Transforming Resistance, Broadening Our Boundaries: Critical Organizational Communication Meets Globalization from Below

Abstract

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.