6th International

Researching Work and Learning

Conference
University of Roskilde, 28 June 1 July 2009, Denmark
Dr. Alessia Contu,
Alessia.contu@wbs.ac.uk

What is resistance in liberal workplaces ?

Why do we have it and why not?

Title: Silence, underground noises and open

denouncements in the corporation
Decaf resistance
Ethical act as Real act of resistance (?)
The resources of Antigone for re-reading
the theories of whistle-blowing

Warwick Business

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and

aims. They openly declare that their ends can be
attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing
social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing
to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

WORKING MEN (and WOMEN!!) OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE

Resistance: open, collective struggle versus Capital
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and Business
its Agents

Trajectory:
Marxist political philosophy and praxis &
organisation studies = labour-process theory
Critical studies of control and resistance in
organisation:
a. Core-labour process theory;
b. Foucauldian-inspired, post-structuralist studies
Studies looking at the changes in liberal western workplaces
related to the development of HRM, corporate culture
programmes, post-bureaucratic/post-modern organisational forms,
social technology of teamworking , entrepreneurship, and the rise
of neo-liberalism

Warwick Business

Warwick Business

McDonalds Workers Resistance

at http://mwr.org.uk/home.htm
Get involved with MWR today, click here for all the latest news
and campaigns plus a list of regional contacts...
Get off your knees and get active you servile wretch! MWR is
your organisation... Welcome to the underground!
Help and resources... A few things to help you in your rightous
crusade against the evil empire... Bag some snazzy (and free!)
stickers... Check out your rights, it wont take long, you've not
got many... Read badly dated Mc Humour ... Or the Alternative
Crew Handbook with all you need to know to survive the job...

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New forms of resistance

In the crevices, the interstices, the
undergrowth of organisational life
Misbehaviour which includes humour,
parody, designer resistance and, most
obviously, cynicism
But

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Far from undermining the rule of Law its transgression in fact

serves as its ultimate support. So it is not only that the
transgression relies on, presupposes, the Law it transgresses;
rather the reverse case is much more pertinent: law itself relies
on its inherent transgression, so that when we suspend this
transgression, the Law itself disintegrates. (Zizek, 1994:77)

Decaf resistance
The ethical act
Antigone

Warwick Business

Antigone and Whiste-blowers in

management theory
Antigone:

Creon:

Laws of the
family/kinship
God of death
Society
Happiness/pleasure

Human law
The State

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Concluding
The danger and allure of the underground
noises of decaf resistance
Exploring the Real act, specifically, the
ethical act in the Lacanian sense
Returning to the image of Antigone =
exploring possibilities for radical
interpretation of whistle-blowers
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Concluding:
Refining these resources to radically rethink whistle-blowing:
The constitutive failure of any attempt to capture universal
attributes that can make whistle-blowing predictable and hence
controllable
The romanticization of whistle blowers but also their demonization
Refinement and articulation with the concrete through empirical
research
Our
ethical
lives

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent

about things that matter.

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