Manifestations and dynamics of control and autonomy in the

One fascinating insight facilitated by the study of this particular empirical setting unhampered as it was by the inequalities inherent in typical waged relationships, was the constantly negotiated realities regarding the issues of who was managing who and who was in control. The data I collected, imbued with meaning for respondents, passionate about their lifeboat service, highlighted a complex, ongoing dynamic. In its most basic variant this dynamic took the form of contestations over legitimate ownership of, in particular, the lifeboat station and its boat, played out between volunteer crews and HQ. For example, the boat was legally owned by the RNLI but was to a great extent seen by the volunteer crew as ‘belonging’ to them, and in a more diffuse sense to the local community both past and present5. This dynamic was crucially about the meaning of the boat and lifesaving service for different actors, meanings which had deep consequences for the nature of organizing (Gergen et al., 2004) for example:

[Volunteers] view that lifeboat as their boat, as far as they are concerned it’s ‘our’ lifeboat. They talk about our lifeboat not RNLI lifeboat. RNLI in Poole is alien to the community here, in the sense of ‘that’s our lifeboat’. So it is something that was given to them and they have taken ownership of it. (Seán, Coxswain)

Whilst RNLI HQ brought a different frame of reference to the situation:

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Because we are providing the basic equipment, the basic training, the infrastructure and the maintenance, it gives us a duty of care over those people and so we sign up into the [local] organisation and say ‘if you want to, as part of the community, if you want to deliver this life saving service, we will really help you to do that, but you are going to have to do it on the institutions terms because we reckon we can look after you better than if you were just doing it in an ad-hoc way’. (Dennis, RNLI Senior Manager)

Contrary to Farmer and Fedor (2001), volunteers were also coercively controlled by their attachment to the organization which, in turn, disciplined them. The experienced threat of punishment was clear in this account of HQ-Station relations:

If you have a catastrophic fuck up in the morning, if you have followed procedures the institution will back you. But if you haven’t followed procedures and you have a catastrophic fuck up the institution will walk away and hang you out to dry. (Conor, Mechanic)

Whereas there is no question that volunteers were in control of the rescue situation on a ‘shout’6, different realities were fashioned which constantly questioned the meaning of the basic assumptions underlying the norms of the organisation. Realities in the RNLI were socially constructed by the interactions

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of members. Within the station-HQ relationship, culture had as much potential to create conflict as it did to create harmony (cf. Grey, 2012). Volunteering in this context was very much linked with the mobilization of moral arguments which involved ‘concerns about the social position of the self (and others) including issues of rights, duties, obligations, responsibility and potential blame’ (Whittle and Mueller, 2012: 114; cf. Harré and Van Langenhove, 1999; Van Langenhove and Harré, 1999). As I will explain in greater depth in chapter six, this moral legitimacy became the focus of meaning-making and manifested as a form of individual and collective resistance against the managerial agenda. As they were unwaged, volunteers’ thought processes were unhampered by the typical economic reasons which maintain retention and a submittal to managerial control in economic employment relationships. Indeed those engaged in thick volunteering sought to negate the bureaucratic and coercive tendencies of HQ, challenged the ways these forms of control draw on discourses of managerial expertise, and actively sought autonomy in their role and the functions of the local station:

[RNLI management] can’t sack me, you know, they can’t do anything to me. They don’t scare me, so no matter who they are it won’t intimidate me. Because I say ‘fuck you, you can say what you like to me’, because they’ve no…they’ve no…I’m in a very strong position, because they need me more than I need them. And there’s nobody in it [HQ] can intimidate me in that regard, because they have no authority over me, effectively. I’m a volunteer they can’t sack me. They can

come down and ask me to leave if they want, that would not be in their interests either. In saying that too, I don’t do anything that warrants [expulsion] …but I think that it’s a great position of power for us. So long as you can realise that and you kind of say ‘well they have to be really nice to me’, you know… In saying that, in saying that, the equipment supplied the boats they give, the survival equipment and the training is second-to-none. So while I’m giving out about them, the fact that they can provide this stuff probably turns them into the arseholes that they are!... Yeah, but you know what I’m saying…it’s really a double edged thing. (Frank, Second Coxswain)

This passionate assertion of the wilful autonomy of volunteers, whilst recognised to an extent at the highest echelons of management was, perplexingly, met with a complacent attitude which completely assumed the dominance of managerial privilege over control. In other words, HQ assumed that they had a control that the volunteers themselves did not recognise:

The policy comes from here, so does the training, the requirements, the equipment required, the HR backup, the finance backup all this is central and undoubtedly I think that’s where the control is. I suppose there’s a view that actually without the volunteer, if the volunteers decided not to be controlled that would give us a major problem. So they have a…I suppose whilst they are happy to be controlled it’s not a problem. (Andrew, RNLI Director)

The above construction of reality tended to be interpreted by volunteers as arrogance on high which was also frequently reported by participants at all levels of the organization. The residual effects of the RNLI employing ‘mostly retired Royal Navy officers’ (Frank, Second Coxswain) (cf. chapter three) was seen as to blame for the command and control ethos of HQ. Probably this was also informed by the economics of the situation. Although local stations ran a local fundraising guild, there was widespread acknowledgement that the large sums of money it takes to run a lifeboat7 could never be raised locally, and so there was awareness on both sides that local stations had no alternative but to accept funds from central fundraising. Volunteers were, in effect, economically controlled by their requirement for expensive resources. Accepting finances, however, did not equate to unquestioningly accepting managerially espoused methods of work, standardized control and acculturation, as the bi-annual inspection of stations by RNLI management interestingly showed. Close analysis of the following passage from a colourful volunteer coxswain led to a central issue here: who was controlling whom?

Respondent: They [RNLI HQ] do it good, there are a few things [in] their rules and regulations [that] are a load of shite, it can’t be done that way…still we usually just do it our way and then when the inspector comes down go back to the way the book is, then we go back for six months doing our own way. I think every station does it. And all our bits and pieces that we are not meant to have in the station; everything

7 _{The larger boats cost STG£3M to design and build. The overall service costs £385,000 per day}

gets hid away into the boots of cars and gone for three days every six months. They [the inspectors] know it…

Me: Like what?

Respondent: Like our own stretchers and own tow ropes that we use which the RNLI doesn’t issue you with. They only have a big tow rope, so for a small boat you cant tie a small boat up with it. Every station has their own small personal kit, and then that just goes missing for a few days…

Me: And you think they know that?

Respondent: Yes they do, they give you warnings get your stuff [out]! They [RNLI inspectors] all know who has what

Me: And would they turn a blind eye to it?

Respondent: They just tell you ‘don’t let it be there when I come down’, that kind of way. Its like our towing bridle that we have been using, they know that it’s better than their one, and now they have come back and said that our one is better than theirs and they took photographs of it working and I think now it’s in the process of getting redesigned and sending it out to the other stations. But that’s the RNLI though, just steamroll in and say ‘we’re using that rope’, they don’t go around to the Tyne (particular type of lifeboat) stations and say ‘what do you use?’ they say ‘there’s a piece of rope and you have to use that’. (Daragh, Coxswain)

Whilst providing an almost textbook example of the dysfunctions of standardized bureaucracy, this respondent also proudly asserted the superior knowledge regime which resided in his local lifeboat station. The obvious resistance to managerial control not only proved the experienced coercive tendencies (if they thought they would not be punished, the local station would not go to the effort of deliberately hiding their personal kit), but also highlighted a dynamic akin to the factory games analysed by Roy (1953) and Burawoy (1985) in the pre-visit negotiation with RNLI management. By passing the word ‘don’t let it be there when I come down’, RNLI inspectors revealed their hand on how loose their overall grip of control actually was. In an obvious respect, this turned the ritual of inspection into a two way process. Although volunteers’ voice may have been formally silent, the informal ‘heads up’ was explained as a way of demonstrating mutual respect in an effort consciously designed not to proverbially ‘rock the boat’:

Respondent: I suppose if [the operations director] came to our station he would probably blow his top, because it wouldn’t be done by the green book8. We do it our own way

Me: When the inspector comes down to do his six-monthly inspection what way do you do it then?

Respondent: We do it his way then! We do it his way then!

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Me: Somebody in a lifeboat station told me that when they know the inspector is coming down there is boots of cars filled up with stuff, hidden in attics…

Respondent: You shine the boat up and you do everything first class by the book, and then when he goes you do everything back to normality again…but by saying that it’s good that they are coming down because it keeps everybody on their toes. Everybody says ‘here’s the fecking inspector coming’…we do dread it even though we are volunteers and we can tell him to get lost, but we won’t do that. So we do have it right for him. And of course they have responsibility and they have to come down and show their responsibility because that’s their job, so they have to do their job as well as we have to do our job, so we have to respect that, you know what I mean. (Ben, Station Chairman)

There were obvious limits to volunteer tolerance of managerial controls and these were clearly expressed in the resistance evidenced above. As a specific technique through which control was mobilized, management’s inspection was considerably disempowered by not only the forewarning given by the inspector but also by the station’s social consensus of expert knowledge and rightful autonomy. The above response brings to mind direct parallels with Ogbonna and Wilkinson’s (1988, 2003) research on supermarket staff who were encouraged, acculturated even, to act friendly and smile at customers in order to create an impression of customer service. Staff ‘smiled but did not mean it’ (Grey, 2005:72, cf. Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 1988), superficially conforming to the

culture management techniques which, incidentally, were reinforced by surveillance such as CCTV and mystery shoppers – akin to the panoptic SAP software system which had to be updated daily at stations and electronically conveyed all data (launches, personnel, training, parts, engine hours etc.) back to HQ9. The ‘resigned behavioural compliance’ (Ogbonna and Wilkinson, 2003: 1152) evident in Ben’s response was certainly not the same as the deeply held conviction which bonded volunteers to the local station and to each other. Despite the best efforts of RNLI management to ‘intervene in and regulate being’ (Grey, 2005: 68) through incessant training and development programs designed not only to impart technical knowledge but also to shape the internal worlds of volunteers (Willmott, 1993) and turn them into ‘better human beings’, volunteer identification steadfastly remained with the norms and tacit frames which shaped the values of their local station. As I will now explain, this led to an inherent paradox in thick volunteering.

By definition, volunteers join organizations of their own volition, and research consistently finds that freely-chosen behaviours are highly committing (Pratt, 2000: 474, cf. Kiesler, 1971; Salancik, 1977). Particularly in the context of normative organizations, people volunteer as an opportunity to live their values. They join organizations whose values they feel connected to, because they seek, on a moral imperative, to do something good, and theoretically, selflessly work towards achieving organizational goals. The paradox here is that at no stage was volunteering experienced as ‘I do what I like’. On the contrary, volunteers were often subjected to a version of management the same as within a

9 _{In an interesting development, RNLI management are conducting trials with helmet-mounted}

paying employment relationship. So whilst on the one hand, volunteering is supposedly ‘about creativity, freedom of action and choice’ (Kreutzer and Jager, 2011: 654), on the other, volunteers had to submit to the collective will, surrender some individual and station autonomy and allow themselves to be controlled by RNLI management. In this way, despite the absence of an economic relationship, the managerial control agenda, albeit in slightly different forms than within the traditional waged relationship, is inherent in thick volunteering. Indeed, I should think that the immense levels of commitment which were observed at the RNLI would be the envy of organizational managers!

At the local stations of the RNLI it was the commitment to the ‘family’, driven by emotional proximity to the cause (in which danger played a meaningful role), which most guided and regulated volunteers’ actions, thoughts and behaviours. By definition, volunteers joined the organization and carry out the volunteer role of their own free will, but over time they became (self) disciplined by their commitment to each other. Not even the most persistent of culture management programs, for example management’s use of sophisticated narrative in the volunteer commitment policy, could dilute volunteers’ dominant, enduring primary commitment – identification steadfastly remained with each other and the local station:

You are going to hear some savagely critical comments about the lifeboat [RNLI management], and I hear them here, there is people come to me and I could say to them, ‘if you are feeling that way, what

are you doing here?’ They say ‘because I want to, I want to go out on that boat and I want to help people’, and I say ‘so there is an organization that is providing you with that boat and all that equipment, do you not see that?’ And they say ‘no no [they’re] fucking clowns!’ So to answer your question what keeps it together? I don’t know! I really don’t. And you’ll find these views all over the place, there is people who could take you off at the knees pretty quickly, but when the pager goes off at three o’ clock on a shitty morning they will be the first ones out there [on that lifeboat]. (Finn, Lifeboat Operations Manager)

In my analysis, this is something to do with the social reality that what it meant to be engaged in thick volunteering bestowed something that money could not buy – higher moral ground. Thick volunteering was greatly influenced by historical, traditional, kinship and contextual (dangerous working environment) factors. Historically, as I have already stated, many of the lifeboat stations were independent and their early history left trace elements which influence the present. Tradition was woven over time into the story of local stations via rituals, storytelling (Gabriel, 1991a, 1991b) and the acceptance of particular narratives over others, thus becoming productive, generative mechanisms which shaped and created realities rather than just reflecting them (Gupta, 2005). Together with the family bonds of kinship, which I will explain in depth in the next chapter, and the dangerous working environment, these historical and traditional factors helped to explain why those engaged in thick volunteering felt and behaved as they did.

Along with these features, an aspect which made this case so unusual is that because the lifeboat was completely fire-walled from RNLI management when it was at sea, autonomy was amplified:

You are supposed to adhere to their guidelines but no, when you are out you are in total control, you may be guided by them but we just do our own thing when we are out…well they can’t get at you when you are out there. You are completely isolated from them when you are at sea. (John Paul, Coxswain)

Self-management at the ‘sharp end’ where the RNLI could not ‘get at’ the crew (which will be discussed in depth in the next chapter), the free donation of time, energy and in many cases money (for example, mobile telephone bills are not covered by the institution), putting oneself in the line of danger, and the deeply held traditional socio-ideological beliefs of local autonomy were translated in this case as negation structures enacted by volunteers to claim a deeper meaning of the lifeboat and the service it provided. In an endless cycle of mutual interaction thick volunteering and the sense of ownership of the lifeboat service bound volunteers to their role and to each other. The narratives of legitimate autonomy which volunteers relayed were also productive, in that they not only