Abstract: This paper analyzes how the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) constructs ‘quiet quitting’ as an affective problem in American Human Resource Management (HRM) discourse. Through a qualitative discourse analysis of ten SHRM articles published between 2022 and 2025, it examines how affectively coded language frames quiet quitting as a violation of ‘feeling rules’ in the workplace that demand affective commitment. Applying Arlie Russell Hochschild’s theory of feeling rules, Marylène Gagné and Edward L. Deci’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT), and Sara Ahmed’s concept of affective economies, the analysis demonstrates how SHRM’s discourse uses affectively coded language both to reify and to contest neoliberal affective governance. This paper highlights how HRM discourse functions as a mechanism of reinforcing cultural control that manages employee subjectivity through affective expectations. Drawing attention to institutional responses to the phenomenon as the site of everyday affective resistance, this paper emphasizes the role of affect in both exploitative employee expectations and the construction of counter-resistance strategies.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, US-American businesses witnessed a mass exodus of the workforce later coined as “The Great Resignation.”1 This mass exit from the workforce added additional stress to employees already struggling to cope with demanding work environments, especially younger generations and economically marginalized groups unable to leave their employers (Tessema et al. 167; Mahand and Caldwell 10). In 2022, a new movement gained recognition in the United States through a viral TikTok video 2 for many in these groups: ‘quiet quitting.’ Participants in this movement sought to resist exploitation by reprioritizing their emotional commitment to their employers by doing only what was expected of them and nothing more, the goal being to realize a sustainable work-life balance (Mahand and Caldwell 9). In practice, quiet quitters resist uncompensated work and jobs without clearly defined boundaries, echoing an older labor strategy known as ‘work-to-rule,’ which also has the effect of limiting employer exploitation (Shotwell). The recent trend ‘act-your-wage’ overlaps with quiet quitting in the sense that employees only take on tasks that match their level of pay, resisting duties and behaviors that they feel are not justified by their current pay (Royal et al.). Ultimately, this practice constitutes a site of everyday affective resistance within US-American labor culture. But what is at stake when employees implement these resistance strategies?
1 This refers to a period which started in March 2020 and continued through December 2021 during which American workers were quitting their jobs at higher rates than ever witnessed since the US Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking such data in December 2000. (Gittleman).
2 On July 25, 2022, zaidleppelin posted a short video of various outdoor scenes while explaining quiet quitting in a voice over (zaidleppelin).
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