Towards a Performative Theory of Resistance: Senior Managers and Revolting Subject(ivitie)s

• Published in: Organization studies Vol. 38; no. 9; pp. 1209 - 1232
• Main Authors: Harding, Nancy Helen, Ford, Jackie, Lee, Hugh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.09.2017; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Ability; Butler, Judith; Discourses; Identity; Interviews; Management; Organization studies; Organization theory; Performativity; Power; Resistance; Senior managers; Strategic planning; Talent management; Barad; senior managers; new materialism; Butler; performativity; resistance
• ISSN: 0170-8406; 1741-3044
• DOI: 10.1177/0170840616685360

This article develops a performative theory of resistance. It uses Judith Butler’s and Karen Barad’s theories of performativity to explore how resistance (to organizational strategies and policies) and resistants (those who resist such strategies and policies) co-emerge, within and through complex intra-actions of entangled discourses, materialities, affect and space/time. The article uses empirical materials from a case study of the implementation of a talent management strategy. We analyse interviews with the senior managers charged with implementing the strategy, the influence of material, non-sentient actors, and the experiences of the researchers when carrying out the interviews. This leads to a theory that resistance and resistants emerge in moment-to-moment co-constitutive moves that may be invoked when identity or self is put in jeopardy. Resistance, we suggest, is the power (residing with resistants) to say ‘no’ to organizational requirements that would otherwise threaten to render the self abject.