Liberating Frontline Workers: Revealing the Discursive Consequences and Dilemmas of Reorganizing

This paper examines the experiences of frontline call center workers and their managers as a “liberation management” project unfolds in order to understand the social consequences that accompany the introduction of a post-bureaucratic form of organizing in a traditional hierarchical organization. The analysis reveals that introducing a new form of organizing requiring frontline staff to talk in ways inconsistent with their worker habitus generates unanticipated costs, benefits and dilemmas in terms of interaction, intellectual engagement, sociopolitical processes, and emergent roles and accountability in ways that impact on employment expectations. It shows these consequences have significant implications for the organization’s operational efficiency, social climate and the achievement of its innovative strategic direction. The study confirms change is not necessarily unidirectional, that continuity and change can co-exist, but the consequences incurred as the tensions between these two states are discursively created can complicate innovation. Most importantly, the findings proposes two concepts - ‘discursive consequence’ and ‘discursive dilemma’ - that the authors suggest could enhance our theoretical understanding of discursive practice during change by providing a platform for understanding frontline employees' experience when change institutes new ways of talking that are inconsistent with their worker habitus. In addition to these contributions to the change management literature the paper also provides new insights about talk-at-work, the notion of work habitus and contributes to the debates surrounding post-bureaucratic organizing and the meaning of work.