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As the framing perspective has evolved, there has been growing recognition that framing processes cannot be adequately understood apart from the broader enveloping contexts in which those processes occur. One such context recently has been conceptualized as discursive opportunities or the DOS. To date the concept has been examined most closely and carefully in relation to the media, most notably in Koopmans research on how the strategies of the German radical right have evolved partly in response to various media reactions and constraints (Koopmans, 2004) and in Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, and Rucht's (2002) comparison of abortion discourse in the U.S. and Germany (between 1970 and 1994) via the media. Koopmans provides the most straightforward and researchable conception of discursive opportunities, defining them in terms of three selection mechanisms that affect the probability of a proffered message or framing being picked-up and diffused. They include “visibility (the extent to which a message is covered by the mass media), resonance (the extent to which others – allies, opponents, authorities, etc. – react to a message), and legitimacy (the degree to which such reactions are supportive)” (Koopmans, 2004, p. 367).

This article sheds light on the legal services offered by antiviolence centers through a discursive practice-based analysis of women who have experienced domestic violence and the lawyers who volunteer in the center.

Using a practice-based framework, the article utilizes a case study of the first legal meeting between a lawyer and a woman who has experienced violence. The case study illustrates how the legal advisors' expertise is deployed in the use of “discursive practices” in dealing with women who have experienced domestic violence. Through a systematic analysis of the verbatim narrative, the case shows how the lawyer performs her legal help through expert “discursive practices” which are situated in recognition of the texture of practices experienced by women in the legal system.

The case study shows how a practice-based approach is able to account for lawyers' discursive and interactional knowledge in dealing with domestic violence. This expert doing and saying includes the ability to read the complexities of abusive situations, using “professional vision” to identify, highlight and codify clues and patterns of a partners' violent behavior; the mastery of “co-implication” with women to support the development of a narrative of the abuse as a crime recognizable both by the victim and the legal system.

The analysis shows that practice-based approaches to knowing and learning in investigating discourse practices can provide insights on practitioners' interactional expertise as well as the relevance of the service. While a close look at the actual practices illustrates the lawyer's interactional mechanisms, the crucial role of legal aid in the antiviolence center can be appreciated by contextualizing within the texture of practices that characterizes women's experiences with violence.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretically informed analysis of a struggle for power over the regulation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social and environmental accounting and reporting (SEAR) within the European Union.

The paper combines insights from institutional theory (Lawrence and Buchanan, 2017) with Vaara et al.’s (2006) and Vaara and Tienar’s (2008) discursive strategies approach in order to interrogate the dynamics of the institutional “arena” that emerged in 2001, following the European Commission’s publication of a Green Paper (GP) on CSR policy and reporting. Drawing on multiple sources of data (including newspaper coverage, semi-structured interviews and written submissions by companies and NGOs), the authors analyse the institutional political strategies employed by companies and NGOs – two of the key stakeholder groupings who sought to influence the dynamics and outcome of the European initiative.

The results show that the 2001 GP was a “triggering event” (Hoffman, 1999) that led to the formation of the institutional arena that centred on whether CSR policy and reporting should be voluntary or mandatory. The findings highlight how two separate, but related forms of power (systemic and episodic power) were exercised much more effectively by companies compared to NGOs. The analysis of the power initiatives and discursive strategies deployed in the arena provides a theoretically informed understanding of the ways in which companies acted in concert to reach their objective of maintaining CSR and SEAR as a voluntary activity.

The theoretical framework outlined in the paper highlights how the analysis of CSR and SEAR regulation can be enriched by examining the deployment of episodic and systemic power by relevant actors.

The formation and spreading of market‐, management‐ and individual‐rights discourses into society, as well as the movement of consumerism, have paved the way for a transformation of the linguistic usage. The transformation suggests that the view of the care seeker has shifted from a waiting patient, via a consumer to a customer creating value. Another example of the process is that the former medical meeting between patient/doctor now is described as a service meeting. With this background, the purpose of this paper is to explore the transformation of linguistic usage and to analyse the performativity of the service management discourse in health care.

The concept of performativity (Butler) supported with discursive formation and subjectivization (Foucualt) is used as theoretical framework. The performativity of the discourse is understood as a vehicle within the discourse, which influences people on an ontological level that names and makes them active subjects in line with what the discourse is saying.

When the service management discourse travels into the world of health care, discursive tensions between medical‐, care‐ and management discourses follow. These become apparent in the distinction between the different discursive constructions of patient – related to passivity, and customer – related to the performative image of active participation in value creating health. Even if the customer in service management discourse is imagined as an agent for himself with power and individual responsibility it is doubtful if people view themselves as customers. The dialectics between the use of the customer concept in commercial service meetings and the patient – doctor meeting, which is illustrated, point to unexpressed and implicit presumptions of an ontological kind in the ways service management researchers describe service meetings. Recent health care research can be interpreted as if a majority of patients have a desire to be part of their value creating processes. Since the responsibilities and tasks of the professions in health care however are regulated by law and institutionalised, the process of delegating tasks to patients seems not to be a matter of course.

It seems to be problematic to replace the patient concept with the customer concept in general. This concept gives hardly much room for the vulnerability that characterises a sick person. A reasonable approach would of course be to use the customer concept in a nuanced way.

The paper demonstrates that the performativity of service management theories, through the use of discursive analysis, is valuable in order to understand shifts in linguistic usage.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that qualitative researchers have much to learn from conducting methodological analyses of their own talk in relation to research participants in interviews. Yet there are specific difficulties in representing findings from methodological analyses of research interviews.

Although qualitative researchers have for some time followed recommendations to analyze both “how” interview data are generated in addition to “what” is discussed, little has been written about the challenges of representing these sorts of analyses. The paper uses a case to first examine difficulties in the representation of an analysis of interview data that draws on discursive psychology. After discussing the case, the paper further explores the challenges of conducting and presenting these sorts of methodological analyses of interview data to research participants and readers in ways that clearly convey what might be learned by examining how interviews are accomplished.

The paper outlines considerations for researchers in doing methodological analyses of interview data, including challenges, reconciling interpretations of “what” and “how” topics are discussed in research studies, and possible areas of focus.

This paper examines what researchers might learn from examinations of their own interview practice and does not focus on representations of topical analyses.

The paper argues that when interviewers subject their own talk to analysis, they learn about themselves, their craft, and the ways in which knowledge about social worlds are collaboratively produced in research encounters with participants.

By developing expertise in how to analyze their interview interaction methodologically, qualitative researchers can attend to significant features of their interview practice and in so doing, develop a reflexive research practice.

This study aims to explore how organisations use institutional language in Green Bond reports to explain and justify their activities using language that describes and reflects narratives while simultaneously constructing and shaping ideology. The paper mobilises Wodak and Meyer’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine reports and related documentation relating to Green Bonds issued in France.

The study uses three legitimating discourses: technocratic, environmental and social and business performance to develop a linguistic perspective that permits contributions to existing knowledge in the area.

The analysis attempts to identify the discursive strategies used to legitimise Green Bond issuance via claims linked to environmental management improvements and business activities’ social impact.

The study contributes to the critical literature on organisational legitimation and responsibility, investigations of Green Bond narratives and an understanding of broader environmental reporting in the financial sector.

The learning history is designed to describe the coming about of best practices, with their reproduction in mind. This paper seeks to discuss the implications of this instrument and presents a modified version.

The paper uses a so‐called discursive learning history to zoom in on the interaction between a convergent, official, organisational narrative on the one hand, and people acting according to their own stories on the other.

Narrative structures help to create an inner logic that helps people to make sense of their organisation. An example is the battlefield metaphor identified in an academic business school.

It is not easy to create a comprehensive whole out of a multitude of small, often ill‐aligned contributions. To tackle this problem, the author adjusts the method of the learning history for it to allow analysis of discursive practices.

With this instrument, managers can identify patterns in the complexity of their organisations and understand what seems irrational at first sight.

In organisations there is a continuous tendency to create one line into this complexity. This can be disciplining and therewith can provoke all kinds of undesired behaviours.

It is often assumed that one can learn from history. Looking at the past and reconstructing what happened during a significant event seems an ideal way to create the coherent plot one feels comfortable with and learn from for the future. A discursive learning history shows there is more to organisations then meets the eye.

Change is continuous and leaves many digital traces in contemporary organizations, while research on change usually lacks such continuity. The purpose of this paper is to test and explore the claim that change can be monitored through employee discourse. In doing so, the authors introduce basic text mining methods to detect prevailing keywords and their changes over time. Such monitoring of content and its change promises a continuous feedback and improvement for change management efforts.

The authors use a mixed research design, combining an ethnographic approach with digital methods. The quantitative element of the method involves applying text mining techniques to a document corpus that is representative of people in organizations, and is originally collected as part of a relatively common performance management system. The findings about discursive categories and their change patterns through time are then combined with observations and secondary information about change management for interpretation.

By combining these measurements with additional information about the change program in focus, the authors develop an interpretation of the dynamics of organizational change. Results showed that even in a successfully implied change effort that realize the planned targets, change does not occur directly and fully, with some elements of discourse being more persistent than others.

Method of the research presents a new way of monitoring discursive change. Its incorporation into practice potentially allows for timely correction of change efforts and increasing possibility of success.

This research provides a framework for understanding how, and to what extent, planned change efforts effect organizations. Furthermore, the method developed in this research presents an innovative approach to monitor discursive change and timely managerial intervention.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implementation of self-service at public libraries from the perspective of their users. The implementation of self-service is related to a diverse societal context including, for example, an overall digitalisation, budget constraints and political expectations on public libraries to contribute to marketing the local community.

Semi-structured interviews with users and observations have been undertaken at self-service libraries in the south of Sweden. The material is analysed by means of a theoretical framework consisting of previous critical LIS-research, Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and Habermas’ theory of the colonisation of the life world.

The implementation of self-service is affecting the users’ library practices as well as their expectations on the library. These expectations are shaped by various and sometimes competing discourses.

To support public libraries’ role as democratic, public spheres, the complexity of the users’ understandings should be taken into consideration when implementing self-service.

The differing expectations articulated by the users, and the various discourses they can be related to, implicate a hegemonic struggle, corresponding to a changing view on public libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of the standardisation of two largely overlapping electronic document formats between 2005 and 2008, and its implications for future IT standards development.

The document format controversy is researched as an exemplary case study of the institutional rivalries, perspectives and strategic interests at play in standardisation processes. The study adopts a methodological lens of discursive institutionalism in order to explain how actors assume and perform a variety of roles during the controversy. It consults a range of documentary sources, including media commentary, corporate press releases and blog posts, financial reports and technical specifications.

The study shows that: first, intentions to increase competition in the office software market through the standardisation of document formats led to a standards “arms race”; second, this further entrenched the position of a single market actor; and third, the resulting public debate nevertheless has reinvigorated the push for genuinely open standards.

Information technology standards are often touted as mechanisms for increasing the competitiveness of a market, thereby benefitting consumers and the greater public. In the presence of dominant institutional actors, efforts to standardise can, perversely, undermine this benefit. Increased public scrutiny through online media offers a potential remedy.

This research presents a novel account of the controversy over the document format standardisation process, understood through the lens of discursive institutionalism. It also shows the increasing and potentially putative role of online media in the development of IT standards generally.