Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World: British Trade Unions under New Labour – Edited by Gary Daniels and John McIlroy
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00764_4.x |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | John Kelly |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistance in Organizations by Peter
Fleming and Andre Spicer. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, 236
pp., ISBN 978 0 521 86086 4, £45.00, $80.00, hardback.
In their introduction, the authors say their intention is to provide ‘an introduction to
the political dynamics of organizational life’ (p. 6). This is a task that has been
undertaken before, but the approach of these authors is different. It is not difficult to
see that they have much more concern for conceptualization than is evident in much
of the existing literature. Part One of the book, which takes up pages 11–65 — or
one-third of the text — is an extended discussion of the concepts of power, resistance
and struggle, and the whole of the rest of the volume (pp. 69–191) is ostensibly
organized around the conceptual priorities set out at the beginning. Although the
question of whether the initial framework is followed through in the more substantive
parts of the text is open, that the authors are more than usually preoccupied with ideas
is not. There are references here to social and political theorists (such as Machiavelli
and Hannah Arendt) as well as to moral philosophers (Diogenes and Nancy Fraser),
not to mention the ideas of fashionable contemporary thinkers (Laclau, Zizeck, etc.).
One issue the reviewer must consider, therefore, is the explanatory yield of this
particular approach to organizational politics. What does the use of these concepts
explain that so far remains opaque or obscure? However, the book does not only
claim to be a work of theory. The authors also suggest that their book provides,
presumably because of its sophisticated conceptualization, an account of ‘some of the
most important forms of struggle that characterise contemporary organisations
today’ (p. 6), so this claim should also be considered.
Part One of this book is devoted to the consideration of the concepts of power,
resistance and struggle, one chapter being devoted to each. It is argued in chapter 1
that power can be seen as having four ‘faces’: coercion, manipulation, domination and
‘subjectification’. Following this, in the next chapter, four faces of resistance are also
identified: refusal, voice, escape and creation. Finally, in chapter 3, the faces of power
are explicitly linked with the faces of resistance, giving four pairings (coercion and
refusal, manipulation and voice, domination and escape, and subjectification and
creation). The concept of struggle (linking power and resistance) is also put forward,
together with the idea that struggle may co-vary in intensity and kind, yielding three
types of struggle: destructive, resentful and loving. The concept of struggle, presum-
ably conceived as having an emergent property, is claimed by these authors as their
distinctive contribution to theory. This set of ideas is economical and neat — if it
works, it will tidy things up a good deal. But does it work? Is what is offered actually
a theoretical breakthrough?
There are some unexpected features of the ideas considered in these chapters. While
the four faces of power have some obvious similarities with established ideas, the
typology of forms of resistance offered here does not. When orthodox organizational
analysts consider power, they are apt to use concepts including those identified by
these authors. In orthodox Weberian theory, for example, systems of (societal) domi-
nation, which are characterized by legitimate power, are central to the analysis. It is
difficult to imagine any specifically managerial regime being able to function effec-
tively without working largely within a broader system of domination of this kind.
Also, it would be impossible to discuss managerial regimes without manipulation and
what these authors call ‘subjectification’. On the other hand, the unwillingness of
some analysts of the modern organization to think of their work in the context of
a theory of power is not simply due to their supposed intellectual or political
Book Reviews 807
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009.
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