The paper discusses critical and postmodern assumptions in organizational analysis and argues in favour of discourse analysis as research method for investigating the corporate environment.
The last two decades in the social sciences have been marked by the advances of what is known as the linguistic, or the cultural, turn, which has promoted a rethinking of organisations which leads to an awareness of the existence of the many realities of an organisation, the numerous discourses and counter-discourses which constitute those realities, as well as the variety of epistemological positions and perspectives on those realities offered by researchers in organisational discourse. In broad terms, organizational discourse might be described as the ‘languages and symbolic media we employ to describe, represent, interpret and theorize what we take to be the facticity of organizational life’ (Grant et al., 1998: 1). Discourses are embodied in texts but exist beyond the individual texts that compose them. It follows that ‘discourse analysis is the structured and systematic study of collections of interrelated texts and the processes of their production, dissemination, and consumption’ (Phillips, 2003).
Grant et al. (1998), in the first attempt to reunite diverse perspectives in order to delineate the scope of organizational discourse as a separate field of research, emphasize the critical and postmodern perspectives to the study of language. Critical studies suggest that plurivocality reflects a struggle for discursive dominance and discourse is construed as a power resource (Mumby and Clair, 1997), while postmodern approaches argue against trying to identify coherent, dominant discourses within organizations as discourses are always fragmented and ambiguous and meanings are continuously shifting (Boje, 1995).
In critical studies, organizations should be seen ‘not simply as social collectives where shared meaning is produced, but rather as sites of struggle where different groups compete to shape the social reality of organizations in ways that serve their own interests’ (Mumby and Clair, 1997: 182). Discourses make certain behaviours possible, and in doing so, constitute reality through the interplay of multiple discourses that pertain to any individual setting (Grant et al., 1998). Some discourses may become so privileged and taken for granted that they become reified, but there is always a struggle for closure.
Postmodern approaches argue for an equivalence relationship between discourse and organizing. Discourse itself is a form of organization and, therefore, organizational analysis is intrinsically discourse analysis’ (Chia, 2000: 517). Discourse analysis is concerned with ‘the formation of discursive modalities, the legitimating of objects of knowledge and the shaping of meanings and their attachment to social objects’ (Chia, 2000: 515). Moreover, identities are constructed in the very act of organizing. ‘My identity is established in the very act of differentiating and detaching myself from my surroundings through material inscriptions and verbal utterances’ (Chia, 2000: 517).
Organizational discourse lends itself to the study of organizations at several analytical levels. ‘At a micro-level, it can be deployed to study the individual, insofar as the analysis of language-use can offer insights into the attitudes, affiliations, orientations, motives and values of a given organizational stakeholder.’ At the interpersonal, meso-level, the focus becomes the direct interaction between stakeholders. At macro-level, discourse analysis is concerned with meta-discourses, which represent a set of mesolevel interactions which form dominant paradigms, institutional practices, and collective social perspectives (Grant, Keenoy, and Oswick, 2001).
A contextually sensitive approach can be explored by analysing the dialogic (Bakhtin, 1981) nature of language, heteroglossia and plurivocality. Kristeva (1980: 69) referred to texts in terms of two axes: a horizontal axis, connecting the author and the reader of a text, and a vertical axis, which connects the text to other texts. Kristeva’s horizontal axis can be explored via the concept of voices, and the vertical axis via the notion of intertextuality. “Intertextual” (Bakhtin, 1986; Fairclough, 1995) analyses of organizational discourses identify and analyze specific, micro-level instances of discursive action and then locate them in the context of other macro-level, “meta” or “grand” discourses (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000). In writing and speaking we always anticipate a response, be it agreement, resistance or silence, making the most monological piece contain rejoinders to other writings, with which the author agrees, argues, complements or questions. Even if presented monologically, within the unifying intention of the author, these relations remain dialogic by nature (Bakhtin, 1984: 403). ‘Dialogical analyses explicitly acknowledge that ‘organization’ is comprised of a multiplicity of discourses which reflect the ‘plurivocal’ meanings brought to bear by the participants. Potentially, this permits a multitude of ‘organizational realities’ which, although relatively autonomous discourses, may overlap and permeate each other. (Grant et al., 1998: 7). ‘Dominant spheres of meaning define the reality of others, where the managerial monologue seems to orchestrate the polyphony into one coherent voice, in is a process of homogenization of meanings.’ ‘
The study of formal texts such as organizational policy statements, advertisements, budgets, annual reports, demonstrates how linguistic practices reflect back on and draw from institutional structures. In terms of organizational discourse, the analysis shows that ‘discourse’ cannot be adequately understood and interpreted in the absence of contextual knowledge; that executive management voices contain both centripetal and centrifugal forces; that multiple voices are heard through what seems to be a unitary account; and that linguistic labels are more than just names, having the power, through their symbolic connotations, to influence interpretations and actions and thus social reality.

Bibliography

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Grant, D., Keenoy, T., and Oswick, C. (1998) ‘Of Diversity, Dichotomy and Multidisciplinarity’ in Grant, D., Keenoy, T.and Oswick, C. Discourse and Organization, (eds.) pp 1-14, London: Sage.
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