Making out and making do:how employees resist and make organizational change work through consent in a UK bank

McCabe, Darren (2014) Making out and making do:how employees resist and make organizational change work through consent in a UK bank. New Technology, Work and Employment, 29 (1). pp. 57-71. ISSN 0268-1072

Abstract

This article draws on fieldwork conducted in the back-office of a major retail UK bank and explores how, when introducing change, management drew on contradictory normative and rational discourses. Its primary concern is to explore how, in this context, employees engaged in contradictory acts that combined elements of both resistance (‘making out’) and consent (‘making do’) that are difficult to disentangle. It is argued that although both are moves within the game, they can be distinguished from each other because the former works against the grain of corporate intentions, whereas the latter works with them.