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this could explain why they began backtracking. I began wondering
whether watching one‟s back is actually a matter of survival and under
some circumstances makes obvious political sense. The game seems to
me to focus on staying invisible and therefore the pull of the team is
important. Thus it is safer to not be noticed than it is to stand out from the
crowd.
My argument is that the effects of the ward team can both help and hinder
the nurses‘ sense of systemic agency. I suggest that without a strong
sense of one‘s worth or emotional and political resilience to those
processes staff including managers can feel demoralised as they play out
an unconscious game that I called earlier an emotional orgy. The nurses in
this instance cannot see that they have discounted their own part in setting
the complaint up to fail. Their low expectation and feeling unsupported by
managers also probably contributes. Thus they retreat, a sort of fatalism or
inaction takes over whereby any effort to change practice seems a waste
of time possibly as a consequence of not being listened to in the past. This
gives rise to further whinging opportunities adding to the Us and Them
habitus.
Another way of explaining what might be happening here is through
Gilligan‘s (1982) notion of the Ethic of Care. She suggested ―women‘s
approaches to conflict were often deeply instructive because of the
constant eye to maintaining relational order and connection‖ (ibid p.xiv).
She argued that women‘s moral reasoning was based on principles of
responsiveness in an interconnected web or network of needs, care and
prevention of harm to others. This created a responsibility to others at the
expense of one‘s own needs; what Gilligan called ―selflessness‖. This
‗selflessness‘ did not extend to Maria because she represented the
management - one of Them - so the embodied habitus to comply with the
rest of the team clearly out weighed the sense of connectedness to Maria
as an individual. For Maria, the temptation to personalise this issue is
great but I believe the nurses are acting out the field with its historical
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