Ethics of resistance in organisations: a conceptual proposal

This study suggests a conceptual proposal to analyse the ethics of resistance in organisations, drawing on Foucault’s practising self as a refusal and Schaffer’s ethics of freedom in opposition to the legitimacy of managerial control and the ethics of compliance. We argue that ethics is already part of such politics in the form of ethico-politics on the basis of participation in political action in organisations. Hence, the practising self as resistance in the face of the status quo of managerial power in an ongoing dialectical process with others and for others comprises our conceptual proposal as an ethics of resistance. Acknowledging dialectics as the driver of the continuous reconstruction and co-construction of politics and praxis, we propose an ethics from the bottom up with a critical and radical perspective. Our contribution is based on opening up an ethico-political space for those who are ignored or suppressed in the ethics and organisations literature.