Introduction to the Organisational Misbehaviour Debate

The first edition of ‘Organisational Misbehaviour’ by Stephen Ackroyd and Paul Thompson, published in 1999, is a landmark book as it engages with debates around managerial control, the labour process and how workers find the space to misbehave via humour, satire, recalcitrance and more. The second edition has recently been published (2022), which is fully revised and updated, with new chapters on managerial regimes, social media, developments in worker misbehaviour and resistance debates. Jamie Woodcock has provided an extended review of the book related to contemporary debates on labour process theory, resistance, and the wider politics of research. Paul Thompson's reply to the review is included as part of a discussion on the subject and its context. Both the review and right to reply have been peer-reviewed and approved by the editors and authors. We hope that the readers of NTWE find this debate interesting and relevant, as it may provoke further wider discussions on the issues which remain vital to the fields of labour process theory, industrial relations and the sociology of work.