The unspoken side of mutual adjustment: Understanding intersubjective negotiation in small professional service firms

This article critically analyses intersubjective negotiation in the context of small firm employment relationships. These employment relationships are generally acknowledged as ad hoc, contested and negotiated, producing mutual adjustment between owner-managers and employees. We present detailed qualitative empirical material from three small professional service firms and argue that explicit instances of formal or informal negotiation cannot be understood as discrete events disassociated from ongoing, everyday intersubjective negotiations. The negotiation of employment relationships, especially in ambiguity-intensive small professional service firms, frequently draws on the perception of other actors’ value or interests rather than on any direct engagement with them. This intersubjective guesswork underlying mutual adjustment is potentially dysfunctional as outcomes can arise that satisfy neither owner-manager nor employee interests. We suggest that understanding employment relationships in small professional service firms requires greater focus on individuals’ perceptions and the ways in which their relative positions are structured in intersubjective mutual (mis)recognition.