Organized crime and employment relations : a personal story of ‘Ndrangheta control on employment relations management practices in Southern Italy

This article sets out the testimony of Paolo, an Italian entrepreneur who worked under the control of an ‘Ndrangheta clan for years, and finally rebelled against that criminal organization. Paolo operated on a crucial front line, as he managed the relations between his company and the dominant criminal organization in his area. This story constitutes a ‘wake-up call’ for more research on the intrusion of organized crime in the labour market. Paolo’s story reveals how strongly organized crime can penetrate decision-making processes and control key people’s management practices. Such control is decisive not only while under the direct influence of organized crime, but also after rebelling against it. Overall, this article provides insights into how organized crime affects employment relations and it calls for more attention to be paid to this topic in the sociology of work and employment relations

Workers' Rites: Ritual Mediations and the Tensions of New Management

International audienceScholarship has highlighted tensions arising from the "new management ideology", an attempt to infuse formal organizations with community, informality and equality. Proposals to "liberate" companies have been received with a mix of skepticism and hope for their emancipatory possibilities. While the tensions arising from such proposals are known, less work examines the practices by which they are mediated in the workplace. Taking a ritual perspective, we argue that rituals' unique capacity to mediate oppositions makes it a powerful tool in the new management toolbox. Examining a liberated enterprise initiative in a French multinational company, we analyze how rituals structure, disavow, segment or maintain organizational tensions. While rituals constituted neo-normative controls, we also discuss the emancipatory possibilities for rituals in holding open unreconciled tensions and preventing closure. We discuss the implications for understanding neo-normative control through rituals, outlining a future research agenda for the study of rituals in new management

Tensions between (Post)Bureaucratic and Neo‐normative Demands: Investigating Employees’ Subjective Positions at EurAirport

International audienc

Da Giacobbe a Israele: il rito nelle relazioni individuo-organizzazione

Ogni relazione interpersonale si caratterizza per la sua complessità. Spesso è un rapporto oscillante tra incontro/scontro, lotta/abbraccio, aggressione/abbandono fiducioso, e deve essere gestita con enorme rispetto dell'altro. Come nella metafora biblica di Giacobbe che lotta con l'angelo, la relazione può creare ferite ma anche generare benedizioni, cioè occasioni di crescita. Nel mondo economico (e nelle imprese) tuttavia la relazione tende a essere semplificata e ridotta a mero scambio utilitaristico. Tale semplificazione fa sì che spesso nelle organizzazioni le relazioni creino "ferite" psicologiche, cioè delusioni e frustazioni che gli individui non riescono a rielaborare, trasformando queste delusioni in elementi di riflessione e di crescita personale. In pratica le "ferite" non diventano "benedizioni", cioè profezie di sviluppo futuro. Il lavoro si propone di comprendere attraverso quali percorsi le "ferite" possono trasformarsi in "benedizioni". Una delle possibili risposte a questa domanda sta nel fatto che le organizzazioni moderne, in particolare nei Paesi occidentali, utilizzando una razionalità economica di scambio utilitaristico e strumenti manageriali molto formalizzati, basati su liturgie con una loro ferrea ortodossia, non sembrano essere più in grado di riconoscere e gestire adeguatamente i riti che esistono al loro interno, i quali costituiscono lo strumento fondamentale per mantenere l'equilibrio tra identità individuale e identità collettiva, e quindi permettono all'individuo "ferito" di vivere ed elaborare una promessa di futuro ad ogni delusione e sconfitta.The interpersonal relationship, referring to the biblical metaphor of Jacob's fight with the angel, appears extremely complex, as it is often a relation oscillating from encounter to clash, fight to embracement, and aggression to faithful abandoning. It has to be managed with an extraordinary respect from the other. Frequently interpersonal interaction cause personal wounds but also generate "blessing", i.e. changes for growth for the involved individuals. Nevertheless the human relationship within the business world (and companies specifically) tends to be simplified and downgraded to a merely opportunistic exchange. This excessive simplification causes in organizations such relations that may produce psychological wounds, i.e. disappointments and frustrations, that the person are not in condition to process, in order to transform these disillusions in opportunities for reflection and personal growth. In practice, the wounds do not become "blessing", i.e. prophecies for an eventual personal development. This paper aims to identify what paths within the social and organizational contexts lead wounds to blessing. One possible answer to this question is the evidence that modern organizations, particularly those in the western world, adopting an economic rationality of opportunistic exchange and very formalized managerial instruments, based on liturgies with a strong orthodoxy, don't seem any longer able to acknowledge and manage adequately the organization's embedded rites. These rites and rituals constitute the fundamental apparatus to maintain the balance, between individuals and collective identity, which would allow the wounded person to experience, process and generate a promise of future from disappointment and defeat