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Communication Monographs

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Transforming Resistance, Broadening Our Boundaries: Critical Organizational Communication Meets Globalization from Below Shiv Ganesh , Heather Zoller & George Cheney To cite this article: Shiv Ganesh , Heather Zoller & George Cheney (2005) Transforming Resistance, Broadening Our Boundaries: Critical Organizational Communication Meets Globalization from Below, Communication Monographs, 72:2, 169-191, DOI: 10.1080/03637750500111872 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03637750500111872

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Date: 17 October 2016, At: 07:02

Communication Monographs Vol. 72, No. 2, June 2005, pp. 169–191

Transforming Resistance, Broadening Our Boundaries: Critical Organizational Communication Meets Globalization from Below Shiv Ganesh, Heather Zoller, & George Cheney

This essay addresses the need for organizational communication scholarship to come to terms with the contested nature of globalization through analyses of collective resistance. We argue that organizational communication has largely situated the study of resistance at the level of the individual, and characterized it as an element of micro-politics located within organizational boundaries. Thus, resistance has been considered in localized, interpersonal terms, without full appreciation of its political and ideological significance. This essay builds a case for reconsidering resistance in order to study “globalization from below” and highlights protest movements as exemplars of transformative resistance. Finally, the essay advances a study of organizational communication with expanded disciplinary engagement with respect to globalization. Keywords: Critical Studies; Globalization; Organizational Communication; Resistance; Social Movements

“Globalization” is one of the most important and contested terms of our times. Although global phenomena such as mass migrations, the spread of disease, conquest, colonialism, and international trade are hardly new, the nature and shape of Shiv Ganesh (Ph.D., Purdue University, 2000) is Senior Lectures at the University of Waikato; Heather Zoller (Ph.D., Purdue University, 2000) is Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati; George Cheney (Ph.D. Purdue University, 1983) is Professor at the University of Utah. The authors would like to thank Stan Deetz for his commentary on an earlier version of this essay presented at the National Communication Association’s annual convention in Chicago, 2004. Finally, they would like to acknowledge the editor, Alan Sillars, and the three anonymous reviewers for their exceptionally careful readings of previous drafts of this essay and the specific suggestions that advanced this work. Correspondence to: Shiv Ganesh, Dept. of Management Communication, Waikato Management School, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0363-7751 (print)/ISSN 1479-5787 (online) q 2005 National Communication Association DOI: 10.1080/03637750500111872

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globalization has taken on new urgency since the late 1980s. Part of this awareness comes from the sheer amount of contemporary technological and cultural interconnectedness. But a great deal of the globalization debate revolves around neo-liberal, pro-market economic policies commonly known as “free trade.” From the standpoint of proponents for multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), the lowering of trade barriers, the privatization of most goods and services, the uncompromising control of inflation, and the specialization of national economies represent the best routes to overall prosperity and further economic development (Krugman, 2002). To critics, this set of policies means a widening gap between rich and poor, as transnational corporations are allowed to pursue their own interests essentially unfettered by national or international state institutions, or other counter-vailing forces. Despite the furor over globalization, we find that communication scholars have not grappled with the full potential that globalization has to reconfigure our understanding of basic concepts that drive our research. This is especially true for critical organizational communication, which we will argue has since the early 1990s researched the twin issues of power and resistance as forms of individualized communicative micro-practice. Critical organizational communication research, along with the communication field more generally, has largely ignored the opportunity to investigate collective resistance to power from the point of view of movements that work to resist and transform ideologies, practices, and institutions that support and constitute neo-liberalism. These growing movements are popularly and loosely called “globalization from below.” Indeed, the discursive terrain of globalization provides grounds for re-examining our very notions of resistance to prevailing power. Conspicuous examples of such collective resistance include 1999’s “Battle of Seattle” and subsequent protests, but we would widen the lens to include many less spectacular acts of resistance to the emerging global economic order, such as Internet-based mobilization. Such phenomena offer us opportunities not only to expand communication’s explanatory reach, but also to engage some of the most pressing issues of our times. Communication scholars, including those in organizational communication, have addressed questions of globalization (Cox, 2004; Grossberg, 1993; Holmer Nadesan, 2001; Nakayama & Martin, 1999; Schiller, 1991). Nonetheless, we believe that as a field, we need to expand our thoughts about power and domination in order to deal with issues of social inequality, resistance, and processes of social change wrought by global markets. We hope to demonstrate in this essay that critical organizational communication studies form a solid platform from which to address these issues. Thus, our objective in this essay is to envision how researchers could reassess issues of resistance through the lens of transformation in the global economy, thereby reviewing and extending critical organizational communication literature on resistance. We proceed first by describing key dimensions of globalization phenomena and its relation to power and resistance. Second, we review literature on resistance in critical organizational communication studies, emphasizing that resistance has been located

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largely within “the organization” and as an element of micro-politics in workplace interaction. We then discuss an alternative approach to studying resistance that emphasizes transformational potential through collective action, and articulate avenues for the field of communication to theorize resistance/transformation in the context of the movement of globalization from below. Finally, we discuss the potential for communication research to contribute to praxis. Background: Power, Economic Globalization, and “Globalization from Below” The growth of transnational corporate influence has been enabled by changes in the policies of post-World War II Bretton Woods economic institutions (Bøa˚s & McNeil, 2003), including the IMF, the WB, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that gave way to the WTO in 1994, and the (so far) ill-fated Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) of 1998. As the mission of these transnational institutions has shifted from preventing global financial crises to promoting neoliberal economic policies, significant changes have occurred in the relationships among corporations/transnational capital, states, and citizens (Falk, 1999; Stiglitz, 2002). Neo-liberal economic rhetoric promotes the primacy of the market and the inefficiency of state regulation in many human affairs (Aune, 2001). The WB and IMF tend to define development in terms of economic growth through privatization and rollbacks of state interventions in the economy (Stiglitz, 2002), and in this sense, neoliberalism represents a political as well as economic ideology (Cheney, 1998a). While economic globalization was pushed off the front pages of newspapers in the U.S. and elsewhere by the post-September 11 headlines of terrorism and war, economic globalization remains linked to those issues and at the forefront of tensions between “North” and “South” worldwide. During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, globalization rose to the surface of popular discourse through attention to “offshoring” because of perceptions that U.S. high-tech and financial service forms were moving many operations to India and China (Cassidy, 2004). Yet for years now, the policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions have come under fire for exacerbating already vast income inequalities and worsening poverty in developing countries due to imposed austerity and privatization measures linked with development loans (Millen, Irwin, & Kim, 2000). The economic critique argues that the ideology of the free market is misleading and that in fact no nation’s economy has ever truly developed according to the supposed free trade principles that neo-liberals would now foist upon all nations, rich and poor alike (Smith, 2001). The political critique argues that the current system of transnational corporate power is undemocratic and not subject to either national sovereignty or popular will (Giddens, 2000). The cultural critique recognizes and criticizes the degree of cultural homogenization caused by globalization, while recognizing various forms of localization and movements for cultural autonomy (Robertson & Khondker, 1998; Tomlinson, 1991). Since 2000, massive protests and government turnovers in nations such as Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela have focused on just these issues.


The form and shape of economic globalization itself is changing for a variety of reasons, and global collective resistance, including protests, coalition building, nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs’) efforts, and other kinds of activism have played and continue to play some role in that change (Klein, 2001). The World Social Forum, organized in Porto Allegre, Brazil in 2001 in response to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has now sponsored huge gatherings in Brazil and India that explicitly refer to their work as being anti-corporate globalization and pro-global justice. One might say that we are witnessing a potential breakdown of the “Washington Consensus” of neo-liberal economic policies, especially the general reduction of trade barriers and opening of all markets to transnational corporate investment, which paved the way for the formation of the WTO. As trade negotiations collapse in the face of increased resistance from poorer countries (e.g., at Cancun in 2003, over FTAA, the Free Trade Area of the Americas) and disagreements among Western countries over protectionism, we need to understand how multiple interests, including transnational capital, state leaders, and protest movements communicate to construct new global economic relationships, and with what consequences for the world’s workers and the poor. There is potential for altering global rules such that corporations serve the interests of the public rather than the opposite, but the opportunity also exists to impose neo-liberalism unilaterally—as is evident in the George W. Bush administration’s post-war restructuring of Iraq’s economy (Roy, 2004). The movement for “globalization from below” is thus entering a crucial moment in its development. Curiously, these tensions and debates over globalization are far more familiar to scholars in economics, political science, sociology, and even to those in management, than they are to communication scholars. Thus, “globalization” is a term that scarcely appears in the pages of articles on small group, organizational, rhetorical, and even political communication. Intercultural communication research has given limited attention to the concept, often focusing on how differences between cultures and nations impact, for instance, cross-cultural negotiations (Zaidman, 2001). On the other hand, cultural-critical studies of communication have given serious attention to a range of globalization issues including diverse and uneven consumption practices, the flow of transnational capital, and the production of global images (Shome & Hegde, 2002), and international studies of media include empirical analyses of global television content and patterns of ownership (Katz & Liebes, 1990; Tomlinson, 1991). Organizational communication studies have clearly begun to engage with these critical issues (Cloud, 2001; Deetz, 1995; Stohl, 2001; Townsley & Stohl, 2003; Zoller, 2004). However, organizational communication scholars have yet to examine popular critiques and protests against these developments in any great detail, and for critical organizational communication studies in particular, the critique of contemporary corporate power is arguably incomplete without a clear understanding of the countervailing forces of “globalization from below.” Moreover, such studies are precisely where organizational communication, political communication, and social movement studies need to come together. In order to do this, critical organizational


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communication scholars need to re-examine their approach to power and resistance. We turn to these issues below. Power, Resistance, Micro-Politics, and Globalization In the early 1990s, Mumby (1993a, 1993b) laid down the gauntlet for realizing the “unfulfilled promise” of critical approaches to organizational communication. First, he explicitly identified a need for empirical work to complement and enable theory building. Second, Mumby (1993a) called for detailed examinations of relationships between everyday communication practices and structures of domination. In this vein, he argued that, “we must pay closer attention to the ‘micropractices’ that discipline social actors at the most mundane level” (p. 554). With the term “micropractices,” Mumby sought to change our understanding of power from sweeping characterizations to empirical observations of everyday interaction. It is clear that in the 1990s, critical organizational communication studies took empiricism seriously. Studies conducted by scholars such as Ashcraft and Pacanowsky (1996), Holmer Nadesan (1996), Taylor and Conrad (1992), Trethewey (1997), and others examined concrete work situations involving hegemony, enabling an understanding of means by which consent was produced, negotiated, and resisted. These same studies also expanded the scope of critique to consider issues of gender and race, and, to a lesser extent, class. More than a decade later, it appears that the field has answered Mumby’s (1993a, 1993b) call for examining everyday communication practices by emphasizing discursive micro-practices of resistance (Larson & Tompkins, 2005; Tracy, 2000; Trethewey, 1997). Our examination of this research illustrates that while resistance has been theorized in multiple ways, and applied work has examined the concept in a number of contexts, research on resistance has been framed and explored in largely individualized terms. Resistance in Organizational Communication Research Here, we map some processes that may have led to the emphasis upon resistance as a form of micro-practice in organizational communication. This focus is ironic but understandable, in light of the historical origins of the field, characteristic research methodologies, and an overall U.S. centrism. First, it may be that existing work displays a bias towards studying resistance at the individual rather than collective level because the field historically has been concerned with the communicative practices of individuals in organizations. This bias toward individuals as the centerpiece of organizational communication research is analogous to Putnam and Poole’s (1988) assessment of organizational conflict research, where they argue that the field has been more concerned with studying conflict patterns between individuals in organizational settings than it has with studying organizational conflict strategies per se. Moreover, some primary theorists have been read as encouraging a focus on the individual as the locus of resistance. For example, Mumby (1997), like many


communication scholars in the critical tradition, draws from Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) writings on hegemony to critique research that ignores the dialectic of resistance and control by addressing only issues of domination or failing at “appropriately situating such resistance in the wider context of capitalism and patriarchy” (p. 346). He then goes on to suggest that studying hegemony and resistance in communication involves “explicating the degree to which social actors are able to discursively penetrate the everyday conditions of their existence” (p. 350). Although much work on resistance in organizational communication now illustrates the simultaneity of domination and resistance, much of it has focused on Mumby’s latter suggestion by conceptualizing resistance as individual awareness of power inequities. Such a narrow application of the hegemony-resistance dialectic, coupled with the dominance of Foucaultian (1980) and allied models of power/resistance, may have resulted in critical organizational communication research defining resistance in terms of an individual’s ability to articulate alternative meanings to that of dominant constructions. For Foucault, power is an immanent dimension of all social relations and symbolic constructions. His work often equates power with diffuse networks of social discipline, and correspondingly conceives of resistance in terms of fragmented acts of communication. Consequently, it is easy to read any form of collective action through a Foucaultian lens as a form of discipline, and view resistance as lying with the individual. For example, Tracy (2000) describes identity as a “dance of resistance and domination” (p. 99), conceptualizing resistance for individual cruise ship employees as the ability to define the self in ways that countered the emotional labor norms established by cruise ship management. Similarly, Tretheway (2001) examines resistance through individual narratives about aging, asking, “How do White middleclass professional women resist the discourse of decline through their narratives and embodied identity?” (p. 188). Second, characteristic methodologies may be another source of individualism in critical organizational communication research. The way that scholars typically implement ethnographic investigations may actually reinforce the individual emphasis, by focusing on single sites of analysis rather than making comparisons across cases (Ganesh, 2005; Larson & Tompkins, 2005; Zoller, 2003). Consequently, ideas about the potential for resistance often remain organizationally specific, and this may weaken the focus on broader social, political, movement, and policy contexts. Moreover, questions of generalizability that often challenge ethnographers result in a timidity to argue for broad cultural or policy changes in such issues as emotional labor norms or new technological systems of production. This pattern of critical, ethnographic work focused on individuals in individual workplaces is not specific to organizational communication, but, with exceptions (Egri, 1994), appears to be true of organizational studies in general. For example, Jermier, Knights, and Nord’s (1994) volume on resistance focuses on individual strategies such as sabotage or elongated break times, that leave workplace norms and structures largely intact (see, e.g., Gottfried, 1994; LaNuez & Jermier, 1994; O’Connell Davidson, 1994). Given the scope of these mainly single-organization investigations, the empirical stress on individual and local action is not surprising; what is worthy of


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comment is that such research provides little insight into the structural possibilities for or implications of resistance. Third, it is also likely that because much of organizational communication research still focuses on U.S. workplaces (see, for exceptions, Cheney, 1998b; Deetz, 1994; Ganesh, 2003; Townsley & Stohl, 2003) researchers may tend not to encounter examples of broad-based collective resistance. For example, in a study of employee resistance to an organizational merger, Howard and Geist (1995) found examples of passive rejections involving “discrediting the dominant ideology” (p. 123) such as by expressing a sense of betrayal. Yet the examples of active rejection the authors found primarily involved exiting the company, thereby leaving the managerial plan intact. A history of worker – management co-operative schemes, the ideology of individuality, the waning power of unions, job scarcity, and economic globalization itself tend to impede collective forms of resistance centered in U.S. workplaces (Fantasia, 1988; Goodstein, 1999). This U.S. focus may also contribute to the fact that critical organizational communication researchers have not devoted very much time to tracing the role of class in articulations of resistance, given cultural reluctance to discuss the issue. Recent interest in broad and ideologically loaded discourses of “professionalism” (Cheney & Ashcraft, 2003) indicates that this trend could change. Nonetheless, we believe that overlooking class issues contributes to the overall lack of focus on issues of collective resistance. In sum, theoretical and methodological issues, along with the choice of cases for analysis have resulted in our emphasis upon resistance as a form of micro-practice. However, we by no means intend to suggest that organizational communication researchers have entirely ignored the issue of collective resistance or are oblivious to class-based issues in and around organizations. Accordingly, we need to assess the manner in which the field has linked individual resistance to collective action. We turn to this task in the following section. Linking Individual to Collective Resistance in the Global Economy Individually focused studies of resistance differ in the degree to which they theorize linkages between individual acts of resistance and collective attempts at change. Much work in the field of organizational communication continues to investigate individual strategies and thus delays examining how these practices might link to transformational politics. Moreover, there are some studies where it appears that resistance is more amenable to interpretation as a coping mechanism than an attempt at transformation per se (Fleming & Sewell, 2002). Bell and Forbes (1994), for example, chronicle office folklore and resistance strategies among mostly female office workers in a university, but they do not discuss the relationship between the stories, drawings, and other symbols that these workers used to parody and perform their oppression, and change in the symbolic or material conditions of their workplace. It is also evident that researchers are aware that individual resistance often does not translate into collective change. For example, Tracy (2000) acknowledged that while


cruise ship staff developed hidden transcripts in the form of making fun of passengers and the program, doing so did not alter the burden of emotional labor in their workplace. Other researchers note the need to carefully trace a connection between individual and collective change, but their data do not capture that process. Murphy’s (1998)study of the resistant practices of flight attendants highlights the need to connect these hidden practices, or transcripts, with collective change, but that process is not evident in any of the three gendered themes (hierarchy, space, and appearance) that constitute the hidden transcripts of flight-attendant discourse. Of course, this absence is likely due to the research site. Tretheway’s (2001) research on women managers and age-based ideology is an interesting example of how linkages between micro-level discourse and collective action might be constructed. The author describes the response of individual women managers as more and less transformative of age ideology for women, such as women’s decisions not to wear make-up or dye their hair. Importantly, the author theorizes a path of at least four steps that move toward transformative politics in changing the “master narrative” of aging for women, from the use of mentors and social support groups to social movements, coalitions, and broader cultural changes. Further empirical research on these processes would help to fill the gap in knowledge about collective resistance. Other scholars have also emphasized the importance of connecting individual action with social movements. Deetz (1995), for example, theorized macro-level political issues and the need for transformation in terms of a stakeholder model for ethical corporate communication. In organizational communication studies, prescriptions for good, ethical, transformative practice often promote corporate social responsibility and the development of a stakeholder model that highlights the connections and responsibilities of a variety of groups with a stake in corporate behavior (see the special issue of Management Communication Quarterly on “The Corporate Meltdown,” 2003). However, there are very few empirical studies of this model (see, for exception, Ulmer & Sellnow, 1997), and this absence leaves the concept under-theorized regarding its usefulness in achieving collective change in corporate structures. Additionally, we note potential limitations of the stakeholder model that may impede our ability to connect individual resistance with social transformation. First, work outside our field points to the problem of co-optation in stakeholder models that may prevent transformative change (Moberg, 2002). Second, the stakeholder model assumes that all individuals and groups necessarily have an equal stake in the contemporary form of corporate capitalism. This is evident in Deetz’s (1995) discussion of “reformation” and his recommendation that we create workplaces where every member thinks and acts like an owner. The need to do so may be compelling in U.S. contexts where corporations are arguably the dominant social institution. However, the value of this prescription as a transformative tactic might not be quite so great in more hybrid economies, including those of India and China, which blend socialist and capitalist principles. Moreover, the very assumption that we all necessarily have a stake (understood as investment with endorsement) in contemporary


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multi-national corporate capitalism could well result in a very limited notion of social transformation itself. At the very least, the notions of “ownership” and “stake” should be rendered problematic and subject to investigation in themselves. In sum, we seek to expand theorizing and practical work on resistance, calling for more research that moves beyond the description of systems of power and resistance to a truly critical engagement with the social processes that link individual-level resistance with attempts at transformational change (see, for an exception, Lukes, 1974).1 Below, we describe an alternate read of resistance that highlights its transformational potential in the context of “globalization from below” and explain further why critical organizational communication studies needs to take these movements more seriously than it has thus far. Critical Organizational Communication and Globalization from Below In contrast to the often individualized and accommodative ways that resistance has been understood, we would like to encourage attention to collective resistance efforts that aim for the transformation of power relations in the global economy. Thus, resistance efforts would be, at least in part, explicitly evaluated in terms of their transformational potential. We see transformation as a term that highlights attempts to effect large-scale, collective changes in the domains of state policy, corporate practice, social structure, cultural norms, and daily lived experience. Cloud (2001) presages our argument when she critiques critical organizational communication studies for a preoccupation with infra-political micro-strategies at the expense of attention to class issues, labor, and macro-level social change. Cloud’s conceptualization of “macro changes” implies the assessment of collective transformation of largely class-based power structures. While this is an example of the “transformative” change we discuss, we would also include other discourses and movements that influence class-based structures, for example, race or gender. Protest movements against global economic and development institutions provide the impetus for the kind of theorizing of transformative resistance to which we allude. We believe that the individualization of resistance in organizational communication may contribute to the paucity of attention to protests and social movements associated with globalization from below. Another possible reason for such neglect may be recommendations to focus on the everyday level of resistance, defined in terms of communication rooted in mundane, unmediated, and routine situations. For example, Deetz’s (1992) influential work, which represents a key critical survey of corporate power, directs attention toward the everyday level of resistance and unfortunately excludes “protest” from the category of the everyday. Deetz describes the public forum as colonized by news reporters and those who can afford to buy airtime, stating: “The ‘protest’ as a modern public expression is totally mediated and demonstrates rather than challenges the structural issue” (p. 50). Although it is vital to question the power relations involved in the formation and expression of political ideas, such dismissals of protest prevent us from learning more about organizational communication phenomena.


We maintain that it has never been more important for our field to engage significantly with social protests, both traditional, such as mass demonstrations and strikes, and new, such as “hacktivist” groups and the public melodrama of organizations such as Act Up and Ad Busters (Jordan, 2002). Accordingly, we describe four reasons why we believe studying collective resistance in the context of globalization from below is significant for critical organizational communication theory and research. First, protests have practical and theoretical significance, despite the fact that they often are ignored or poorly represented by the mainstream media and popular culture (Schiller, 1989). Indeed, we should theorize about how these activities can be made to work better. This focus is particularly important in light of changing protest strategies including counter-summits, independent media, and direct action, which frequently result from new forms of social organizing such as affinity group networks and leaderless convergences (Prokosch, 2002). Moreover, although contemporary protests often take the form of spectacle, this does not mean that they have a lack of impact. In this vein, DeLuca (1999) argues for the concept of the “public screen,” insisting that protests based on image events do not substitute for what he calls “real rhetoric” but are rhetorical in themselves. DeLuca also argues that in adopting post-modern suspicion of foundations and essences, new forms of grassroots environmental organizing may “transgress the limits of strategy and suggests the possibilities of radical democracy for countering global industrialism” (p. 199). The adoption of opportunistic, non-traditional forms of organizing allows such groups to avoid co-optation, but, as DeLuca argues, makes them invisible to traditional studies of social movements. Second, the disparate elements of globalization from below, mediated or otherwise, demonstrate that such movements can pose a serious challenge to existing structures of oppression. World attention has been brought to bear on the policies of international financial institutions and global corporations through public protests at international meetings, such as the WTO meeting in Seattle in December 1999. It has been argued that Seattle protesters emboldened less developed countries to resist the demands of Western countries in that round of WTO negotiations (Brecher, Costello, & Smith, 2000). In perhaps the first major case of successful Internet-based anti-globalization organizing, loosely networked protestors claimed a significant role in halting the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (Prokosch, 2002). Specific “local” challenges include ending WB funding for India’s Narmada Dam when 900 organizations throughout the world threatened to de-fund the bank (Brecher et al., 2000). And, poor Bolivians in Cochabamba fought off Bechtel’s purchase of their national water system by taking to the streets, facing violence from armed police (Farthing, 2001). Third, studying “globalization from below” helps us to think more interdisciplinarily, linking organizational communication theories with studies of social movements, media, culture, health, and the environment. Only interdisciplinary work can shed light on the sheer diversity of forms, agents, sites, and strategies of resistance that are implicated in globalization (Mittelman & Chin, 2000). For example, work in health, race, and organizational studies can help us understand how AIDS activists adopted resistance strategies from South African anti-apartheid movements (Jordan, 2002).


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Fourth, the global context helps the field to better understand the relationships among corporate practices and what we usually consider to be distinct but often interrelated forms of social inequality, such as gender, race, and class. One of the effects of globalization-fromabove has been the feminization of labor, in which the reliance of many national economies on low-paying service work falls disproportionately to women (Appadurai, 2000). Women in the Third World are unduly disadvantaged by economic globalization. As the majority of the world’s poor, they are more likely to suffer from reduced government services, to lose their role as subsistence farmers due to global competition, and to drop out of school and become sweatshop labor (Sassen, 1998). As Holmer Nadesan (2001) argues, it is critically important to consider how women’s movements deal with women’s roles in inequities in global work and economic patterns. Additionally, global divisions of labor are as much raced as they are gendered. Studies of outsourcing, for example, would do well to examine the ethnic dimensions of call center work in Asian countries like India, or the racial nature of international divisions of labor itself, as evidenced by U.S.-owned maquiladoras along the border in Mexico. Theorizing Collective Resistance to the Global Economy Thus far, we have made a case for examining social transformation alongside critical empirical examinations of individual resistance. Here, we provide a set of theoretical questions that should be considered when examining issues of transformation in the context of globalization from below. These lines of inquiry provide a theoretical guide to evaluating actual practices that might be considered as having transformative potential. Fitzgerald and Rodgers (2000) note that assessing outcomes related to collective resistance is often problematic, and it may be difficult to identify and measure transformation in terms of its outcome. Certain outcomes may happen long after the lifespan of the organization, some may be difficult to gauge such as improved awareness and altered public discussion, and frequently, radical groups have goals that are unlikely to be met. Given such uncertainty as to the outcome of transformation, we would like to make two stipulations about investigating resistance. For one, we need to be as grounded as possible in our understanding of what practices constitute transformative aims as well as how particular practices contribute toward transformation. Moreover, our understanding of relationships among symbolic and material domains needs to be as complex as possible. Ultimately, we must account for and bring to light the multifaceted interrelations of the material and the symbolic forces of power. These twin issues serve as a backdrop against which we cast four questions to guide theorizing resistance through the lens of transformation. First, what norms, practices, structures, and power relations are targeted by resistance efforts? In particular, we suggest evaluating resistance efforts with specific attention to their positioning in relation to neo-liberalism. Such attention provides a means of assessing transformative potential. For example, some critics have charged that sustainable development discourse, although it critiques the logic of consumption under-girding capitalism and provides an alternative vision, can serve to privatize local


economies and livelihoods, resulting not in more ecologically conscious practice, but an alignment with transnational networks of capital (Peterson, 1997). Similarly, some health-related community organizing efforts have been criticized for defining empowerment in individual terms that may inadvertently support neo-liberal rollbacks in public services (Minkler, 1997). Such analysis can be accomplished not only through Marxist or post-Marxist approaches to communication, but also through more post-structural lenses. For example, the Foucaultian concept of governmentality, which treats neo-liberalism as an economic discourse that diffuses across and “governs” institutions and cultures, can be used to understand the multiple centers of the global economy (Foucault, 1991). Governmentality implies a form of discursive control where centers of power bring a variety of previously heterogeneous and diverse institutions, including churches, communities, and families, into their purview, while simultaneously ensuring that they appear autonomous—a principle Rose and Miller (1992) call “governing at a distance.” Instances of the diffusion of neo-liberal governmentality include the increasing trend to treat students as consumers in educational institutions worldwide and appeals to the idea of an “ownership society” in the U.S. Post-structural lenses can therefore help us understand how a wide array of resistance efforts might be connected to neo-liberal power relations. Second, to what degree does resistance provide the potential for disrupting hegemonic forces and systems? As we discussed earlier, Mumby (1997) repositions hegemony in organizational communication studies in terms of struggle, but the potential for counter-hegemony has, perhaps inadvertently, been interpreted in largely individualized terms. There are several ways to return to the Gramscian (1971) origins of counter-hegemony as an eminently collective practice that challenges the status quo. As Mumby details, Gramsci situates the “philosophy of praxis . . . as a collective activity with a material force, the goal of which is to engage the social forces and their ideologies that produce common sense” (p. 350). Thus, it is important to understand the degree to which an effort creates a vision that is able to promote collection action, particularly given the issues of coercion often faced by counter-hegemonic groups. As Gramsci (1971) famously observed, when consent deteriorates, the coercive arm of the state comes to dominate. The complicity of the state in corporate power relations is manifested through state-sponsored trade policy as well as military and police coercion in response to protest and upheaval (Hansen, 2001). And while coercion itself is hardly new, our field needs to address the communicative processes that may create and sustain levels of collective resistance necessary to face coercion, rather than focus solely on issues of consent. It is important to note that the potential for transformation, like the potential for resistance, is easily cast as reactive and oppositional. Indeed, Ju¨rgen Habermas’s (1981) well-known theory of communicative action casts new social movements as reactions to the spread of “systems” of money and power into the lifeworld of our everyday communicative practices. We, on the other hand, mean to consider such social movements not only as reactions to corporate and government excess, but potentially as creative inventions of social, political, and economic relations and identities.


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Third, what is the relationship between the process and outcome of resistance efforts and democracy, both direct and representative? Posing this question links organizational resistance efforts to theories of public sphere and critical publicity. Communication research on the public sphere has grown in the last two decades (Asen & Brouwer, 2001; Brown, 2002; Pezullo, 2003). In his advocacy of globalization from below, Richard Falk (1999) argues that we consider the phenomenon in terms of the promotion of substantive democracy as a counter-weight to neo-liberalism. He says: “Substantive democracy, unlike backlash politics . . . seeks a politics of reconciliation that maintains much of the openness and dynamism associated with globalizationfrom-above, while countering its pressures to privatize and ‘marketize’ the production of public goods. In effect, the quest of substantive democracy is to establish a social equilibrium that takes full account of the realities of globalization in its various aspects” (p. 150). Such normative democratic practice involves critical consideration of such elements as the consent of citizenry, rule of law, human rights, participation, accountability, public goods, transparency of policy deliberations, and non-violence. The communication field has implicitly theorized and evaluated the impact of potentially transformative practices upon substantive democracy. For example, Owens and Palmer (2003) argue that Black Block protestors of the WTO in Seattle used the Internet to mount a counter-public relations attack on negative mainstream media coverage that changed the nature of mainstream media coverage itself. Fourth, to what degree do resistance efforts address multiple forms of inequality and difference, such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, religion, and sexuality? As Laclau and Mouffe (1985) argue, practical connections between gender, class, and ethnic politics are not inevitable and must be explicitly articulated. For example, we should seek to understand whether outsourcing debates focus on the problems of white, middle-class male technology workers or articulate linkages between them and impoverished workers (often women) in the Global South. To do so, researchers can draw from subaltern studies that have documented the relationship among ethnicity, gender, and capitalist relations of production (Spivak, 1988). In sum, attempts to assess transformation must take into account the manner in which and extent that transformative activities articulate relationships between different forms of social inequality. Having built a case for reconfiguring conceptions of resistance in terms of transformation in order to study globalization from below, we now turn our attention to those aspects of transformative social practice ( praxis) where we believe the sub-field of organizational communication in general, and critical scholars in particular, can make the most important contributions. An orientation toward praxis in the global context capitalizes on our strengths as a discipline but also requires us to expand our research focus. Praxis: Communicative, Organizational, and Political Dimensions of Global Resistance As both concept and practice, we consider transformation as implying active engagement on the part of the researcher. As Ginsburg (1997) maintains, a grounded


conception of social transformation requires reflexive commitment on the part of the researcher. Similarly, Appadurai (2000) argues that we need to ensure that the knowledge we produce as scholars turns into a form of engagement with communities worldwide rather than simply residing within the academy. The communication field has an active history of advocating engagement with the people we study (Adelman & Frey, 1997), yet more work needs to be done. We need to further examine and promote our role in praxis by ensuring that research goals and practices are guided by the needs of resistance groups themselves. Here, we present a set of five domains of praxis. As we discuss each area in brief, we highlight how current research in organizational communication in general and critical research in particular can contribute to praxis. We then explain how critical research, often working interdisciplinarily, can contribute to such transformational practice. The first area pertains to the now substantial research in organizational communication on corporate forms of organization. The field of organizational communication has developed a nuanced understanding of corporate organization and communication not found in other parts of our discipline (Conrad & Haynes, 2001; Taylor, Flanagin, Cheney, & Seibold, 2000). Critical research in organizational communication in particular has made significant contributions toward our collective understanding of the central role that corporations play in shaping our communities, environments, and governments (Conrad & McIntush, 2003; Tompkins & Cheney, 1985), and has advanced a critique of managerialism within that form. For example, Deetz’s (1992) and Deetz and Mumby’s (1990) discussion of managerialism separates stockholder, stakeholder, and managerial interests, with the latter often focused on short-term and personal gain. This research provides a counter-balance to arguments about the “naturalness” of neo-liberalism. Additionally, critical issue management studies bring tools for dissecting corporate discourse aimed at identification, legitimacy, and co-operation (Cheney & Christensen, 2001; German, 1995). In this way, critical organizational communication scholars can contribute to praxis by providing tools for the deconstruction of power relations, particularly those focused on corporate discourse on a transnational scale. Deconstructive tools can facilitate praxis when they are aimed at the development of oppositional consciousness2 (Morris & Braine, 2001), which can lead to critical, collective action through identification. Such a contribution adds to critical-cultural studies in the field of communication that have advanced a critique of neo-liberalism based in widespread commodification, marketization, and depoliticitization of society (Cloud, 1998; Grossberg, 1993). The second area of praxis pertains to communication processes surrounding grassroots organizing. Here, organizational communication research has much to contribute to transformative work through its focus on the discursive process of organizing (Taylor, Cooren, Giroux, & Robichaud, 1996; Weick, 1995) and the role that informal networks play in the creation and structuration of formal organizations (Cooren, 1999). Morris and Braine (2001) note that many social movement scholars tend to pay attention to social movements only after they have announced themselves as a social force,


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ignoring years of incipient organizing activities. Work in organizational communication can help activists understand their persuasive choices as they conduct grassroots organizing, which is especially important given that movement writers call for basic communication skills to facilitate grassroots organizing, including dialogue, consensus building, and conflict management (Prokosch, 2002). Critical organizational research that focuses on participation contributes to our understanding of relationships between forms of organizing (bureaucratic, democratic, etc.) and voice (Cheney, 1995, 1998b; Stohl & Cheney, 2001). For example, many social movement organizations working for globalization from below attempt to use feminist, non-hierarchic models, the problems and promises of which have been investigated by critical organizational communication scholars (Ashcraft & Pacanowsky, 1996; Zoller, 2000). Thus, by focusing on the discursive process of organizing and power, critical organizational communication theorists have more to offer by further addressing potential inequalities in meaning formation and expression among participants (Deetz, 1992) in protest movements and organizations. Often, studies of activist and social movement organizations give more weight to “public” communication, or ignore power issues in favor of a focus on culture, framing, symbolism, and identity (Gamson, 1990). Critical organizational culture and narrative approaches on the other hand can investigate the possibility of hegemonic framing of “internal” group discourse and examine connections between hegemony, counter-hegemony, and transformation. A third area of praxis pertains to new and incipient forms of organizing in globalization from below. Research in organizational communication, especially network approaches (Monge & Contractor, 2001), can help activists further understand the potential of affinity-group and Internet-based organizing styles in which, for example, small groups of like-minded individuals may converge with other groups in numerous events announced on the Internet (Jordan, 2002). Critical organizational communication research focused on hidden transcripts is also useful here because it can bring to light the potential role for individual resistance tactics as a basis for new forms of collective action (Murphy, 1998). In terms of future contributions, there is potential for critical work to merge with network approaches to examine the transformative potential of de-centered groups. Movement writers argue that globalization from below is uniquely characterized as a network formation, and that this “NGO swarm” is an organizing strength (Brecher et al., 2000) given that it is difficult for governments to coerce or co-opt these swarms because they have no central structure, and the array of attacks can “sting a victim to death” (p. 83). Yet critics argue that these structures lack coherence in strategies, goals, and public communication (Rosenau, 1994). Research into this approach may engage something as global as the opposition to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment or something more contained but nevertheless international in implications—such as fighting multinational corporate abuses in developing countries. Additionally, critical organizational communication scholars can draw from theories of organizational technology to understand the role of technology in


facilitating this decentralized strategy (see for example Owens & Palmer, 2003; Russell, 2001). Also, by focusing on task accomplishment over individual behavior, discursive approaches to leadership (Fairhurst, 2003) can facilitate critical studies of the transformative potential of “leaderless movements.” This would make significant contributions to resistance groups and the social movement literature, which often treats leadership formally as a possession of the individual and the primary genesis of a social movement (see, for example, Stewart, Smith, & Denton 2001). In this way, critical organizational communication research can create synergies among leadership, media studies, and critical organizational research. Fourth, the field can contribute to praxis through an investigation of formal structures such as NGOs as a counterbalance to corporate power. An important question for activists has been to consider how the interests of their movement coincide or move against the interests of existing power structures. By doing so, they can avoid the twin problems of cooptation and irrelevancy. Extant research in critical organizational communication research has examined the relationship between NGOs and the state, arguing that NGO practice can uncritically reproduce dominant state and corporate interests instead of serving as a means for resisting them (Ganesh, 2005). Studies of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh also demonstrate the utility of post-structural and critical perspectives in understanding how democratic issues such as participation might themselves serve as a form of control rather than resistance. The idea of concertive control, in particular, was used to explain the high rate of loan repayment amongst impoverished women in that country (Papa, Auwal, & Singhal 1997). Critical organizational communication scholars could have much more to say about the ways in which social movements themselves turn into “organizations.” For example, Gill’s (1997) analysis of the “NGOisation” of social movements in Bolivia demonstrates that these groups tend to turn themselves into formal organizations as they encounter international funding structures and vocabularies. Such research would enable more nuanced critiques of the international development apparatus by focusing upon the extent to which NGOs arise from and are responsive to grassroots, the manner in which they generate and use funds, and their ability to affect meaningful social change (see also Tevelow, 2004). Fifth and finally, critical organizational communication researchers can contribute to praxis related to specific tactics for change employed by the movement for globalization from below, adopting something of an action research perspective (Freire, 1973). Existing research in issue management, public relations, and media can be used to improve the ability of resistance-based organizations to capitalize on publicity and lifecycle dynamics to create successful public campaigns (Grunig, 1997; Ryan, Carragee, & Schwerner, 1998). Such campaigns include targeting specific policies of corporations such as Nike, Wal-Mart, or Coca-Cola (see, for example, Knight & Greenberg, 2002), promoting boycotts, offering activist tours (e.g., as conducted by Global Exchange), or linking communities and unions in the West with those in developing countries to mutually pressure multi-nationals for improvements in wages and working standards (Bacon, 2001). Bargaining and negotiation research (Putnam & Poole, 1988) also can be useful, since pressure campaigns, such as those aimed at the Gap, often lead to negotiation


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with the company for proposed solutions, and little is known about the long-term effect of such negotiations on the achievement of activist goals. In terms of future research, critical organizational research can contribute in several ways. Research that addresses the interrelationships between communication, organizing, and alternative economic systems (Cheney, 1998b) can facilitate the growth of efforts to transform economic systems, and add to critical studies of economic discourse (Aune, 2001) by engaging the everyday communication processes of organizing alternative economies. These efforts include LETS (or local economic and trade systems) that have appeared in the U.S. and U.K., and barter systems and informal international economies that have arisen in opposition to multi-nationals in border areas such as India and Bangladesh (Castells, 2000). Also, critical organizational communication research could respond to activist calls for work that addresses how different strategies can be combined. In the “Global Activist’s Manual,” Prokosch (2002) distinguishes among direct action, institutional campaigns, and local/coalitional organizing, arguing that each holds both promises and limitations. He proposes that all these activities should now be considered together in an integrated organizing model for globalization from below. Applied research can illuminate the process of integrating these organizing models, and assess the transformational potential of various initiatives. Finally, organizational communication researchers can work to develop proactive strategies among global justice organizations to build the potential for radical or transgressive coalitions that aim toward transformational change rather than work within the status quo. The development of warring factions, repression, co-optation, and isolation may impede coalition building (Brecher et al., 2000). Research into these processes would shed light on how resistance organizations build solidarity and build coalitions with other groups (Rose, 2000). For example, much discussion has centered on conflicts between explicitly non-violent public protestors and “anarchist” or black-block groups. While nonviolent groups often argue that any violence detracts from their demands for justice, anarchist groups counter that property destruction is not violence but an appropriate confrontation (Paris, 2003). These conflicts represent deeply rooted differences between radical and mainstream approaches in goals, tactics, and publicity, and critical scholars cannot overlook them in understanding practical methods of change after the millennium. Global justice advocates are also concerned about the construction and continuation of social inequalities in access to resources among activist organizations. These international debates illustrate the need for synergistic research between critical organizational communication and intercultural studies. They also demonstrate that addressing the transformational potential of collective resistance does not entail abandoning attention to the dialectic of power and hegemony, and the multiple manifestations of power/ hegemony (Mumby, 1997). Conclusion In this essay, we have identified and described critical organizational communication’s emphasis on the individual experience of the dialectic of control and resistance, and it


remains a vital research interest. Yet we must further engage with economic globalization and the social-structural inequalities that currently comprise the current context of corporate dominance and vulnerability. Consequently, alternate conceptions of resistance become important. Moreover, new methods of study become necessary. Such examinations may take the form of localized ethnographic work that significantly situates local power relations within larger structural power issues through additional contextual grounding that includes consideration of neoliberalism; participatory action research in which research goals and practices are guided by the needs of resistance groups themselves; extended case studies that examine multiple contexts of power and resistance using rhetorical and historical criticism; and mixed methods that include quantitative approaches. This essay also points toward the need for scholars in various parts of the discipline to collaborate. What is perhaps most promising about our discipline is greater attention to issues and problems as centers of intellectual energy. This is precisely why areas such as health and environmental communication are able to bring together scholars from otherwise disparate sub-disciplines. In this essay, we are trying to bring to the attention of communication scholars the need to ask both theoretical and practical questions about the meanings, dimensions, associated practices, and power networks of globalization. Although we have maintained a fairly consistent focus on what globalization and resistance mean for organizational communication, we have also drawn connections to media studies, cultural studies, environmental studies, and rhetoric. We believe strongly that a great deal of collective theoretical development can come from examining key issues from the angles of diverse sub-disciplines as well as disciplines, which is why we have argued that critical organizational communication scholars engage more with other groups in the field in order to understand the communicative processes entailed in the organization of globalization from below. Notes [1] We would like to emphasize that we are not at all recommending a moratorium on research on individual or localized resistance. The body of literature we have reviewed is important and has made fundamental contributions to communication studies. Indeed, feminist researchers in particular should be commended for bringing sustained attention to the issue of resistance that had been overlooked. To reiterate, our objective is to point out a general emphasis in the field on individual sites of resistance, with a corresponding lack of attention paid to group-, organizational-, and societal-level efforts. [2] Oppositional consciousness can be defined as “an empowering mental state that prepares members of an oppressed group to act to undermine, reform, or overthrow a system of human domination” (Morris & Braine, 2001, p. 25).

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