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This chapter explores how “discourse,” as a process concerned with the production and consumption of talk and text, has been embraced within the field of organizational change and development (OCD). We present six ways of thinking about the role of discourse in OCD (namely: “discourse as component,” “discourse as process,” “discourse as analysis,” “discourse as method,” “discourse as mindset,” and “discourse as style”). Although the advent of dialogic OD has raised awareness of discourse, we demonstrate that it remains a marginal and under-utilized area of interest. We conclude by making a case for a more expansive role for discursive modes of analysis and engagement within OCD.

To consider Critical Management Studies as a social movement.

The purpose is fulfilled by reflecting upon the history of Critical Management Studies by reference to social movement theory, institutional theory and the social theory of hegemony.

Critical Management Studies is plausibly understood as a social movement.

The chapter offers a fresh perspective on Critical Management Studies by representing it as a movement rather than as a specialist field of knowledge.

Michael Holquist (1990), one of the commentators on Mikhail Bakhtin’s monumental work, stated flatly that “human existence is dialogue,” and Ivana Markova (2003) declared that “dialogism is the ontology of humanity.” Bakhtin (1985;1986) himself said that such dialogues are conducted by using “speech genres.” From another angle Kenneth Burke asked, “What is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?” and claimed – and showed – that this question can be best answered by using what he called the “grammar of motives,” which consisted of a hexad of terms: act, attitude, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. In this chapter, I examine, by using various examples, how the Burkean grammar is used in the construction of one speech genre or the other to achieve rhetorically effective dialogic communication.

This paper focuses on the strategic role of elites in managing institutional and organizational change within English public services, framed by the wider ideological and political context of neo-liberalism and its pervasive impact on the social and economic order over recent decades. It also highlights the unintended consequences of this elite-driven programme of institutional reform as realized in the emergence of hybridized regimes of ‘polyarchic governance’ and the innovative discursive and organizational technologies on which they depend. Within the latter, ‘leaderism’ is identified as a hegemonic ‘discursive imaginary’ that has the potential to connect selected marketization and market control elements of new public management (NPM), network governance, and visionary and shared leadership practices that ‘make the hybrid happen’ in public services reform.

The article develops a model which conceptualizes headquarter-subsidiary relations in the multinational corporation as a multilevel discursive struggle between key managers. At the first level, the relations are conceptualized as a discursive struggle over decisions and actions using rationalistic discourses. At the second level, they are viewed as a discursive struggle over power relations using control and autonomy discourses. Finally, underlying the first two, at the third level, headquarter-subsidiary relations are conceptualized as a discursive struggle over managers’ worldviews using cultural (pre)conceptions about “the self” and “the other.”

Despite the attention that Charles Sanders Peirce and Herbert Blumer dedicated to semiosis, symbolic interactionism still clearly lacks a theory of the sign. Attempts to appropriate Saussurean semiology and deconstruction have been made, but these have often resulted in, respectively, denying the importance of interaction and interpretation, or in implying the demise of meaning. In this article I propose an interpretive analytics of the sign by building upon Peircean semiotics and social semiotics. I examine the sign as a tripartite process of relations among object, representamen, and interpretant and analyze processes of production, distribution, and consumption of signs, and how these processes are shaped by power dynamics. I discuss how socio-semiotic codes are constituted through specific ideological discursive practices, and how these discursive practices are contingent on exo-semiotic conditions. Finally, I reflect on the importance of this approach for the continued growth of symbolic interactionism.

Purpose: In this chapter we examine the emotional experience and identity of sustainability change agents and advance understanding of their emotion management strategies. We explore how sustainability change agents experience, manage, and respond to the negative emotions that arise in the course of their jobs. Study Design: We took a mixed-method and multimodal approach to answer our research questions. Using a narrative approach, we collected data using in-depth narrative interviews and supplemented this with quantitative measurement of participants' heart rate and sweat response during the interviews. Findings: Our results confirm that sustainability change agency is an emotionally laden profession. Furthermore, we found that sustainability change agents use three different coping mechanisms including emotion-focused coping (EFC) (“rational avoiders”), problem-focused coping (PFC) (“committed go-getters”), and meaning-focused coping (MFC) (“green philosophers”). Originality: Our research shows that sustainability change agents experienced strong negative emotions in relation to their jobs and they employed one of the three coping styles: EFC, PFC, or MFC. We found that MFC was an isolated cognitive appraisal style, rather than a form of EFC. These findings provide a starting point for further work to help sustainability change agents avoid potential burnout and continue to contribute to the future health of the planet while at the same time maintain their personal well-being.