Counterinstitutional Web sites are often portrayed as publicizing the outbursts of disgruntled employees and customers. However, they also enable participants to take part in discussions normally discouraged within traditional work environments. These sites permit individuals to publicly and anonymously voice their concerns and frustrations with particular institutions with reduced fear of retribution or termination. A close examination of one of these counterinstitutional Web sites (RadioShackSucks.com) illustrates the dissent and resistance functions that such sites provide to a wide variety of stakeholders. The authors' analysis of 1,095 site postings during a 1-month period finds that participants use these sites to engage in voice and resistance efforts outside formal organizational boundaries. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
Arthur, M. B., & Rousseau, D. M. (1996). The boundaryless career: A new employment principle for a new organizational era. New York: Oxford University Press.
2.
Barker, J. R. (1993). Tightening the iron cage: Concertive control in self-managing teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 408-437.
3.
Baum, D. (2005, January 17). Battle lessons: What the generals don't know. New Yorker, pp. 42-48.
4.
Bok, S. (1989). Secrets: On the ethics of concealment and revelation. New York: Vintage.
5.
Bowen, F., & Blackmon, K. (2003). Spirals of silence: The dynamic effects of diversity on organizational voice. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 1393-1417.
6.
Collinson, D. L. (2003). Identities and insecurities: Selves at work. Organization, 10, 527-547.
7.
Correll, S. (1995). The ethnography of an electronic bar: The lesbian cafe. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 24, 270-299.
8.
Daisey, M. (2002). 21 dog years: Doing time @ Amazon.com. New York: Free Press.
9.
Deetz, S. (1998). Discursive formations, strategized subordination and self-surveillance. In A. McKinlay & K. Starkey (Eds.), Foucault, management, and organizational theory: From panopticon to technologies of self (pp. 151-172). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
10.
Dundes, A., & Pagter, C. R. (1992). Work hard and you shall be rewarded: Urban folklore from the paperwork empire. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
11.
Farrell, D., & Rusbult, C. E. (1992). Exploring the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect typology: The influence of job satisfaction, quality of alternatives, and investment size. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 5(3), 201-218.
12.
Fleming, P., & Sewell, G. (2002). Looking for the good soldier, Svejk: Alternative modalities of resistance in the contemporary workplace. Sociology, 36, 857-873.
13.
Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2002). Workers' playtime? Unravelling the paradox of covert resistance in organizations. In S. R. Clegg (Ed.), Management and organization paradoxes: Advances in organization studies 9 (pp. 65-85). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
14.
Fleming, P., & Spicer, A. (2003). Working at a cynical distance: Implications for power, subjectivity and resistance. Organization, 10(1), 157-179.
15.
Fung, A. Y. H. (2002). Identity politics, resistance, and new media technologies: A Foucauldian approach to the study of HKnet. New Media & Society, 4(2), 185-204.
16.
Gabriel, Y. (1999). Beyond happy families: A critical re-evaluation of the control-resistance-identity triangle. Human Relations, 52(2), 179-203.
17.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.
18.
Graham, J. W. (1986). Principled organizational dissent: A theoretical essay. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior, 8 (pp. 1-52). Greenwich, CT: JAI.
19.
Graham, J. W., & Keeley, M. (1992). Hirschman's loyalty construct: Employee voice to supervisors. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 5(3), 191-200.
20.
Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
21.
Hodson, R. (1995). Worker resistance: An underdeveloped concept in the sociology of work. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 16, 79-110.
22.
Holmer-Nadesan, M. (1996). Organizational identity and space of action. Organization Studies, 17(1), 49-81.
23.
Joyce, A. (2005, February 11). Free expression can be costly when bloggers bad-mouth jobs. Washington Post, p. A01-A01.
24.
Kahn, R., & Kellner, D. (2004). New media and internet activism: From the “Battle of Seattle” to blogging. New Media and Society, 6(1), 87-95.
25.
Kassing, J. W. (1998). Development and validation of the organizational dissent scale. Management Communication Quarterly, 12, 183-229.
26.
Kassing, J. W. (2001). From the looks of things: Assessing perceptions of organizational dissenters. Management Communication Quarterly, 14, 442-470.
27.
Kassing, J. W. (2002). Speaking up: Identifying employees' upward dissention strategies. Management Communication Quarterly, 16, 187-209.
28.
Kassing, J. W., & Dicioccio, R. L. (2004). Testing a workplace experience explanation of displaced dissent. Communication Reports, 17(2), 113-120.
29.
Levine, D. S. (1998). Disgruntled: The darker side of the world of work. New York: Berkley.
30.
Lewis, D. B. (Ed.). (2001). Whistleblowing at work. New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone.
31.
Malone, D. (2004a, January 28). Suing to silence? RadioShack turns its legal guns on a middle-class Web site operator. Fort Worth Weekly. Retrieved September 30, 2004, from http://www.fwweekly.com
32.
Malone, D. (2004b, May 12). Wearing down a cyber-critic: A new Webmaster carries on with RadioShack irreverence. Fort Worth Weekly. Retrieved September 30, 2004, from http://www.fwweekly.com
33.
Mears, M. M., Oetzel, J. G., Torres, A., Derkacs, D., & Ginossar, T. (2004). Employee mistreatment and muted voices in the culturally diverse workplace. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 32(1), 4-27.
34.
Miethe, T. D. (1999). Whistleblowing at work. Boulder, CO.: Westview
35.
Milliken, F. J., Morrison, E. W., & Hewlin, P. F. (2003). An exploratory study of employee silence: Issues that employees don't communicate upward and why. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 1453-1476.
36.
Mitra, A. (2001). Marginal voices in cyberspace. New Media and Society, 3(1), 29-48.
37.
Mitra, A., & Watts, E. (2002). Theorizing cyberspace: The idea of voice applied to the internet discourse. New Media and Society, 4, 479-498.
38.
Morrison, E. W., & Milliken, F. J. (2003). Speaking up, remaining silent: The dynamics of voice and silence in organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 40, 1353-1358.
39.
Murphy, A. G. (1998). Hidden transcripts of flight attendant resistance. Management Communication Quarterly, 11, 499-535.
40.
Nissen, B. (2003). The recent past and near future of private sector unionism in the US: An appraisal. Journal of Labor Research, 24, 323-338.
41.
Olian, J. (2004, May 11). Web's anonymity can make, break reputations. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. C-10-C-10.
42.
Orr, J. (1996). Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
43.
Prasad, A., & Prasad, P. (1998). Everyday struggles at the workplace: The nature and implications of routine resistance in contemporary organizations. In Research in the sociology of organizations (Vol. 16, pp. 225-257). Greenwich, CT: JAI.
44.
Real, K., & Putnam, L. L. (2005). Ironies in the discursive struggle of pilots defending the profession. Management Communication Quarterly, 19, 91-119.
45.
Saunders, D. M., Sheppard, B. H., Knight, V., & Roth, J. (1992). Employee voice to supervisors. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 5, 241-260.
46.
Static: Speech out of reach. (2004, June 30). Ft. Worth Weekly. Retrieved September 30, 2004, from http://www.fwweekly.com
47.
Taras, D., & Gesser, A. (2003). How new lawyers use e-voice to drive firm compensation: “Greedy associates” phenomenon. Journal of Labor Research, 24(1), 9-29.
48.
Taylor, B. C., & Trujillo, N. (2001). Qualitative research in organizational communication. In F. Jablin & L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication(pp. 161-194). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
49.
Tompkins, P. K., & Cheney, G. (1985). Communication and unobtrusive control in contemporary organizations. In R. D. McPhee & P. K. Tompkins (Eds.), Organizational communication: Traditional themes and new directions (pp. 179-210). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
50.
U.S. Department of Commerce. (2004). A nation online: Entering the broadband age. Retrieved December 13, 2005, from http://www.ntia.doc.gov/reports/anol/
51.
Van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2005). The deepening divide: Inequality in the information society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
52.
Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., & Botero, I. C. (2003). Conceptualizing employee silence and employee voice as multidimensional constructs. Journal of Management, 40, 1359-1392.
53.
Withey, M. J., & Cooper, W. H. (1989). Predicting exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect. Administrative Science Quarterly, 34, 521-539.
54.
Young, S. L. (1998). Where silenced voices speak out: The hidden power of informal communication networks. Women and Language, 21(2). Retrieved June 11, 2005, from Infotrac.
55.
Zhou, J., & George, J. M. (2001). When job dissatisfaction leads to creativity: Encouraging the expression of voice. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 682-696.
