What comes around, goes around: how neo/normative control accidently enables its own resistance

Purpose The paper discusses how the management of a sports and fashion company, which we refer to as NULMA, successfully applied the neo/normative control technology “karma organisation” and gained employee engagement. Whereas other studies have documented employee resistance to organisational cultures when used for managerial control, our case demonstrates resistance to management practices that employees find inconsistent with the dominant karma culture. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a six-year longitudinal organisational at-home ethnography conducted by one of the authors using methods of both participant and non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and collaborative production of secondary data in the case organisation. Findings While our research shows that management can successfully apply neo/normative control which employees accept and support, we further show that employees mobilise the same values to resist management when it fails to deliver on the commitments and promises of the organisational culture. Originality/value The study contributes to the literature on organisational culture and, in particular, neo/normative control by theorising employee resistance as being by “accident”, by which we mean an inherent negative potentiality co-invented and released by managers establishing a “karma organisation”. Our theorising culminates in a discussion of the study’s implications for research and practice.