Challenging objectivities and normalising discourse thomas and davies

May (1999) argues that the contradictions in, and unintended consequences of,managerial strategy create spaces in which practices and identities emerge at oddswith strategies that seek to stabilise and intensify the effort bargain. He argues that inorder to fully understand what is occurring in organizations we need to not only focus

on strategy, but tactics – what workers do in those spaces. Wray-Bliss and Willmott’s(1999) study of call centre operators provides a good example of the way in whichtactics of resistance can take place in the spaces created by strategic ambiguities. Theemployees in their study turned the discursive ambiguities and contradictions in the

were seen as nostalgic failures and established workers were seen as the embodimentof that failure. Yet, it was precise because of their collective experience over time andthe meaning invested in their work that the railway workers resisted arbitrary change(Strangleman, 2004). The moral ownership they showed over work was a result of theircollective and sedimented experiences over time (Strangleman, 2004, p. 176).This idea that employee responses and reactions are sedimented over time not onlyhighlights the temporal dimensions of identity, it also alludes to the spatial aspects ofidentity formation and sustenance. Brown and Humphreys (2006) have shown how

distinct cohorts of workers in a newly merged organization drew on sharedunderstandings of “place” to inform, defend, contest and promote preferred versions ofthemselves and their organization. They found that individuals drew on understandingsof different buildings to engage in nostalgic reminiscences and bittersweet memories of

Leonard (2006) argue, to separate aspects of time and space, as they are interwoven. Forexample, spatial narratives invariably draw on past experiences, contemporarylifestyles and preferred futures (Brown and Humphreys, 2006).

The studies outlined above have shown how employees draw on temporal resources(discourses of the past and future) to resist change that threatens a sense ofself-continuity. More recently, there has been a focus on the ways that employeesconstruct spatial narratives of resistance. However, all these studies focus on the way

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