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5. The dialogic organization

The Transformative Power of Dialogue

ISBN: 978-0-76230-904-7, eISBN: 978-1-84950-165-1

Publication date: 9 October 2002

Abstract

This paper presents three dialogic concepts developed by Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin: answerability, polyphony and heteroglossia. These concepts are interpreted in relation to organizing and management and applied to data from a case study of a large American computer manufacturer. The study permits us to use Bakhtin's ideas to formulate the links between organizational change and language. We will show, using a Bakhtinian analysis of our case, how dialogue reconstructed a group of managers' understandings of their organizational reality and their identity as an organization. The analysis presents a view of organizational change as communicative, symbolic, dynamic and layered.

Citation

Jo Hatch, M. and Ehrlich, S. (2002), "5. The dialogic organization", Roberts, N.C. (Ed.) The Transformative Power of Dialogue (Research in Public Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 107-131. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0732-1317(02)12007-0

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2002, Emerald Group Publishing Limited