Purpose – Much current academic writing focuses on the changing nature of work in the services sector, particularly with regard to the implementation of new technological processes. Bringing attention back to a traditional industry, coal mining, the paper aims to consider the impact of...

Purpose – The purpose of this short paper is to introduce the special issue and outline its major themes. Design/methodology/approach – The control‐resistance literatures are described, and the necessity for field‐led empirical accounts is amplified, as a precursor to introducing the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how new public management (NPM) reform from the national level is implemented as practice in a local unit within the police sector in Sweden. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative case‐study approach is applied using...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a next step in Greta Foff Paules' groundbreaking analysis of control‐resistance in service work by exploring the work practices of restaurant servers in regard to ways they resist and reshape the tipping system that structures their work...

Purpose – This paper deals with flexibilisation of work and employment in large‐scale retailing. Its aim is two‐fold: first, to highlight how an authoritarian workplace regime and normative forms of control interact, in the attempt to achieve workforce alignment to flexibility. Second, to...

Purpose – From the optimistic to the critical, the post‐structural to the market rational there are varied perspectives on normative control at work. The purpose of this paper is to describe a tactical evolution in normative control practices and explore how this development sits with each...

Purpose – The purpose of this short paper is to introduce the special issue and outline its major themes. Design/methodology/approach – The control-resistance literatures are described, and the necessity for field-led empirical accounts is amplified, as a precursor to introducing the...