The focus of this work is on labour-management relations in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC), Nigeria. The work explores current mangerial practics in the corporation and their effects on the intensifiaction of work, and how the management sought to control workers and the labour process. The work explores the experiences of workers and their perception of managerial practices. Evidence suggests that managerial practices and their impacts on workplace relations in NNPC have become more subtle, with wider implications for workers experiences and the labour process. The work shows that while managerial control remains significant, workers inhabit domains that are "unmanaged" and "unmanageable" where "resistance" and "misbehaviour" reside. Without a conceptual and empirical interogation, evidence of normative and mutual benefits of managerial practices or a submissive image of workers will produce images of workers that obscure their covert opposition and resistance.Workers collude with the "hubrics" of management in order to invert and subvert managerial practices and intentions. Through theoretical reconceptualisation the work seeks to re-insert workers-gency back.