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This chapter explicates the theoretical basis and contribution of poststructuralism to the study of strategy and strategic management. More specifically, it focuses upon Foucauldian analysis which is contrasted to rationalist and interpretivist studies. Foucauldian analysis is not regarded as a corrective but as an addition to these established approaches to studying strategy. Notably, Foucault's work draws attention to how discourse constitutes, disciplines and legitimizes particular forms of executive identity (‘strategists’) and management practice (‘strategizing’). We highlight how Foucault's poststructuralist thinking points to unexplored performative effects of rationalist and interpretivist studies of strategy. Foucault is insistent upon the indivisibility of knowledge and power, where relations of power within organizations, and in academia, are understood to rely upon, but also operate to maintain and transform, particular ‘discourses of truth’ such as the discourses of ‘shareholder value’ and ‘objectivity’. Discourse, in Foucauldian analysis, is not a more or less imperfect, or ineffective, means of representing objects such as strategy. Rather, it is performative in, for example, producing the widely taken-or-granted truth that ‘organization’ is separate from ‘environment’. In turn, the production of this distinction is seen to enable and sanction particular and, arguably, predatory forms of knowledge, in which the formulation and application of strategy is represented as neutral, mirror-like and/or functional.

The ongoing global pandemic poses significant challenges for researchers, personally and professionally, as it does for all people. However, even if we cannot safely leave our home to gather qualitative data by directly meeting with people, opportunities abound for engaging in discourse analysis. After all, people have not stopped talking or writing, even if much of that is now via Zoom, social media or some other technology platform rather than face to face. What people are talking and writing about at this time matters greatly because language use profoundly shapes how people interpret reality, perceive themselves and others and act. Quite literally, then, the discourse people engage in and are influenced by during the pandemic may help to save or imperil lives and livelihoods. While there are many possible approaches to discourse analysis, this chapter focuses on some key insights French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault offers for such endeavors. It offers an introductory account of his key concepts and methods, followed by a brief case study to demonstrate their application to discourses that reject scientific knowledge and advice about COVID-19.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and shed light on the following questions: What is an author? Is it a person who writes? Or, is it, in information, an iconic taxonomic designation (some might say a “classification”) for a group of writings that are recognized by the public in some particular way? What does it mean when a search engine, or catalog, asks a user to enter the name of an author? And how does that accord with the manner in which the data have been entered in association with the names of the entities identified with the concept of authorship?

The authors use several cases as bases of phenomenological discourse analysis, combining as best the authors can components of eidetic bracketing (a Husserlian technique for isolating noetic reduction) with Foucauldian discourse analysis. The two approaches are not sympathetic or together cogent, so the authors present them instead as alternative explanations alongside empirical evidence. In this way the authors are able to isolate components of iconic “authorship” and then subsequently engage them in discourse.

An “author” is an iconic name associated with a class of works. An “author” is a role in public discourse between a set of works and the culture that consumes them. An “author” is a role in cultural sublimation, or a power broker in deabstemiation. An “author” is last, if ever, a person responsible for the intellectual content of a published work. The library catalog’s attribution of “author” is at odds with the Foucauldian discursive comprehension of the role of an “author.”

One of the main assets of this paper is the combination of Foucauldian discourse analysis with phenomenological analysis for the study of the “author.” The authors turned to Foucauldian discourse analysis to discover the loci of power in the interactions of the public with the named authorial entities. The authors also looked to phenomenological analysis to consider the lived experience of users who encounter the same named authorial entities. The study of the “author” in this combined way facilitated the revelation of new aspects of the role of authorship in search engines and library catalogs.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss stigma and insensitive communication surrounding mental illness discourse amongst adolescents in the Polokwane Local Municipality against the background of a Foucauldian lens.

The literature reviewed included a discussion of perspectives on stigma and insensitive communication, contextualisation of the dual health–belief system in South Africa and the Foucauldian governmentality theoretical perspective. The methodology was based on a Foucauldian orientation and Geertz’ interpretivism. The methods followed to analyse the discourse were Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), coupled with Geertz' “thick description.” The data were collected from six focus group discussions, which consisted of a total of 36 informants.

The findings indicated the dominance of the biomedicine discourse, neoliberal rationalisations for self-care and the policy of deinstitutionalisation.

The implications for practice using an FDA approach combined with an interpretivist stance exposes the actions, institutions, possibilities for action whilst understanding core beliefs in a complex dual health and religious belief setting. The addition of Geertz’s interpretivism adds a cultural flare and insight, which adds to the depth of the analysis.

The complexity of beliefs, experiences and health choices calls for culturally sensitive discourse about mental illness and also highlights how discourse about individual conduct and self-care is embedded in the discourse used by adolescents.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a close, detailed analysis of the frequency, nature, and depth of visible use of two of Foucault’s classic early works, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things, by library, and information science/studies (LIS) scholars.

The study involved conducting extensive full-text searches in a large number of electronically available LIS journal databases to find citations of Foucault’s works, then examining each citing article and each individual citation to evaluate the nature and depth of each use.

Contrary to initial expectations, the works in question are relatively little used by LIS scholars in journal articles, and where they are used, such use is often only vague, brief, or in passing. In short, works traditionally seen as central and foundational to discourse analysis appear relatively little in discussions of discourse.

The study was limited to a certain batch of LIS journal articles that are electronically available in full text at UCLA, where the study was conducted. The results potentially could change by focussing on a fuller or different collection of journals or on non-journal literature. More sophisticated bibliometric techniques could reveal different relative performance among journals. Other research approaches, such as discourse analysis, social network analysis, or scholar interviews, might reveal patterns of use and influence that are not visible in the journal literature.

This study’s intensive, in-depth study of quality as well as quantity of citations challenges some existing assumptions regarding citation analysis and the sociology of citation practices, plus illuminating Foucault scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to foreground the importance of context in discourse analysis by drawing on a study of online gender talk on Facebook in India.

Using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), this study explored participants’ use of language to construct and perform various identities in online gender talk. This study discusses the methods used and challenges in analyzing digital spaces through FDA, focusing specifically on the importance of an ethnographic perspective to contextualize online talk.

Engagement with the larger socio-cultural context of the subject of study through various data collection methods enhanced our understanding of the contexts behind text. It helped the authors to explore the data from multiple directions from a Foucauldian framework. This study found that people constructed a “progressive” identity when talking about gender on Facebook.

There are very few studies combining discourse analysis and digital ethnography and this paper seeks to do that. Digital ethnography helps to look beyond the text and locate text in the larger socio-cultural context. To emphasize the importance of context in discourse analysis, this study engages with both online and offline data as online talk is connected with offline contexts in many significant ways. In this paper, the authors provide a description on various methodological steps used to collect and analyze online data using FDA.

Children have been recognized as an important user group for information and communication technology (ICT) and methods for involving them in ICT design have already been devised. However, there is a lack of research on children’s genuine or authentic participation in ICT design as well as a lack of critical research scrutinizing how “children” and “their participation” actually end up constructed in ICT design. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An intervention involving children in ICT design following the research strategy of nexus analysis was implemented. A qualitative data archive of this intervention is examined through a Foucauldian lens.

The study reveals that numerous discourses were relied on when talking about “children” and “their participation” in the case project: the discourses of participation, equality, domination, segregation, rebellion, and patronization were identified. Moreover, “children” were constructed as equal partners and influential, but also as ignorant, ignored, silent, and silencing each other. Some of the findings are in line with the existing ICT literature on the matter, others even with the literature on genuine participation of children. However, children and their participation were also constructed as “problematic” in many senses.

The study contributes to and opens up avenues for critical research on genuine participation of users, especially children.

Practical suggestions for researchers interested in participation of children in ICT design are provided.

While research literature offers an abundance of best practices and an idealized view on children and their participation, this study shows the multitude of challenges involved and discourses circulating around.

The qualitative characteristics of decision-useful financial information (as set out in the revised March 2018 Conceptual Framework for financial reporting of the International Accounting Standards Board [IASB]) are fundamental for standard setting relied on by companies when making accounting policy changes and choices. However, there has not been an overarching universally agreed conceptual context of the qualitative characteristics. This paper aims to study the completeness of the qualitative characteristics towards suggesting a revision of the Conceptual Framework.

The present study evaluated the completeness of these qualitative characteristics using Foucauldian critical discourse analysis and content analysis paradigms to elucidate the inclusion conundrum. Foucauldian analysis allowed focus on power relationships, governmentality and subjectification in accounting society, as expressed through language and practices of the IASB who ultimately decide on the qualitative characteristics. Content analysis was used to analyse data collected via interviews with preparers and users of banks’ accounts, changes in banks’ accounting policies after the conceptual framework was published and comment letters from banks who wrote to the IASB.

Novel findings from this study revealed the potential significant omissions of the constraints of “materiality”, “transparency” and “regulatory/supervisory framework”. Also, surrounding the qualitative characteristics having been shown to be valid and includable, the adjective “decision-useful” reinstated in the chapter title and the IASB project team technical writers needing to show completeness of attention to all comments.

From these findings, a freshly formulated chapter in the conceptual framework on the qualitative characteristics can now be submitted for consideration by the IASB, with potential for international post-implementation review.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the diverse rendering of the idea of nation and the role of universities in nation-building in the 1950s Murray and Hughes Parry Reports in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This paper provides trans-Tasman comparisons that reflect the different national and international interests, positioning of science and the humanities and desired academic and student subject positions and power relations.

This paper adopts a Foucauldian genealogical approach that is informed by Wodak’s (2011) historical discourse analysis in order to analyse the reports’ discursive constructions of the national role of universities, the positioning of science and humanities and the development of desired academics and student subjectivities and power relations.

The analysis reveals the different positioning of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand in relation to the Empire and the Cold War. It also demonstrates how Australian national interests were represented in these reports as largely economic and defence related, while Aotearoa/New Zealand national interests were about economic, social and cultural nation-building. These differences were also matched by diverse weightings attached to university science and the humanities education. There is also a hailing of traditional, enlightenment-inspired discourses about desired academic and student subjectivities and power relations in Australia that contrasts with the emergence of early traces of more contemporary discourses about equity and diversity in universities in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

The paper demonstrates the value of transnational analysis in contributing to historiography about university education. The Foucauldian discourse analysis approach extends existing Australian historiography about universities during this period and represents a key contribution to Aotearoa/New Zealand historiography that has explored academic and student subjectivities to a lesser extent.

The purpose of this paper is to sensitize researchers to qualitative citation patterns that characterize original research, contribute toward the growth of knowledge and, ultimately, promote scientific progress.

This study describes how ideas are intertextually inserted into citing works to create new concepts and theories, thereby contributing to the growth of knowledge. By combining existing perspectives and dimensions of citations with Foucauldian theory, this study develops a typology of qualitative citation patterns for the growth of knowledge and uses examples from two classic works to illustrate how these citation patterns can be identified and applied.

A clearer understanding of the motivations behind citations becomes possible by focusing on the qualitative patterns of citations rather than on their quantitative features. The proposed typology includes the following patterns: original, conceptual, organic, juxtapositional, peripheral, persuasive, acknowledgment, perfunctory, inconsistent and plagiaristic.

In contrast to quantitative evaluations of the role and value of citations, this study focuses on the qualitative characteristics of citations, in the form of specific patterns of citations that engender original and novel research and those that may not. By integrating Foucauldian analysis of discourse with existing theories of citations, this study offers a more nuanced and refined typology of citations that can be used by researchers to gain a deeper semantic understanding of citations.