Accept the restrictions and don´t complain!: The valuation of placidity in the Argentinean workplace

Abstract

Globalization and competition lead organizations to seek always more performance and flexibility from their employees: they must adapt to these constraints obediently, without complaining, and more generally placidly. We make the hypothesis that such placidity may have a normative status. It is found that line managers expect their employees to act placidly, and that non-executives are aware of this expectation, demonstrating placidity as well as spontaneously as to give good image of themselves. These data are in line with the hypothesized normativity.