Workers' Rites: Ritual Mediations and the Tensions of New Management

Scholarship has highlighted tensions arising from the ‘new management ideology’, an attempt to infuse formal organizations with community, informality and equality. Proposals ‘liberate’ companies have been received a mix of scepticism hope for their emancipatory possibilities. While such proposals are known, less work examines practices by which they mediated in workplace. Taking ritual perspective, we argue that rituals’ unique capacity mediate oppositions makes it powerful tool new toolbox. Examining liberated enterprise initiative French multinational company, analyse how rituals structure, disavow, segment or maintain organizational tensions. constituted neo-normative controls, also discuss possibilities holding open unreconciled preventing closure. We implications understanding control through rituals, outlining future research agenda study management.