3.1Embarras de richesses

It was noted in the previous section that discourse permeates organizational life and that organizations, in turn, are ubiquitous, so that we are constantly steeped in organizational discourse. Yet sadly, as always in empirical work, not everything that one feels should be studied actually can be. Certain research questions may have to remain unanswered because of legal, ethical or practical hurdles. Even so, a wide variety of organizational genres are open to scrutiny and have indeed been studied through the language lens: for example, mission statements (Koller 2011), annual reports (de Groot 2014), job interviews (Roberts and Campbell 2005; Lipovsky 2006; Lipovsky 2008; Roberts 2012), meetings (Rogerson-Revell 2011; Angouri and Marra 2011; Clarke, Kwon and Wodak 2012; Kwon, Clarke, and Wodak 2014), blogs (Puschmann and Hagelmoser 2014) and corporate apologies posted on Twitter (Page 2014).

Furthermore, rather than homing in on particular genres, organizational discourse research can also be organized around themes, such as gender (Mullany 2007), emotions in the workplace (Boudens 2005), humour (Heiss and Carmack 2012), disagreement (Angouri 2012), leadership (Saito 2011; Genoe McLaren 2013), multilingualism (Gunnarsson 2014), corporate social responsibility (Brennan, Merkl-Davies, and Beelitz 2013), organizational change (Airo, Rasila, and Nenonen 2012; McClellan 2014), or indeed various combinations of such themes (e.g., Mullany 2004; Ladegaard 2012). The point of listing all these themes here, together with a few (egregiously selective) references, is to give readers a sense of the richness and variety of the field, and to suggest a few entry points, should they wish to forge their own path through it. Two uber-themes that have been investigated particularly widely and deeply are identity and power, and we will look at these in more detail shortly.

Finally, the perspective applied may be neither genre- nor theme-based, but train the analytic lens on specific linguistic devices, such as metaphor, or forms of representation, such as narrative. Both will also be discussed further below. Of course, in actual research projects, “themes” and “devices” may be conjoined, as in cases where the role of metaphor for identity construction is discussed (see, for instance, Jacobs, Oliver, and Heracleous 2013). What is more, looking through the linguistic lens also enables one to identify more fine-grained levels of meaningmaking, such as syntactic and lexical choices (Mautner 2016).

3.2Identity

Identity is a hotly debated theme in the social sciences generally, and one with numerous applications in organizational discourse research. The complexity involved can be staggering. What at first glance may seem like a perfectly straightforward research question – “how is the professional identity of older workers in Company X constructed”, say – will soon turn out to be a rather messy affair. For not only will “identity” emerge as multi-layered – located, among other things, on the individual, organizational and societal levels – but the layers themselves often turn out to be neither stable nor neatly separable.

Taking a closer look at our fictitious example of a research question, we can see that it is not too difficult to pick holes in the concepts, categories and hidden assumptions it includes; and these holes would in fact have to be picked, if we wanted to get any analytical purchase on the role that discourse plays in constructing identity. For example, does the phrase the professional identity of . . . imply that each individual has only one such identity? By referring to older workers collectively, do we assume that that identity is shared and generalization therefore possible? What about an employee who first trains as a chemical engineer and works in production, then half-way through their career does a law degree, specializes in crisis communication and joins the public relations department? Over the course of such a career, does the employee’s professional identity, and the discourse that goes with it, change completely – the lawyer casting off the chemical engineer’s identity like a snake’s skin, as it were – or are they more likely to develop a hybrid identity the components of which can be activated as and when required? Moreover, at which point in the lifespan does the label older apply? Should the definition be imposed by the researcher or be developed subjectively (that is, quite literally, driven by the subjects being researched)? And what about other identity categories, such as gender or ethnicity? How will our research design reflect the fact that these categories may in fact be intertwined (as sociologists have long recognized, and captured in the concept of “intersectionality”; see Choo and Ferree 2010)?

Embracing the complexity involved, identity research now tends to take certain things as read.

From a linguistic perspective, then, identity work is regarded as being carried out in and through language. Potentially, choices on all linguistic levels are involved. For example, bilingual or multilingual speakers may align or distance themselves from other people or groups by choosing one language rather than another; and within one language, speakers may express their personal, professional and group identities by using the jargon distinctive of these groups. Personal pronouns, too, play a key role, as strategic switching between I, we and they indexes tensions between individual identities and different group affiliations. All these choices may be made flexibly, “on the hoof” while an interaction is ongoing. Koester (2010), for instance, shows how different aspects of people’s identities may be foregrounded or backgrounded even during a rather short stretch of talk (see also Chapter 26 of this handbook), again pointing to the fluid and negotiated nature of identity.

For employees, the use of identity resources is not always a matter of choice however. Many employers engage in “identity control”, often in the name of forging a consistent organizational identity. In a number of ways – persuasively, contractually, coercively – staff may be made to comply with regulations governing anything from language use to dress and personal grooming styles (Mautner 2016: 105‒107). Paradoxically, some organizations – such as the Australian call centres studied by Fleming and Sturdy (2009) – use a form of normative identity control which focuses on “authenticity” and a “Be Yourself” philosophy, apparently eschewing coercion. Yet at the end of the day such policies are also made with the intention of increasing output and profit, and are thus, as Fleming and Sturdy caustically put it, a “managerial manoeuvre” with “exploitative intention”. Whether or not one agrees with their critical stance, what deserves the linguist’s attention in such cases is that “control is exercised through the language of non-control” (Peter Fleming, personal communication). Thus, identity is closely intermeshed with power, the focus of the following sub-section.

3.3Power

Power is a foundational concept in the social sciences: multifaceted and ideologically loaded; fought over in academia as much as in politics; with an intellectual pedigree reaching back as far as Plato and Macchiavelli, while also including contemporary thinkers such as Bourdieu and Foucault. Yet the concept remains “unclear and controversial” (Göhler 2009: 27). Not an auspicious start, then, for researchers embarking on projects in organizational discourse, who might be forgiven for wanting to give power a wide berth. However, power is such a central feature of social life generally, and organizational life in particular, that if you try to blank it out, you are likely to miss out on information that is pivotal for making sense of your data.

Before we move on to the significance of power for organizational discourse, a few observations are in order about the nature of power in more general terms. The definition given by Stokes (2011: 121) is a good entry point. “Power”, he explains, “can be described as the possibility, control and ability to do something”, and “it can also point at having authority over something or somebody”. Frequently, that authority is asserted not overtly and coercively, but covertly and persuasively, with the apparent consent of those over whom it is exercised. At the same time, power inevitably provokes resistance, which is also enacted through discourse (Zoller 2014). Accordingly, organizational discourse has been described as “a dialectical phenomenon characterized by interdependent processes of struggle, resistance and control” (Mumby 2004: 240). When we set out to describe dominant discourses, therefore, we should be equally alert to the presence of marginalized counter-discourses (Heracleous 2006: 184).

In critical paradigms, and in keeping with the constructionist approach sketched out in the Introduction, power and discourse are treated as “mutually constitutive” (Hardy and Phillips 2004: 299). In other words, power relations shape the way we use language, just as language use supports power relations. A distinction is frequently drawn between power over, in and of discourse. Power over discourse refers to an individual’s or group’s access to the public, usually through media, and thus their ability to air their views (Wodak 2012: 217). Power in discourse describes the degree of control that participants have in making linguistic choices. More powerful people typically have more freedom to determine the structure and process of interaction. They decide who speaks to whom when and about what, and they dictate which level of formality is appropriate. Finally, when the power of discourse is discussed, the perspective is shifted to the power that discourses themselves exert (Holzscheiter 2010), as they do when certain ways of talking and writing have become the taken-for-granted norm. Under the influence of neo-liberalism, for example, “marketized” discourse is now widespread in public-sector and non-profit organizations (Mautner 2010).

With this conceptual grid laid out, one is well placed to analyze specific manifestations of power in discourse. For obvious reasons, interactional genres with steep power differentials, such as job interviews, offer particularly rich pickings in this regard. Yet power is invariably intertwined with other issues, and it would be simplistic to assume that job interviews were based on a sharp binary distinction between an interviewer who has all the power and an interviewee who has none. In actual fact, the situation is usually a lot fuzzier than that, on a number of levels (Mautner 2016: 187–192). First, the job applicants’ position is strengthened considerably if their skills and/ or personal characteristics are much needed by the organization concerned. In such cases, the interviewer may well be under more pressure to “sell” the prospective employer than the interviewee is to “sell” him- or herself. Second, and in conjunction with such power issues, interviews are events in which participants on both sides attempt to establish their joint membership of social and discursive communities – of a particular role, a profession, an industry or a social class. On that basis they wish to create trust and solidarity (Kerekes 2006, 2007; Lipovsky 2008). Third, over and above what may be happening in the microcosm of the specific interview, the macro social world outside the event, and indeed outside the organization, will have an impact too. Compliance with wider cultural norms, rather than merely the narrower requirements of a particular job, clearly increases an interviewee’s chances. For example, as Roberts and Campbell (2005) have demonstrated, job applicants in the UK are evaluated more positively if they are able to tell stories that conform to the typical “Anglo” narrative structure. Pursuing a linear path from an introductory abstract through to a coda (cf. Labov 1972), that structure is more likely to be known and mastered by those who grew up in the UK (whether or not they are ethnic minority members). By contrast, those who were socialized abroad, in cultures with different narrative traditions, suffer a “linguistic penalty” (Roberts and Campbell 2005: 47), that is, they are rated less favourably because they do not meet interviewers’ expectations of what makes “a good story” in an interview.

Thus, a compelling nexus exists between linguistic and social capital (Bourdieu 1991). That nexus is also borne out by the way in which job interviews reflect the so-called “new work order” (Gee, Hull, and Lankshear 1996). Under that regime, work is conceptualized as a discursive rather than merely material endeavour; it has become “textualized” (Scheeres 2003: 332). Employees are expected to adopt the branded discourses of their organization as well as to achieve what Campbell and Roberts (2007: 244‒245) refer to as “the seamless synthesis of work-based and personal identity”.

Incidentally, such melding of spheres also underpins so-called “personal branding”, which encourages people to view themselves as saleable commodities (Oswick and Robertson 2007; Mautner 2010: 124‒145). Self-help books in this area give readers advice on how best to “package”, “brand” and “sell themselves” (rather than only their labour). To argue that such turns of phrase are “merely” metaphors is to underestimate the power of metaphor to influence perception. This brings us to the next section, where we shift our focus from macro themes to linguistic devices and forms of representation.

4.1Metaphor

Metaphors are figures of speech (or “tropes”), which carry meaning from one domain to another. In organizational discourse research, metaphor is a popular staple. Morgan (1986) put it on the map for scholarly audiences outside linguistics, and it has since been taken up by many organizational researchers (cf. Grant and Oswick 1996; Tietze, Cohen, and Musson 2003: 33–48; Koller 2004; Cornellisen 2007; Woodhams 2014).

The popularity of metaphor may be partly due to the fact that, as analytical categories go, metaphors are relatively easy to identify and describe – easier, certainly, than many phenomena on the levels of syntax and textual structure. Moreover, metaphors appear to have immediate and intuitive appeal for researchers who in the wake of the “linguistic turn” want to “do discourse” but are not necessarily au fait with linguistic methodology and jargon. That said, there are of course other and more substantive reasons for focussing on metaphors. Over and above their “decorative” uses (Deignan 2005: 2), enhancing a text’s aesthetic and persuasive effect, metaphors are “rich summaries of worldviews” (Putnam and Fairhurst 2001: 107). At the same time, the worldview that a given metaphor summarizes – that of an organization as a machine, a family, a battleship and so on (Mautner 2016: 88‒94) – then goes on to structure thinking (a shared central tenet, incidentally, of both Critical Theory and Lakoff and Johnson’s [1980] Conceptual Metaphor Theory). From a critical perspective, the act of structuring, as such, would not be so objectionable if it did not entail what Deetz calls “discursive closure” (Deetz 1992). In other words, not only is one worldview privileged, but debate about possible alternatives is forestalled too.

These effects become more salient when the metaphor in question does not occur in isolation, but as part of a cluster: when, for example, in addition to the organization being described as a battleship, employees are called combatants who fight, man battle stations and celebrate victories, and are contrasted with employees who prefer their organization to be a cruise ship offering comfort and convenience.55 Such clusters are referred to as “extended metaphors”. Some also have a stark binary contrast built into them – as in the battleship/cruiseship example – which further increases the degree of discursive closure. That is, a third or fourth option – would the organization perhaps best be described as an explorer ship? – is not even considered, although from a functional, managerial perspective, it might make as much or perhaps even more sense than the original pair of metaphors. After all, the idea of the explorer could help crystallize employees’ curiosity, creativity and entrepreneurialism.

Finally, however compelling a particular metaphor may be in purely rhetorical terms, it may nevertheless meet with resistance in social terms. The managerial élite may be promoting a particular metaphor as foundational for the organization’s identity and culture – for example, companies are often portrayed as “families” – but employees may be unwilling to accept the specific “spin” that the metaphor imposes on reality. Ironically, they can do so by ostensibly accepting the form of the metaphor while challenging its content, describing the organizational “family” as dysfunctional, for example, or calling for a divorce. Such acts of resistance are useful reminders that power is co-constructed and relies heavily on the consent of those governed.

4.2Narrative

In the wake of the linguistic turn, the social sciences, including organization studies, have developed a keen interest in narrative approaches (Bruner 1991; Gabriel 2000; Tietze, Cohen, and Musson 2003: 54; Rhodes and Brown 2005: 168; Czarniawska 2007; Maitlis 2012). They are based on a constructionist and critical heritage: the idea, that is, that a story never merely reports “facts” but offers a representation, and that the perspective from which it does so is likely to be that of the most powerful story-tellers. As Putnam & Fairhurst (2001: 110) explain:

Storytelling is not a neutral process; rather, stories function ideologically to represent the interests of dominant groups, instantiate values, reify structures, and reproduce power (Mumby 1988). In Witten’s (1993) view, narrative discourse is a mode of persuasion used to create and maintain a culture of obedience, to invent a credible history, and to exert covert control.

That said, the point made earlier, about power invariably giving rise to dissenting voices and resistance, also applies to power manifested through narrative. When retold, stories originally owned by those in power may be reframed to suit the interests of those with less power.

At any rate, organizations are replete with stories which cover the whole spectrum between formality and informality. Stories feature in watercooler chats as much as in annual reports, job interviews (see Section 3.3) and many other genres. Stories help reduce the complexity of organizational life and therefore play a pivotal role in organizational sense-making (Rhodes and Brown 2005: 170). Specifically, they are involved in change processes (Buchanan and Dawson 2007), including so-called “work role transitions” in which “narrative identity work” is carried out (Ibarra and Barbulescu 2010). Moreover, stories are used as public relations tools in order to promote brands, enhance organizations’ reputations and convey their public images to the outside world (Herbst 2015).

The ubiquity and relevance of narratives has led researchers to make the even broader claim that organizations are constructed through narratives and are in fact “story-telling systems” (Boje 1991). Such a view has immediate conceptual benefits because it highlights two key features of organizations. On the one hand, narratives have plots, and plots evolve over time, so that a focus on narrative foregrounds the processual, dynamic nature of organizations. On the other, narratives can open up discursive space because they can be told from different perspectives and allow a plurality of voices to be heard (Rhodes and Brown 2005: 177‒178).

5.1Interdisciplinarity

The chapter began by noting that organizational discourse research straddles many disciplines, including sociology, management and linguistics. Each of these, in turn, comes with its own set of methodological preferences: for particular analytical tools, types of data, and interpretative lenses. There is clearly no shortage of pegs on which aspiring discourse scholars may hang their own work. Instead, the problem is likely to be an oversupply of theories and methods, with few bridges between them. On the plus side, in order to do organizational discourse research, one does not have to learn any new analytical techniques, as such. You should be able to apply whichever theory and method of discourse and/or textual analysis you are already familiar with.

Recently published handbooks and review articles in the area bear vivid testimony to the wide range of approaches currently available. The picture that emerges is bewildering, to say the least. In their review article, Putnam and Fairhurst (2001) list no fewer than nine strands of research that have been applied to organizational discourse: sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, semiotics, literary and rhetorical analyses, critical language studies, and postmodern language analysis. This plethora of research traditions is equally characteristic of discourse analysis generally. In the Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Gee and Handford 2012) we find twelve approaches to discourse analysis (each deemed distinctive enough to be given its own chapter): critical discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics, multimodal discourse analysis, narrative analysis, mediated discourse analysis, multimedia and discourse analysis, gender and discourse analysis, discursive psychology and discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, discourse-oriented ethnography, discourse analysis and linguistic anthropology, and corpus-based discourse analysis.

The jury is still out on whether such variety is a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, methodological diversity makes it more likely that the qualitative data which organizational discourse studies generally work with – in other words, situated and messy data – can be dealt with flexibly in a way that a one-size-fits-all method can’t. On the other hand, diversity may encourage randomness. The chances are that the researcher’s reasons for situating their work in Approach A rather than Approach B are not based on a suitably detached appraisal of the approaches’ respective merits, but on the researcher’s academic socialization, or their personal skills and preferences, or all of those things wrapped together. There is only a fine line between eclecticism, which is disinterested, and cherry-picking, which is not.

In the face of such diversity, what is the novice researcher meant to do? Sadly, there is very little guidance on how all these models and techniques relate to each other. Wooffit’s (2005) Conversation analysis and discourse analysis: A comparative and critical introduction is a rare example of a book-length treatise examining the relationship between two research traditions and their associated methods. Many others would be needed if we were serious about making “discourse studies” less fragmented, less fuzzy, and more robust methodologically. At this stage, then, the best advice for the novice is to keep an open mind, scrutinize rival models (not least to see whether they are more compatible than their advocates themselves make them out to be), and then make an informed choice.

Of course, an “informed choice” need not be in favour of one, and only one, school or method. So-called mixed-methods research is now well-established (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004; Johnson, Onwuegbuzie, and Turner 2007; Myers 2014) and potentially very fruitful in unravelling complex issues. Yet again, for the whole to be more than the sum of its parts, considerable expertise is required not only in the methods that are to be mixed, but also in synthesizing the results gleaned from them.

5.2Data

In organizational discourse studies, the range of what can be considered data is as rich and varied as organizational life itself. Informal e-mails, for example, are as constitutive of the organization as formal articles of association (though obviously in a different way); so are hastily scribbled post-it notes and glossy annual reports, negotiations which perform “boundary-spanning” vis-à-vis the outside world (Kuhn 2014: 491–492) and meetings that face inwards. Add to all that the fieldnotes that the researcher may have taken, plus background information from a range of sources – on politics, the economy, the legal framework and so on. To account for this variety, Rapley (2007) proposes dispensing with the term data altogether and replacing it with archive. Although his suggestion does not appear to have caught on, it is a useful reminder of the variety, value and significance of the material foundations of organizational research.

Unfortunately, the discourse data that are most interesting are arguably also most difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. Due to confidentiality requirements, researchers often find themselves barred from observing organizational life as it unfolds, and have to content themselves with the limited textual residue that is allowed to reach the public domain. Or, if researchers are granted access and can observe organizational interaction first hand, then data recording, storage and publication – essential steps if studies are to be replicable – may be severely curtailed or prohibited altogether.

Another set of challenges arises when the data to be studied are web-based, such as websites, blogs, tweets and facebook messages. They may be easily accessible here and now, but are notoriously ephemeral in the medium and long term (Mautner 2005). No longer can diachronic analyses rely on organizational “textscapes” (Keenoy and Oswick 2004) to be preserved on paper. Researchers have to intervene to freeze the data – typically, by storing them in a file and printing out a hard copy – but that freezing, ironically, robs the texts concerned of the very fluidity that is most characteristic of them. At the very least, that loss needs to be acknowledged, and at best factored into the interpretation.

Web-based data are also particularly rich in terms of the semiotic modes they employ, combining text, still and moving images, as well as sound. Yet even more conventional text is never totally “bare”; even an unadorned, ostensibly neutral text which appears to include only words – a contract, say, or an internal memo – has a strong multimodal component. How the text is laid out, which font is used and what type of paper, and indeed the very absence of pictures also creates meaning. Multimodal does not necessarily equate with “colourful”; it simply refers to the inevitable multi-layeredness of semiosis, the construction of meaning. And here lies another difficulty. Although the study of multimodality is a burgeoning new field where both theoretical and methodological innovations are constantly being proposed (Ventola, Charles, and Kaltenbacher 2004), the terrain is still rather difficult to negotiate. As a result, multimodal data is often shied away from, and continues to be the exception rather than the rule.

5.3Researcher’s stance

One of the key questions that researchers need to address is: How close or distant do they position themselves vis-à-vis those people and organizations that are the subject of the research? Does that position lead to bias, in terms of how research designs are drawn up, which research questions are asked, and how the results are interpreted? These questions are as relevant for organizational discourse studies as they are for any other empirical work, though they are perhaps brought into rather sharper relief when academic interests are intertwined with commercial ones. Possible links are located along a spectrum. At one end, there is in-house research, done by people employed by the organization being studied; at the other, there are researchers as detached lookers-on, fully independent socially and financially from those they investigate. In between, there are various shades of grey – hybrid positions, that is, where dependencies and loyalities may be hard to pin down, but can nevertheless give cause for concern (witness part-timers with double affiliations in both academia and industry, or faculty with lucrative consulting contracts).

Yet closeness or distance need not be merely a question of direct financial links. Much more broadly, as Critical Management Studies reminds us, business studies has a long tradition of servicing the corporate world in a number of ways, through educating future executives, for example, and providing the tools for running businesses efficiently. This “performative” orientation – driven by the profit motive, or at least a willing accessory to it – may result in a lack of critical distance, and slippage between the descriptive and prescriptive perspectives, so that “what is” becomes practically indistinguishable from “what ought to be”, with the latter defined by corporate, rather than more general social interests. Not surprisingly perhaps, Critical Management Studies has found it difficult at times to deal with the resulting tensions (Grey and Willmott 2002), agonizing over whether it should be “hellraising and muckraking” (Adler 2002: 390), from a broadly left-wing perspective, or move on to the politically more neutral ground of a “pragmatist-reflexive” stance (Zald 2002: 382).

The melding of academic and managerial standpoints is pervasive. It begins early on in managers’ socialization, with the typical business school curriculum incorporating a heavy dose of functional expert knowledge, most of which rests on the seemingly immutable conceptual foundations of the market economy. By contrast, ideas, models and discourses that challenge these foundations are generally marginalized, if present at all. The pattern is repeated in and constantly reinforced by popular textbooks, often sold in their tens or hundreds of thousands, and by the dissemination of canonical knowledge in lecture halls across the globe. Management textbooks have been shown to be a case in point (Genoe McLaren and Helms Mills 2010), as have marketing textbooks (Mautner 2016). Although on one level, they are of course “about” management and marketing, respectively, on another they “sell” the ideological underpinnings of managerial control and the market society. This blurring of boundaries continues to be an issue in research as well. For example, Tourish and Tourish (2010) show how the discourse around “spirituality at work” – a recent trend in leadership development which they examine critically – is not confined to the popular management literature but also has vocal advocates among academic management experts. It also comes with the usual institutional paraphernalia such as dedicated journals, handbooks and special interest groups.

Why should this be of any concern to the organizational discourse researcher? Simply because boundaries matter, defining, as they do, what constitutes authoritative knowledge within a given field. You may want to challenge that definition, but you are not in a good position to do so – particularly as a linguist entering the field from outside – if you are unaware of where the boundaries are and why they have been drawn in the first place. Such awareness is also the best insulation against being sucked into an uncritically prescriptive position, advising managers how to communicate effectively rather than analysing how they actually do communicate within complex webs of power and control.

The issue at stake is not whether researchers should be allowed to take a stance. In fact, those working in critical paradigms would argue that stance-taking is not only inevitable but also desirable, and that claims to objectivity are in any case bound to be spurious. In organizational discourse studies, as elsewhere, the real issue is not whether a particular perspective has been applied but whether it has been declared openly; whether what is only one of many possible perspectives is tacitly passed off as “the truth”; and whether the diagnostic and advisory stages of the project are kept sufficiently apart. Should a research project lead to practical recommendations, it is always vital to ask who these benefit most. Cui bono? is arguably the single most important guiding question in any critical researcher’s armoury.