‘If you are having a go at me, I am going to have a go at you’: The changing nature of social relationships of bank work under Performance Management

Abstract

Over the last three decades work and employment in the private and public sector are increasingly subject to marketisation processes. A defining feature of marketised employment is the rise of performance management systems (PMS). This article utilises a novel framework of Sayer’s moral economy approach and labour process theory to explore the changing nature of bank work and social relationships between branch managers and branch workers before and after the implementation of PMSs in UK banks. This article illustrates how the social and moral texture of the social relationships between branch workers and their managers deteriorated after the implementation of PMS, resulting in the rise of hostile forms of engagement.