Where 'The Rules Don't Apply': Organizational Isolation and Misbehaviour in Elite Kitchens. (8th September 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Burrow, Robin; Scott, Rebecca; Courpasson, David
• Is Part Of: Journal of management studies. Volume 59:Number 5(2022)
• Page Start: 1103
• Page End: 1131
• Publication Date: 2021-09-08
• Subjects: misbehaviour -- isolation -- space -- communitas -- normative communitas -- chefs -- kitchens; Industrial management -- Periodicals; 658
• DOI: 10.1111/joms.12759
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-2380

Abstract

Abstract: In this article we elaborate on the connection between organizational isolation and misbehaviour. Drawing on 47 interviews with elite chefs we make a twofold contribution to the misbehaviour literature. First, we conceptualize misbehaviour amongst chefs as a potentiality engrained into the geography of the kitchens they work in. Drawing on Smith (1987), we call this a geography of deviance . Through this concept we show that misbehaviour can be inscribed into a place, through structures that create feelings of invisibility, alienation and detachment. Second, we make sense of chefs' misbehaviour by using Turner's theory of normative communitas . Via this framing misbehaviour is cast as a ritualized component of an anti‐structural way of being, where the kitchen is simultaneously apprehended as an instrument of social withdrawal and a symbol of deviance around which the community pivots. Through these contributions we help to crystalise the relationship between organizational isolation and misbehaviour, particularly in the context of chefs and kitchens.