Description
Book SynopsisOffers a window into gray zones through its look at the manufacture and exchange of illegal goods called homers, tolerated in a French aeronautic plant. This book argues that when patrolled, gray zones like the production of homers offer workplaces balanced opportunities for supervision as well as expression.
Trade Review"Moral Gray Zones is an important book for scholars of organizations to be aware of and read, especially to continue building empirical knowledge of the subterranean administration and underlife of workplaces... Moral Gray Zones is argued well, accessible and does what very good research should do--advance knowledge in a field for others to evaluate, contest, affirm and advance."--David Shulman, Contemporary Sociology "Scholars of organizational deviance will ... find it to be particularly illuminating. Moral Gray Zones would be apposite for a senior, undergraduate level course as it makes both substantive and theoretical contributions to our understanding of gray zones in organizations."--Dale Spencer, Canadian Journal of Sociology "The deep and lucid writing style and clear structure of the book make it enjoyable reading... The book is recommended reading for sociologists and business scholars alike who are interested in organization studies, and more specifically in workplace studies. It will be of particular interest to scholars and graduate and undergraduate students in the fields of the sociology of work, organizational sociology, sociology of occupations and professions and also economic sociology. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the social system of production, the interface between vertical and horizontal forms of work, and of the centrality of creativity and self expression even in large bureaucracies."--Asaf Darr, ASQ Review "I recommend this book to anyone interested in workplace behavior and worker control and for use in undergraduate and graduate courses on work--not only for what it reveals about organizational gray zones but also for what it offers students: opportunities to apply Anteby's logic to what they have observed in their own workplaces and to use what they know about industrial segments, occupational divides, gender segregation, and other topics to answer some of these questions for themselves."--Martha Crowley, Work and Occupations "Moral Gray Zones is a sophisticated and thought-provoking work... [T]he book should be of great interest to those studying status-ordering in organizations, the informal organization of work, or the intermingling of identity and control."--Tim Bartley, American Journal of Sociology
Table of ContentsList of Figures and Table vii Preface ix Introduction: The Persistence of Organizational Gray Zones 1 PART ONE: THE MOTIVATIONS AND THE SETTING 15 Chapter 1: Revisiting Social Systems in Organizations 17 Chapter 2: The Side Production of Homers in Factories 29 Chapter 3: The Pierreville Plant: Setting and Status Divides 43 PART TWO: THE FINDINGS 61 Chapter 4: Retirement Homers: An Entry into the Community 63 Chapter 5: Homers Gone Wrong: Delimiting the Gray Zone 78 Chapter 6: Shades of Homer Meanings: Occupational Variations 91 Chapter 7: The Rise and Fall of Craftsmanship 106 Chapter 8: Trading in Identity Incentives 122 PART THREE: THE IMPLICATIONS 137 Chapter 9: Organizational Gray Zones as Identity Distillers 139 Chapter 10: Identities, Control, and Moralities 153 Appendix A: Data and Methods 173 Appendix B: Position in the Field 183 Notes 191 References 213 Index 227
