A Semiotics View on a Story Of Control, Resistance and Organizational Comics

This paper examines a graphic novel created by the management of an Italian banking company and periodically spread via the company intranet as part of a training initiative directed to several thousands of employees working at the branch level. Theoretically, it draws on three main streams of literature: that on HRM systems as meaning-creating devices to govern the employment relationship; that on the ever more tight relation between popular culture and organizations; and the growing stream of visual organizational research. In addition, it elaborates on Eco’s semiotic theory to decipher the “mystery” represented by the mostly negative reactions of employees and unions to the managerial initiative. On the basis of the available empirical material, semiological guerrilla warfare is advanced as a collective strategy to resist organizations’ internal mass communications. In the final part of the paper contributions and implications are discussed in light of the proposed theoretical and analytical framework.