‘You can’t buy my silence’: Five lessons on resistance and organizational silence amidst the expanding use of non-disclosure agreements

Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are increasingly used by powerful organizations to silence victims of workplace abuse, discrimination and misconduct. While originally designed to protect intellectual property, NDAs have evolved into tools that suppress resistance, conceal unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour and reinforce organizational silence. This Acting Up piece draws on the experiences of Zelda Perkins – co-founder of the global campaign Can’t Buy My Silence and the first woman to publicly break her NDA with Harvey Weinstein – to examine how organizational resistance can be enacted despite legal constraints. Perkins’ actions, and the growing movement against NDA misuse, offer organization scholars critical insights into the lived realities of resistance, the weaponization of confidentiality and the psychological toll of enforced silence. We outline five key lessons about resistance strategies that challenge dominant theories in organization studies, highlighting how real-world struggles complicate and enrich our understanding of power, voice and social change. This Acting Up piece contributes to ongoing conversations about organizational ethics, whistleblowing, resistance and the politics of silencing in the workplace. Organization scholars can learn much from Zelda’s Acting Up, its tactical and somewhat uncomfortable insights.