ABSTRACT
Alongside whatever organised 'industrial actions' still occur, there continues to occur a considerable variety of both group and individual actions of adjustment, resistance and organisational mischief. This chapter concentrates on activities at the level of the workplace and the considerable variety of ways in which people, legitimately and illegitimately, adjust to the everyday circumstances in which they find themselves at work and the ways they resist, or otherwise deal with, being 'made use of' by employers, co-workers and customers – and even, with regard to employers, being 'disposed of'. The forms of 'mischief' to be considered in the chapter, in one way or another, all involve a degree of resistance to the patterns of power in which people find themselves at work. Humour and play thus help maintain an organisational culture. Humour is closely but ambiguously involved in maintaining the informality of employment relations that typically characterises small organisations by 'downplaying status differences and indicating a sense of personal closeness'.
