1. Traditional accounts of organisational resistance have tended to align control with management and resistance with (other) employees. Critically analyse why this is problematic both in relation to understanding how and why resistance happens and in its portrayal of managerial power and position.
2. Critically analyse how contemporary redesigned workspaces might be seen as related to the change to more ‘horizontal’ forms of managerial control, including the management of meaning and the management of identity.
3. Critically analyse how organisational and managerial practices create and sustain inequalities, inclusions and exclusions, and different patterns of opportunities for employees from different social groups, such as gender, ethnicity, disability, age, class and sexuality. Given this analysis, how far is it possible to ‘manage diversity’?
4. Where once it would have been said that there is no place for emotions in the rational work organisation, it is now becoming recognised that “organisations have feelings” (Albrow 1997). Critically discuss how and why it is relevant for managers to consider emotions (including their own) in an organisational context.
5. As part of the management of culture, there has been a trend towards using humour in a functionalist way to improve work relations and organisational performance. Critically analysing the different social functions that humour plays, discuss why it is difficult to manage and harness humour in this way.
6. In today’s workplace, employees are often expected to ‘live the brand’. Critically examine how norms of consumption have become part of the employment relationship, and explore the potential consequences.
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