From Engagement to Quiet Quitting: The Workplace Behavior Life Cycle and the Re-stabilization of the Effort Bargain
Öz
Workplace concepts frequently gain rapid prominence in organizational and public discussions before gradually losing visibility, even though the underlying behaviors they describe continue to persist. Existing research has typically examined such concepts as discrete phenomena, offering limited explanation for the recurring processes through which workplace behavioral labels emerge, diffuse, become contested, and eventually fade from attention. Addressing this gap, this paper develops the Workplace Behavior Life Cycle (WBLC), a conceptual framework explaining the lifecycle dynamics of workplace behavioral concepts. The framework is developed through a comparative analysis of two contrasting cases: employee engagement, an academically developed construct that became institutionalized through managerial practice, and quiet quitting, a worker-generated label that rapidly diffused through digital platforms before giving way to successor terms. Drawing on management fashion theory, labor process theory, and discourse-oriented perspectives, the paper proposes a six-stage cycle consisting of latency, naming, amplification, institutional response, concept fatigue, and retirement or discursive backgrounding. The paper makes three principal contributions. First, it extends management fashion theory by incorporating both management-generated and employee-generated workplace concepts within a unified framework. Second, it introduces the concept of discursive backgrounding to explain how workplace concepts may remain institutionally embedded despite losing intellectual momentum. Third, it proposes that workplace behavioral concepts tend to converge toward the re-stabilization of the effort bargain on terms favorable to management, regardless of their origin. The WBLC contributes to organizational behavior, human resource management, and the sociology of management knowledge by providing a general framework for understanding the emergence, diffusion, and containment of workplace behavioral concepts.
Anahtar Kelimeler
Kaynakça
- Abrahamson, E. (1996). Management fashion. Academy of Management Review, 21(1), 254–285. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1996.9602161572
- Abrahamson, E., & Fairchild, G. (1999). Management fashion: Lifecycles, triggers, and collective learning processes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(4), 708–740. https://doi.org/10.2307/2667053
- Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The Job Demands-Resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309–328. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940710733115
- Baldamus, W. (1961). Efficiency and effort: An analysis of industrial administration. Tavistock Publications.
- Barley, S. R., & Kunda, G. (1992). Design and devotion: Surges of rational and normative ideologies of control in managerial discourse. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37(3), 363–399. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393449
- Bazargan, A., Bygrave, C., Singh Saini, D., & Eze, S. (2025). Beyond the EVLN model: Quiet Quitting and the evolving dynamics of job dissatisfaction in human resource management. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 36(15), 2785–2814. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2025.2568602
- Behrend, H. (1957). The effort bargain. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 10(4), 503–515. https://doi.org/10.1177/001979395701000401
- Bernuzzi, C., Paganin, G., Petrilli, S., et al. (2025). Old trends in new clothing? Exploring the quiet quitting phenomenon through a scoping review. Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-025-07920-x
- Boccoli, G., Gastaldi, L., & Corso, M. (2023). The evolution of employee engagement: Towards a social and contextual construct for balancing individual performance and wellbeing dynamically. International Journal of Management Reviews, 25(1), 75–98. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12304
- Braverman, H. (1974).  Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. Monthly Review Press.
