From micro- to macro-politics of NWOW: The re-regulation of the ‘new ideal worker’. A conventionalist perspective

New ways of working (NWOW) encompass a wide range of management principles and practices deemed ‘transformative’ for organizations. It is often materialized by three intertwined dimensions (Taskin, Ajzen and Donis, 2017): (i) spatial and temporal flexibility practices; (ii) work organization practices fostering collaboration; and (iii) management principles and practices promoting employees’ empowerment and participation. Beyond an appealing concept and its related-practices and purpose, NWOW portray a particular image of the organization, promoting more autonomy, responsibilities, well-being or work-life balance (e.g., Kelliher and Richardson, 2012; Peters, Poutsma, Van Der Heijden, Bakker and De Bruijn, 2014). However, behind practices and rhetoric resides the making of an overall rationale promoting an ideal vision of the firm pointing towards flexibility– or more recently, agility (Baran and Woznyj, 2021) – principles. The latter may shape the proper behaviors and actions of the new ideal worker as a reflection of the ideal firm (Ajzen, 2021), shedding light on a specific convention. A convention is a social construct providing information on expected behaviors to adopt or actions to take in a given situation (Lewis, 1969). However, previous research shows how workers are not passive through managerial attempts to shape their subjectivity (Thorne, 2005; Hancock and Spicer, 2011; Richardson and McKenna, 2014) and resist (Ajzen and Taskin, 2021; Taskin, Courpasson and Donis, 2022). This paper therefore aims to question to what extent such (micro-)resistances lead to re-shape the convention (macro-resistances). Building on a case study and 78 interviews conducted in a Belgian logistics company having implemented a NWOW project, we show the making of the NWOW conventional worker by identifying discourses, artefacts and practices that compose the conventional dispositive. We also report worker’s acts of resistance and remind that any attempt to transform people’s ideal and relationship to the organization cannot be a one-way process, from management practices to employee’s obedience. We then argue the ‘new ideal worker’ shaped by NWOW is more the result of a re-regulation process than of a disruptive top-down transformation. This leads us to discuss the politics of NWOW, and how micro-resistances observed when workers face the conceived ‘ideal worker’ may transform into macro-resistances when the firm itself is re-defined by workers, as the result of this re-regulation process. The contributions of the article are therefore twofold. First, we penetrate the social process of the making of the ideal firm, by drawing on a conventional perspective (Gomez and Jones, 2000). Second, we illustrate that such a re-regulation process involves both the conceived ‘ideal firm’ and the lived ‘ideal worker’, and that mundane acts of resistance are part of a larger re-regulation process, which may, in turn, re-shape the ideal firm. From this enlarged perspective on resistance at work, we highlight the move from micro to macro-politics of NWOW.