Avoiding, Resisting and Enduring: A New Typology of Worker Responses to Workplace Violence

Abstract

Drawing on research on chefs and aspiring chefs in commercial kitchens, this article typologises workers’ strategic responses to violence and illustrates how these responses are shaped by occupational status and work experience, as well as industry structures. While previous scholarship indicates that workers actively avoid or resist violence in the workplace, this literature largely neglects ways in which workers endure violence in strategic ways. Based on ethnographic data and in-depth interviews, this article explores three key responses to violence – avoidance, resistance and endurance – and argues that while these reactions may complement workers’ occupational self-interest, they ultimately serve to reinforce, normalise and even exacerbate violence within commercial kitchens and other similar workplaces.