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Levers of Control and Employee Groupwork to Develop a Novel Strategy in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Levers of Control and Employee Groupwork to Develop a Novel Strategy in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Marco Borria (Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy), Maurizio Massaro (Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy), and Carlo Bagnoli (Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy)
Copyright: © 2023 |Pages: 13
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-4181-7.ch013
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Abstract

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are competing in an unknown, ever-changing environment. This turbulence generates new forms of uncertainty and risks that not only affect business performance but also the wellbeing of employees. Groupwork as a management control system can support business risk reduction and increase employee wellbeing. However, while groupwork can help companies develop a novel strategy apt to face unprecedented competitive scenarios, it can also bring new challenges in terms of practical organization and efficiency. Moving from this premise, the chapter will discuss how groupwork can be used as a management control system using the levers of control lens. Opportunities and challenges both for businesses and employee wellbeing will be discussed.
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Background

Returning to work in an office environment has a strategic impact (Klimczuk et al., 2021). Flexible work-from-home setups have sometimes been the only way around the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. In psychiatrist Wilfred Bion’s terms, a relationship exists between raw thinking or feeling and the process of more elaborated thinking. This is what he called the “container” concept (Ogden, 2004): a process which allows the analysand to express their unprocessed thoughts and find words for them through the working of a containing function. Today, the containing function of the organisation is at risk in that its boundaries are no longer clearly defined, hence the process of elaborating thoughts out of raw feelings might be in jeopardy. This means raised levels of anxiety and unprocessed thinking for people which may threaten the groups they belong to. Whatever organisations and governments will decide to do with the work set-up situation in the time to come, companies are left dealing with the transition. Turbulence has been brought from outside the organisation to within the organisation. With turbulence come risks, anxiety, and uncertainty.

We have been presented with an idea of the “new normal”. This reflects the wish for things to go back the way they were before. However, until December 2021, the end of the pandemic was still not observed yet. The most that we seemed to be able to hope for was a status change from pandemic to endemic, meaning we are going to be living aside the disease for years to come (Tayag, 2021).

Many people enacted forms of protest towards the measures that have being taken: some refused to be vaccinated, some argued against COVID passes, others protested against mandatory jabs (The Guardian, 2021). Yet, businesses were caught in the middle of such protest. They were forced to expect employees to comply with the restrictions and the measures set up by the government, yet they were facing the brunt of their same employees’ discontent.

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