Organizing as Tong (通): Decolonizing Organizational Communication from the Roots

Abstract

We offer a critical intervention to decolonize organizational communication from the roots by interrogating the basic assumptions of “organizing” and foregrounding alternatives that draw on nonwestern languages, cultures, and philosophies. Centering language and the lived experiences of two marginalized women organizing actors in China through 10-year consecutive ethnographies, we propose Tong as a theoretical framework that offers three branches to privilege subaltern knowledge and organizing praxes: (1) Bian Tong: approaching organizing as constant form-shaping whereby organizing essence/goals emerge through changes; (2) Hui Tong: understanding organizing knowledge as relational, and achieved through a confluence of the agentic interplay of time, place, and people; and (3) He Tong: highlighting organizing as the creation of possible pathways against opposing forces by remaining still and nurturing. Grounded in local languages and indigenous philosophies, our work serves as a decolonial intervention to disrupt deep-seated Eurocentric assumptions and to stimulate theoretical imagination to foreground organizing from the margin.