'Ain't misbehavin'? Opportunities for resistance under new forms of 'quality' management

In this paper we explore the development of a new regime in a major bank wh ere total quality management (TQM) has recently been introduced. A number o f recent critics have suggested that TQM all but eliminates resistance eith er through a management regime that removes waste or through the totalising discourse it propagates. We argue that new management innovations associat ed with TQM and 'empowerment' are effective in increasing control over work processes and the subjectivity of staff Even so, employees are able to ret ain some control over areas of their working lives. A central concern of th e paper is to provide some limited evidence of how how an analysis of subje ctivity enhances our understanding of both consent and resistance at work.