Organizational Discourse E-Book

Francois Cooren

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: PKGS - Polity Key Themes in Organizational Communication
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 363

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

How can we study organizations from a discursive perspective? What are the characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of each perspective on organizational discourse? To what extent do discourse and communication constitute the organizational world? This accessible book addresses these questions by showing how classical organizational themes, objects and questions can be illuminated from various discursive perspectives.

Six approaches are presented and explained: semiotics, rhetoric, speech act theory, conversation analysis/ethnomethodology, narrative analysis, and critical discourse analysis. These six perspectives are then mobilized throughout the book to study coordination and organizing, organizational culture and identity, as well as negotiation, decision making and conflicts in the context of meetings.

The unifying thread of this volume is the communicative constitutive approach (CCO) to organizations, as implicitly or explicitly advocated by the great majority of organizational discourse analysts and theorists today. Throughout Organizational Discourse, this theme will help readers distinguish between discursive perspectives and other approaches to organizational life, and to understand how discourse matters in organizations.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Acknowledgments

1 What is (Organizational) Discourse? How is This Book Organized?

What is Discourse (and, By the Way, What is Communication)?

What is Organizational Discourse?

Objectives and Organization of This Book

2 Analyzing Organizational Discourse: Six Perspectives

Semiotics

Rhetoric

Speech Act Theory

Ethnomethodology/Conversation Analysis

Narrative Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis

A Synthesis?

Structure of the Remaining Chapters

3 Coordination and Organizing

The Organizing Property of Discourse

Organizing, Subjection, and Authority

Narrating and Organizing

4 Organizational Culture, Identity, and Ideology

Culture and Identity

Unfolding Organizational Identities from Discourse

Unfolding Organizational Cultures from Discourse

Unfolding Ideologies from Discourse

5 Meetings: Negotiation, Decision-making, and Conflicts

Rhetoric

Semiotics

Speech Act Theory

Conversation Analysis/Ethnomethodology

Narrative Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis

6 By Way of a Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

Guide

Cover

Contents

Begin Reading

Print Page Numbers

ii

iii

iv

v

viii

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

151

152

153

154

155

156

157

158

159

160

161

162

163

164

165

166

167

168

169

170

171

172

173

174

175

176

177

178

179

180

181

182

183

184

185

186

187

188

189

190

191

192

Key Themes in Organizational Communication

Organizational Rhetoric, Charles Conrad

Organizational Discourse, François Cooren

Dissent in Organizations, Jeffrey Kassing

Organizational Socialization, Michael Kramer

Communicating Emotion at Work, Vincent R. Waldron

Organizational Discourse

Communication and Constitution

François Cooren

polity

Copyright © François Cooren 2015

The right of François Cooren to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2015 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8941-8

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cooren, François.

Organizational discourse : communication and constitution / François Cooren. pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7456-5421-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7456-5422-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 0-7456-5421-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 0-7456-5422-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Communication in organizations. 2. Organizational behavior. 3. Corporate culture. I. Title.

HD30.3C658 2014

302.3’5014--dc23

2014018711

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website:

politybooks.com

À Daniel Robichaud

Les amis, qu’on craint moins de mécontenter que les indifférents, sont toujours les derniers servis

Denis Diderot

Lettre à Madame d’Épinay

Acknowledgments

I want to express my deepest gratitude to the colleagues and graduate students from our research group, the LOG (Language Organization Governance). These people are, in alphabetic order, Gerald Bartels, Joëlle Basque, Nicolas Bencherki, Chantal Benoit-Barné, Nili Berner, Boris H. J. M. Brummans, Mathieu Chaput, Maurice Charland, Geoffrey Da Costa, Hélène Giroux, Alain Létourneau, Kirstie McAllum, Thomas Martine, Frédérik Matte, Daniel Robichaud, James R. Taylor, Elizabeth E. J. Van Every, and Consuelo Vasquez. A special thank you to Stephanie Fox for greatly improving the readability of the manuscript.

All my love to Nancy, Nina, Émile, and Adrien.

1

What is (Organizational) Discourse?

How is This Book Organized?

Let me begin this book by recalling what will certainly sound like a common-sense truth to many of you: communication matters in organizations. We all have already heard this refrain, especially when members start complaining about something that does not appear to work in their company or institution. One department fails to communicate a vital piece of information to another, and a whole project might start falling apart, with sometimes dire consequences (the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster was partly attributed to a lack of communication between engineers and managers; see Tompkins, 1993).

Communication indeed matters, but as this book will show, it should not be reduced merely to the transfer of information, as is usually implied when people deplore so called “communication problems.” Just think about what happens (1) when organizational members are celebrating an important anniversary; (2) when the representatives of a company are signing a contract with a client; or (3) when a supervisor is asking her supervisee to complete a specific task. Are these persons informing each other? Yes, to a certain extent, if we consider, in case 1, that organizational members might be informing each other of their sense of joy and accomplishment; in case 2, that the company representatives are informing their counterparts of their engagement; and in case 3, that the supervisor is informing her supervisee about the kind of work that has to be done.

But if some pieces of information were definitely conveyed (literally, informing means “giving a form,” which means that when we are informed about something, we are also transformed by what we heard, read, or more generally experienced, i.e., saw, smelled, tasted, or touched), it would be a mistake to reduce what is happening in these three cases to a sharing of information. To be convinced, we just need to focus on the that are used to depict these three situations: celebrating, signing, and asking. Communicating might have something to do with informing, but it also has a lot to do with many other things that go far beyond the transfer of information: emotions in the case of celebrations, commitment in the case of a signature, power and authority in the case of what is requested.