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Human Relations
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A longitudinal study of the influence of shop floor work teams on expressions of ‘us’ and ‘them’

Christine Coupland

Organizational Behaviour at Nottingham University Business School; chris.coupland{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Paul Blyton

Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University; blyton{at}cardiff.ac.uk

Nicholas Bacon

Nottingham University Business School; nicholas.bacon{at}nottingham.ac.uk

A discourse analysis of employee rhetoric before and after the introduction of shop floor work teams in a steel mill reveals important changes in expressions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitudes. The normative rhetoric of teamworking used by managers, insisting that all employees are working towards the same goal, raised an expectation of change in the traditional ‘them’ and ‘us’ divide between managers and workers. When workers detected little subsequent change they used the new language of teamworking to critique management in private although working in teams they reported pressure to behave differently. New working roles in teams did undermine traditional ‘them’ and ‘us’ loyalties, which fragmented to encompass finer distinctions (e.g. middle and upper management, workers and slackers) and employee attitudes became more individualistic.

Key Words: rhetoric • us-and-them • work teams

Human Relations, Vol. 58, No. 8, 1055-1081 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0018726705058503
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