Control, Care, and Culinary Justifications: How Chefs Blend Old and New Forms of Management

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 8: Supervisor-Subordinate Communication

Abstract

How does one manage when a core pillar of one’s management approach becomes contested? We explore this case using the fine dining industry, which is facing a moment of change as the historically institutionalized model of hierarchical and abusive management has given way to an emerging management style that emphasizes individualized care and personal growth. Analyzing 120 interviews with fine dining chefs across the US (San Francisco and New York City), we examine how chefs justify the managing of their staff through the lens of two management ideologies, which we call broadly “control” and “care.” We find that most chefs use instrumental justifications to integrate a new caring management approach – e.g., it results in better quality food and higher employee retention. At the same time, they retain some aspects of the traditional model of control, which continues to be perceived as effective. We find that the resultant blending of the two models is heavily influenced by individual chefs’ personal perceptions of what care should be. This variation, we argue, comes from the not-yet-institutionalized nature of the care approach, whereby meanings become localized to the individual rather than across a field. Our qualitative data also reveals an intermediary phase in this process of change, whereby actors renegotiate the rules of the game through their choices of which aspects of old and new ideologies to blend. These findings illuminate the distinctive mechanisms by which macro-level changes come to life within individual organizations.

Authors

• Daphne Demetry, McGill University

• Gillian Gualtieri-Miller, New York University

• Jo-Ellen Pozner, Santa Clara University