A01=Michel Anteby
Absenteeism
Activism
Anecdotal evidence
Arbitration
Author_Michel Anteby
Boredom
Bribery
Category=JHB
Category=KJG
Category=KJMV2
Code of conduct
Collective agreement
Collegiality
Collusion
Competition
Cultural lag
Currency
Customer
Dead-end job
Employment
Entrepreneurship
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ethnography
Fraternization
Fraud
Gerald Mars
Human relations movement
Ideal type
Incentive
Industrial relations
Industrial sociology
Insider
Interdependence
Internal auditor
Job satisfaction
John Van Maanen
Labor relations
Labor unrest
Laborer
Labour movement
Layoff
Mail carrier
Manufacturing Consent
Michael Burawoy
Moral Mazes
Organization
Organizational behavior
Outsourcing
Participant
Politique
Primo Levi
Profession
Qualitative research
Quality control
Retirement
Salary
Scrap
Selective enforcement
Self-image
Shop foreman
Sick leave
Subcontractor
Supervisor
Test pilot
The Practice of Everyday Life
Theft
Time and materials
Trade union
Traditional society
Unemployment
Unreported employment
Welder
White-collar crime
Workforce
Workplace
Product details
- ISBN 9780691135243
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 21 Jul 2008
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Anyone who has been employed by an organization knows not every official workplace regulation must be followed. When management consistently overlooks such breaches, spaces emerge in which both workers and supervisors engage in officially prohibited, yet tolerated practices--gray zones. When discovered, these transgressions often provoke disapproval; when company materials are diverted in the process, these breaches are quickly labeled theft. Yet, why do gray zones persist and why are they unlikely to disappear? In Moral Gray Zones, Michel Anteby shows how these spaces function as regulating mechanisms within workplaces, fashioning workers' identity and self-esteem while allowing management to maintain control. The book provides a unique window into gray zones through its in-depth look at the manufacture and exchange of illegal goods called homers, tolerated in a French aeronautic plant. Homers such as toys for kids, cutlery for the kitchen, or lamps for homes, are made on company time with company materials for a worker's own purpose and use.
Anteby relies on observations at retirees' homes, archival data, interviews, and surveys to understand how plant workers and managers make sense of this tacit practice. He argues that when patrolled, gray zones like the production of homers offer workplaces balanced opportunities for supervision as well as expression. Cautioning against the hasty judgment that gray zone practices are simply wrong, Moral Gray Zones contributes to a deeper understanding of the culture, group dynamics, and deviance found in organizations.
Michel Anteby is assistant professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School.
