People are forced not to go beyond their roles; they are prevented from contributing in the direction of increased competence (Hammer and Champy 1995: 13, 15, 16; Peters and Waterman 1982: 320). Employees feel like Production, Cleaning and Dispatch machines. This forces new individual identities to emerge, each attempting to go beyond the treatment (Clarke et al. 1994).
Non-managers express a sense of ‘losing’ something but also of becoming aware of a feeling of ‘value’. Managers formulate strategies as if the procedures in their departments can be described as input–output models. Employees start to increase variety to create conditions under which such models do not fit. They emphasise the importance of a second point of view next to that of managers:
‘People [at Laurens] would say, we used to do this and that…’ (4.46.2).
‘…junior support staff [at Eden]…confide to us trainers’ (3.22.2).
