Paper long abstract:

Various ethnographic studies have documented a sense of intensification of time among large strata of post-socialist societies. This paper will describe the transformations of work-discipline in a large Romanian state bank purchased by a Western bank during the early 2000s. Building on the work of E.P. Thompson, ethnographies of post-socialism and ethnographies of work in the flexible accumulation regime, I will describe the sudden process of disciplining the post-socialist work force, and the instilling a new sense of routine, daily schedule and work related relationships. Based on interviews with middle managers and human resources managers carried out in 2006, I describe the transformations induced by the new corporate management. These include a sharper separation of "work" and "life", higher standardization of time keeping, the de-socialization and individualization of work space, the emergence of "virtual" time and the colonization of personal time by organizational time mainly through training and team-building activities.