Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
P. Thompson (2016)
Dissent at work and the resistance debate: departures, directions, and dead ends*Studies in Political Economy, 97
C. Valentin (2014)
The extra mile deconstructed: a critical and discourse perspective on employee engagement and HRDHuman Resource Development International, 17
Shumaila Chandni, Z. Rahman (2020)
Customer engagement and employee engagement: systematic review and future directionsThe Service Industries Journal, 40
P. Thompson, Paula McDonald, P. O'Connor (2019)
Employee dissent on social media and organizational disciplineHuman Relations, 73
A. Sayer (2007)
Dignity at Work: Broadening the AgendaOrganization, 14
Journal of Business Research, 99
G. Lemmon, Jaclyn Jensen, Morgan Wilson, Margaret Posig, Kenneth Thompson (2020)
Engagement as a Privilege and Disengagement as a PathologyJournal of Management Inquiry, 29
Minjie Cai, Scott Tindal, Safak Bennett, J. Velu (2020)
‘It’s Like a War Zone’: Jay’s Liminal Experience of Normal and Extreme Work in a UK Supermarket during the COVID-19 PandemicWork, Employment and Society, 35
Karen Johnson, Sunyoung Park, K. Bartlett (2018)
Perceptions of customer service orientation, training, and employee engagement in Jamaica’s hospitality sectorEuropean Journal of Training and Development, 42
Anastasios Hadjisolomou (2019)
Front-line service managers’ misbehaviour and disengagement: the elephant in the store?Employee Relations: The International Journal
Bahare Afrahi, J. Blenkinsopp, J. Arroyabe, M. Karim (2021)
Work disengagement: A review of the literatureHuman Resource Management Review
F. Carré, Chris Tilly, M. Klaveren, D. Voss-Dahm (2010)
Retail jobs in comparative perspective
Marek Korczynski, C. Evans (2013)
Customer abuse to service workers: an analysis of its social creation within the service economyWork, Employment & Society, 27
William Kahn (1990)
Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at WorkAcademy of Management Journal, 33
Karen Wollard (2011)
Quiet DesperationAdvances in Developing Human Resources, 13
P. Edwards, J. O’Mahoney, S. Vincent (2014)
Critical Realism and Interviewing Subjects
Ö. Bozkurt (2015)
The punctuation of mundane jobs with extreme work: Christmas at the supermarket deli counterOrganization, 22
E. Demerouti, A. Bakker, F. Nachreiner, W. Schaufeli (2001)
The job demands-resources model of burnout.The Journal of applied psychology, 86 3
Kelsy Hejjas, G. Miller, Caroline Scarles (2019)
“It’s Like Hating Puppies!” Employee Disengagement and Corporate Social ResponsibilityJournal of Business Ethics, 157
Sarah Jenkins, R. Delbridge (2013)
Context matters: examining ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to employee engagement in two workplacesThe International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24
Kate Reynolds, L. Harris (2009)
Dysfunctional Customer Behavior Severity: An Empirical ExaminationJournal of Retailing, 85
(2020)
Employee disengagement from the perspective of frontline employees: a hotel case study in Zimbabwe
Robert Hebdon, Sung-Chul Noh (2013)
A Theory of Workplace Conflict Development: From Grievances to Strikes
(2011)
Active engagement to active disengagement: a proposed model
Seigyoung Auh, B. Menguc, S. Spyropoulou, Fatima Wang (2016)
Service employee burnout and engagement: the moderating role of power distance orientationJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44
U. Aslam, Farwa Muqadas, Muhammad Imran, U. Rahman (2018)
Investigating the antecedents of work disengagement in the workplaceJournal of Management Development, 37
L. Cain, S. Tanford, L. Shulga (2018)
Customers’ Perceptions of Employee Engagement: Fortifying the Service–Profit ChainInternational Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 19
J. Godard (2014)
The psychologisation of employment relationsHuman Resource Management Journal, 24
D. Subramanian, Jean-Baptiste Suquet (2018)
Unpacking the Service Triangle: Arranging Power Relations Between Frontline OccupationsWork and Occupations, 45
C. Maslach, S. Jackson (1981)
The Measurement of experienced burnoutJournal of Organizational Behavior, 2
(2009)
Driving customer satisfaction and financial success through employee engagement
J. Purcell (2014)
Disengaging from engagementHuman Resource Management Journal, 24
Sadia Cheema, Farheen Javed (2015)
Employee Engagement and Visionary Leadership : Impact on Customer and Employee Satisfaction
Anastasios Hadjisolomou (2021)
Doing and Negotiating Transgender on the Front Line: Customer Abuse, Transphobia and Stigma in the Food Retail SectorWork, Employment and Society, 35
A. Rastogi, S. Pati, J. Dixit, Pankaj Kumar (2018)
Work disengagement among SME workers: evidence from IndiaBenchmarking: An International Journal, 25
A. Rastogi, S. Pati, T. Krishnan, S. Krishnan (2018)
Causes, Contingencies, and Consequences of Disengagement at Work: An Integrative Literature ReviewHuman Resource Development Review, 17
L. Harris, Hongwei He, Dr. Harris (2019)
University of Birmingham Retail employee pilferage: a study of moral disengagement
J. Sutherland (2018)
Who commits? Who engages?Employee Relations, 40
Anastasios Hadjisolomou, K. Newsome, I. Cunningham (2017)
(De) regulation of working time, employer capture, and ‘forced availability’: a comparison between the UK and Cyprus food retail sectorThe International Journal of Human Resource Management, 28
The article challenges the narrow view in scholarship which presents disengagement as passive and simply the absence of condition of engagement and explores how food retail employees articulate their disengagement within the intensified customer-centric service work. The article adopts the term “active disengagement”, as presented by Ackroyd and Thompson (2016) and empirically examines this as a form of oppositional voice towards managerial norms and behavioural expectations.Design/methodology/approachThe article draws on qualitative data from two case study organisations in the Cypriot food retail sector. Forty-six interviews took place with participants across different departments, including front-line employees and front-line and senior managers, to better understand the research problem through different perspectives.FindingsThe data show that disengagement is an integral part of organisational life and it is expressed in an individual and less-risky way. The data also reveal a variation in disengagement actions across departments, depending on employees' mobility on the shop floor and the intensity of interaction with the customers and the line manager. Shop floor employees enjoyed a wider “space of disengagement”, in comparison to those working on the front-end/checkouts. Nevertheless, checkout employees have developed sophisticated actions to express disengagement.Research limitations/implicationsThis research provides a refined understanding of active disengagement in organisations. It empirically contributes to the existence of a spectrum of engagement and expands Ackroyd and Thompson's (2016) “active disengagement” framework, discussing it as a form of oppositional voice towards corporate values and the customer-centric work intensification.Practical implicationsThe research provides empirical evidence that employee disengagement is not merely the absence of engagement, as HRM scholars and practitioners have argued, but entails further social meanings. This article will be useful for practitioners to rethink, revisit and revise employee engagement programmes in organisations, as well as to re-write corporate values, mission and vision, to also consider employees' experiences within the workplace. This will allow the provision of social support by management to address active disengagement in service organisations.Originality/valueThe study provides an important insight in employees' individual actions to express disengagement towards corporate values and managerial expectations related to customer service. It highlights the variation of dynamics across the food retail shop floor, which has been treated as a contextual periphery within the disengagement debate. Applying a broader lens on retail work heterogeneity, it provides further understanding of the diversity of how frontline service workers express disengagement within the triadic employment relationship. This study offers ground for future research to examine active disengagement in various contexts for better conceptual and practical understanding of this behaviour in organisations.
Employee Relations: An International Journal – Emerald Publishing
Published: Jan 2, 2023
Keywords: Customer service; Food retail; Service work; Active disengagement; Employee engagement; Organisational misbehaviour
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.