(Un)willing to resist? the discursive production of local workplace opposition*

Abstract

Workplace resistance is conventionally regarded as the product of worker consciousness and intentionality. More recent studies of resistance have questioned this notion, seeing workplace resistance as emerging out of more spontaneous and non-calculative types of action. This paper examines the discursive production of routine resistance in an organization, showing how notions of employee intentionality and non-intentionality were categories through which resistance itself was produced. We look at an alleged case of sabotage, the enactment of “careful carelessness” and “dumb resistance” as complex discursive productions of both resistance and intentionality. We conclude with a brief discussion of implications for managerial control.