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In this paper, I explore micro‐political resistance (defined as resistance at the level of meanings, identity or subjectivity) within the context of professional part‐time working.UsingSkeggs' (1997) notion of dialogical recognition, which refers to an individual's identification with negative portrayals of the social categories to which they belong, I argue that in transgressing dominant (and taken‐for‐granted) workplace norms, part‐time professionals experience guilt and a sense that they may not be fulfilling their professional obligations. Based on a qualitative study of part‐time working in theUKpolice service, I show how part‐time professionals navigate these feelings by both drawing attention to the instrumental value of conforming to certain work‐based norms, specifically long hours, and by refusing deployment to tasks and roles that they see as peripheral to their professional identities. It is through such refusals, I argue, that the micropolitical resistance I illustrate in this paper can be understood as effective because of its impact on how everyday routines are performed.

Researching sexism is not only a controversial undertaking, but one that is rendered problematic due to the fact that many individuals are reluctant to name certain experiences or practices as 'sexist'. In this article, I use a discursive psychology approach to transcend arguments as to whether certain experiences and practices should be understood as sexist, focusing instead on how, in the context of a research 'conversation', participants attempt to warrant their own interpretations of these processes. Using data from research conversations held with two policewomen, who present very different accounts of sexism, I argue that social facts, like sexism, possess an inherent interpretive duality: they can be understood, simultaneously, to be both objective and subjective experiences. The study illustrates that the resolution of competing reality claims (e.g. is sexism a 'fact' or is it 'in the eye of the beholder') depends upon the processes through which particular versions of reality acquire authority. This essentially political process is, I argue, critical for understanding the reproduction, resilience and endurance of social facts such as sexism.

The concept of 'dirty work' has much potential to offer insights into processes related to the construction of organizational identities and work-group cultures. In this article, I use a social constructionist framework, to argue that 'dirty workers' perform their identities in two conceptually distinct contexts: 'front regions' and 'back regions' (Goffman, 1959), each producing its own subjective challenges. I use a critical discourse analysis to explore how, within the research interview setting, police officers deal with the moral dilemma of their use of coercive authority. I argue that what is designated as 'dirty' within any specific role differs according to the perspective of the observer, revealing the boundaries and landscape of different moral and social orders and how these overlap and compete. It is further argued that, within specific interactional contexts, occupational identity comprises a site of contestation for these different moral and social orders. The utility of the dirty work concept is explored in relation to its ability to illuminate the dynamics of ideological reproduction and transformation.

Responding to calls to incorporate a more dispersed and localized conceptualization of power in the study of strategy as discourse, in this article we illustrate that while investing senior managers with the authority to speak and enact strategy, at one and the same time strategy discourse renders this group highly visible and vulnerable. Using a Foucauldian-inspired discursive psychology approach to provide a critical analysis of brief stretches of talk in a research interview, we expose the inherent instability and contingency of strategy discourse as it is used to construct and reconcile contradictory accounts of corporate success, failure and senior manager subjectivity. Our core contribution is to show that resistance to strategy discourse is discernible not only through how lower level or other actors contest or undermine this discourse but also by observing the efforts of corporate elites to manage temporary breakdowns (Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2011) that disrupt the background consensus that ordinarily provides strategy discourse with its 'taken-for-granted' quality. Resistance, we argue, is not only an intentional and oppositional practice but also inheres within the fine grain of strategy discourse itself, manifested as a 'hindrance and stumbling block' (Foucault, 1978) in the highly occasioned and local level of mundane interaction.