Scholarship has highlighted tensions arising from the ‘new management ideology’, an attempt to infuse formal organizations with community, informality and equality. Proposals to ‘liberate’ companies have been received with a mix of scepticism and hope for their emancipatory possibilities. While the tensions arising from such proposals are known, less work examines the practices by which they are mediated in the workplace. Taking a ritual perspective, we argue that rituals’ unique capacity to mediate oppositions makes it a powerful tool in the new management toolbox. Examining a liberated enterprise initiative in a French multinational company, we analyse how rituals structure, disavow, segment or maintain organizational tensions. While rituals constituted neo-normative controls, we also discuss the emancipatory possibilities for rituals in holding open unreconciled tensions and preventing closure. We discuss the implications for understanding neo-normative control through rituals, outlining a future research agenda for the study of rituals in new management.

中文翻译：

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工礼：仪式调解与新管理的张力

学术研究强调了由“新管理意识形态”引起的紧张局势，试图将社区、非正式和平等注入正式组织。“解放”公司的提议已经收到了混合的怀疑和希望他们解放的可能性。虽然这些提议引起的紧张是众所周知的，但很少有工作研究在工作场所调解它们的做法。从仪式的角度来看，我们认为仪式调解反对意见的独特能力使其成为新管理工具箱中的强大工具。通过考察一家法国跨国公司的自由企业计划，我们分析了仪式如何构建、否认、分割或维持组织紧张局势。虽然仪式构成了新规范的控制，我们还讨论了仪式在保持公开的不可调和的紧张局势和防止关闭方面的解放可能性。我们讨论了通过仪式理解新规范控制的意义，概述了新管理中仪式研究的未来研究议程。