Resistance and Control in a Culture Programme: Disrupting Hierarchies of Social Identity

This paper contributes to a debate which questions whether employees have the means and the motivation to resist the incorporation of identity attributes implied by culture programmes such as lean, TQM, and JIT. Drawing on social identity theory, this paper finds that these identity attributes lead to identity mobility for groups whose social identities are high on the “salience-prominence differential” – a concept that denotes social identities which are either highly desirable but unlikely to be enacted, or vice- versa. The paper argues that such social groups may more readily accept the incorporation of alternative identity attributes into their social identities, because such acceptance provides alternative ways for gaining positive distinction. We differentiate between consent and colonisation to theorise variations in agency. The paper also highlights how social groups which are low on the salience-prominence differential may resist attempts to incorporate alternative social identity attributes, specifying the origins of substantive as well as symbolic resistance.