Telfer Research Seminar Series - Daphne Demetry

How does one manage when a core pillar of one’s management approach becomes contested? We use the fine dining industry as our case, which is facing a moment of change as the historically institutionalized model of hierarchical and abusive management has given way to an emerging management style that emphasizes individualized care and personal growth. Using 115 interviews with fine dining chefs across the US (San Francisco and New York City), we examine how chefs make decisions about managing their staff through the lens of two available forms of management, which we call broadly call “control” and “care.” We find that chefs use instrumental justifications to adopt the new caring management approach – e.g., it results in better quality food and higher employee retention. Chefs then seek meaningful ways to integrate care in their everyday management while still retaining some aspects of control (which continues to be perceived as effective), resulting in a managerial “blending” of the two. We find different types of blending depending on how each individual chef perceives what care should be. This variation, we argue, comes from the not yet institutionalized nature of the care approach, whereby meanings become localized in the individual rather than the field. These findings illuminate how actors use justifications to describe their practices during a moment of perceived occupational change. Our qualitative data reveals an intermediary phase in this process of change, whereby actors are renegotiating the “rules of the game” and choosing to blend old and new practices.