We have all experienced the effects of power in organizations, be it in a corporation, education institution or social club. Most of us too have been agents of resistance, or at least witnessed resistance in organizations. As we have noted in this book, such resistance can take many interesting and often colourful forms. A corporate culture campaign may be lampooned through bawdy and vulgar commentary. A shop-floor union or professional association may organize collective action in the face of an unpopular policy. Gay employees or ethnic minorities may launch anti-discrimination campaigns in their organizations. A software engineer may sabotage a project that has unfairly exploited his/her creative input. A secretary may even piss in the coffee of a sadistic boss. The list could well be endless.

The objective of this book has been to provide a theoretical basis for making sense of such instances of contestation. In particular, we have developed the notion of struggle, not only to sharpen our analysis of power and resistance at work but also to transcend the limitations of these two concepts. The first two chapters placed our concerns within a scholarly tradition that identifies the differing ways in which power and resistance can be conceptualized in relation to work organizations.