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1 – 10 of over 6000Cristiano Busco, Elena Giovannoni, Fabrizio Granà and Maria Federica Izzo
The purpose of this paper is to explore the enabling role of accounting and reporting practices as discourses about sustainability unfold inside organizations. In particular, the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the enabling role of accounting and reporting practices as discourses about sustainability unfold inside organizations. In particular, the authors investigate how managers attempt to connect the concept of “sustainability” to their specific experience, as they seek to make sustainability meaningful (i.e. filling it with unfolding meaning) through accounting and within particular discursive spaces.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors rely upon the case of LOGIC, a large international oil and gas company operating in more than 70 countries worldwide. The authors analyze the evolution of discourses concerning sustainability inside the company, as well as the changing accounting and reporting practices, with a particular focus on integrated reporting.
Findings
The authors show that accounting and reporting practices (such as integrated reporting within LOGIC) provide the conditions for “sustainability”—as a discursive concept—to become meaningful, while evolving themselves as they are attached to this concept. They do so by enabling individuals (the management team within LOGIC) to connect their diverse experiences and aspirations to the concept of sustainability. Rather than filling sustainability with stable meaning, the authors observed that individuals are attracted by the gaps left by accounting representations, leading to the development of new practices and unfolding meanings within specific discursive spaces.
Originality/value
Most of the literature on sustainability accounting and reporting practices concentrate on the need for these practices to mirror what companies do about sustainability. Differently, the authors add to the very few studies on “aspirational” reporting that have emphasized the enabling effects of the gap between what companies say and do about sustainability. The authors do so by demonstrating that accounting is “aspirational” not only because it stimulates corporate efforts toward an imaginary better future, but also because it attracts managers’ particular aspirations through its representational gap. The authors show that this gap enables meaningful connections between individuals (their particular experience and aspirations) and “sustainability,” bringing this concept into their specific discursive space and, thereby, leading to the emergence of new practices.
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To illustrate methodologically and conceptually how understanding of entrepreneurial management can be enhanced through a discourse perspective which focuses on discourse as both…
Abstract
Purpose
To illustrate methodologically and conceptually how understanding of entrepreneurial management can be enhanced through a discourse perspective which focuses on discourse as both noun and verb, encompassing discursive resources and discursive practices.
Design/methodology/approach
An ethnographic study of SME managers and their companies, which deployed a discourse perspective to managing, organising and learning. Through two case study companies the paper explores how managers' formal management learning influenced their organisation practice.
Findings
Demonstrates how significant communicative acts are to understanding a company. Illustrates how apparent organisation dysfunction might be analysed and sense made of it.
Research limitations/implications
By differentiating between discursive practice and discursive resource it shows that entrepreneurship research can be enriched through ethnographic study of both the content of communication between organisation members and their communicative practices.
Practical implications
Illustrates a method of gaining insight into dysfunctional organisational processes. Provides new ways of understanding and researching the interconnections between learning, knowledge and management in small enterprises.
Originality/value
In the small firm sector there are still few empirical discursive analyses of organization and managing. Discursive organization studies have also tended to be undervalued as “an obsession with talk” and “an intellectual luxury”. This article addresses both these gaps, both offering evidence of the practical utility of the methodological approach for advancing organisation understanding and providing a rare empirical discursive study of managing in SMEs.
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– The purpose of this paper is to examine how discursive practices are involved in organizational change.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how discursive practices are involved in organizational change.
Design/methodology/approach
This research scrutinizes organizational change by combining discourse and practice approaches. A case study at a public university hospital is conducted with a narrative analysis method.
Findings
The key finding of this research is that discursive practices are involved in organizational change through discourse phronesis. Discourse phronesis is a socially and contextually developed phenomenon, and hence discursive practices are particular within context. The case study revealed four particular discursive practices as examples of discourse phronesis: field practices, mandate practices, priority practices and word practices.
Practical implications
The results of this research advance awareness of the concealed power within discursive practices and, more importantly, invite practitioners to pursue the intellectual virtue of discourse phronesis while implementing organizational change. Discourse phronesis may be utilized as a gateway to advance change goals and to translate various discourses and actions that otherwise might remain unexplained.
Originality/value
Although extensively studied, organizational change has not previously been directly approached through discourse phronesis, and by doing so this empirical research provides novelty value to both organizational change research and discourse analysis. By introducing the concept of discourse phronesis, this research offers scholars an alternative lens, the intellectual practicality lens, through which to approach organizational change and perhaps to develop new understandings of the great challenges that organizational change complexities usually generate.
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Rihab Khalifa, Nina Sharma, Christopher Humphrey and Keith Robson
This paper aims to develop understanding of how the pursuit of practice change in auditing, especially in relation to audit methodologies, is conveyed, presented, reflected in and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to develop understanding of how the pursuit of practice change in auditing, especially in relation to audit methodologies, is conveyed, presented, reflected in and enabled (or hindered) through discursive, textual constructions by audit firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses an extensive series of interviews with audit practitioners, educators and regulators and a textual study of the content, concordances and narratives contained in two key audit methodological texts published by KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms.
Findings
Major discursive shifts in audit methodologies are identified over the last decade, with the dominant audit discourse switching from one of “business value” to one of “audit quality”. Such shifts are analysed in terms of developments in the wider, organisational field and discursive (re)constructions of audit at the level of the audit firm.
Originality/value
The identified shifts in auditing discourse are important in a number of respects. They demonstrate the significance of discursive elements of audit practice, contradicting influential prior claims that methodological discussions and developments in audit over the last decade had focused consistently on notions of “audit quality”. Methodologically, they demonstrate the importance and opportunities for knowledge development available by combining institutional, field‐wide analysis with a detailed discursive study of individual interviews and texts.
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Drawing from findings of a case study of inter‐organisational collaboration, this paper aims to employ organisational theory to examine the potential learning that opens between…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing from findings of a case study of inter‐organisational collaboration, this paper aims to employ organisational theory to examine the potential learning that opens between educational organisations. The focus is discursive practices. Two questions guide the analysis. What (unique) practices are implicated in the “knotworking” of inter‐organisational collaboration? What knowledge and capacities are learned in these discursive practices?
Design/methodology/approach
A case study was conducted of a collaboration between a university unit, school district, elementary school and parent executive board to govern a laboratory school. Documents were examined and 17 interviews conducted and analysed inductively. Document analysis and second stage transcript analysis employed methods of discourse analysis.
Findings
The case analysis suggests that collaborations open unique sites for organizational learning. Actors (teachers, administrators, parents) engage with various discourses in the “knots” of inter‐organisational networks. Those who thrive in the “knot” of collaboration learn how to be flexibly attuned to shifting elements that emerge in negotiations. Further, these actors appear to develop capacities of mapping, translating, rearticulating, and spanning boundaries among the diverse positions of organisations.
Research limitations/implications
The case study is limited in scope in order to allow in‐depth discourse analysis of the data.
Originality/value
The combination of theories employed here – a practice‐based organizational learning theory called “knotworking” and critical organisational discourse analysis – is unique in educational administration research. It is argued that together, these theories provide a useful analytic approach for administrators wanting to understand and work through the cultural and political complexities of inter‐organisational collaborations.
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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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Aileen Lawless, Sally Sambrook, Tom Garavan and Claire Valentin
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
Discusses two approaches to discourse analysis, a “practice” and a “critical” approach, and illuminates how both approaches can contribute to theorising HRD.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
Due to word restrictions an empirical example has not been included. However, future work will address this limitation.
Practical implications
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.
Originality/value
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.
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– The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from a discourse model that was developed for an empirical study of a strategic change program.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from a discourse model that was developed for an empirical study of a strategic change program.
Design/methodology/approach
The perspective informing the discourse model is that discursive processes are central to strategic change in organizations, and that strategic change works by constructing a particular organizational reality in which the possibilities for change are preconditioned. This perspective offers a discursive understanding of how strategic change is formed, articulated, engaged, and contested by managers and employees.
Findings
The paper reports the findings from a study in which the discourse model was applied to a strategic change program in a Bank. The findings demonstrate the inter-discursive nature of strategic change in showing how different levels of discourse, from the grand to the local, were intertwined in an organizational and situated context.
Research limitations/implications
This paper builds on the small but growing body of empirical work that studies organizational strategy as a discourse. In this paper it has been argued that discursive processes are central to strategic change in organizations - central to the understanding and the practice of how strategic change is formed, articulated, and engaged by managers and employees. This argument was informed by a post-structuralist definition and articulation of language and an understanding of language as discourse in organizations.
Practical implications
The paper demonstrates the central role of language and discourse in the formation of a strategic change program. The findings reported in the paper show the importance of strategy discourse in providing a framework for strategic change, for mobilizing change in an organization, and for legitimizing the change imperative.
Social implications
A critique of the management of emotional intelligence is set out. The centrality of employee identity and subject position to the processes of change is illustrated.
Originality/value
The discourse model made possible an investigation of how a program of strategic change was formed through the discursive framing of organizational reality.
Romain Gandia and Florence Tourancheau
This paper aims to analyze the strategizing and organizing practices in the innovation process by using a processual approach. Three types of practices are examined: discursive…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the strategizing and organizing practices in the innovation process by using a processual approach. Three types of practices are examined: discursive, episodic and administrative. Their arrangement and their influence are also studied in the innovation process. The final objective is to understand the making process of the strategizing/organizing (S/O) duality, which remains today one of the major challenges of the strategy-as-practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a longitudinal and qualitative methodology applied to a single case study. Primary data are based on 18 semi-directive interviews during a three-year period. Secondary data came from various meeting and reports, Web sites, newspapers and newsletters.
Findings
The results show that strategizing and organizing practices are preconditioned by the phases of the innovation process. In the idea generation, commercialization and diffusion phases, strategizing takes precedence over the organizing, whereas in the R & D phase, it is the opposite. In the industrialization phase, strategizing and organizing are carried out simultaneously. Other results highlight the influence between discursive, episodic and administrative practices in the innovation process.
Practical implications
This research offers guidance to practitioners of innovation who want to attain a deeper understanding of the innovation-making process and its close ties with strategizing and organizing.
Originality/value
The authors empirically validate the making process of the S/O duality and examine the theoretical and empirical relevance of an innovizing concept, when the innovation-making process implicitly generates the production of a new inseparable S/O duality.
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Understanding of HRD in SMEs has frequently been based on impoverished research resulting from underdeveloped theory. This article argues for the potential offered to researching…
Abstract
Understanding of HRD in SMEs has frequently been based on impoverished research resulting from underdeveloped theory. This article argues for the potential offered to researching, understanding and practising HRD in small organisations, of taking a discourse perspective on organisation, learning and development. Through a comparative interpretation, from a traditional and a discourse perspective on HRD, of research material collected ethnographically in three small companies, the article aims to contribute to an approach which can deepen understanding of HRD in SMEs by combining three strands that have not generally been integrated: ideas from recent debates on what HRD comprises, perspectives on learning, and a discourse perspective on organisation. The implications for research indicate a need for methods that enable the study of HRD in action – the micro‐processes of development.
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