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Doing Democracy, Engaging the Material

Employee Participation and Labor Activity in an Age of Market Globalization

University of Utah

Dana L. Cloud

University of Texas at Austin

This colloquy results froma series of discussions between the authors concerning issues of (a) the status of labor activity in organizational communication study, (b) the dimensions of and prospects for workplace democracy in practice, and (c) the need for the discipline of communication to attend more seriously to the material world. The authors write this essay using three voices: each of theirs plus a joint expression of interests. Above all, this conversation seeks to strengthen engagement of possibilities for robust democratic practices in the work of today's globalizing market economy and to challenge communication scholars to see economic and labor phenomena as more than can be perceived through the lens of unbridled discursive and symbolic constructionism. Although this essay ranges across questions of ontological status, epistemological choices, disciplinary mythos, and theoretical preferences, it is ultimately practical with a call for (organizational) communication scholars and activists to engage the misguided pursuits, injustices, and hopes surrounding contemporary corporate-consumer capitalism.

Key Words: discursive or symbolic power • employee participation • labor organizing • material constraints • workplace democracy • Marxism • globalization • consumerism

Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4, 501-540 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0893318905285485


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