Deconstructing trust and distrust in the workplace: A Foucauldian analysis of labor relations in an electric utility

Scope and method of study. This study uses Foucault's genealogy of power to identify practices contributing to the deterioration of labor relations in an electric utility company. Since Foucault observed that reversals of practices are found in the problematic, the sampling of persons to interview and scenes to observe was conditioned by managers' and union members' sense of the problematic. Open ended interviews were conducted to identify practices that constituted the relationship between the company and the union. Since Foucault observed that manuals are used to work on others, the self, or things, training and policy manuals were examined. To elaborate practices, memos, internal studies, newsletters, grievances, annual reports, and newspaper files were examined. Practices were first classified as family and friendship like, internal labor market, management, and labor relations practices. These were analyzed by identifying the elements of practices, what they objectify and work on, how they are related, and how they set up differential lines of action.; Findings and conclusions. Analogies of distrust used by workers to recount practices that evoke distrust are used to evoke distrust and contain evidence of their genealogy. Two classes of practices seemed to evoke distrust. First, reversals of practices evoke distrust when a trusted practice is replaced with a practice that seems opportunistic from the point of view of the trusted practice. Such reversals were not instituted during the Great Depression when friendship was practiced between workers and managers. Company system building practices were adopted that inhibit friendship in three ways: (1) Centralization removes control at the work group level necessary to practice friendship, (2) promotion practices place managers in the strategic level who have few relations with workers that began as peer or work group relations, and (3) family like and paternalistic practices were eliminated. Second, dually embedded practices--practices containing common elements but encouraging conflicting lines of action--evoke distrust. Management rights become dually embedded through practices of compromise. Contract construction is intertwined with problem solving. Dividing practices encourage two groups with different practices who work on common elements. Finally, trust seemed be to most clearly related to the practice of friendship.