Alternative Organizing Communities: Collectivist Organizing, Telework, Home-Based Internet Businesses, and Online Communities

Abstract

Alternative work communities encompass various organizing forms, including democratic organizing practices, participative decision making, feminist organizing principles, and technological alternatives, such as telecommuting and Internet businesses. These nontraditional organizing practices discursively construct identity and community in the day-to-day negotiation of the tensions of technological empowerment and organizational control. This review of literature pulls together varied, multidisciplinary sources from organizational communication, critical management studies, feminist theory, and gender studies, as well as business, organization studies, and sociology to aid in the development of future research in gender and organizational communication studies or, as Martin and Collinson (2002) referred to this growing area of study, gendered organizational studies.