Search results

The aim of the paper is to understand and define how the polyphony of management is constructed in interaction and to describe this through concrete management meeting cases. Polyphony refers to the diverse voices of various organization members, and how these voices are present, disclosed and utilized in management.

The study is based on the social constructionist and discursive perspectives of management, which question the traditional, individualistic approaches of management. The issue was examined through a qualitative case study by analysing the micro‐level management discourse in three healthcare organizations.

Discursive practices that enhance or inhibit polyphony are often unnoticed and unconscious. Key moments of management discourse are an example of unconscious mundane practices through which members of organizations construct the reality of management.

The empirical results are locally contextual. In the future, research will be able to apply the approach to diverse contexts as well as link micro‐level discourses to the construction of broader health and social management discourses.

The paper increases the understanding of how to enhance participation and staff contribution, and how to utilize the knowledge of all members of the organization.

Both managers and other staff members are fully involved in the social construction of management. Micro‐level discourse should be paid attention to in management work as well as in the education of managers and staff.

The study increases the understanding of micro‐level issues of management and challenges the conventional, taken‐for‐granted assumptions behind organization and management theories.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The discourse model made possible an investigation of how a program of strategic change was formed through the discursive framing of organizational reality.

This paper aims to address the general lack of detailed attention to the value co-creation process which happens in the consumers’ social environment. The purpose of the paper is to extend prior understanding on new ways of creating value within an uncertain and complex small business environment where consumers are increasingly collaborating and constructing value within their own social environment that is not always visible to entrepreneurs.

The authors collected in-depth data from craft beer consumers who detail consumers’ perspectives on value co-creation within their social context. Discourse analysis is used to examine the ways in which consumers create value within their social environment. Discourses are generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews.

The findings reveal that a significant part of value creation happens outside the entrepreneurs’ control. Consumers seek to have social experiences which they want to experience individually but not alone. Accordingly, the legitimacy of a certain type of consumption creates a basis for consumers’ self-presentations and situational selves, on which value can be built.

This study offers new insights into how contemporary consumers work together to co-create value. In addition, this study answers the call for scholarly attention to consumer-to-consumer value linkages to gain new understandings of socially constructed value and contemporary consumption behaviour and reveals how entrepreneurs can benefit from this.

The purpose of this paper is to link the authentic, communicative activities, e.g. organization-wide meetings at the micro-level, to the institutionalized practices at the macro-level within an organization, e.g. change management decisions and communication strategy (Steyn, 2003). Thus, the concern is with the relationship between institutionalized strategic management and the real-life strategic communication processes, thus advancing the understanding of the role of texts and discourses in the actual practice of strategic communication in an organizational context of strategic change processes.

The data are based on a large corpus of video-taped management meetings and organization-wide meetings in a large Danish public, knowledge-based organization. The method applied for studying the management discourse is a conversation-analytical approach (Sacks et al., 1974; Sidnell, 2010). This method has been chosen as it enables the authors to focus on micro-aspects of organizational practices (Nicolini, 2013) by investigating the interactional patterns that serve as resources for doing legitimation as an institutionalized practice.

The common denominator for the entire analysis is legitimation accomplished through the discursive use of distanciation and the analysis identifies three different discursive elements or micro-level strategies directly related to the concrete doing of strategic communication. First, legitimation is created by reference to the socio-economic context of the organization. Second, legitimation is generated by means of pointing to the abnormality of the strategic situation. And third legitimation is fostered by the use of idiomatic expressions. These different ways of accomplishing legitimacy are in a strategy-as-practice perspective related to the specific, in-situ communicative praxis and accomplished by the concrete actions of the strategic communicators, and thus the authors can position the instances of strategic communication at the organizational micro-level.

This paper studies at a micro-level how strategic actors use various discursive resources to legitimize strategic decisions and how these resources constitute the discursive basis of strategic communication as a managerial practice. The authors focus on the role of discourse in the legitimization processes of strategic managerial decisions analyzing micro-level instances of organizational communication. The paper thereby links the actor process activities (Langley, 2007), e.g. organization-wide meetings at the micro-level, to the institutional field practices at the macro-level within an organization, e.g. strategy and planning (Johnson et al., 2007).

The purpose of this research is to reveal the gendered nature of social arrangements in order to bring to the surface the hidden discourses that mediate the opportunities of women leaders in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability.

The author uses critical sense-making (CSM) to analyze interviews with CSR leaders toward understanding the interconnected layers of influences they draw from as they make sense of their experiences.

Despite the positioning of women as being untapped resources within CSR, the reality within CSR leadership indicates that resilient, stereotypical social constructions of gender are being (re)created. However, cues can disrupt the ongoing process of sense-making and create shocks that represent opportunities for resistance as discriminatory practices are revealed.

Applying CSM as a methodology and to the field of CSR adds a component to CSR and gender scholarship that is currently missing. CSM as a methodology bridges broader sociocultural discourses and the local site of sense-making, making visible the structures and processes that enable some narratives to become legitimized by the formative context and protect the status quo.

If these leaders are able to use their discursive power to establish an alternate, dominant narrative throughout their organizations – a culture of emotional empathy within CSR – alternate meanings about the nature and purpose of CSR may emerge while highlighting the need for change.

Applying CSM as a methodology and to the field of CSR adds a component to CSR and gender scholarship that is currently missing. CSM as a methodology bridges broader sociocultural discourses and the local site of sense-making, making visible the structures and processes that enable some narratives to become legitimized by the formative context and protect the status quo.

In the implementation of integrated care, the role of managers is important and their mutual collaboration should be addressed more visibly. The purpose of this study was to investigate how cross-boundary collaboration is constructed in the discourse of middle-level managers in health and social care.

The study was based on a discursive approach. Group discussions with three groups of Finnish middle managers (n = 39) were analyzed using discourse analysis.

Five ways of talking about cross-boundary collaboration were identified, labeled “ideal”, “structure”, “defence”, “money” and “support” discourses. In the ideal discourse, cross-boundary collaboration appeared as a “good thing” and is self-evident. Structural discourse defined managers as passive actors in self-sustaining entities. Defensive discourse highlighted the problems of cross-boundary collaboration and the hierarchy within the health and social sectors. Financial discourse constituted the ultimate obstacle to successful cross-boundary collaboration, and both strengthened and explained defensive discourse. Supportive discourse portrayed other managers as partners and as an important resource.

Cross-boundary collaboration can be experienced as a resource, helping managers cope with their workload. However, identification of and continuous attention to challenges at macro, meso and micro levels of integrated care is crucial for successful collaboration. Thus, critical discussion of collaboration needs to be given space.

The study design and discursive approach highlights the power of language and give voice to middle managers who are key actors when implementing integrated care.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the prior work on social enterprise (SE) model comparisons by exposing the difficulties in producing universally comparative SE models. Furthermore, this paper seeks to trace different dominant stories of SE based on a combined historical and discursive analysis of Australian institutions shaping SE development.

This paper emulates the methodological approach taken by Kerlin (2013) and uses the same indices and measures adopted in this original model comparison. Although the valuable contribution of macro-level model comparison studies to the growing SE knowledge base is noted, it is proposed that categorisations are naturally exclusionary by their design, omitting emergent SE models and their institutional influences. These omissions pose difficulties for recognising and conceptualising hybrid organisations that often traverse institutional boundaries and frameworks (Doherty et al., 2014). A discourse analysis of SE policies in Australia was used to illustrate how micro-level appraisals of SE models differentiate from, and complement, the macro-level approach.

A combinatory analysis of Australian SEs, based on historical and discursive institutional theories, provides two stories about these organisations. The first story emerges that Australian SEs are partly shaped by institutions, the historical path-dependencies of which are associated with particular SE characteristics. Alternatively, using a discursive lens, the second story of Australian SEs emerges as a political subject, captured within a broader idea (e.g. social inclusion) that is coordinated between political domains and communicated within the public sphere. Therefore, it is argued that a combinatory approach shows SE models as they are, as well as how they might be – contingent on the implementation of identified policies.

The major contribution is to critique and extend Kerlin’s (2013) approach by complementing the macro-level study of SE models with an analysis that considers the local-level innovations that drive unique SE models and applications. To enact this, the authors explore how closely macro-level approaches to SE categorisation are the subject of discursive construction, as well as historical events. Consequently, this paper contributes to existing knowledge by advancing existing approaches to SE model studies, illustrating how different stories of SE can be drawn out from combinatory methods and local knowledge.

The practical implication arising from this paper is that SE discourses are both a subject of capture and a site of contestation, meaning that various institutional actors play a role in shaping the “reality” of the field.

The main social implication of this paper is that Australian SEs make a diverse contribution, but there are dangers that the discursive construction of civil society could narrow and constrain this.

The novelty inherent in this approach lies in bringing together two frameworks to explore the same field of action. By replicating Kerlin’s (2013) approach and bringing in a discursive analytical framework, it is shown that macro-level studies of SE sectors are enhanced by combinatory methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of social accounting at the micro level and examines the use of social reporting for constructive purposes through internal communication devices. It explores the discourse adopted by a large organisation in social accounting and reporting (workplace flexibility) through employee newsletters. In doing so the paper seeks to answer two research questions. First, what workplace flexibility practices are evident in the employee newsletters? Second, do management use discourse (including self-accounts) in newsletters for self-serving management control purposes or for the emancipatory purposes of benefiting employees?

Content and discourse analysis are used to examine “workplace flexibility” practices portrayed within the newsletters. This study explores the discourse adopted by a large Australian financial institution, in its social accounting disclosure in employee newsletters. It does so by examining the discourse adopted by the organisation in relation to one aspect of social accounting, that is, “workplace flexibility” in the employee newsletters over the period 2003-2007.

The paper finds the financial institution used its internal newsletters to influence employee attitude and behaviour, not as claimed for social “betterment” – justice, welfare, emancipation. The possibility of social accounting's emancipatory potential was suppressed by those responsible for providing the accounts. The paper found that management used discourse (including self-accounts) in the newsletters for self-serving management control purposes and not as claimed for benefiting employees.

The idea that the organisation provides workplace flexibility for the sake of benefitting employees is questionable. The discourse found in the newsletters suggests that flexible work options instead appear to be aimed at garnering employee loyalty, with subsequent employer benefits of improved organisational performance. The organisation used the discourse on workplace flexibility to blur the boundaries of work and life and persuade the employees to work harder and longer, to continuously increase productivity. In doing so, the organisation camouflaged its own economic sustainability and profitability as workplace flexibility.

This paper analyzes how public servants who work with young people discursively cope with competing demands on their agency, defined as their orientation toward and capabilities to influence their clients. Previous studies revealed how public servants treat their clients when facing competing demands but paid less attention to how public servants define their agency.

Micro-level discourse analysis is applied to analyze how public servants represent their agency in client relationships, drawing on interviews with nine individuals in a Finnish city who work with young people lacking jobs or school placements.

Instead of describing their agency coherently, the interviewees applied several discourses to represent their agency differently in relation to different demands. This ability to navigate contradictory discourses is discussed as reflexive discursive coping strategy, which enables public servants to maintain a positive image of their agency despite tensions at work.

Although the method does not allow direct generalizations, it reveals discursive strategies likely to be found in many contemporary public organizations.

The study indicates a need to better acknowledge and nurture the multifaceted nature of agency to improve service quality.

The findings deepen the view on tensions in public servants' work and show that diverse discourses not only create anxiety but also help individuals dealing with contradictory work.