ILPC 2026

In a classic paper written within the labour process theory tradition (LPT), Armstrong (1983) asked whether a group of front-line managers (FLMs), factory supervisors, were members of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. He argued that, despite some similarity of condition with workers, supervisors essentially carried out the functions of capital through the extraction of surplus value. The purpose of my research was to apply the same question to a very different role set and work domain: graduate managers in an “empowered” front-line service work setting. A further innovation was the explicit deployment of a critical realist analytical framework given its emphasis upon anteriority and deployment of a stratified ontology. These concepts complement the LPT analytical toolkit mobilised by Armstrong, whilst circumventing limitations imposed by ‘flat’ ontology approaches.

Whilst my case study utilises Armstrong’s core methods of triangulated observations and interviews, it went a step further in terms of incorporating historical data about the organisation and industry. The research was also longitudinal by design, completed over three years by a researcher acting as participant observer. Such exposure proved instructive, in that it provided a unique opportunity to illustrate how past and present forces and factors intersected to shape social relations at the point of production/consumption.

In actuality these graduate FLMs were highly constrained actors, preoccupied with operational mandates and control over the labour process. They were held responsible for the extraction of surplus value, even though their typical day was dominated by direct contributions to the production process. The power of senior management and its exercise of that power was key to making FLMs an essentially unauthoritative class of actors – albeit, one with significant bases of resistance relating to the social dynamics of “quality” service provision. Additional findings were that ‘management’ and ‘grad scheme’ labels as well as extra-ordinary perks relating to the product itself, served to obfuscate the proletarianized character of work. The contribution is to show how contradictions between resources and responsibilities rendered FLMs compromised actors. It also calls into question the legitimacy of portraying them as members of the managerial class.