Backstage Discourse and the Emergence of Organizational Voices: Exploring Graffiti and Organization

Abstract

The current study focuses on organizational bathroom graffiti in an urban coffee house, proposing that this form of communication forms constitutes an alternative public sphere for expressive and political voices. Public bathroom graffiti is interesting due to its unique spatial and textual affordances. In particular, anonymity of such spaces promotes voice and dialogue while insulating actors from social conformity pressures. This discursive relation to space produces dense and polyphonic communicative acts, allowing authors to tackle important social and organizational questions, engage in self-conscious reflection, and express taboo emotions. A 3-year study of organizational graffiti is presented, followed by a description of how the graffiti studies composed an expressive political space within the organization. Implications of the graffiti included the decentralized production of organizational voices, the problematizing of the notions of public and private, and the possibilities of political expression within organizational spaces.