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The paper aims to explore an affirmative, discursive perspective for its potential to expand the current understanding of processes of institutional transformation.

First the notion of institutional transformation is discussed and the “discursive model of institutionalization” as developed by Phillips et al. is described. Then the concept of “positive textual deviance” is introduced and defined. The discursive model is read to explore possibilities for institutional transformation through instances of positive textual deviance.

The insertion of the concept of positive textual deviance into the discursive model of institutionalization reveals openings for transformation which are captured in propositions that address the agency of texts and their authors in the creation of desired change.

The paper is unique in its synthesis of three distinct theoretical perspectives – institutional, discursive, and affirmative – in the definition and application of positive textual deviance. Its affirmative, constructionist stance goes beyond a critical deconstruction of taken for granted practice by proposing a hopeful, emancipatory approach that enables institutional actors to become agents of change.

This study aims to investigate how highly ranked business schools portray ideal students in terms of their attributes and their agency. Understanding how these higher education institutions (HEIs) discursively construct their present and prospective students also shed light on the institutions’ self-representation, the portrayal of the student–institution relationship and eventually the discursive construction of higher education’s (HE) role.

To understand this dynamic interrelationship, this study uses mixed methodological textual analysis first quantitatively identifying different modes of language use and then qualitatively analysing them.

With this approach, this study identified six language use groups. While the portrayal of the business schools and that of the students are always co-constructed, these groups differ in the extent of student and organisational agency displayed as well as the role and purpose of the institution. Business schools are always active agents in these discourses, but their roles and the students’ agency vary greatly across these six groups.

These findings can help practitioners determine how students are currently portrayed in their organisational texts, how their peers and competitors talk and where they want to position themselves in relation to them.

Previous studies discussed the ideal HE students from the perspective of the students or their educators. Other analyses on HE discourse focused on HEIs’ discursive construction and social role This study, however, unveils how the highly ranked business schools in their external organisational communication discursively construct their ideals and expectations for both their students and the general public.

The authors use concepts from the “communication constitutes organizations” (CCO) literature in combination with Cooren’s (2010, 2012) ventriloquism to demonstrate the symbolic uses of texts and shifting interpretations of authority during a negotiation regarding the future of a nonprofit educational institution. The two sides negotiating over how to resolve a fiscal crisis struggled to achieve legitimacy through competing institutional logics, and this paper captures this process through a detailed account. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study emerged from a multi-year full immersion ethnography undertaken by the second author, who spent over 5,000 hours as a participant observer at the organization. The quotes and observations come form field notes taken during this time.

Communication constitutes the nonprofit institution through two communication flows – self-structuring processes and institutional positioning – and these flows symbolically and materially unified the opposing negotiation parties during the negotiation process as each side struggled to gain legitimacy through competing institutional logics. The process of ventriloquism was the mechanism through which different actors and texts negotiated their levels of authority.

This case demonstrates how oppositional groups used and viewed texts throughout a negotiation process, revealing the agency, authority, legitimacy, and symbolic power of texts. This case also highlights the political struggle between institutional logics backed by financial models and professional logics backed by traditional organizational values.

At a material level, this case is a detailed examination of organizational members navigating the negotiation process during a fiscal crisis, but on a symbolic level this case demonstrates the communicative means through which oppositional groups negotiate core organizational values, and whether past values can lead organizations to a sustainable future. The observational depth of this case study was only possible through long term, full immersion ethnography, and this depth provides clarity to abstract concepts from CCO, ventriloquism, and institutional theory.

The purpose of this research is to study how compliance evaluation becomes performed in practice. Compliance evaluation is a common practice among organizations that need to evaluate their posture against a set of criteria (e.g. a standard, legislative framework and “best practices”). The results of these evaluations have significant importance for organizations, especially in the context of information security and continuity. The author argues that how these evaluations become performed is not merely a “social” activity but shaped by the materiality of the evaluation criteria

The authors adopt a sociomaterial practice-based view to study the compliance evaluation through in situ participant observations from compliance evaluation workshops to evaluate organizational compliance against a information security and business continuity criteria. The empirical material was analyzed to construct vignettes that serve to illustrate the practice of compliance evaluation.

The research analysis shows how the information security and business continuity criteria themselves partake in the compliance evaluations by operating through (ventriloqually) the evaluators on three strata: the material, the textual and the structural. The author also provides a conceptualization of a hybrid agency.

This research contributes to lack of studies on the organizational-level compliance. Further, the research is an original contribution to information security and business continuity management by focusing on the practices of compliance evaluation. Further, the research has theoretical novelty by adopting the ventriloqual agency as a hybrid agency to study the sociomateriality of a phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptually discuss whether and how feminine voice is muted within e‐mails in organizations; the implications of which are substantial and far‐reaching for human resource development (HRD) professionals as well as the HRD field as a whole.

Utilizing the approach and arguments in muted group theory, the author conceptually applies these tenets to organizational e‐mail.

Current gender‐preferential research concentrates on the textual polarity of male‐ and female‐preferential language. These language differences carry over to organizational e‐mail despite the lack of contextual cues within e‐mail as well as the masculine nature of organizations. A critical assessment of these findings, rooted in muted group theory, reveals that women's voice is not merely marginalized (i.e. is present, but relegated to the margin), but it is mute (i.e. is not even present because it has no authentic language with which to use).

Future research should concentrate on ways in which women remain muted and strategies to “un‐mute” them such that they are able to utilize a language reflective of their own experiences.

Diversity trainers who seek to incorporate diversity into organizations must look at the deeply entrenched assumptions of a culture that embraces likeness rather than difference. Many norms and taken for granted day to day procedures, such as e‐mail exchange, foster, and reinforce resistance to diversity.

The paper urges researchers, practitioners and academics to continue to analyze critically the muteness of women in organizations.

One of the adverse effects of COVID-19 is on poor economic and financial performance. Such economic underperformance, less demand from the consumer side and supply chain disruption is leading to stock market volatility. In such a backdrop, this paper aims to find the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian stock market by analyzing the analyst’s report.

The sample includes a cross-sectional data set on selected Indian firms that are indexed in BSE 100. The authors calculate the score of disclosure tone by using a textual analysis tool based on the analyst report of selected BSE 100 firms' approach in tackling COVID-19’s impact. The relationship between the tone of the analyst report and stock market performance is examined. This empirical model also survives robustness analysis to establish the consistency of the findings. This study uses both frequentist statistics and Bayesian statistics approach.

The empirical result shows that tone has negative and significant influence on stock market performance. This study indicates that either analysts are not providing value-relevant and incremental information, which can reduce the stock market volatility during this pandemic situation or investors are not able to recognize the optimism of the information.

This study provides an interesting insight regarding retail investors' stock purchasing behavior during the crisis period. Hence, this study also lays out crucial managerial implications that can be followed by preparers while preparing corporate disclosure.

In the concern on pandemic and its impact on the stock market, this study sheds light on investors' preferences during the crisis period. This study uniquely focuses on analyst reports and investors' preference which has not been studied widely. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in the Indian context, which aims to understand retail investors’ investment preferences during a pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the problem of reconfiguring epistemic boundaries and the authority relationships that these boundaries represent in corporate R&D. The authors focus the analysis on the mediation of this reconfiguration by project management tools, specifically the development plan and its subsidiary roadmaps and timelines.

The authors analyze discourse data from an ethnographic study to show in situ the communication about and through project management tools in collaborative project development. The concepts of organizational map and mapping from the perspective of the communicative constitution of organization (CCO) frame the close-up analysis of this communication.

The analysis reveals how the plan and its subsidiary texts participate in the negotiation and legitimation of epistemic ownership and authority for a collaborative strategy to be implemented. The authors illustrate the material agency of these texts in the objectification and prioritization of strategic choices in this implementation.

To conclude, the authors discuss the significance of exploring the mapping function of supposedly mundane representational tools used in project management.

The originality of this study comes from applying the organizational map concept to demonstrate the politically charged materiality of project management tools in the discursive establishment of authority and accomplishment of corporate strategy.

The notion, technologies and organizational elaboration of traceability have become more prominent and more systematic in recent years in many different fields, notably food. This chapter argues that traceability has many faces: it is a programmatic value embedded in norms and regulations; it is a frontier of technology development such as blockchain, and it is a continuous processual and political dynamic of organizational connectedness, leading also to resistance. These different aspects make up “traceability infrastructures,” which embody a number of tensions and dynamics. Three such dynamics are explored in this chapter: the tension between organizational entities and meta-entities, problems of agency and the distribution of responsibility, and dialectics of connectivity and disconnectivity. These three dynamics generate three testable propositions, which define a prolegomena for a new subject of “traceability studies.” Overall, traceability is argued to be an ongoing process of connecting discrete agencies – a process of “chainmaking” – and is formative of more or less stable forms of distributed agency and responsibility.

Extant research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication primarily relies on a transmission model of communication that treats organizations and communication as distinct phenomena. This approach has been criticized for neglecting the formative role of communication in the emergence of organizations. This paper seeks to propose to reconceptualize CSR communication by drawing on the “communication constitutes organizations” (CCO) perspective.

This is a conceptual paper that explores the implications of switching from an instrumental to a constitutive notion of communication.

The study brings forth four main findings: from the CCO view, organizations are constituted by several, partly dissonant, and potentially contradictory communicative practices. From that viewpoint, the potential impact of CSR communication becomes a matter of connectivity of CSR to other practices of organizational communication. Communication practices that concern CSR should not be generally dismissed as mere “greenwashing” – given that some forms of talk can be action. Consequently, there is a need to investigate which specific speech acts create accountability and commitment in the context of CSR. The CCO view shows that CSR communication potentially extends the boundary of the organization through the involvement of third parties. Thus, it is fruitful to study CSR communication as a set of practices that aims at boundary maintenance and extension. Organizations are stabilized by various non‐human entities that “act” on their behalf. Accordingly, CSR communication should also take into account non‐human agency and responsibility.

This paper links the literature on CSR communication to broader debates in organizational communication studies and, in particular, to the CCO perspective. By applying the CCO view, it reconceptualizes CSR communication as a complex process of meaning negotiation.

The current study makes two main contributions: one theoretical and one methodological. First, it investigated the theoretical prepositions of career sustainability perspective, which appears particularly suitable for examining project managers' careers' dynamics and patterns, featured by explicit and recursive interactions between individual, temporal and contextual factors. Second, the study aimed to adopt a qualitative approach to this topic as to allow a deeper understanding of individual narratives about careers, highlighting underexplored issues and peculiarities that future research could further examine through quantitative methodologies.

Project managers' careers are still an under-researched topic, especially through qualitative methods. The study applied career sustainability theory to the realm of project management, moreover, adopting a socio-constructivist perspective. Participants were 50 Italian project managers who were involved through a narrative in-depth interview that focused on career and career success. Their answers were analyzed through thematic analysis of contents and diatextual analysis.

Results showed that project managers' career could be a prototypical example of sustainable career, basically described in terms of four basic constitutive dimensions as follows: time frame, social space, agency and meaning. Implications for both future theoretical expansion of career sustainability theory and project managers' career management interventions were also discussed.

The originality of the paper could be found in the effort to adopt a socio-constructivist perspective to investigate the topic of career sustainability taking the exemplary case of project managers' career.