Successful social media resistance: implications for employee voice

ABSTRACT

Industrial relations (IR) authors tend not to draw on critical management studies (CMS) literature. IR’s radical wing believe it overstates the possibility of managerial control and IR’s pluralist wing are disinterested because of their emphasis on institutions and processes. There is a need for pluralist industrial relations to make use of the research on resistance in CMS which has found social media to be capable of bringing about workplace change, meaning that it needs to be explained in pluralist IR as a form of voice. Informed by insights into successful social media resistance, a research agenda for IR is set out to extend our understanding of worker voice in the digital era.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• employee voice
• resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Notes on contributors

Michael Walker

Michael Walker is a PhD candidate at UTS Business School, an official of the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees Association (SDA), and Secretary of AIRAANZ.