The paper contributes to the discussion on the changing work environment and working culture of organization which are influenced simultaneously by the historical emergence of local practices and the economic pressures in global market. We approach strikes as local practices (Schatzki 2006) and focus on the workers sense making of their position, of their value for the employer/company and of how the voice of the employees is been heard. This brings the discussion to organizational culture, trust and dialogue - or the lack of dialogue - between management and employees.  A conflict affects strongly the organizational culture and trust/distrust between management and labour, in the same time as it is a product of that culture.

This paper reports an on-going study which investigates strikes in organizational level. We have chosen a large (7000 employees), globally operating company as our case organization since the susceptibility for strikes in that company is seemingly high. Drawing on the practice based orientation we study a strike situation in its context and involve the participants of the strike to ponder the reasoning of strikes. We explore how do they talk of strikes and of the other side of the conflict. Do they show interest in listening out to the other part that has been proposed to be a basic requirement for a dialogue (Bohm 2004)? The methodology is supported by the narratives told by the actors involved in the strikes. We are interested in understanding how do the parties legitimate (in their talk and actions) their counteracting positions of the conflict. Why do they fail in intra-organizational arbitration and in collective bargaining and end up in strikes?

The research of labour conflict has traditionally been dominated by macro-economic and quantitative IR research. As several comparative studies show, the labour-market studies made in other political and economic circumstances do not explain the local realities in another country or cultural context (Black 1999; Roscigno and Hodson 2004; Bryson and Frege 2010). The study of conflict has been fragmented and the absence of comprehensive treatments of the subject is striking (Kolb 2008) . Therefore, we add to the qualitative case studies of conflict research and draw closer to ‘the localized genre of interaction’ (Gillespie 2012) which accommodates various organizational voices and meaning structures in order to uncover the discrepancies and barriers between and within the local strike discourses.

After a thorough analysis of our data we aim to uncover the discrepancies and barriers between and within the local discourses of work conflict. Our research relates several theoretical notions connected to work conflict research aiming to find a new framework for understanding strikes in today’s organizational working conditions.