Introduction

This chapter considers how those invested in an organisation seek to regulate feelings of shame in employees to generate compliance and conformity to organisational rules, standards and expectations. It first outlines the terrain relating to organisational control in social work services to argue that the place of shame regulation has been overlooked. Secondly, it analyses what shame is from a constructivist perspective, which lays the foundations for an analysis of how leaders and managers engage in a process of regulating others’ shame. Thirdly, it provides a framework for understanding how leaders and managers go about regulating shame in other people so that any feelings of shame as a result of undertaking tasks the organisation expects them to do are contained and diverted, while ensuring that shame is evoked as a result of any transgressions. Finally, these arguments are discussed in terms of their relevance and importance for practice.

Organisational control

Organisations are created with a purpose. In order to fulfil that purpose there needs to be forms of control within the organisation over the workforce. Conceptualising organisational control has a long history in organisational theory. Weber (1978), for example, argued that bureaucracies provided the benefit of a set of rules that ordered employee behaviour while facilitating efficiency and fairness. The consequence of such organisation, he argued, was that this also provided a highly ordered and rigid system that limited individual freedom, creating what he referred to as the ‘iron cage’. Paying a workforce and organising them into clearly defined spheres of activity, within a hierarchy, while enforcing strict and systematic discipline within the office, was meant to ensure that the organisation would achieve its aims and objectives.

In terms of social work organisations, however, the bureaucratic iron cage was not so rigid that it did not allow for some flexibility. Lipsky's (1980) classic paper on front-line practice in public service organisations identified the need for practitioners to exercise discretion in implementing bureaucratic rules, procedures and policies. While this facilitated flexibility in the face of complex real-life situations on the one hand, it enabled variation in practice methods and outcomes on the other.