Critical Criminology

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09445-9

Harm at Work: Bullying and Special Liberty in the Retail

Sector

Anthony Lloyd1 

© Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Abstract
This article draws upon a number of concepts from contemporary criminological theory
to address bullying and violence in the workplace. Utilizing empirical data from the UK
service economy, the article argues that workplace violence includes verbal and emotional
abuse and bullying. Management bullying, workplace cliques and the retail practice of
“stealing sales” within the organizational and political-economic context of competition,
profitability and targets reflect cultural manifestations of economic imperatives and subjec-
tive motivations that can lead to harmful and problematic practice. In considering this evi-
dence from an ultra-realist perspective, the article suggests that some subjects, libidinally
invested in the corporate workplace’s symbolic order, believe themselves to possess the
“special liberty” to rise above normative codes and rules, as well as ethical obligations, in
order to maximize self-interest through harmful actions that have negative consequences
for co-workers. The workplace “bailiff” reflects the complex interplay between culture,
political economy and subjective motivation to act in harmful ways within the workplace.

Introduction

This article offers a number of contributions to the criminological oeuvre. First, it seeks to
reconsider the relationship between criminology and the workplace. In doing so, the article
outlines the existing literature on bullying and violence in the workplace in part to demon-
strate the wealth of material currently available under the criminology-work nexus but also
to elucidate gaps and opportunities for advancement. Harmful arenas and behaviors are not
strictly limited to mainstream criminological concerns but are instead prevalent across a
number of examples, including the workplace.
Second, this article presents original evidence drawn from a qualitative study of service
economy employees in the North East of England. This will demonstrate practices seen as
entirely acceptable by both employees and managers that raise questions about workplace
abuse and bullying within the context of a set of economic imperatives with consequences
for cultural practice and intersubjective relations. The activities of shop-floor cliques iso-
late and marginalize some co-workers with harmful consequences. Management bullying

* Anthony Lloyd
Anthony.Lloyd@tees.ac.uk
1
Teesside University, Middlesbrough TS1 3BA, UK

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of employees under the auspices of performance and targets leads to negative outcomes
(Bartlett and Bartlett 2011). Finally, the practice of “stealing sales” from co-workers in
order to meet individual performance bonuses or targets raises questions about the nature
of shop-floor culture within retail sectors.
The third goal of this article is to address these examples with reference to an ultra-real-
ist criminology (Hall and Winlow 2015) that offers a lucid explanation for both the individ-
ual behavior of workplace bullies and the organizational imperatives that fuel and tolerate
such behaviors. In particular, Hall’s (2012a) work on “special liberty” in the context of the
transcendental materialist subject (see also Johnston 2008) provides a coherent interpreta-
tion of empirical data and heeds Matthews’ (2017) call for criminology to re-engage with
theoretical knowledge and development. Ultra-realism attempts to delineate motivational
factors that drive harmful behaviors (Hall and Winlow 2015) and suggests that cultural,
economic and social factors drive and motivate individual behavior at both a conscious and
unconscious level. Ultra-realism also follows critical realism’s injunction to investigate the
causative impact of absence; in this case, the absence of meaningful labor market regula-
tion may have causative effect on organizational culture and practice.
The evidence of workplace abuse and bullying is evaluated in the context of an absence
of ethical responsibility for the other. This absence, within competitive, performance-man-
aged and target-driven work environments, creates space for individual subjects, referred
to here as the “workplace bailiff,” imbued with “special liberty” to maximize their market
shares or prop up their own precarious positions through abuse and bullying of employees
and co-workers. This article asks criminologists to expand the scope of inquiry to accom-
modate practices ongoing within the workplace (Lloyd 2018) and suggests the importance
of a wider concept of social harm (Hillyard and Tombs 2004; Pemberton 2016) embedded
within the dominant cultural values of competitive individualism in order to ascertain the
motivation behind harmful behavior in the workplace. The next section indicates the cur-
rent state of play in relation to workplace bullying.

Workplace Violence and Bullying

Employee abuse within the service sector is a well-excavated seam of social science
research (Berlingieri 2015; Einarsen et  al. 2011; Chamberlain and Hodson 2010; Schin-
deler 2013; Sloan 2012). Criminology has addressed workplace violence in a number of
ways, including violence against secondary school teachers (Martin et al. 2012). Schindeler
(2013) argues that workplace violence should be the subject of criminological investigation
despite falling under the rubric of human rights rather than criminal law. Tombs’ (2004,
2007, 2017) long-standing interest in workplace regulation and safety crimes highlights
repeatedly the violence perpetrated on employees within the workplace, often through
institutional failures to protect employee health and well-being. Disregard of health and
safety regulation, and the failure to enforce regulatory frameworks account for widespread
harm at work. Gill and colleagues’ (2002) edited collection on Violence at Work addresses
the issue in a number of contexts including gender, HR approaches, union perspectives
and the distinction between bullying and violence in the workplace (Barron 2002). Ames
(2007) considers the phenomenon of “going postal” in the United States—deadly outbursts
of workplace violence perpetrated by employees against the company, co-workers and
management. Finally, Berlingieri (2015) suggests an expanded definition of violence that
places workplace mistreatment and bullying on a continuum reflective of socio-structural,

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Harm at Work: Bullying and Special Liberty in the Retail Sector

symbolic and interpersonal drivers in late modern culture. In sum, violence at work has
been a criminological concern for some time.
The literature also addresses workplace bullying (Chamberlain and Hodson 2010; Ein-
arsen et al. 2011; Hoel and Salin 2003; Sloan 2012). Berlingieri (2015) offers a succinct
review that divides workplace bullying research into three perspectives: a behaviorist per-
spective that addresses the individual perpetrator; tension between two individuals; and
attempts to situate bullying within a broader setting of organizational culture or practice.
The sociological literature on organizations often reduces workplace bullying and abuse
to power relations and control within the manager–employee relationship (Chamberlain
and Hodson 2010). Sloan (2012) contemplates the role of co-workers as supportive agents
who mitigate the worst excesses of unfair treatment by managers. Co-worker relations are
often cited as important factors in job satisfaction (Lloyd 2018), particularly as unfair treat-
ment and bullying at work lowers satisfaction rates (Sloan 2012). Hoel and Salin (2003)
situate workplace bullying in the wider context of management practice and employer
behavior as responses to the external stimuli of competitive markets and the economic
imperative to survive. This drives particular behaviors that can manifest as unfair treatment
and bullying. Finally, workplace bullying is not limited strictly to co-worker relations or
manager–employee dynamics as customer abuse also figures in service economy research
(Korczynski and Evans 2013; Lloyd 2013; Williams 2006).
While much of the literature on workplace violence, bullying and abuse focuses upon
individual relationships between manager and employee or customer and employee, we can
widen the analytical lens to consider the external and structural factors that may explain
workplace bullying (Hoel and Salin 2003). In following Berlingieri’s (2015) suggestion
that “violence” be placed in a wider context, this article explores the effects of workplace
violence; bullying and verbal abuse are as harmful as physical violence and should be
treated as part of a continuum. Criminological theory, particularly ultra-realism and the
concept of “special liberty,” may offer new insights and perspectives.

Exploring Criminological Theory

Workplace violence clearly sits within the purview of criminological research. A key aim
of this article is to employ contemporary criminological theory within the context of work-
place harm and bullying. In order to make a case for an ultra-realist perspective, it is useful
to consider alternative criminological theories and acknowledge their value or shortcom-
ings. Much mainstream criminology remains wedded to an empiricist framework, rooted
in policy orientation and administration (Hall 2012a). This approach seeks to identify risk
and effectively administer practical solutions to limit or curtail criminal behavior (Mat-
thews 2016). In relation to workplace violence, while administrative criminology can tell
us the frequency of reported bullying or violence in the workplace and design interventions
to reduce the risk of workplace bullying, it fails to deal with questions of etiology (Hall
and Winlow 2015). A social construction approach largely fails to recognize the reality
of crime and often reduces crime to labeling, the media or moral panics (Cohen 2002).
Control theories, such as those developed by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), stem from
a conservative tradition that assumes inherently evil or dangerous subjectivity lacking in
self-control and in need of restraint.
The left-realist response (Currie 1985, 1997; Lea and Young 1993) acknowledges
the reality of crime and its impact upon communities and victims. Cultural criminology

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(Ferrell et  al. 2015) builds upon the work of Katz (1988) and others in considering the
emotion behind criminal activity. This is a positive development, but cultural criminology
is often limited in its failure to adequately connect the micro-experiences of daily life with
the mechanisms by which underlying processes of political economy and ideology graft
onto subjectivity (Hall and Winlow 2007). The result is a desire to see political struggle
and resistance in the daily experiences of marginalized populations engaged in entirely
apolitical activity (see Ferrell 2018). It is into these spaces we can consider sinking the
theoretical shafts of ultra-realist criminology.
The ultra-realist framework proposed by Hall and Winlow (2015; see also Winlow and
Hall 2016) sits upon the foundations of critical realism (Bhaskar 2008) which tells us that
empiricism and positivism fail to reveal the dynamics of underlying structures and pro-
cesses which have causative impact upon events and experience. As such, the social sci-
entist is compelled to investigate a tripartite level of social reality: experience; events; and
“depth structures”—an intransitive realm of processes and forces that shape and drive the
social. Critical realism tackles issues of structure, agency and, importantly, motivation, but
is, at root, an attempt to grapple with cause. In this sense, attempts to place workplace bul-
lying and violence in a sociocultural context may find a suitable explanatory framework in
critical realism as it strives to link subjective motivation to a wider dialectic of structure
and agency (Winlow and Hall 2016). Importantly, critical realism also identifies absence
as causative (Bhaskar 2008). Empiricism and positivism regard social facts as observable
or quantifiable phenomena, but this misses the causative role absence can play in shaping
social and cultural forces. For example, the absence of regulation on employment contracts
has a causative impact on workers employed on zero-hour contracts. This absence is trans-
formative for both organizational cultures and the conditions of work in twenty-first cen-
tury service economy occupations.
If we are to consider the motivations behind workplace violence and bullying, it is
crucial to make sense of subjectivity and its connection to our social order. Rejecting
Bhaskar’s (2008) belief in a “natural” human essence at the heart of subjectivity, within the
transcendental materialist schema (Hall and Winlow 2015; Johnston 2008), the subject is
neither good nor evil, yet the possibility of either is inherent (Winlow and Hall 2016). The
human brain is hard-wired for plasticity (Hall 2012b; Johnston 2008). Neurologically, the
brain’s materiality and its neuronal receptors are malleable; they break down and reconsti-
tute. This is a vital requirement in order for humans to adapt and survive in multiple envi-
ronments. This corresponds with the literature that suggests human action is underpinned
by the relationship and interaction between biology and environment (Meloni 2014; Wake-
man 2017).
Transcendental materialism suggests that human subjectivity arises from a material base,
the brain, but moves beyond its material origins and is therefore no longer reducible to mate-
riality (Johnston 2008). As the subject acts in the world and interacts with its surroundings,
those surroundings and external stimuli feed back into the material core. The inherent plastic-
ity of the brain absorbs external stimuli and reconfigures neuronal patterns in order to adapt
and survive in one’s surroundings (Wakeman 2017). The implication for the subjectivity gen-
erated by neoliberalism is clear; the individual’s material starting point, his or her biological
origin, interacts with the ideologically infused consumer capitalist environment. These nor-
mative codes, values and behaviors subsequently reshape the neuronal receptors in the brain,
temporarily hard-wiring the subject according to a set of external influences and stimuli. Carr
(2011) identifies the way the Internet reconfigures neuronal receptors; our cultural environ-
ment, dominated by online interaction, has material consequences for our brain and its capac-
ity for attention span, impulse control and information retention. Questions remain about

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Harm at Work: Bullying and Special Liberty in the Retail Sector

transcendental materialism (Wakeman 2017), and undoubtedly, future developments in neuro-

science will have implications for theoretical advancement. Nevertheless, it offers a coherent
interpretation of the dialectic relationship between subject and society, which provides us with
a platform to explore workplace bullying and offer some tentative etiological conclusions.

Methodology

This project aimed to build upon a previous call center study (Lloyd 2012, 2013, 2017) and
broaden the scope of inquiry to include a wider range of service occupations. How do flexible
patterns of work impact employees? How do workers feel about their working conditions in
light of low pay and insecure or precarious conditions? What impact do pressure over targets
and profitability have upon the management strategies within organizations? How do these
strategies shape culture and attitudes on the shop floor? These questions informed part of a
long-term study of the service economy in the North East of England. The town at the center
of the study suffered deindustrialization and its associated social problems are in line with
much of the literature (Harvey 2005; Standing 2011). Also in keeping with the sociological
literature on labor market shifts, this town saw industrial and manufacturing work replaced
largely by service economy jobs (Lloyd 2013; Shildrick et al. 2012).
Workplace observations of bars, cafes, leisure, restaurants, retail and takeaway establish-
ments conducted over a 2-year period were supplemented by over 20 in-depth interviews with
service economy employees between late 2014 and early 2017. The sample was drawn from
existing contacts from previous research with some acting as gatekeepers to facilitate snowball
sampling. Some contacts came via workplace observations, others from leaflets distributed
across service economy workplaces and from calls for interest across social media platforms.
Interviews ranged from 45 min to 2 h, and some contacts agreed to follow-up interviews to
help develop a picture of career trajectories over several years. The ages of interviewees ranged
from late teens to early forties with an even gender split. Some respondents would be char-
acterized as British-Pakistani, while most were White-British. According to traditional class
structures, interviewees could be characterized as working class, although more recent class
categorizations, such as those offered by Savage and colleagues (2015) or Standing (2011),
would classify respondents as “emerging service workers” or perhaps even “precariat.”
There are methodological limitations to any research project, and this one is no different.
A small-scale and geographically specific qualitative study raises inevitable questions about
validity and generalizability. Analytical generalizability, however, emphasizes the theoretical
foundations that contextualize the relevance of empirical findings (Yin 2009). The conclu-
sions presented here are not intended as a definitive statement of fact on workplace bullying
but instead represent a contribution to a discussion that can be extended both methodologi-
cally and theoretically in future research. The findings from this study raised questions about
workplace bullying that provide an opportunity to contribute to existing debates via theoretical
exploration. The following section will discuss those findings.

Workplace Abuse

Findings reflect existing themes within the literature; interviewees recounted evidence
of routine customer abuse, supervisor and manager discrimination and bullying, and
co-worker hostility and mistreatment. This section will focus on management abuse of

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employees, exclusionary workplace “cliques” and the practice of “stealing sales” within
retail. This facilitates exploration of subjective motivation in the context of workplace
abuse and identifies the impact of abuse and bullying in the workplace. Data can be inter-
preted according to each of the traditional explanatory frameworks elucidated in Berlingie-
ri’s (2015) account of workplace violence. For the purposes of dialectical inquiry, however,
let us follow Schindeler’s (2013) request to extend the boundaries of criminology and pose
an alternative explanation that draws upon the ultra-realist framework of Hall and Winlow
(2015). The evidence presented below will allow us to explore ultra-realism and transcen-
dental materialist subjectivity, and will then introduce Hall’s (2012a) related concept of
special liberty.

Management Abuse

Sam was in his late thirties, British-Pakistani, with almost two decades of experience
in retail. He thought of himself as a “people person,” who built rapport with custom-
ers but acknowledged the target-driven reality. He reflected on the various management
approaches he had experienced and felt that “man-management” was often lacking and a
blanket approach to profits, sales and targets heaped pressure on employees. He also high-
lighted two managers he had worked with in different stores who, he felt, crossed the line
between pressure to perform and outright bullying and abuse,
She made people’s lives hell in that store, I remember she got rid of girls because
they were good looking and they didn’t fit, she got rid of people who were confi-
dent because she didn’t feel confident working with them. I know there’s people in
there she absolutely annihilated them, she brought their confidence down, some of
them left of their own accord…she vindictively got people sacked, that’s the sort of
woman she was. She got that job through arse-licking, it wasn’t on merit, it wasn’t on
her performance…she intimidated certain managers as well, even the people above
her cos of the way she came across. She should never have been put in that position
of management. At best she was a team leader. She was good at certain things. There
was a few girls she annihilated, she mentally tortured them into thinking they were
worthless in the business. I remember her saying to a few of the young girls, ‘you’re
nothing’, maybe I should’ve stuck up for them a bit more but it’s all about self-pro-
tection at the time, you tend to want to not rock the boat yourself, but on reflection
you think, no I should’ve dealt with it.
This manager appeared to have bullied co-workers to compensate for her own confidence
issues and to bolster her own precarious position within the workforce. Her behavior
reflected her own insecurities and manifested as a negative and destructive attitude toward
her co-workers. Her subjective distancing from others acted as a defense mechanism; she
scorched the earth with negativity and harm as an act of self-preservation to protect against
her own objective and subjective conditions of precarity. In a depressed economy with low
wages and low-growth, high-street chains fail; retail is subject to the vicissitudes of the
market and leaves its employees in precarious circumstances. A store that fails to hit targets
is in danger. The preservation of status through intimidation tactics bolsters her position;
you have nothing, whereas I am indispensable.
We could also argue, however, that Sam’s manager displays a common cultural form—
the competitive incentive to fight for status and reward. Co-workers and employees are seen
as competitive and self-interested; therefore, she reproduces this position and abandons any

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sense of social obligation to her co-workers. There is no duty of care, no shame and no
sense of responsibility for those under her direction; they would strip her of her rewards
and dignity to assert their own position of strength and security so she must fight fire with
fire. As a transcendental materialist subject, she reveals her inner core of self-interest, com-
petition and post-social orientation in her willingness to intimidate and deploy negativity
to maintain her position. The subject is neither good nor evil but instead possesses the pos-
sibility of either. In this respect, the subject seeks the stability and coherence of a logical
“symbolic order” (Winlow and Hall 2013; Žižek 2000)—a system of norms, signs, sym-
bols and values that collectively represent what we identify as “reality”; the consistency of
these representations allows the subject to locate oneself in an ideological framework and
find a sense of stability or “being-in-the-world.”
As “symbolic efficiency” declines, the ability of collective institutions into which the
subject is socialized and invested fails to ensure a degree of coherence; the subject is una-
ble to make sense of an increasingly unfamiliar social world (Winlow and Hall 2013). The
collapse of neoliberalism’s symbolic efficiency moves the “obscene Real” at the heart of
the subject closer to the surface and more central to social identity and cultural practice.
Perhaps this manager’s inner core of self-interest, competition and asocial or anti-ethical
moral compass constitutes both her social identity and her daily practice. Her social and
cultural practice reflect the ascendancy of an obscene Real at the heart of subjectivities that
solicit a symbolic order built on anti-ethical, asocial and negative values. This is revealed
in her approach to co-workers. This is not to say that this manager is not insecure. These
two positions are not mutually exclusive; her insecurity is real, particularly in the sense that
lack and insecurity exist at the heart of her subjectivity.
Sam noted his own self-preservation and unwillingness to make himself a target and
defend his co-workers. In a culture of competitive individualism, standing up for others is
incongruous with the requirement to protect one’s own position. This has ramifications for
his second example, where he becomes the target of abuse by a different manager,
To this day, I still feel affected by her, I feel affected more by her because I was
intimidated a little bit by her. She was one person who did intimidate me. I didn’t
know where she was coming from and I couldn’t deal with that, she mentally intimi-
dated me and made me feel terrible. In the end, she wasn’t there for long… When
they’d get you in that office it was to try and get you out, it was literally they wanted
you out and you’d have to be mentally strong to be able to…there were times where
I’d come home and cry, I’d break down at home, you couldn’t sleep because you had
that physically sick feeling in your stomach. You know where you enjoy going to
work? It was the complete opposite, what’s going to happen today? Am I going to
have a job by the end of today?
An organizational culture retooled in order to meet the demands of a competitive market
and maintain growth and profit can mask management intimidation and bullying. Man-
agement practices revolve around profitability, targets and the need to remain competitive;
performance management of employees and target-driven processes provide managers with
the leeway to pressurize and challenge “under-performing” workers. In such workplace
cultures, managers can step over the line into outright bullying and abuse. To prioritize
profit and targets reflects the absence of an ethical responsibility toward the other. Manag-
ers are free to intimidate and bully workers who can suffer severe consequences. Sam’s
experiences are representative of many low-paid service economy occupations. The quest
for a particular set of outcomes drives a set of management behaviors that on its own might

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not seem problematic or particularly harmful but potentially lays the groundwork for some
managers to take advantage.
Daniel, a 27-year-old White-British male, was representative of many contacts in that
he had worked in call centers, retail, supermarket distribution and other customer service
roles. His experience of high-pressure sales environments, performance management and
targets resulted in a situation whereby the workplace culture within his retail occupation
normalized management pressure and confrontation in the name of motivation. The impact
of this management abuse on Daniel was significant:
And this cold, this flu would not go away and I remember I went to the doctor’s…I
was sitting at the doctor, I’m really bad… burst into tears, crying my eyes out, I was
like, I can’t do this anymore blah-blah-blah. He was like right I think you need some
time off. And so…he diagnosed me with stress induced depression and it was hor-
rendous. And I remember I used to take my sick note and drive up to work and sit
outside and I’d sit outside for 10–15 minutes plucking up the courage to go in. I’d
wander in and I’d look white, and I’d just look awful and I remember once I went in
there and I stood there for ages trying to catch someone’s eye, colleagues would say
Dan you don’t look so well are you still off? Management would walk by, ignored
me, ignored me, ignored me, one of them came up to me and was like extended sick
note? Right! Took it off me and walked away! I was like what can I do? So I went to
the car and like a man I cried about it!
Daniel returned to work, but by his own admission he became “paranoid” about managers,
and his coping mechanisms included taking up smoking, and over-eating. The symbolic
(or emotional) violence inflicted upon him by managers left a lasting scar that ultimately
resulted in Daniel’s exit from this workplace. His co-workers, used to seeing management
harass staff in the name of sales and targets, failed to identify Daniel’s treatment as bully-
ing or abuse because the organizational culture normalized such behavior. Management
behavior went unchecked and concerns over profits and targets either at worst drove or
at least masked outright bullying and harmful abuse. The subject reproduces the cultural
environment in which one exists; in Daniel’s case, management behavior not only reflected
imperatives of performance management, sales and targets but actively reproduced the
conditions within which some employees thrive and others, such as Daniel, suffer.

Cliques at Work

Some employees recognize the exploitative reality of low-paid service work and align
themselves with the manager who can make working life tolerable or unbearable. Precari-
ous workers (see Standing 2011) and managers often demonstrate a degree of cynicism and
refuse to conform to the corporate agenda that often includes the injunction to “be your-
self” and make work “fun” (Fleming and Sturdy 2011). Instead, self-interest and “subjec-
tive distancing” (Fisher 2009) color their attitude toward work—a recognition that work is
necessary so do what you have to in order to get through the day or cope with the pressure.
In doing so, those libidinally invested in the symbolic order of the workplace align them-
selves with managers and workplace cliques, while others are left to suffer at their hands;
processes of inclusion and exclusion take place at work and have consequences for those
left out.
Jade was in her early twenties, a White-British sales representative for a clothing
retailer. She had a varied work history across numerous low-paid service economy jobs.

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Harm at Work: Bullying and Special Liberty in the Retail Sector

Her experience at a national coffee chain is reflective of a number of contacts’ experi-

ences of workplace cliques and exclusion. Her first day at work ended with her crying to
herself when she got home, similar to “going back to school with a pack of bullies.” She
pressured herself to make her new job a success but ultimately resorted to short-term
milestones of “one more week” and “stick it out for a bit longer.” After initially bearing
her abuse subjectively—that she was somehow at fault—Jade eventually accepted that a
management-led clique deliberately bullied and excluded her.
The people we worked with… were all women and it was very bitchy and very
clique-y and I thought it was just me, what have I done? Am I horrible? What’s
wrong with me? But it wasn’t just me. There was another girl they did it to and
then they employed another girl while I was there and they loved her, and it was
because she was friends with one of the girls who already worked there so she was
instantly in, whereas me and these other two girls were a bit like, right we’re the
outsiders. And I’m happy to be the outsider cos you’re always going to be when
you first start but it wasn’t welcoming with open arms which is why I put the pres-
sure on, come on, just try and make the best impression you possibly can and that
still wasn’t enough. It was more of a ‘no, don’t like you, don’t like the other girl
either, don’t want you to work here’, so they made your life hell until you leave.
Rachel and Jessica were both in their early twenties, worked in clothing retail, and
recounted similar experiences with management-led cliques. They identified manage-
ment attitudes and practices as the worst element of the job because they had “one rule
for one, one rule for another.” This was true of pay raises linked to in-house staff train-
ing. Those included within the clique achieved pay raises without completion of the
training program, while the excluded had to wait. Those outside of the clique were made
to feel unwelcome and were often ignored by colleagues and managers when they asked
for help. Management-led cliques provide certain co-workers with a feeling of safety
and freedom to willingly harm other members of staff through exclusionary practice or
outright emotional violence. Jade acknowledged the “bitchy” nature of her co-workers
emboldened by their close relationship with the manager. Jessica found similar issues in
her work, judged negatively by colleagues for not “looking your best,” marginalized as
the odd one out and ignored by co-workers. The competitive atmosphere within organi-
zations leads to exclusionary behaviors. Those inside the group would probably report
close working and social relationships as well as a positive atmosphere at work. For
those not included, bullying, exclusion and intimidation by co-workers become part of
working life.
In the transcendental materialist schema, those visiting emotional violence upon co-
workers are products of the culture they inhabit, their inner core of subjectivity shaped
by and invested in a particular set of norms and values. Yet, they also reproduce clearly
these same conditions through their practice of exclusion and marginalization. In his
analysis of gendered violence in Breaking Bad, Steve Wakeman (2017) suggests that
transcendental materialism perhaps offers a theory of male violence. If it is, at its core,
a theory with biological origins, then the noted biological differences between men and
women need to be addressed. The male protagonists become violent, while the female
protagonists do not. In this study and the emotional violence enacted through workplace
bullying, abuse cut across gender lines as both men and women reported being vic-
tims of workplace violence and identified male and female protagonists. If a definition
of violence is extended to cover emotional and symbolic violence, as well as physical

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violence, then these data suggest that transcendental materialism may offer a theory that
encompasses both male and female violence, albeit manifested in different forms.

Stealing Sales

The reconfiguration of labor markets in favor of flexibility and at the expense of job
security creates precarious and uncertain patterns of work (Standing 2011). It also, to
some extent, creates a two-tiered workforce within the service economy. Employers
can maintain a lean workforce of permanent employees supplemented with temporary
labor at peak times. The influx of additional personnel creates extra competition within
bonus- and target-driven work cultures. Although the customer base expands during
peak period, the arrival of temporary staff, who often seek to impress in order to attain
a rare permanent contract, ensures that sales personnel are in direct competition to reach
customers, to make sales and hit targets. There is a financial inducement, too, with
targets often linked to performance bonuses. The need to bolster one’s position in the
workplace, combined with the desire to achieve financial incentives, leads to a practice
in retail known as “stealing sales.”
Strategies for stealing sales were numerous. This most frequently occurred when expe-
rienced sales staff offered to “help” new or inexperienced colleagues. Experienced col-
leagues would develop rapport with the customer, appear friendly and offer advice to an
inexperienced member of staff. At some point during the interaction, the experienced sales
person would leverage the situation to their advantage and take over the sale. The sale
would be allocated to the experienced member of staff and count toward his or her sales
target. Sometimes, the sale would be “stolen” at the cash register. Experienced employ-
ees would solicit the support of cashiers; arriving at the cash desk with the customer, the
cashier might inadvertently assume it was the experienced colleague’s sale and input his
or her employee number, or the sales person would collude with the cashier to switch the
transaction.
The employment of emotional labor in a customer interaction, coupled with the status
pressure between permanent and temporary staff, could prevent the temporary colleague
from asserting authority. The colleague who steals sales sees no ethical problem in exploit-
ing these circumstances and profiting personally by taking over an established sale. The
colleague who steals sales sees no ethical problem in negatively disadvantaging a tempo-
rary colleague for whom good sales figures and the attainment of targets are crucial in his
or her pursuit of a permanent contract. This is the ultimate harm in stealing sales from
temporary colleagues. When permanent colleagues steal sales, this harms the temporary
worker’s chance to secure a permanent contract but bolsters the security of the experienced
worker.
High-performing sales personnel are valued by store managers who may turn a blind
eye to these behaviors. In a culture driven by results, managers may tacitly accept the
harmful behavior of those colleagues best positioned to achieve results. The target-driven
culture within retail and other service sector employment generates and reflects wider cul-
tural manifestations of achievement, competitive individualism and status. As long as high
performers continue to perform, their mistreatment of temporary colleagues does not mat-
ter; in all likelihood, they will not be with the company for long anyway.
Once again, the transcendental materialist subject reflects and reproduces the domi-
nant cultural and economic imperatives of achievement, aggressive competition and
self-interest. Wakeman (2017) is correct to suggest that the individual subject undergoes

13
Harm at Work: Bullying and Special Liberty in the Retail Sector

a process of becoming as he or she interacts with the external environment which feeds
back onto his or her neuronal receptors. In positioning the transcendental materialist
subject within the context of pseudo-pacification, Raymen’s (2017) contribution places
subjectivity within the stream of history and the relationship between a political-eco-
nomic generative core and the thymotic energy of a desiring subject (Hall 2012a).
The historic process of pseudo-pacification saw the sublimation of basic human drives
and energy in the pursuit of a more ordered economic system, reducing disorder, social
unrest and violence, while simultaneously transferring that energy into economic relations
that culminated in a capitalist economic order (Hall 2012a; Hall and Winlow 2015). If Hall
and Winlow (2015), and by extension Raymen (2017), are correct, and we are seeing the
breakdown of the pseudo-pacification process, then abuse, anxiety, bullying, competition,
individualized forms of asocial behavior, self-interest and violence are manifestations of
the declining symbolic efficiency of a political-economic order. Consumer capitalism can
no longer integrate positively and successfully large swathes of the population and channel
libidinal energy effectively. This reflects a reversal—a return to previous codes and prac-
tices—whereby libidinal energy is channeled in asocial forms of behavior, competition and
personal self-interest. The employee willing to steal sales from co-workers in order to suc-
ceed in competitive labor markets, earn bonuses and maintain his or her position within
the organization demonstrates the breakdown of normative codes of sociality and behavior
as workplaces become sites of aggressive competition and self-interest; the prevalence of
bullying and abuse reflects the breakdown of positive social bonds and the subject reconsti-
tuted around the normative codes and practice of neoliberal consumer capitalism.

Special Liberty and the Rise of the “Workplace Bailiff”

If we contemplate a transcendental materialist subjectivity shaped through biological

adaptability toward an external environment, we can begin to reconsider the relationship
between harmful subjectivities and the wider neoliberal consumer capitalist environment
(Hall et al. 2008; Treadwell et al. 2013). Hall’s (2012a) concept of “special liberty” places
the subject within the context of a breakdown of historic behavioral codes and norms; the
subject is driven to compete, to display signs of status and success, to meet targets and to
value individual achievement, unshackled from ethical responsibilities and collective codes
and norms. The subject is emboldened by ideological adherence to wider cultural tenets
and regards itself as free from convention and moral or ethical restrictions. In a culture
grounded in personal freedom, the cult of individualism, self-interest and status, built upon
a politico-economic system orientated around the pursuit of profit and wealth through a
harmful and aggressive system of competition that exacerbates and normalizes disadvan-
tage and inequality, some individuals feel emboldened to act. They are imbued with special
liberty; this allows them to rise above ethical responsibilities toward the other or bonds of
mutuality and community, in order to follow one’s own interests and desires.
The violence of workplace abuse and bullying reflects the harmful subjectivities of
some employees who, libidinally invested in the corporate workplace’s symbolic order,
regard themselves as exempt from normative codes and rules, and follow their own self-
interest to maximize market position. Those who steal sales pay scant regard to concerns
over ethics, moral responsibility, or even recognition of the other, following an ideological
injunction toward competition, individualism, and self-interest. Such individuals feel enti-
tled to act because they exist within a competitive environment where co-workers’ success

13
 A. Lloyd

can come at their expense. In the battle for targets and bonuses, some employees believe
they are entitled to circumvent the rules in order to succeed. Their special liberty serves
only to reinforce and reproduce the cultural ground upon which they exist.
In many respects, the harmful subjectivity embodied in the characteristics of special
liberty reveals the presence of a “bailiff” within the post-crash service economy. Tradition-
ally, a bailiff is someone tasked with taking something from others. The bailiff enforces
contracts and collects on accrued debts by the removal of property or money in order to
compensate for those unable to meet certain obligations. The bailiff is emboldened to act;
he or she inhabits positions of authority or superiority over less fortunate subjects and is
entitled to take away whatever is needed in order to satisfy an obligation. Service econ-
omy bailiffs are emboldened to take from others in order to make bonuses, to maximize
their opportunities, to meet targets, to satisfy an obligation to themselves, to solidify their
position, and to succeed in a precarious environment. Managers on an intermediate rung
of the corporate ladder bolster their position by taking from others. Abuse, bullying and
emotional violence take away confidence and dignity from co-workers, keep them in their
place and safeguard a relatively privileged position. Employees who join management-led
cliques take from those excluded “others” in order to gain a sense of belonging, safety and
security in an insecure form of employment. Individuals who steal sales from others harm
their colleagues because the workplace culture of targets imbues a competitive, winner-
take-all environment with monetary incentives for success and uncertain futures for failure.
Ultra-realism identifies the importance of causative absences in attempts to understand
harm, inequality and the subjective motivation to act (Winlow and Hall 2016). The preva-
lence of workplace abuse and bullying within the service economy demonstrates not only
an absence of a positive workplace culture but also the absence of an ethical responsibility
to the other (Smith and Raymen 2018). Organizational cultures built around competition,
performance management, profits and targets drive a particular set of behaviors, manage-
ment practices and rules. In elevating these values to a dominant position within the organ-
ization, employers strip the workplace of positive values, such as care, collegiality, and
respect; the workplace reflects the bare logic of capitalist imperatives and social relations.
Within this context, employees know they are expendable, managers know the bottom
line matters above all else, and interpersonal relationships reflect this logic. The absence of
an ethical responsibility for the other stems from this wider absence of positivity; operating
within a culture of negativity, some employees are distinguished by a harmful subjectivity,
the ideological imperatives of neoliberalism hard-wired into their psyche and behavioral
practices. Absent an ethical responsibility for the other, the workplace bailiff is embold-
ened to act in his or her own self-interest, regardless of consequence. MacIntyre (2011)
suggests that a culture which emphasizes individualism locates morality in the individual
rather than the social; instead of ethics, morality and virtue grounded in social function
and the collective, “emotivism” focuses upon individual feeling. What is “good” is linked
to how the subject feels, not a process of learning and doing rooted in social practice. The
workplace bailiff may demonstrate an absence of ethical responsibility toward the other,
but in one sense, his or her harmful actions produce a positive internal feeling as he or she
makes instrumental gains. According to this logic, the subject in possession of special lib-
erty can justify his or her actions as he or she “feels good” about the rewards he or she has
accrued.

13
Harm at Work: Bullying and Special Liberty in the Retail Sector

Conclusion

Workplace abuse and bullying takes place on a frequent basis and reflects a wider organi-
zational culture of competition, performance management, profit and targets. This drives
management practice and shapes shop-floor culture. Within these conditions, harmful
behavior emerges as a response to this cultural and organizational context. This harmful
behavior also reproduces these cultural conditions. Workplace bullying has been identi-
fied across a number of examples, including management abuse, exclusionary abuse of the
workplace clique and stealing sales. Each example reflects either the subject protecting his
or her own self-interest or taking advantage of the organizational culture to abuse co-work-
ers under the protection of management “motivation” or the pursuit of targets. The harms
perpetrated upon the victims of abuse and bullying are clear and damaging, yet any regula-
tory or policy-orientated response to curtail harmful behavior has to contemplate etiology
and not simply offer knee-jerk pragmatism.
The motivation to commit acts of abuse and bullying has been analyzed through the
lens of ultra-realism and the transcendental materialist subject (Hall and Winlow 2015).
The complex interrelationship between human subjectivity, the motivation to act, and the
power of external environment and ideology can place specific acts of workplace bully-
ing and emotional violence in a wider context than the traditional interpretations offered
by much of the literature on workplace bullying (Berlingieri 2015). This article heeds
Schindeler’s (2013) call to expand a theory of violence to include verbal abuse and emo-
tional violence. The workplace bailiff commits acts of emotional and verbal violence that
have harmful consequences. The workplace bailiff commits acts of emotional and verbal
violence because he or she perceives himself or herself to possess the “special liberty” to
act—an entitlement to satisfy the ideological imperative and injunction to maximize one’s
own market shares—to be a winner in a competitive culture.
Issues of criminological importance occur within the workplace. Criminology and work
intertwine across a number of points of convergence, but if we expand the criminological
gaze to incorporate harmful activity that sits outside of the legal framework of criminal law
(Hillyard and Tombs 2004; Lloyd 2018; Pemberton 2016), then the workplace remains a
rich site for criminological investigation. Harmful behaviors occur in a multitude of arenas,
including the workplace. Harms perpetrated in the workplace reflect ideological impera-
tives, motivations, and subjectivities that require the kind of etiological explanations criti-
cal criminology is well placed to provide.

Compliance with Ethical Standards 

Conflict of interest  The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Ethical Statement  This study was approved by my host institution’s Research Ethics Committee and con-
ducted in compliance with the British Society of Criminology’s statement on ethical practice.

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