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The purpose of this paper is to discuss how a discourse approach to theorising human resource development (HRD) can open a “discursive space” to challenge dominant discourses within the field; enabling a more critical discourse to emerge.

Discusses two approaches to discourse analysis, a “practice” and a “critical” approach, and illuminates how both approaches can contribute to theorising HRD.

The notion of what constitutes HRD is being constantly renegotiated both in theory and in practice. While contemporary HRD discourses are many and there is fluidity in the field a dominant discourse can be identified. The authors argue that a focus on the discourses which construct and constitute HRD need to consider both the “practice” and “the order of discourse” enabling the emergence of alternative discourses within the field.

Due to word restrictions an empirical example has not been included. However, future work will address this limitation.

The two approaches to discourse analysis discussed provide a useful framework; enabling an analysis of the dominant and competing discourses within the field of HRD.

Discourse analysis is rarely discussed in business settings despite the evidence that applied discourse analysis focuses on questions that are of relevance to the field. This paper contributes to a perceived gap and demonstrates how discourse analysis can contribute to researching alternative notions of HRD in order to encourage a variety of conceptual developments.

The purpose of this paper is to present a composite framework for critical policy analysis drawing from discourse analysis and post-structuralist analysis. Drawing on an interpretive paradigm (Yanow, 2014), this paper provides a thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the processes involved in the application of these tools in a critical policy analysis project, focusing on disability policy within the Irish context. Methodologically, this is a resourceful cross-fertilization of analytical tools to interrogate policy, highlighting its potential within critical disability policy analysis and beyond.

Merging a critical discourse analysis framework and a policy problematization approach, the combination of tools presented here, along with their associated processes, is referred to as the critical discourse problematization framework.

Potentially, the framework can also be employed across a number of cognate social policy fields including education, welfare and social justice.

The value of this paper lies in its potential to be used within analytical practice in the field of critical (disability) policy work by offering an evaluation of the analytical tools and theoretical framework deployed and modeled across an entire research process.

The framework has the potential and has been used successfully as a tool for disability activism to influence policy development.

The analytical framework presented here is a methodically innovative approach to the study of policy analysis, marrying two distinct analytical tools to form a composite framework for the study of policy text.

Developing leaders for a diverse democracy is an increasingly important aim of higher education and social justice is ever more a goal of leadership education efforts. Accordingly, it is important to explore how dominant leadership models, as blueprints for student leadership development, account for and may unwittingly reinforce systems of domination, like racism. This critical discourse analysis, rooted in racialization and color-evasiveness, examines three prominent college student leadership development models to examine how leaders and leadership are racialized. We find that all three leadership texts frame leaders and leadership in color-evasive ways. Specifically, the texts’ discourses reveal three mechanisms for evading race in leadership: focusing on individual identities, emphasizing universality, and centering collaboration. Implications for race in leadership development, the social construction of leadership more broadly, and future scholarship are discussed.

Current social entrepreneurship (SE) literature advocates a critical reexamination of the core construct. As such, and based on the seemingly endless definitional debate among academics, this paper seeks to empirically analyse social entrepreneurship discourse in the United Kingdom. It aims to posit that this debate is in fact detrimental to a more coherent and evenly distributed discourse. Furthermore, the ensuing ambiguities suit other, more powerful participants, and keeping this debate live allows the discourse to be shaped.

The author utilised critical discourse analysis (CDA) in this study, developing a personal qualitative data set (including a third sector and SE corpora containing SE policies covering 2002‐2008). This data set was then subjected to an online analysis tool WMatrix, and both sets were compared with a widely used base line corpus.

The findings show that SE discourse is now firmly attached to public policy discourse. Furthermore, this public policy concerning SE was heavily imbued with political language and ideology. Thus, the findings show empirically that SE is characterised in broader public policy debates as a politically re‐constructed concept.

SE will continue to be a contested concept in the public sphere, however further research should explore the potential of dissensus from political reconstructions as a powerful counter‐discourse.

This study is among the first to utilise CDA to interrogate SE discourse, and the analysis provides novel insights for academics and practitioners to reinterpret and contest SE as more than the solution for failing public services.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on John B. Thompson's “tripartite approach” for the analysis of mass media communication, highlighting how this methodological framework can help address some of the shortcomings apparent in extant studies on accounting which purport to analyse accounting “texts”.

By way of example, the paper develops a critique of an existing study in accounting that adopts a “textually‐oriented” approach to discourse analysis by Gallhofer, Haslam and Roper. This study, which is informed by Fairclough's version of critical discourse analysis (CDA), undertakes an analysis of the letters of submission of two business lobby groups regarding proposed takeovers legislation in New Zealand. A two‐stage strategy is developed: first, to review the extant literature which is critical of CDA, and second, to consider whether these criticisms apply to Gallhofer et al. Whilst acknowledging that Gallhofer et al.'s (2001) study is perhaps one of the more comprehensive in the accounting literature, the critique developed in the present paper nevertheless highlights a number of limitations. Based upon this critique, an alternative framework is proposed which allows for a more comprehensive analysis of accounting texts.

The critique of Gallhofer et al.'s study highlights what is arguably an overemphasis on the internal characteristics of text: this is referred to by Thompson as the “fallacy of internalism”. In other words, Gallhofer et al. draw inferences regarding the production of the letters of submission from the texts themselves, and make implicit assumptions about the likely effects of these texts without undertaking any formal analysis of their production or reception, or without paying sufficient attention to the social and historical context of their production or reception.

Drawing on Thompson's theory of mass communication and his explication of the hermeneutical conditions of social‐historical enquiry, the paper outlines a range of theoretical considerations which are pertinent to researchers interested in studying accounting texts. Moreover, building on these theoretical considerations, the paper delineates a coherent and flexible methodological framework, which, it is hoped, may guide accounting researchers in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to tackle the problem of societal knowledge management from the perspective of critical management research. The focus is on national intellectual capital analysis as part of societal knowledge management. First, the aim is to identify the dominant discourse that governs the discussion around national intellectual capital and its measurement. Second, the aim is to explore the prospects for an alternative conceptualisation and to propose a heuristic tool through which it is possible to approach national intellectual capital and its measurement in a critical, informed and analytic way.

The study takes a critical standpoint and leans loosely on the methodology of critical discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough.

The paper argues for the emancipation of national intellectual capital from the orthodoxy that relates it to economic growth, quantitative measurement, objectivity and universality towards a discourse that regards the value of national intellectual capital and its analysis more broadly, recognising the contextual and subjective nature of national intellectual capital.

The conceptual analysis provides a basis for further empirical assessment of national intellectual capital.

The paper offers a critical conceptual lens through which to approach societal knowledge management. The constructed heuristic tool for analysing national intellectual capital can serve as a basis for strategic knowledge‐based development.

The paper offers a critical reflection of intellectual capital on the national/societal level and a starting point for critical societal knowledge management.

This paper aims to present findings from a three-year qualitative study that used a model of teacher learning referred to as teaching as inquiry (Manfra, 2019). Teaching as inquiry centers the teacher as a learner in a prolonged and “systematic process of data collection and analysis focused on changing teaching” (p. 167). Findings from the larger qualitative study demonstrate the work of collecting transcripts and using discourse analysis to analyze classroom discourse fostered high school English teachers’ knowledge and skills for facilitating critical conversations (Schieble et al., 2020). For this paper, the authors highlight Paula, a white, female secondary teacher who is dual certified in English Language Arts and ESL. Findings from Paula’s case demonstrate the ways the teacher inquiry group disrupted Paula’s language ideologies of linguistic purism, an ideology embedded in white supremacist and colonialist, hegemonic language policies and practices (Kroskrity, 2004), and transformed her instructional practices over time.

The research used qualitative methods for design and scope to generate an information-rich instrumental case study (Stake, 1995). Case study is a form of qualitative inquiry that concentrates on experiential knowledge of the case. This study used case study methods to construct an instrumental case to understand how participation in the teacher inquiry group shaped Paula’s facilitation of critical conversations. Data analysis used inductive and deductive qualitative coding procedures and discourse analysis (Gee, 2004; Rogers, 2018) to address the research questions.

Findings demonstrate that prior to meeting with the teacher inquiry group, Paula’s teaching practices embodied linguistic separatism by emphasizing that standardized English was the “appropriate” way to participate in critical conversations. Through studying her classroom discourse, the inquiry group supported her to critically question these instructional practices and ideologies. Findings demonstrate that the work of the inquiry group supported her embodiment and articulation of a translanguaging ideology that supported her facilitation of critical conversations.

Findings from this study contributes to scholarly and professional knowledge about how models of teaching as inquiry (Manfra, 2019) demonstrate a positive or reconstructive impact on teacher and student learning. This study highlights the potential for reconstructive shifts in the context of how teachers learn together and the tools that support them in doing so.

This article presents a case study of Kelly, a third-grade teacher enrolled in a literacy leadership course within a Master of Reading program. In this course, practicing teachers completed an assignment in which they implemented a literacy coaching cycle with a colleague, video-recorded their interaction, and conducted critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the interaction. The authors explore how engaging in CDA influenced Kelly's enactment of professional identities as she prepared to be a literacy leader.

Data presented in this article are taken from a larger study of four white, middle-class teachers enrolled in the course. Data sources included the students' final paper and semistructured interviews. The researchers used qualitative coding methods to analyze all data sources, identify prominent themes, and select Kelly as a focal participant for further analysis.

Findings indicate that Kelly's confidence as a literacy leader grew after participating in the coaching cycle and conducting CDA. Through CDA, Kelly explored how prominent discourses of teaching and learning, particularly those relating to novice and expert status, influenced Kelly in-the-moment coaching interactions.

Previous literacy coaching research suggests that literacy coaches need professional learning opportunities that support a deep understanding of coaching stances and discursive moves to effectively support teachers. The current study suggests that CDA may be one promising method for engaging literacy coaches in such work because it allows coaches to gain understandings about how discourses of teaching and learning function within coaching interactions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current and past work using discourse analysis in the field of educational administration and of discourse analysis as a methodology.

Authors reviewed research in educational leadership that uses discourse analysis as a methodology.

While discourse analysis has been used in the field, little work has been done that explores “leadership” as a discourse practice.

Increased use of discourse analysis in the field might unearth the ways principals and superintendents are creators of discourse and mediators of the discourses of others.

The purpose of this paper is to take conceptual and methodological steps towards the elaboration of the critical grounded theory (CGT) method.

Starting from conceptual issues with mapping everyday discourses and practices in their broader societal context in organisational ethnography, cultural political economy (CPE) is proposed as a suitable theoretical framework for integrating the cultural dimension of discourses and imaginaries into political-economic analyses of organisation and management. The CGT method is introduced for empirical operationalisation.

Grounded theory tools for working with ethnographic data can be employed within critical approaches such as CPE although they originate from positivist social science. The need to combine ethnographic fieldwork with substantial theoretical work and/or critical discourse analysis may be met by CGT, which affords the ethnographic strengths of grounded theory without, however, bracketing the critical-theoretical insights of CPE.

The usefulness of CGT has been tentatively tested, but requires thorough meta-theoretical and methodological development, which is what is undertaken here.

CGT expects and takes account of the social implications of its employment in the field.

First steps towards a new critical method for organisation and management studies are taken. Although originating from concern with CPE, the CGT method may appeal to a wider audience of critical scholars across the social sciences.