Deserving freedom: A Bourdieuan analysis of the work experience in a self-proclaimed liberated firm.

Abstract

This study aims to further knowledge on the ambivalent work experience in “liberated” organizations, responding to calls for more empirical evidence on the threats and virtues of popular “new” managerial ideologies. In this article, we empirically draw on the findings of a case study undertaken in a liberated medium-sized enterprise, active in the field of IT consulting. By mapping out how the rules of the game have changed since the self-proclamation of being a liberated firm, we outline how enchanted values of freedom and autonomy serve to mask a new form of symbolic violence. We illustrate how workers themselves are complicit in their own demise by buying into and reproducing the liberated firm ideology whilst paradoxically being silenced and made to feel “freedom unworthy”. This study contributes to deepen our understanding of elusive forms of domination and to reveal ambivalences of worker experience in supposedly happy workplaces. Especially in light of the new world of work and the Covid19-crisis, a better understanding of how the control-autonomy association works is timely.