legal or illegal. Ackroyd and Thompson (1999: 2) define their interest as 'anything you do at work you are not supposed to do'. We proceed from this definition.
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