The sixteen cases this paper read, in the order of its case list. Each is a GAEKJU outside case: GAEKJU's summary of the published study it cites, set beside another workplace, Korean in the original; the English is this study's translation, labelled as such in each case. For each case the appendix gives its title, scene and evidence, the reading its judgment leans to, its judgment, its counter-condition and its proposal, word for word. Sentences that carry counts taken from GAEKJU's own record of one organisation, or details of that organisation, are left out, and the sentences kept stand as the case has them.
Banana time
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of two published studies (Roy 1959, 'Banana Time': Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction; Dunbar, Marriott & Duncan 1997, Human conversational behavior), in this study's English.
Banana time at the machine, ㅋㅋ in the office.
In a factory in the United States, a work group repeated the same machine work all day. They cut the day into small pieces with games and teasing such as 'banana time' and 'coffee time'. When a quarrel broke off the games, the day became unbearable. When the games came back, the day came back too.
Roy (1959): a work group on monotonous machine work got through the day by cutting it up with games and teasing such as 'banana time' and 'coffee time'. When a quarrel broke off the games the day became unbearable, and when the games came back it recovered. Output was not measured. Dunbar et al. (1997): observing natural conversation, about two-thirds of conversation time was talk about people and relationships. The two studies go as far as saying that talk that looks pointless is everywhere. They do not speak of its relation to performance.
They cut endlessly repeated work into bearable pieces. Even when the trade changes, this cutting remains.
What remains across trades is the gesture of cutting up the day.
Dunbar's about two-thirds shows that this is not a habit of the workplace alone either. But this case cannot speak as far as performance. (as of 2026-09-25)
If a record comes out that a group in the same monotonous work that was stopped from games and small talk held out as long as a group that was not, that is, a record that absence and quitting were the same, the reading that cutting up the day is a condition of holding out collapses. It is to be looked for in factory field studies that compare work groups and in personnel records by work group.
Do not clear away the gaps for cutting up monotonous work. If a schedule so tight that it leaves not even a gap to cut is bunched on one work group alone, share that part with other groups first.
Laughter by team
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Holmes & Marra 2002, Having a laugh at work: how humour contributes to workplace culture), in this study's English.
Does the shape of laughter follow the team more than the trade?
This is a study that looked at humour at work in several workplaces in New Zealand. Humour made a different culture in each team, and at the same time revealed that culture. Even in the workplaces of one society, the grain of laughter differed team by team.
The gist of the study is that humour at work made and revealed a different culture in each team.
Amount alone cannot read culture.
(as of 2026-09-25)
The team that receives a request can then answer in its own usual way of speaking.
Surface acting and permission
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of two published studies (Grandey 2003, When 'the show must go on'; Baruch & Jenkins 2007, Swearing at work and permissive leadership culture), in this study's English.
Changing rough talk, and the attitude of the leader.
Grandey looked at surface acting, smiling only on the outside, in service work. Surface acting led to emotional exhaustion and lower ratings of service. Some years later Baruch and Jenkins held, in British organisations, that when superiors are permissive, swearing can be not antisocial but a social act and a solidarity. One study points to the kind of work, the other to the attitude of superiors.
Grandey 2003 (service work): surface acting led to emotional exhaustion and lower ratings of service. Baruch & Jenkins 2007 (British organisations): under permissive leadership, swearing can become solidarity. Neither study compared the amount of swearing between trades.
The trade sets the amount of feeling that must be held down, and the superior sets where that feeling is let out. Under a permissive superior, the same swearing does not hide and becomes solidarity.
Joining the two studies together, B is the least forced. Grandey showed the cost of holding down, and Baruch and Jenkins showed that permission changes the meaning of swearing. Neither is a study that measured the amount of swearing by trade, so this judgment is kept only as a hypothesis. (as of 2026-09-25)
Divide the turns so that the hours of having to smile before customers do not bunch on a few people. Do not listen to what words pass behind the scenes.
Taboo words everywhere
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Jay 2009, The Utility and Ubiquity of Taboo Words), in this study's English.
A review of research in 2009 held that taboo words are everywhere and serve to express emotion.
The gist of the review is two things. Taboo words are everywhere, and they serve to express emotion.
From what feeling that pair came cannot be known from this material, so it stands on A and leaves B as a question. (as of 2026-09-25)
Share part of that load in turns with other departments.
False compliance and short answers
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Scott 1985, Weapons of the Weak), in this study's English.
False compliance in the village and short answers in the office.
Scott wrote down how the weak side deals with the strong side in rural Malaysia. Open revolt was rare. Instead there was everyday resistance such as foot-dragging, feigned ignorance, false compliance and back-talk.
The gist of Scott 1985: the everyday resistance of the weak was foot-dragging, feigned ignorance, false compliance and back-talk. This study did not count tones of speech or the frequency of words.
Calling it resistance is too much.
Foot-dragging in the paddy fields and the approval talk of an office are different things.
It leans to B.
(as of 2026-09-25)
Take on instead the trouble of trimming talk that goes upward to the approval forms, so that detours like foot-dragging are less needed. Do not carry the talk that passed below up to the top.
The shared drawing
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Carlile 2002, A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries), in this study's English.
When words cross, whose meaning does a shared drawing change?
In new-product development, each department attached a different meaning to the same object. The study held that objects that could be revised together were used to cross the boundary. Making one side's words the standard and both sides revising the drawing are different things.
Outside: Carlile (2002) looked at the knowledge boundaries between departments in new-product development of car parts and explained that shared objects were used to reveal and revise the consequences at that boundary.
When the drawing is revised together, the different meanings come out.
A shared drawing is not a tool that only matches the meanings of words but a place to revise each other's work results.
(as of 2026-09-25)
If, even when the drawing is changed together, rework between departments does not fall and only the difference in decision rights remains, the role of the shared object must be lowered.
Leave the items that different words point to side by side on one drawing.
One CT, two hospitals
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Barley 1986, Technology as an Occasion for Structuring), in this study's English.
Why did the same CT bind technologists and doctors differently in two hospitals?
A 1986 study followed what came after the same CT equipment arrived in the radiology departments of two US hospitals. The equipment was the same, but the relations between technologists and doctors changed differently in the two hospitals. The object did not settle the relations.
The gist of the study is one line. Even when the same equipment arrived, the relations between technologists and doctors changed differently in the two hospitals.
The distance is great.
The time when a new object comes in is a rare gap in which relations are rearranged. Who takes hold of the object first in that gap sets even the talk that follows.
What the study showed goes as far as that the object does not settle the relations.
It leans to C, that the time a new object comes in is the time relations are rearranged. (as of 2026-09-25)
Let technologists and doctors, and department and department, take turns carrying the share of being first to take hold of new equipment. For the few weeks before relations set, keep the places of asking and answering open on both sides.
Yes said upward
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Scott 1985, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance), in this study's English.
Yes said upward, words left behind.
Scott watched the days of powerless people in a village in Malaysia. They did not stand up openly. They dragged their feet, feigned ignorance, pretended to follow, and talked behind backs.
Scott (1985) recorded everyday resistance in rural Malaysia. Foot-dragging, feigned ignorance, false compliance, back-talk.
Reading the office's nep as false compliance is reading one field over into another.
In Scott's list, the thing closest to the office is not nep but back-talk.
If there was a weapon, it was rare and quiet.
Reading all nep as false compliance is too much. Nep was common between colleagues too. Where Scott's frame fits is the side of the rare back-talk that drops the honorific. What village and office share goes as far as that, where power is tilted, talk splits into the outward and the behind. (as of 2026-09-25)
It can be told by reading an anonymised sample.
Do not try to tell whether a nep is sincere.
Challenging proposals
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Burris 2012, The Risks and Rewards of Speaking Up), in this study's English.
Why does the same proposal sound lower when it is challenging talk?
Talk in which a subordinate points out a problem and talk that supports the present course sound different to a superior. The study showed that challenging speaking up can be rated lower. The content of the talk and the threshold of the rating need to be looked at apart.
Outside: Burris (2012) showed a tendency for challenging voice to be rated lower by managers than supportive voice.
Apart from the quality of the proposal, a tone that touches the hierarchy changes the rating.
A difference in rating cannot be put down straight to a difference in the quality of proposals. Challenging talk itself may be an unfavourable threshold, so feasibility and the rating of the voice must be looked at apart. (as of 2026-09-25)
If there is no difference in rating even when proposals of the same cost and the same content are presented differing only in tone, the disadvantage of the challenging form is not confirmed.
Have challenging proposals and supporting proposals compared in the same box of grounds. Keep the rating of the person who asked and the cost of carrying out the proposal in different boxes.
Moves by direction
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Kipnis, Schmidt & Wilkinson 1980, Intraorganizational influence tactics: Explorations in getting one's way), in this study's English.
Why do people use different moves when they take the same request upward?
A 1980 survey in the United States had employees write down the ways they had used to move someone at work. Moves came out such as ingratiation, giving reasons and bringing in higher-ups. People chose different moves when the other was a superior, a colleague or a subordinate.
The gist is one thing. Even for the same request, the move chosen differed with the other's position. These are ways people wrote down themselves, and which move got the work done better is not in the gist.
The tone that goes upward is a tool the direction chooses, not a person's character — if the same person uses different moves upward, sideways and downward, talking around things cannot be written down as that person's personality.
No ground comes from here for writing down a tone that goes upward as that person's flaw. Which move got the work done better is not answered by this survey, so the difference of direction is not linked to performance. (as of 2026-09-25)
If a result comes out that the same person uses almost the same moves with superiors and with colleagues, this judgment is wrong.
With a request going upward, effort goes first into how to say it rather than into what to say. Put the boxes 'reason' and 'decision needed' at the front of the request form going to superiors, to lift the burden of choosing a tone off the sender.
Many hands
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of two published studies (Latané, Williams & Harkins 1979, Many hands make light the work; Karau & Williams 1993, a meta-analysis of social loafing), in this study's English.
One person's share that shrinks when working together.
In a 1979 experiment, people put in less effort shouting and clapping together with others than alone. In 1993 Karau and Williams gathered 78 studies and summed up that this phenomenon recurs robustly. But it shrank when the individual's share was visible, when the work was meaningful, or when the group was valued.
Latané, Williams & Harkins 1979: when many shouted and clapped together, one person's effort fell. Karau & Williams 1993: across 78 studies social loafing replicates robustly, and it shrinks when individual contribution is visible, when the work is meaningful or when the group is valued. It is the strongest evidence against the hypothesis of this group.
The loss of effort is real. In work done together there is always a gap where who did less cannot be seen, and results leak by as much as that gap.
Because it is a result repeated across many tasks and many years, it is hard to read this loss over as slack. The meta-analysis said only that the loss shrinks when shares are seen, the work is meaningful and the group is valued, not that it disappears. In this group, the hypothesis 'not necessarily low performance' is weakest here. (as of 2026-09-25)
If field studies pile up showing almost no loss of effort in meaningful real work even though individual shares are not seen, A steps back. It is looked for in the results of taking the field studies alone out of the sample of Karau & Williams 1993, and in field comparisons after that.
Do not dig into who did less. Return each person's share in joint work so that it is visible to that person, narrowing the place of the loss that arises from not being seen.
Unfairness and slacking
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Lim 2002, The IT way of loafing on the job: cyberloafing, neutralizing and organizational justice), in this study's English.
Why does slacking off become blameless when the company feels unfair?
Employees in Singapore were asked how fairly they felt the company treated them and about slacking off on the internet during work. The more a person felt the company to be unfair, the more they justified that slacking to themselves.
The gist of the study is that the feeling of unfairness went together with justifying slacking off on the internet during work.
This study sets beside it one candidate for what that talk may be a response to.
Justifying slacking is a way of setting right by oneself a treatment that has gone wrong. Then where the holding-back body points is not a person's disposition but the place where treatment went wrong.
This study is one ground for reading the holding-back body as a response to treatment rather than as disposition. But being a survey at one point in time, it cannot tell whether the feeling of unfairness calls up slacking or slacking draws in that feeling.
(as of 2026-09-25)
If, in a study following the same people over time, the justification of slacking did not fall even after treatment improved, this judgment is wrong.
The feeling of unfairness usually comes from a reckoning that is not seen.
Wards that report more
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Edmondson 1996, Learning from Mistakes is Easier Said Than Done), in this study's English.
There are wards that report more mistakes.
Medication errors were counted in nursing wards of US hospitals. More errors were reported on wards with good relations and leadership. It was not because they erred more often but because they spoke more often.
Outside (Edmondson 1996): more medication errors were reported on wards with good relations and leadership. It was not that they made more mistakes but that they spoke more.
Where it diverges: the ward study compared wards with each other.
That the counted value is the temperature of speaking is the same for wards and office.
This thermometer is used only at the level of the organisation and the place, and not at the level of the person. (as of 2026-09-25)
If it is over half, those corrections are not the sign of an accepting place but explanations called out, and the reading of ritual is right.
Look at the time it took for a confessed mistake to be fixed and at the person who took on its aftermath. Do not use the number of confessions as a score for a person or a team.
Copier stories
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Brown & Duguid 1991, Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice), in this study's English.
How did the technicians' stories fix the copiers the manual could not?
A 1991 paper reread an earlier field study that had observed copier repair technicians. Faced with faults that would not be fixed by following the manual, the technicians fixed the machines with stories they traded with each other and informal know-how. The paper saw this as the way an organisation actually learns.
Outside: the gist is that not the manual but the stories and know-how that passed among the technicians fixed the machines, and there are no numbers.
If colleagues first solved among themselves faults the manual could not keep up with, the side room is where the organisation's repair knowledge is first written down.
(as of 2026-09-25)
It is checked by dividing the context of three characters before and after the know-how words into procedure and compromise and counting by frequency.
Give the field technicians part of the share of writing the revision of the manual, so that a road opens for the know-how traded in the side room to rise into the next edition of the manual.
Resistance without words
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Scott 1985, Weapons of the Weak), in this study's English.
The pushback of the weak that is not left in words.
Scott recorded the ways people with little power stood up to others in a village in Malaysia. The resistance he saw was foot-dragging, feigned ignorance, false compliance and back-talk. He called this everyday resistance. Three of the four are not words but body and attitude.
The gist of Scott 1985: everyday resistance appears as foot-dragging, feigned ignorance, false compliance and back-talk. Of the four, only back-talk is left in words.
Back-talk is by nature talk in a place where the person concerned is absent.
Foot-dragging and feigned ignorance are pushback that could not become words, moved into the body.
It holds that pushback does not pick its field.
Pushback left in writing is easier to read than pushback done with the body, in that it shows what it stands against. (as of 2026-09-25)
The automatic judgment has no business digging out false compliance. Rather, by showing both sides whether the deadlines and burdens of work answered with 'yes' were bunched on the weak side, it reduces the very reason to feign ignorance.
Who stays
An outside case: GAEKJU's summary of a published study (Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski & Erez 2001, Why People Stay: Using Job Embeddedness to Predict Voluntary Turnover), in this study's English.
What are people tied to who talk of quitting and still stay?
Staff at two fields of different trades, a grocery chain and a hospital, were surveyed to see who stayed and who left. What held people was not so much satisfaction with the work as the relations tied into the workplace, the fit between work and person, and what would be lost by leaving. The study bound these three together as the degree to which a person is embedded in a workplace.
The gist of the study: what divided leaving and staying was not satisfaction alone but relations tied into the workplace, fit, and what is lost by leaving. The study only looked at the degree of embeddedness and the leaving that followed, and did not count the talk people exchanged.
When an embedded person brings up leaving is the heaviest signal. Talk of quitting from a person who will not leave easily is early news that conditions have tilted far.
Staying and being satisfied were not the same thing. Then the talk of a person who talked of quitting and still stayed reads not as empty words but as a record of a state in which embeddedness holds discontent in place. The more embedded the person, the more talk of leaving is early news that conditions have tilted.
(as of 2026-09-25)
Do not bunch training partners and handover partners on one senior; divide them into several lines. If the ties that hold are of several strands, the remaining people are not shaken all at once even when one person leaves.