Resistance From the Margins: The Postmodern Public Relations Practitioner as Organizational Activist

A postmodern view of public relations practice holds that practitioners will act as organizational activists. This article examines the discourse of 16 public relations practitioners to determine whether they exhibited postmodern behavior that translates into organizational activism. Practitioners displayed organizational activism through situational ethical decision making, a desire for change, the use of biopower to resist dominant power, a concern for employee representation, and the practice of dissensus, to mention but a few. This study confirms the emancipatory potential of public relations and challenges the domination of modernist perspectives in public relations.