Journal of Organizational Change Management - Volume 18 Issue 1 (2005)

jocm cover (i).qxd

2/22/05

9:30 AM

Page 1

ISBN 1-84544-092-7

ISSN 0953-4814

Volume 18 Number 1 2005

Journal of

Organizational Change Management Discourse and organizational change Guest Editors: David Grant, Grant Michelson, Cliff Oswick and Nick Wailes

www.emeraldinsight.com

Journal of

ISSN 0953-4814

Organizational Change Management

Volume 18 Number 1 2005

Discourse and organizational change Guest Editors David Grant, Grant Michelson, Cliff Oswick and Nick Wailes

Access this journal online __________________________

3

Editorial advisory board ___________________________

4

About the Guest Editors ___________________________

5

Guest editorial: discourse and organizational change David Grant, Grant Michelson, Cliff Oswick and Nick Wailes ____________

6

Managing change at Sears: a sideways look at a tale of corporate transformation David Collins and Kelley Rainwater _________________________________

16

Discourses of disrupted identities in the practice of strategic change: the mayor, the street-fighter and the insider-out Nic Beech and Phyl Johnson _______________________________________

Access this journal electronically The current and past volumes of this journal are available at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm You can also search more than 100 additional Emerald journals in Emerald Fulltext (www.emeraldinsight.com/ft) and Emerald Management Xtra (www.emeraldinsight.com/emx) See page following contents for full details of what your access includes.

31

CONTENTS

CONTENTS continued

Discourse as strategic coping resource: managing the interface between ‘‘home’’ and ‘‘work’’ Susanne Tietze _________________________________________________

48

‘‘What you’ll say is . . .’’: represented voice in organizational change discourse Donald L. Anderson _____________________________________________

63

Post-crisis discourse and organizational change, failure and renewal Matthew W. Seeger, Robert R. Ulmer, Julie M. Novak and Timothy Sellnow ________________________________________________

78

Afterword: why language matters in the analysis of organizational change Haridimos Tsoukas______________________________________________

96

Note from the publisher ____________________________ 105

www.emeraldinsight.com/jocm.htm As a subscriber to this journal, you can benefit from instant, electronic access to this title via Emerald Fulltext and Emerald Management Xtra. Your access includes a variety of features that increase the value of your journal subscription.

Additional complimentary services available

How to access this journal electronically

E-mail alert services These services allow you to be kept up to date with the latest additions to the journal via e-mail, as soon as new material enters the database. Further information about the services available can be found at www.emeraldinsight.com/alerts

To benefit from electronic access to this journal you first need to register via the internet. Registration is simple and full instructions are available online at www.emeraldinsight.com/admin Once registration is completed, your institution will have instant access to all articles through the journal’s Table of Contents page at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm More information about the journal is also available at www.emeraldinsight.com/ jocm.htm Our liberal institution-wide licence allows everyone within your institution to access your journal electronically, making your subscription more cost-effective. Our web site has been designed to provide you with a comprehensive, simple system that needs only minimum administration. Access is available via IP authentication or username and password.

Key features of Emerald electronic journals Automatic permission to make up to 25 copies of individual articles This facility can be used for training purposes, course notes, seminars etc. This only applies to articles of which Emerald owns copyright. For further details visit www.emeraldinsight.com/ copyright Online publishing and archiving As well as current volumes of the journal, you can also gain access to past volumes on the internet via Emerald Fulltext and Emerald Management Xtra. You can browse or search these databases for relevant articles. Key readings This feature provides abstracts of related articles chosen by the journal editor, selected to provide readers with current awareness of interesting articles from other publications in the field. Reference linking Direct links from the journal article references to abstracts of the most influential articles cited. Where possible, this link is to the full text of the article. E-mail an article Allows users to e-mail links to relevant and interesting articles to another computer for later use, reference or printing purposes. Emerald structured abstracts New for 2005, Emerald structured abstracts provide consistent, clear and informative summaries of the content of the articles, allowing faster evaluation of papers.

Your access includes a variety of features that add to the functionality and value of your journal subscription:

Research register A web-based research forum that provides insider information on research activity world-wide located at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister You can also register your research activity here. User services Comprehensive librarian and user toolkits have been created to help you get the most from your journal subscription. For further information about what is available visit www.emeraldinsight.com/usagetoolkit

Choice of access Electronic access to this journal is available via a number of channels. Our web site www.emeraldinsight.com is the recommended means of electronic access, as it provides fully searchable and value added access to the complete content of the journal. However, you can also access and search the article content of this journal through the following journal delivery services: EBSCOHost Electronic Journals Service ejournals.ebsco.com Huber E-Journals e-journals.hanshuber.com/english/index.htm Informatics J-Gate www.j-gate.informindia.co.in Ingenta www.ingenta.com Minerva Electronic Online Services www.minerva.at OCLC FirstSearch www.oclc.org/firstsearch SilverLinker www.ovid.com SwetsWise www.swetswise.com TDnet www.tdnet.com

Emerald Customer Support For customer support and technical help contact: E-mail [email protected] Web www.emeraldinsight.com/customercharter Tel +44 (0) 1274 785278 Fax +44 (0) 1274 785204

JOCM 18,1

4

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 p. 4 # Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD James Barker HQ USAFA/DFM Colorado Springs, USA David Barry University of Auckland, New Zealand Jean Bartunek Boston College, USA Dominique Besson IAE de Lille, France Steven Best University of Texas-El Paso, USA Michael Bokeno Murray State University, Kentucky, USA Mary Boyce University of Redlands, USA Warner Burke Columbia University, USA Adrian Carr University of Western Sydney-Nepean, Australia Stewart Clegg University of Technology (Sydney), Australia David Collins University of Essex, UK Cary Cooper Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, UK Ann L. Cunliffe University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Robert Dennehy Pace University, USA Eric Dent University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, USA Alexis Downs University of Central Oklahoma, USA Ken Ehrensal Kutztown University, USA Max Elden University of Houston, USA Andre´ M. Everett University of Otago, New Zealand Dale Fitzgibbons Illinois State University, USA Jeffrey Ford Ohio State University, USA Jeanie M. Forray Western New England College, USA Robert Gephart University of Alberta, Canada Clive Gilson University of Waikato, New Zealand Andy Grimes Lexington, Kentucky, USA Heather Ho¨pfl University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK Maria Humphries University of Waikato, New Zealand

Arzu Iseri Bogazici University, Turkey David Jamieson Pepperdine University, USA Campbell Jones Management Centre, University of Leicester, UK David Knights Keele University, UK Monika Kostera School of Management, Warsaw University, Poland Terence Krell Rock Island, Illinois, USA Hugo Letiche University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands Benyamin Lichtenstein University of Hartford, Connecticut, USA Stephen A. Linstead Durham Business School, University of Durham, UK Slawek Magala Erasmus University, The Netherlands Rickie Moore E.M. Lyon, France Ken Murrell University of West Florida, USA Eric Nielsen Case Western Reserve University, USA Walter Nord University of South Florida, USA Ellen O’Connor Chronos Associates, Los Altos, California, USA Cliff Oswick King’s College, University of London, UK Ian Palmer University of Technology (Sydney), Australia Michael Peron The University of Paris, Sorbonne, France Gavin M. Schwarz University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Abraham Shani California Polytechnic State University, USA Ralph Stablein Massey University, New Zealand Carol Steiner Monash University, Australia David S. Steingard St Joseph’s University, USA Ram Tenkasi Benedictine University, USA Tojo Joseph Thatchenkery George Mason University, Fairfax, USA Christa Walck Michigan Technological University, USA Richard Woodman Graduate School of Business, Texas A&M University, USA

About the Guest Editors David Grant is Professor of Organizational Studies, the School of Business, at the University of Sydney. He is also a co-director of the International Centre for Research in Organizational Discourse, Strategy and Change. His primary area of research interest is organizational discourse, especially where it relates to organizational change initiatives. He has co-edited a number of books including the Handbook of Organizational Discourse (2004, with Cynthia Hardy, Cliff Oswick and Linda Putnam) and published in a range of management and organization journals including Organization Studies, Academy of Management Review, Organization, Human Relations, The Journal of Management Studies, Text and The Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences. E-mail: [email protected] Grant Michelson is a Senior Lecturer in Work and Organisational Studies, the School of Business, at the University of Sydney. His research interests include organizational change with a particular emphasis on the processes of rumour and gossip, taboos in management and organizational practice, and ethical considerations in work contexts. His research on these and other topics have appeared in a range of outlets such as Journal of Management Studies, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Business Ethics, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources and the Australian Journal of Management. E-mail: [email protected] Cliff Oswick is Professor of Organization Theory and Communication at The Management Centre, University of Leicester. He is also a co-director of the International Centre for Research in Organizational Discourse, Strategy and Change and a regional editor for the Journal of Organizational Change Management. His current research interests are concerned with the application of aspects of discourse to the study of organisations, organising processes and organisational change. He has co-edited several books and published work in a range of international journals, including contributions to Human Relations, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, Academy of Management Review and Organization Studies. E-mail: [email protected] Nick Wailes is a Senior Lecturer in Work and Organisational Studies, the School of Business, at the University of Sydney. His current research interests include the impact of enterprise resource planning systems on management and organizations. He is a co-editor of International and Comparative Employment Relations (2004, with Greg Bamber and Russell Lansbury) and has published work in a range of international journals including Industrial Relations, British Journal of Industrial Relations, International Journal of Human Resource Management and Journal of Business Ethics. E-mail: [email protected]

About the Guest Editors

5

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 p. 5 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

JOCM 18,1

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Guest editorial: discourse and organizational change David Grant and Grant Michelson University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

6

Cliff Oswick University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Nick Wailes University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to examine the contribution that discourse analysis can make to understanding organizational change. Design/methodology/approach – It identifies five key contributions. Discourse analytic approaches: reveal the important role of discourse in the social construction of organizational change; demonstrate how the meaning attached to organizational change initiatives comes about as a result of a discursive process of negotiation among key actors; show that the discourses of change should be regarded as intertextual; provide a valuable multi-disciplinary perspective on change; and exhibit a capacity, to generate fresh insights into a wide variety of organizational change related issues. Findings – To illustrate these contributions the paper examines the five empirical studies included in this special issue. It discusses the potential for future discursive studies of organizational change phenomena and the implications of this for the field of organizational change more generally. Originality/value – Provides an introduction to the special issue on discourse and organizational change. Keywords Organizational change, Research methods, Narratives Paper type General review

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 pp. 6-15 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510579814

This special issue is the first of two issues that the Journal of Organizational Change Management has devoted to the topic of discourse and organizational change. The following five papers are all empirical studies and utilise a variety of discourse analytic perspectives and methodologies. In taking this approach they provide innovative analyses of the concept of organizational change and explore the inter-relationships or connections between change as discourse and change as strategy, as process and as a set of outcomes or forms. The two special issues reflect a growing interest among researchers in examining the organizational discourse(s) that may be used to describe, analyse, theorise and enact, the processes, and practices that constitute organizational change. This turn to discourse is, in part, driven by a growing disillusionment with more mainstream theories and approaches to the study of change (Barrett et al., 1995; Heracleous and Barrett, 2001; Heracleous, 2002; Marshak, 2002). Moreover, it has also been reinforced by wider developments in organizational studies such as the turn to critical theory and post-modern styles of thinking (Heracleous and Barrett, 2001; Reed, 2000).

In this paper we examine the contribution of discourse analysis to the study of organizational change. In the first section we identify five specific features of analytic approaches to the study of organizational discourse(s) that can contribute to the study of organizational change. In the second section we illustrate the insights discourse analysis can bring to the study of organization change by reviewing the five empirical studies included in this special issue. We conclude by discussing the potential for future discursive studies of organizational change phenomena and the implications of this for the field of organizational change more generally. Discourse and the study of organizational change: five key contributions A number of commentators have suggested that our understanding of organizational change would be better served if we were, for example, to “re-think” (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Grant et al., 2002) or “re-conceptualise” (Pettigrew et al., 2001) the various forms, processes and outcomes associated with it. Similarly, Collins (2003, p. v), has argued that we need to: . . .provoke a “re-imagined” world of change: A world where change is understood not as an exception to the norm of stability; not as an outcome that is known in advance and discussed in retrospect; not as something that can be made to unfold to the rhythm of “clock-time”; but as the defining character of organization; a fuzzy and deeply ambiguous process, which implicates both author and subject in the quest for new and different ways to understand one another.

We concur with Collins’ perspective. We are also sympathetic to his call to adopt an approach to the study of organizational change guided by the work of C. Wright-Mills (1973) on the sociological imagination. It is indeed important that scholars return to a quest for knowledge that addresses the concerns and ambitions of the everyday people affected by change (Collins, 2003, pp. v-vi). However, the key point for us, is that answering Collins’ call to provoke a re-imagined world of change along the lines of the above quote is best achieved used discourse analytic approaches. This is not something Collins (2003) explicitly advocates, although as his paper (co-authored with Rainwater) in this special issue indicates, it is an approach that he himself has elected to adopt. The purpose of this special issue is then to demonstrate that in order to fully understand organizational change, one needs to engage with it as a discursively constructed object. Where we refer to discourse and its occurrence in organizations, we are referring to the practices of talking and writing, the visual representations, and the cultural artifacts which bring organizational related objects into being through the production, dissemination and consumption of texts (Phillips and Hardy, 2002; Grant et al., 2004). These texts can be considered to be a discursive “unit” and a manifestation of discourse (Chalaby, 1996) and discourse analysis involves their systematic study. It is not, however, simply a collection of methods; it is “a related collection of approaches to discourse, approaches that entail not only practices of data collection and analysis, but also a set of meta-theoretical and theoretical assumptions” (Wood and Kroger, 2000, p. x). If one accepts the above definition of discourse, discourse analytic approaches might be expected to contribute to our understanding of organizational change in five significant respects.

Guest editorial

7

JOCM 18,1

8

Organizational change as a socially constructed reality First, discourse analysis allows the researcher to identify and analyse the key discourses by which organizational change is formulated and articulated. More specifically, and as all of the papers in this special issue show, taking a discourse analytic approach demonstrates that for an organization’s members, discourse plays a central role in the social construction of their reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Searle, 1995) As such, it brings an object (for example, an organizational change initiative) into being so that it becomes a material reality in the form of the practices that it invokes (Hardy, 2001, p. 27). As part of this process, discourse “rules in” certain ways of talking about the change initiative that are deemed as acceptable, legitimate and intelligible while also “ruling out”, limiting and restricting the way we talk about or conduct ourselves in relation to this topic or constructing knowledge about it (Hall, 2001, p. 72). In this sense it “acts as a powerful ordering force” in the context of effecting organizational change (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000a, p. 1127). Organizational change as a negotiated meaning Second, discourse analysis enables the researcher to show how, via a variety of discursive interactions and practices, particular discourses go on to shape and influence the attitudes and behaviour of an organization’s members in relation to change (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000a, pp. 1126-27). As with any discourse, organizational discourses related to change do not simply start out in possession of “meaning”. Instead, and in line with their socially constructive effects, their meanings are created, and supported via discursive interactions among organizational actors (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000b). This constructive process involves the negotiation of meaning (Mumby and Stohl, 1991) among different actors with different views and interests and results in the emergence of a dominant meaning that can be seen as a particular discourse. The emergence of this dominant meaning occurs as alternative discourses are subverted or marginalized and is indicative of the power relationships that may come into play. As Fairclough (1995, p. 2) explains, the “power to control discourse is seen as the power to sustain particular discursive practices with particular ideological investments in dominance over other alternative (including oppositional) practices”. Discourse analytic studies, such as those in this special issue demonstrate that, although some discourses related to change may dominate, “their dominance is secured as part of an ongoing struggle among competing discourses that are continually reproduced or transformed through day-to-day communicative practices” (Hardy, 2001, p. 28). More specifically, they can also be seen to demonstrate that dominant meanings emerge from the context under which they are negotiated. This brings us on to the third contribution of discourse analysis to understanding organizational change. Organizational change as an intertexual phenomenom To understand how and why particular discourses and their meanings are produced, as well as their effects, it is important to understand the context in which they arise. This has led to the application of “intertextual” (Bakhtin, 1986; Fairclough, 1995; Kress and Threadgold, 1988) analyses of organizational discourses. Such studies identify and analyse 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, 2000a). As Fairclough and Wodak (1997, p. 277) have pointed out:

Guest editorial

Discourse is not produced without context and cannot be understood without taking context into consideration. . . Discourses are always connected to other discourses which were produced earlier, as well as those which are produced synchronically and subsequently.

Fairclough and Wodak’s observation demonstrates that the negotiation of meaning surrounding an instance of organizational change unfolds through the complex interplay of both socially and historically produced texts (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000a; Keenoy and Oswick, 2004) that are part of a continuous, iterative and recursive process (Taylor et al., 1996; Grant and Hardy, 2004). In short, any text is seen as “a link in a chain of texts, reacting to, drawing in and transforming other texts” (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997, p. 262). The value of this approach is that it takes us beyond simple examinations of verbal and written interaction and allows us to appreciate the importance of “who uses language, how, why and when” (van Dijk, 1997, p. 2). More specifically, it means that when studying a particular discursive interaction, organizational change researchers ought to consider other discursive interactions operating at different levels and at different times, which are linked to, and inform, their interpretations of the immediate instance of change under scrutiny (Keenoy and Oswick, 2004; O’Connor, 2000). The papers in this special issue – all of which could be seen as intertextual – can be seen to contribute to our understanding of these processes. A multi-disciplinary perspective of organizational change Fourth, discourse analysis is multi-disciplinary in origin – it is informed by a variety of sociological, socio-psychological, anthropological, linguistic, philosophical, communications and literary based studies and approaches (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000b; Grant et al., 2004). This means that those researching discourses of change draw on a variety of methodological approaches involving, for example, metaphorical analysis (Morgan, 1997; Oswick et al. 2004), narrative analysis, (Boje, 2001; Czarniawska, 1998; Gabriel, 2004) rhetorical analysis (Cheney et al., 2004) and conversation analysis (Boden, 1994; Fairhurst and Cooreen, 2004; Woodilla, 1998). The range of methodologies available to the researcher wishing to conduct empirical studies of discourse within organizational settings can be seen as a virtue (Phillips and Hardy, 2002). It assists discourse focused research into organizational change to study a variety of issues at the individual, group and organizational levels (Grant et al., 2004) It can also mean that the parameters of a research question are delimited by the array of methodologies available with which to test it. Further, the extensive choice of methodologies available facilitates analysis of an enormous range of data types (Grant et al., 2004; Phillips and Hardy, 2002). The papers presented in this issue illustrate several empirically strong methodologies that may be employed in order to study organizational change related discourses. These include narrative, and storytelling analysis, conversation analysis and the analysis of the metaphors and rhetorical devices used by key actors involved in organizational change. An alternative approach to the study of a variety of organizational change related issues Discourse analysis is seen to offer an alternative approach to the research of a wide variety of organizational change related issues thereby generating new insights.

9

JOCM 18,1

10

The increasing interest in, and use of, discourse analytic approaches among organizational change researchers has led to studies that add to our knowledge and understanding of change in relation to a wide range of phenomena such as organizational culture (Alvesson, 1996; Beech, 2000; Oswick and Montgomery, 1999), information technology (Heath et al., 2004; Heracleous and Barrett, 2001; O’Connor, 2000), new media (Boczkowski and Orlikowski, 2004), TQM (Du Gay and Salaman, 1992), downsizing (Palmer and Dunford, 1996) and organizational learning (Jackson, 2000; Oswick et al., 2000). Others studies have looked at the role of conversations in producing intentional change in organizations (Ford and Ford, 1995) and have discursively analysed the role of consultants in the change management process (Heracleous and Langham, 1996; Clark and Salaman, 1996), the negotiation of change (Mueller et al., 2004), and the links between strategy and change (Washbourne and Dicke, 2001; Dunford and Jones, 2000). The studies in this special issue exemplify the capacity of discourse analytic approaches to generate fresh insights into a variety of change related issues. These include: corporate transformation; corporate renewal; the framing and routinization of change; and identity and change. Five discursive analyses of organizational change The papers in this special issue all contribute to our understanding of organizational change and clearly illustrate of the potential contributions of discursive analysis discussed in the previous section. The first paper by David Collins and Kelley Rainwater engages with celebrated interpretations of organizational change whereby “success” stories are lauded and such companies are regarded as exemplars of modern business practice. The authors re-examine one such case of corporate transformation (at Sears, Roebuck and Company) in a way designed to draw out many different voices. By moving beyond contextual and processual accounts of organizational change, Collins and Rainwater offer what they refer to as a “sideways look” of corporate transformation. Rather than simply trying to uncover “what really happened” in the turnaround at Sears, Roebuck and Company, they use narrative and storytelling approaches to reveal the polysemic nature of the change. In particular, the authors challenge the simplicity of sequential and linear understandings of organizational turnarounds by invoking the audience in the narrative and story, as well as discussing the more protagonist roles of heroes and fools. It is therefore possible to view the case of organizational change in numerous ways. The authors choose to highlight two alternative interpretations – tragedy and comedy – to reveal the complexities and ambiguities of change management. The paper does not privilege one account over another but reveals the possibility of “re-storying” previously reported cases (whether celebratory or critical) of organizational change. In the following paper, Nic Beech and Phyl Johnson also use narrative analysis to examine change in organizations. However, their focus is different in that attention is placed on how the key organizational actors constructed and interpreted their own situation in the change process. This focus resonates with an active utilization of discursive resources. The authors contend that change is a “continual process of becoming” for actors and they reject analyses of organizational change which focus on the points of stability; that is, accounts that examine the “before and after”of change. Specifically, Beech and Johnson make a case for understanding the micro-level processes of change by looking at the senior management group in one company and

the alterations to their identity as the change was personally experienced. It is argued that what happens at this level can have wider consequences in the context of organizational change. What the analysis of the identities of the management executives in this case reveals is that a broader narrative coherence in, and unifying direction for, the organization were missing. Rather, significant disjunctures and disruptions in the actors’ identity and sensemaking were evident. Identity is a theme also addressed in the third paper in this special issue. This paper introduces the need for a more nuanced view of change by examining the spatial location in which work activities are carried out. In her contribution, Susanne Tietze challenges conventional views of organizational change which accept both identifiable organizational boundaries in a specific place, and the performance of work activities exclusively within those boundaries, as given. The author uses the case of tele-working to highlight the dispersion and “reach” of contemporary organizations as the domains of “home” and “work” collide. Those who engage in tele-work seek to use discourse as a coping resource. However, even more than this, Tietze argues that it is the entire household (and not just the tele-worker) that has to learn to cope with the wider change in work organization introduced by tele-work. It has, for example, affected how tele-workers construct and express their professional or occupational identities. Such identities can either be affirmed or contested by other household members and a range of discursive resources are subsequently enacted to protect their identities. She concludes by noting that future studies of organizational change may need to rethink what boundaries are established for the organization, as well as considering a variety of stakeholders (family members, friends and neighbours) not normally associated with change efforts. The fourth paper also picks up on a recurrent theme in this collection. Donald Anderson discusses representations of voice by organizational members in a change process and demonstrates the importance of historical continuities in terms of how language adopted in the past can shape language in the future. The study is located in a high-tech company and Anderson interprets a range of discourse excerpts from members of a project team to establish his argument. Voice (of the individual, of specific others’ and of categories of organizational members such as managers) enable generalized meanings to emerge. He shows how organizational members discursively construct meaning in patterned ways and that new discourses seldom appear in an independent fashion. Instead, each “new” discourse draws on and transforms texts and meanings previously used in the organization. Processes of framing and routinization of language are then considered by members of the project team as possible areas of organizational change. The change occurs when people temporarily stabilize the organization through the voicing of current practices. By voicing actual practices, individuals can then evaluate how they might sound in the voices of organizational members. This allows the inter-relationships between past, present and future discourses to emerge, and therefore the shift from past to future organizational meanings, or organizational change, to take place. Matthew Seeger, Robert Ulmer, Julie Novak and Timothy Sellnow in their paper examine organizational change as it relates to crisis and disaster. In particular, they focus on the comments (or voice) of the chief executive officer in the Wall Street bond-trading firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost nearly 700 of its 1000 employees in the World Trade Centre attacks in September 2001. Seldom do studies of organizational

Guest editorial

11

JOCM 18,1

12

change focus on corporations, which have experienced widespread personal tragedy as articulated through substantial loss of human life. Such crises and disasters are significant change-inducing events and, not least of all, place severe demands on sensemaking in organizations. By looking at the role of the chief executive officer, the authors identify a “discourse of renewal” as Cantor Fitzgerald expressed a new purpose in the post-September 2001 period. The leader was therefore, critical in giving meaning to the crisis. Using a variety of discursive devices, including rhetoric and metaphor, he enabled the situation to be reframed and, in turn, shaped the nature and degree of organizational change. In this way, the identity of the company was “remade”. The discursive use of public sympathy and support resources by the company helps account for this positive outcome. This finding stands in contrast to conventional wisdom, which suggests that such disasters are primarily negative events, which lead to organizational decline. However, as the case shows this is by no means inevitable. Discussion and conclusion The implications of discourse analysis for the study of organizational change are neatly captured by Haridimos Tsoukas in his Afterword to the collection. In particular, he notes that some other views of making sense of organizational change, including those of the behaviuorist and cognitivist perspectives, 1offer a more limited approach to our understanding of organizational change than potentially does discourse analysis. This is because these two perspectives tend to project a more objectified view of the world. For those adopting a discursive perspective, this world is constructed through narrative, language, signs, symbolic patterns and so on. If Tsoukas is correct, then our understanding of common change terms including “power”, “stability”, “turbulence”, “unfreeze”, “refreeze” and even “change” itself are by no means universally shared. Further, the role of actors and the construction of their identity in organizational change, as well as how the narrative of change unfolds, need to be woven into the account of change. In other words, to understand change, we need to understand how it is discursively constructed and interpreted. This paper has highlighted the ontological and epistemological role of discourse in shaping organizational change and, in so doing, noted the ability of discourse analysis to open up analytical space for alternative accounts of the processes forms and outcomes of organizational change. We have asserted that discourse analytic approaches reveal the role of discourse in the social construction of organizational change initiatives, emphasizes that the meaning attached to organizational change initiatives comes about as a result of a process of negotiation among key actors, and shows that the discourses of change should be regarded as intertextual. We have also argued that the value of discourse analytic approaches to the study of organizational change, in part, lies with their facilitating a multi-disciplinary perspective of change as well as their capacity as an alternative approach to the study of a variety of organizational change related issues to generate fresh insights into these issues. These observations are commensurate with those ofAlvesson and Karreman (2000b), p. 145), who have observed that the value of discursive approaches to the study of organizational phenomena, is that they offer the researcher insights into the ambiguous and constructed nature of the data with which they must work, whilst at the same time allowing them space for more relaxed, freer and bolder ways of

interacting with the material. The papers in this special issue all exhibit these important attributes. Combined, they vividly demonstrate the capacity of discourse analytic research to challenge, innovate and progress more conventional approaches to the study of organizational change.

Guest editorial

References Alvesson, M. (1996), Communication, Power and Organisation, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin. Alvesson, M. and Karreman, D. (2000a), “Varieties of discourse: on the study of organizations through discourse analysis”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 9, pp. 1125-49. Alvesson, M. and Karreman, D. (2000b), “Taking the linguistic turn in organizational research”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 136-58. Bakhtin, M. (1986), in Emerson, C. and Holquist, M. (Eds), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX. Barrett, F., Thomas, G. and Hocevar, D. (1995), “The central role of discourse in large-scale change: a social construction perspective”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 352-72. Beech, N. (2000), “Narrative styles of managers and workers: a tale of star crossed lovers”, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 210-28. Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1967), The Social Construction of Reality, Penguin, London. Boczkowski, P. and Orlikowski, W. (2004), “Organizational discourse and new media: a practice perspective”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), The Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London, pp. 359-78. Boden, D. (1994), The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action, Polity Press, Cambridge. Boje, D. (2001), Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communications Research, Sage, London. Chalaby, J. (1996), “Beyond the prison-house of language: discourse as a sociological concept”, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 47 No. 4, pp. 684-98. Cheney, G., Christensen, L.T., Conrad, C. and Lair, D. (2004), “Corporate rhetoric as organizational discourse”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), The Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London, pp. 79-104. Clark, T. and Salaman, G. (1996), “Telling tales: management consultancy as the art of storytelling”, in Grant, D. and Oswick, C. (Eds), Metaphor and Organizations, Sage, London, pp. 166-84. Collins, D. (2003), “Guest editor’s introduction: re-imagining change”, Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organizational Science, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. iv-xi. Czarniawska, B. (1998), A Narrative Approach to Organization Studies, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Du Gay, P. and Salaman, G. (1992), “The culture of the customer”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 615-34. Dunford, R. and Jones, D. (2000), “Narrative and strategic change”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 9, pp. 1207-26. Fairclough, N. (1995), Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, Language in Social Life Series, Longman, London. Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. (1997), “Critical discourse analysis”, in van Dijk, T.A. (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction: Discourse Studies Volume 2 – A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Sage, London, pp. 258-84.

13

JOCM 18,1

Fairhurst, G. and Cooreen, F. (2004), “Organizational language in use: interaction analysis, conversation analysis and speech act schematics”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), The Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London, pp. 131-52. Ford, J. and Ford, L. (1995), “The role of conversations in producing intentional change in organizations”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 541-70.

14

Gabriel, Y. (2004), “Narratives, stories and texts”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), The Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London, pp. 61-78. Grant, D. and Hardy, C. (2004), “Struggles with organizational discourse”, Organization Studies, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 5-14. Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (2004), “Introduction – organizational discourse: exploring the field”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), The Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London, pp. 1-36. Grant, D., Wailes, N., Michelson, G., Brewer, A. and Hall, R. (2002), “Rethinking organizational change”, Strategic Change, Vol. 11 No. 5, pp. 237-42. Hall, S. (2001), “Foucault: power, knowledge and discourse”, in Wetherell, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S. (Eds), Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader, Sage, London, pp. 72-81. Hardy, C. (2001), “Researching organizational discourse”, International Studies of Management and Organization, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 25-47. Heath, C., Luff, P. and Knoblauch, H. (2004), “Tools, technologies and organizational interaction: the emergence of ‘workplace studies’”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), The Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London, pp. 337-58. Heracleous, L. (2002), “The contribution of a discursive view to understanding organizational change”, Strategic Change, Vol. 11 No. 5, pp. 253-62. Heracleous, L. and Barrett, M. (2001), “Organizational change as discourse: communicative actions and deep structures in the context of information technology implementation”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 755-78. Heracleous, L. and Langham, B. (1996), “Organizational change and organizational culture at Hay Management Consultants”, Long Range Planning, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 485-94. Jackson, B. (2000), “A fantasy theme analysis of Peter Senge’s learning organization”, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 193-209. Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (2004), “Organizing textscapes”, Organization Studies, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 135-42. Kress, G. and Threadgold, T. (1988), “Towards a social theory of genre”, Southern Review, Vol. 21, pp. 215-43. Marshak, R. (2002), “Changing the language of change: how new concepts are challenging the ways we think and talk about organizational change”, Strategic Change, Vol. 11 No. 5, pp. 279-86. Morgan, G. (1997), Images of Organization, 2nd ed., Sage, London. Mueller, F., Sillince, J., Harvey, C. and Howorth, C. (2004), “‘A rounded picture is what we need’: rhetorical strategies, arguments and the negotiation of change in a UK hospital trust”, Organization Studies, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 75-94. Mumby, D.K. and Stohl, C. (1991), “Power and discourse in organizational studies: absence and the dialectic of control”, Discourse and Society, Vol. 2, pp. 313-32. O’Connor, E. (2000), “Plotting the organization: the embedded narrative as a construct for studying change”, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 210-28.

Oswick, C. and Montgomery, J. (1999), “Images of an organization: the use of metaphor in a multinational company”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 501-23. Oswick, C., Putnam, L. and Keenoy, T. (2004), “Tropes, discourse and organizing”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), The Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London, pp. 105-28. Oswick, C., Anthony, P., Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Mangham, I. (2000), “A dialogic analysis of organizational learning”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 36 No. 7, pp. 887-901. Palmer, I. and Dunford, R. (1996), “Conflicting use of metaphors: reconceptualizing their use in the field of organizational change”, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 691-717. Pettigrew, A., Woodman, R. and Cameron, K. (2001), “Studying organizational change and development: challenges for future research”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44 No. 4, pp. 697-713. Phillips, N. and Hardy, C. (2002), Discourse Analysis: Investigating Processes of Social Construction, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Reed, M. (2000), “The limits of discourse analysis in organizational analysis”, Organization, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 524-30. Searle, J. (1995), The Construction of Social Reality, Allen Lane, London. Taylor, J.R., Cooren, F., Giroux, N. and Robichaud, D. (1996), “The communicational basis of organization: between the conversation and the text”, Communication Theory, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 1-39. Tsoukas, H. and Chia, R. (2002), “Organizational becoming: rethinking organizational change”, Organization Science, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 567-82. van Dijk, T. (1997), “Discourse as interaction society”, in van Dijk, T. (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction: Discourse Studies Volume 2 – A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Sage, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 1-38. Washbourne, N. and Dicke, W. (2001), “Dissolving organization theory? A narrative analysis of water management”, International Studies of Management and Organization, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 91-112. Wood, L. and Kroger, R. (2000), Doing Discourse Analysis, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Woodilla, J. (1998), “Workplace conversations: the text of organizing”, in Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (Eds), Discourse and Organization, Sage, London, pp. 31-50. Wright-Mills, C. (1973), The Sociological Imagination, 1959, Penguin, Harmondworth, Middlesex. Further reading Oswick, C. and Grant, D. (Eds) (1996), Organization Development: Metaphorical Explorations, Pitman Publishing, London.

Guest editorial

15

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

JOCM 18,1

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Managing change at Sears: a sideways look at a tale of corporate transformation

16

David Collins Essex Management Centre, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Kelley Rainwater St Edward’s University, Austin, Texas, USA Abstract Purpose – This paper offers a reanalysis or “re-view” of a celebrated tale of corporate transformation – the turnaround of Sears, Roebuck and Company – which was discussed in the Harvard Business Review. Noting that “contextual” and “processual” attempts to revise the tale of Sears and its transformation would tend to exchange one monological rendering for another, albeit more critical account, the paper “re-views” the case in an attempt to make space for perspectives and narratives normally edited out of narratives of change management. Design/methodology/approach – Building upon a critical review of the literature concerned with organizational storytelling the paper “re-views” the Harvard rendering of the Sears case as an epic tale. The paper then supplements this epic rendering of the Sears case with another two accounts of the case, which recast and review the tale first as a tragedy and then as a comedy. Findings – The paper reveals the polysemic nature of organization and change and suggests the need for approaches to the narration of change that can give voice to perspectives denied by both celebratory and critical accounts of change management. Originality/value – The paper offers an innovative “re-view” of a celebrated account of change management and invites the reader to make room for voices and perspectives normally lost within narratives of change. Keywords Change management, Storytelling, Transformational leadership Paper type Case study

Introduction It has become a commonplace argument to suggest that many accounts of change and its management are limited analytically and weak in terms of their practical application (Pettigrew, 1985; Dawson, 1994; Collins, 1998) because they consider only a “thin slice” (Clark, 2000) of organizational variables, wrenched from their wider socio-economic and historical contexts. Reflecting upon the limitations of these accounts of change and its management, Pettigrew (1985) argued for a “contextual” approach to change, designed to analyse the interactions of context and action through time. Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 pp. 16-30 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510579823

This is an edited version of a paper entitled “Riders on the Storm: A sideways look at a celebrated tale of corporate transformation” that was presented to the British Academy of Management annual conference (Harrogate, 2003). The paper was awarded the BAM Executive Prize for “Best Overall Paper”. The authors are thankful to Alison Linstead and Peter Hamilton for organizing the “Critical Management” stream. Also grateful to Gibson Burrell and Ian King for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

While accepting that contextual and processual accounts of change (Dawson, 1994) offer an improvement on the “thinly-sliced” accounts of organizational change produced by the frameworks of “Heathrow Organization Theory” (Burrell, 1997), a number of authors have suggested that there is a need to reconsider the merits of these attempts to provide situated explorations (and explanations) of the change process. For example, Morgan and Sturdy (2000) have argued that Pettigrew’s “contextual” analysis of the processes of change is both flawed and limiting. Indeed they suggest that Pettigrew’s analysis retains a pluralist orientation and refuses to analyse organization in discursive terms (Grant et al., 1998; Linstead and Westwood, 2001). Buchanan (2003) has also expressed dissatisfaction with contextualist and processual accounts of the change process. Building upon empirical analyses of change management, he argues that these models of change lead to a distorted understanding of organizational dynamics because they insist on the production of single-voiced and authoritative renderings of the change process. Thus, Buchanan asserts that there is a need to explore analytical frameworks, which will allow us to seek out and give voice to the many different and distinctive understandings of organization and change, silenced by the predominant voices that speak to and for contextualist and processual frameworks. Reflecting this call to explore analytical approaches designed to give voice to arguments and perspectives muffled or silenced by contextualist and processual accounts of change, this paper offers a “sideways look” (Holquist, 1990) or a self-conscious “re-view” of a “turnaround” change process, which has been celebrated in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) (Rucci et al., 1998) and elsewhere (Stratford, 1997; Rucci, 1997). The case in question concerns Sears, Roebuck and Company. The report on this company offered by the HBR celebrates the “transformation” of Sears from faltering giant to corporate beacon and suggests that the company should be regarded as an exemplar of modern business leadership. In offering a “sideways look” at the Sears case, this paper attempts to “re-view” the turnaround of Sears in the light of recent accounts of narrative and storytelling (Gabriel, 2000; Boje, 2001), which stress polyphony and polysemy. Unlike the accounts offered by contextualist and processual analyses of change, therefore, our “re-view” does not attempt to uncover what really happened at Sears, Roebuck and Company. Instead the analysis offered here, suggests and pursues a number of alternative, local understandings of the Sears case. In pursuing these local and fragmented understandings of the “transformation” of Sears we will “re-view” the Harvard “report” as an example of organizational “storytelling” (Boje, 1991; Boje et al., 2001; Gabriel, 2000). Through this reanalysis the paper seeks to explore aspects of the Sears experience, which are absent from the Harvard case and often occluded from those more critical accounts, which would seek to place organizational change in a contextualist or processual framework. Accordingly, the paper is structured as follows: we begin, fittingly enough with a story. Our story involves a number of young men – a tank commander, a tank driver, a gunner (whose names are unknown) and another man (whose name remains the subject of speculation (Wright, 2000)) – a popular protest, Deng Xiaoping and a 40 ton Norinco Type 69/59 main battle tank. Yet, as we shall see this is a tale that transgresses the normal conventions of storytelling. Indeed, our tale is, in poetic terms a poor story.

Managing change at Sears

17

JOCM 18,1

18

It is a story that has passed into history despite having no clear beginning, a disputed middle and an ending that fragments in its prematurity. Yet, we will argue that this fragmenting tale can teach us much about the processes of change and about our attempts to render these meaningful. Having relayed this fragmenting tale, our second main section attempts to tease out its significance as it considers the debates and controversies, which have grown up around narratives and storytelling in organizations. In our third main section we build upon this account of storytelling as we offer an exposition and analysis of the Sears case, discussed by Rucci et al. (1998). “Re-viewing” the Sears case in the light of our analysis of storytelling, we will attempt to destabilise (Latour, 1987) the Harvard tale as we consider the potential of (and for) more local understandings of the change process. The tale of “Tank Man” We begin with a story. Thanks to the reporting of the world’s journalists this story is known across the globe. As rendered by Western journalists, this tale normally involves a young man, a tank and a morally bankrupt regime. Yet, this story has no clear beginning. It has instead a backdrop. In early May 1989, Chinese students staged a small demonstration in Tiananmen Square, initially to demand an end to state corruption. In a short time however, this demonstration grew in both size and scope such that by the middle of this month, the square was occupied by a large body of students, demanding dialogue with and democratic accountability from their leaders. On 4th June many of these protestors were shot and killed as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fired indiscriminately into the crowd. On the following day, around noon, as a column of tanks rolled down the Avenue of Eternal Peace a young man walked to the middle of the road and stopped in the path of the lead tank. This man had a bicycle with him and was carrying two small bags. The journalists who had been covering the demonstrations for some time were stunned by this man’s actions. Trained in the mantra of journalism – readers need to know who, what, when, where and why – they speculated on the identity and occupation of this man. In the absence of more concrete information an identity was constructed. The man it was agreed, was probably a student. His bags probably contained books and perhaps a little shopping. A beginning to the story suggested itself: This man, whom some have called “Tank Man” (Wright, 2000) had been in the Square on 4th June when the government’s soldiers began to shoot at the demonstrators and now, on his way home from the library, he had been shocked to see tanks rolling down the Avenue. Of course, no one knows for sure who this man was, nor can they be sure about his thoughts and actions. But this beginning is as good as any, given, as we shall see, that the middle parts of our tale are also open to dispute. So now we have a beginning: Tank Man is a mild-mannered student, an ordinary man studying for a degree, who finds himself in the middle of the road, facing down a column of battle tanks, because he can no longer trust his leaders. Transformed from a man of letters into a man of action, Tank Man confronts the tank column. Wright (2000) notes that the photographs and video clips of this “mechanical ballet” were soon beamed to a worldwide audience. The journalists who provided the text of this encounter were struck by Tank Man’s bravery and by his willingness to take a

stand, alone. This man it was generally agreed was a hero and the world’s journalists celebrated him as such. In the face of a violent and authoritarian regime he had had the courage to confront a column of armoured vehicles. Tank Man it was agreed was an inspiration to us all. Yet, as we noted, the middle of our tale is disputed. Indeed, Deng Xiaoping suggests that the tale of Tank Man has been distorted by Western propaganda. Deng’s rendering of this tale introduces a larger cast of characters. It recasts Tank Man as “a scoundrel” bringing disorder to China as it introduces a new hero to the cast-list. For Deng the true heroes of this encounter are the PLA for he reasons that Tank Man could not have stopped the tanks. The PLA, he argues, could easily have continued down the Avenue of Eternal Peace but they exercised restraint in the face of this scoundrel’s protests. Given the activities of the 4th June it is difficult to give credence to this account of the PLA. Yet, Deng’s attempt to “spin” this encounter is instructive nonetheless. In attempting to challenge the Western media’s depiction of Tank Man, Deng introduces a wider cast of characters and concerns, which begin to fragment and disrupt what had been, until now, a rather familiar tale. Indeed, his narrative invites us to make space for alternative and more local renderings of the Tank Man tale because he encourages us to consider the actions of a small number of young men, within the lead tank, who have hitherto been ignored by the tellers of the Tank Man tale. In a story where so little can be known with certainty, one thing is clear. History records that the tank stopped. But who stopped the tank? Journalists, struck by the drama of the moment and by the poetics of their trade have suggested that Tank Man stopped the tank. Yet, this is not quite true. While Tank Man clearly obstructed the path of the tank, he did not stop it. Acknowledging the bravery of Tank Man, Wright (2000) wonders if it might be wise to “write-in” parts for the tank crew in our drama. Indeed, Wright suggests that the tank’s commander may well be the real hero of the Tank Man tale because he ordered the tank driver to stop. Yet, he also concedes that the tank’s driver might be the real hero for he may have ignored the commander’s order to crush Tank Man. Who can say for sure? So how does the tale end? Having fabricated a beginning and been offered a choice of “middles” and casts you might as well select your own hero and your own ending: perhaps you are comfortable with the tale preferred by Western journalism. Perhaps you will side with Deng. Perhaps your “ending” will follow Tank Man as a hero. Perhaps you will follow him as a scoundrel. Perhaps you will focus on the tank’s commander. Perhaps, like Wright, you will be more interested in the driver. In the sections that follow we will build upon these choices. We will argue that this fragmented and fragmenting tale can teach us much about the processes of change management because it encourages us to seek out and take seriously, the local users and local narratives, which persist despite attempts to produce “top-down” and authoritative renderings of the change management process. In the next section, therefore, we will examine the debates, which shape the literature on “organizational storytelling”. We will suggest that our account of Tank Man (and the facts and fictions, heroes and villains, superior and subaltern voices, which compete to tell “his” tale), challenges both managerial and contextual renderings of change. Indeed, we will argue that the Tank Man tale helps to illuminate orientations and experiences, which have

Managing change at Sears

19

JOCM 18,1

20

been driven into the darkest corners and recesses of organization by managerial and more critical accounts of change management.

Storytelling in organizations In recent years much has been written on narratives, storytelling and organization (Boje, 1991; O’Connor, 1995; Czarniawska, 1997; Gabriel, 2000). While it would be fair to say that much of this work calls on and is, in part, derived from earlier attempts to catalogue and harvest stories, contemporary interest in storytelling is distinctive insofar as it is predicated on the understanding that organizational stories have meaning and significance only when they are analysed, in context, as organic and vital constituents of organization. Recent interest in organizational storytelling, therefore, has been driven by an understanding that organizational stories are not mere reflections of organizational reality, but are, instead, properly viewed as creators of organizational meaning and organizational realities. Thus, Gabriel suggests that the increasing interest in stories has been facilitated by postmodern scholarship and its tendency to see stories (as generators and creators of meaning) everywhere. However, Gabriel disputes this tendency to “see stories everywhere” – as the creators and generators of meaning – on two counts. First, as we shall see below, he argues that not all narratives qualify as stories. Secondly, he argues that stories do not always and everywhere generate meaning because while stories are portable and travel well, they are often modified as they travel. Thus, Gabriel suggests that stories have a fragile and “polysemic” quality, which makes them susceptible to translation (Latour, 1987). Boje’s analysis of narratives and “narratology” also demonstrates a concern with polysemy as it attempts to uncover worlds and experiences, which are otherwise denied in official corporate (hi)stories. Following Weick’s (1995) account of sensemaking, he begins by noting that on a day-to-day basis, people confront a key problem: how to make sense of a “complex soup” of ambiguous and half-understood problems, events and experiences. In their attempts to come to terms with this ambiguous flow of experience, Boje suggests that people construct and retrace their lives, retrospectively through stories. But for Boje, stories have a particular meaning and significance. Indeed, Boje warns us that we must distinguish “stories” from “narratives” (which for ease of exposition we will reproduce as “narratives”) if we are to understand the richness of organizational sensemaking. Indeed, he warns us, that Narratives are not to be confused with stories. Narratives, he argues, stand aloof from the flow of experience. Narratives are plotted, directed and staged to produce a linear, coherent and monological rendering of events, whereas “stories” “are self-deconstructing, flowing, emerging and networking, not at all static” (Boje, 2001, p. 1). Reflecting upon the narrative understanding of organization, which comes to us from such august sources as the HBR, Boje argues that academic analysis has confused stories with narratives. Thus, he complains that “so much of what passes for academic narrative analysis in organization studies seems to rely upon sequential, single-voiced stories” (Boje, 2001, p. 9). In an attempt to provide an alternative to these monologues of business endeavour, Boje (2001, p. 1) introduces the concept of the “antenarrative”, which, he argues, resituates the concerns of the field of organization studies by allowing us to catch sight of the “fragmented, non-linear, incoherent,

collective and unplotted” soup, which is organization. This focus upon flow and fragmentation has a profound affect on Boje’s conceptualisation of “antenarrative”. For Boje, “antenarrative” has two faces. On one face, Boje’s focus upon “antenarrative” is based upon the understanding that “stories” precede narrative. For Boje, then, stories are “antenarrative” in that they come before the processes of staging and directing, which, as he sees it, lead to the development of “sequential, single-voiced” narratives. On the obverse face, Boje calls upon the rules of poker as he suggests that his “antenarrative” represents “a bet” (or “an ante”) that retrospective sensemaking may emerge in the future from the stories, which come before narrative accounts. This account of stories and narratives overlaps, to some degree, with the account offered by Gabriel (2000). In common with Boje, Gabriel notes that stories offer local and intimate accounts of situations, events and predicaments. Indeed, reflecting upon the complexities associated with the analysis of stories and storytelling, Gabriel argues that story-work – literally the art of constructing meaningful stories – is a delicately woven product of intimate knowledge. Also in common with Boje, Gabriel is clear that it is vitally important to distinguish “stories” from other “narrative” forms. Yet here Gabriel’s account of stories and storytelling departs from that offered by Boje. Like Boje, Gabriel argues that it is important to separate “proper” stories from other (mere) narratives. Yet, disputing Boje’s analysis – although not necessarily his aims and larger methods – Gabriel notes that “proper” stories are, in truth, special forms of narrative. Reversing Boje’s argument, therefore, Gabriel is firm in the understanding that stories are narratives, which have plots, characters and typical elements (accident, coincidence, motive, etc). Yet in common with Boje he argues that stories do not invite factual verification. Elaborating on the difference between stories and histories as narrative forms, Gabriel argues that “stories” need to be separated from other narrative forms. Thus, Gabriel argues that there is a need to distinguish “opinions” (which may contain factual or symbolic materials but tend to lack both a plot and characters), “proto-stories” (which while they may have a rudimentary plot remain incomplete insofar as they offer a beginning and a middle but no end) and “reports” (which offer an historic rather than a poetic rendering of events, and so, produce stubbornly factual and causative as opposed to symbolic accounts) from “proper” stories. Disputing Boje’s reservations regarding plots and direction, therefore, Gabriel insists that (properly so-called) stories build on “poetic” qualities, and so, depend upon plots, embroidery and embellishment. Yet, despite their dispute over terminology, Gabriel and Boje seem to concur that the analysis of storytelling offers a means to resituate and recapture the flow and the plurality of organization. Thus, Gabriel seems to agree with Boje’s suspicion of narrative, when he argues that “stories” are quite unlike histories and “reports”. Reports, he warns us are monological, invite factual verification and so, seek to crystallise events, whereas stories are local, organic and polyphonic and depend upon poetic licence for the generation of meaning. Indeed, Gabriel suggests that this dependence upon poetic licence makes storytelling difficult because it places the storyteller in the hands of an audience who must be willing to indulge the embroidery and embellishment of the entertainer. Yet he warns us that not all are willing to grant storytellers such a warrant. Indeed, he notes that tellers of tales often confront

Managing change at Sears

21

JOCM 18,1

unwilling audiences, peopled with “pedants and bores” who would attempt to convert “stories” into “histories” with their interruptions, questions and challenges. It is of course clear that storytellers must be indulged to some degree. Yet, Gabriel’s attempt to make a categorical distinction between “stories” and “histories” introduces a problematic and paradoxical element to his account of storytelling.

22

Stories versus histories? Deng Xiaoping has suggested that the PLA should be regarded as the true heroes of our Tank Man tale. Few, of course, would accept Deng’s account of the Tank Man tale as a fair treatment of fact, but do we really make Deng’s story into a history when we challenge it? Surely it would be more appropriate to acknowledge the consanguine nature of “stories”, “histories” and “reports”? After all the historical records of the protests in Tiananmen Square rely on journalistic reports which, as we have seen, have themselves been the subject of poetic embroidery and embellishment. Story-teller versus audiences? Gabriel argues that those who interrupt story-tellers with observations and addenda are bores and pedants. While accepting that such interruptions can be frustrating and can act to undo the poetic elements of a good yarn, we must wonder if this blanketing attack on restive audiences is justified. Deng’s account of the Tank Man tale recasts and redirects the narrative to highlight the glorious role of the PLA. But are we pedants when we interrupt Deng’s attempt to glorify the PLA? Might we, as challengers of Deng’s poetic embellishment, not be accorded a more legitimate denomination? If we as the audience for Deng’s tale prefer a different cast list; if we prefer a different hero; if we prefer other characterisations and embellishments, are our interruptions not justified? So we have a paradox: stories are worthy of study because they reveal the plural and fragmented nature of organization but we should not, it seems, subject the storyteller to these very forces. Thus, in making a categorical distinction between “stories” and “reports” and in celebrating the arts of the storyteller, Gabriel seems to subordinate the listener to the monologue of the storyteller. He argues that stories are of interest to academic researchers because they reveal the organic and polyphonous nature of organization, yet at the same time he seems to warn us that the audience must know its place. In our “re-view” of the Sears case we will attempt to overcome such divisions. While acknowledging our debt to Gabriel we will nonetheless mix poetry and history, storytelling and reportage as we attempt to give voice to the local perspectives, trials and problems that have been written out of the “history” of Sears. Yet before we do this, we must conclude our analysis of the concepts and preoccupations of organizational storytelling with an account of the poetic tropes. The poetic tropes Reflecting upon the poetic qualities of stories, Gabriel (2000) argues that “proper” stories will call upon a number of the eight “poetic tropes” or generic attributions as they attempt to make events meaningful. Outlining these poetic tropes, Gabriel suggests that poetic tropes are the attributes which breathe life into stories. Poetic stories, therefore tend to attribute various tropes to the characters and events, which constitute the tale:

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Motive – which might variously define events to be accidental or incidental; Causal connections – which outline the cause and effects of actions; Responsibility – where blame and credit are allocated to actors and actions; Unity – such that a group comes to be defined as such; Fixed qualities – such that heroes are heroic and villains villainous; Emotion – to describe the emotional characteristics of actions; Agency – whereby volition is variously raised or diminished; Providential significance – which is important in certain tales, where higher forms may seem to intervene to restore justice and order to systems.

The careful organization of these tropes, Gabriel notes, allows for the construction of many different plots and characters, such that different arrangements of the poetic tropes allow storytellers to produce a number of different “poetic modes” designed variously to inculcate pride in, or to bring laughter forth from, the enraptured listener. Documenting the main poetic modes, Gabriel notes that a tale may be: (1) comic; (2) tragic; (3) epic; or (4) romantic depending upon the construction and organization of characters and events. For example, “epic” tales have particular attributes which, as we have seen, cause Boje discomfort. Thus “epic” tales tend to have simple and rather linear plot-lines. They devote little time to the intricacies and complexities of character development. Instead they focus upon action, movement, achievement and closure. In contrast, comic tales are designed to produce laughter. Indeed in the case of the comic tale it is worth noting that the laughter of the audience is often achieved at the expense of the main protagonist. Thus where the qualities of the epic hero lead inevitably to triumph, the character flaws of the main protagonist in the comic tale lead inexorably to failure because (for example) the protagonist has had the vanity to interfere in events and processes, which exceed human understanding. In the section that follows, we will attempt to build upon these accounts of audiences, narratives, storytelling, heroes and fools as we turn our attention to the tale of Rucci et al. (1998) regarding the turnaround of Sears, Roebuck and Company. A tale of transformation Rucci et al.’s (1998, p. 83) account of the turnaround and transformation of Sears, Roebuck and Company begins by telling us that the radical change in the fortunes of the company (between 1992 and 1998) “is no longer news”. Recognising this, the authors promise us an account of change management at Sears that looks beneath surface events to reveal the change in organizational logic and the changing organizational metrics, which delivered the company’s bottom-line improvement. Thus, Rucci et al. (1998, p. 82) suggest that there is a need to look behind the headlines and the headline figures of corporate improvement to consider the development and performance of the “employee-customer-profit model”, which links the “soft” and

Managing change at Sears

23

JOCM 18,1

24

“hard” elements of Sears to provide a powerfully predictive business model – “a set of rigorous leading indicators that measure attitudes, impressions and future performance” across the company. In this regard we might suggest that the authority of the HBR report is based upon the understanding that Rucci, Kirn and Quinn, as senior employees of the company, can offer us unique and definitive insights into the employee-customer-profit model because they were personally involved in the management processes, which transformed Sears. Boje (2001, p. 9) as we have seen, has suggested that the HBR tends to produce “sequential and single-voiced stories”. In an attempt to give a feel for the sequence of events that shape the HBR narrative, we offer an account of the Sears transformation, which attempts to reduce the HBR narrative to a simple linear chain of events. Since it mimics the linear orientation of a computing language we might refer to this as a “BASIC” rendering of the Sears case. A “BASIC” or linear, programmatic account of the Sears transformation, therefore, might be outlined as follows: 10 1992: Sears reports US$ 3.9 billion loss (US$ 3 billion of which is attributable to the merchandising group. 20 September 1992: Arthur Martinez (previously of Saks) is appointed to lead the merchandising division. He immediately “refocuses marketing”, announces a process of store renovation (800) and closure (113), and closes the company’s 101-year-old catalogue. 30 1993: Merchandising group posts income of $752 million. 40 March 1993: Martinez announces five new strategic priorities to “Phoenix team” of 65 senior managers. 50 November 1993: Phoenix team reports problems sharing and cascading strategic priorities throughout the organization. Management looks to employees to help with “vision” and then calls in experts to share the vision, which becomes apparent to Martinez. 60 March 1994: Phoenix teams form four task forces – looking at “customers”; “employees”; “financial performance”; and “innovation”. This is subsequently enlarged to five by the formation of a task force on “values”. 70 January-June 1995: task forces gather data (over two quarters) on measures of customer satisfaction etc. This material is sent to an expert consultancy for statistical analysis. 80 Mid-1995 onwards: “town hall” meetings are held and “learning maps” (pictorial representations of company history and performance) are produced to educate workforce about the new strategic priorities. 90 Summer 1995: Statistical consultancy reports on measures collected. This offers management a predictive model (of the employee-customer-profit chain), which links such things as employee training and retention to sales performance. 100 End 1995: model is refined to improve operation. 110 1998: Available metrics reported in HBR suggest that Sears is out-performing competitors and expectations thanks to the management processes, which instituted the employee-customer-profit chain.

This programmatic rendering of the case communicates a general, if skeletal chronicle of the activities associated with recent changes at Sears. Yet the BASIC rendering of the HBR narrative is misleading. HBR is no simple chronicler of the business world. Its writers and ghost-writers do not and could not simply “report” events, in part because managers understand that programmes and sub-routines will not deliver change (Gabriel, 2002). Instead HBR provides managers with accounts of business today, which qualify as stories in Gabriel’s analysis (and as narratives in Boje’s analysis) of the organized world. Indeed, viewed in these terms, the HBR is like The Reader’s Digest insofar as it produces abridged tales of real-life courage, which involve characters, events and predicaments. In common with The Reader’s Digest, therefore, HBR produces stories, which call upon symbolic resources for an absent group of readers who are nevertheless invited to identify with the heroes and their quests. Viewed in these terms the Sears case is reconstituted as an epic story; a tale, which involves the arrival of a hero (Martinez), with special qualities (strength, courage, leadership and determination) and special powers (business vision). As the hero of the tale, Martinez faces a predicament laden with symbolism (the imminent demise of a “111-year-old American institution” (Rucci et al., 1998, p. 85) and must move quickly to make changes if the predicament is to be successfully managed. Using all his powers and qualities, our hero succeeds in producing a successful and sustainable future for Sears. He makes immediate changes designed to stabilise the company in the short-run. Yet he also realises that future success will require a more fundamental alteration to the logic of the company. Accordingly, Martinez develops a vision for the future and calls upon a loyal group of lieutenants to consider the future he has outlined. This group of assistants research aspects of the organization (although only Martinez sees the linkages clearly!) and together with consultants they produce a model which links the “soft” and “hard” aspects of the business in a fashion that will allow managers to plan future developments with confidence. When the HBR narrative ends, therefore, we are left with the understanding that Martinez is to be honoured and respected because others have been moved to make super-human efforts in his name. Indeed, the narrative informs us that Martinez has succeeded in doing something that has eluded other business leaders: he has produced an understanding of modern business operations (the employee-customer-profit chain), which allows predictive links to be made between the “soft” and “hard” elements of business. Following Gabriel (2000), we may put this more concisely. Rucci’s “report” is no mere chronicle of business. It is instead an epic tale of noble triumph involving: A protagonist: Martinez A rescue object: Sears Assistants: The Phoenix Teams

In a tale of noble success, which deals with: A predicament: How to save Sears

And employs the following tropes:

Managing change at Sears

25

JOCM 18,1

Agency: Martinez chooses, tells, leads, inspires Motive: Saving Sears – reshaping business Credit: To Martinez, with some trickling to others Fixed qualities: Strength, commitment

26

To produce key: Emotions: Pride, admiration.

Yet we need not meekly accept this tale of heroic deliverance. Stories as we have seen are fragile. Their casts, plots and meanings tend to change as they travel through time and across boundaries. This implies that, in a variety of ways, the audience (whether composed of readers or listeners) who attend a tale may become simultaneously its authors, especially where a licence is earned or granted (Boje, 1991) to recast, redirect and “re-story” (Boje et al., 2001) events. In the section that follows, we will exercise a licence to “re-story” the Sears case as we “re-view” Martinez’s legacy. Transforming the tale In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx (1978, p. 9) observes: Hegel remarks somewhere that all the events and personalities of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

In what follows we will take our lead from Marx as we attempt to destabilise the Harvard epic. While recognising that there will be many local narratives of the transformation of Sears, we will, for reasons of space, offer just two “re-views” of the Sears case as we rewrite and recast the HBR epic, first as tragedy and then as comedy. The Sears case as tragedy Rucci et al.’s epic rendering of the Sears case makes much of Martinez’s ability to inspire more junior members of the organization. In our attempt to rewrite and “re-view” the Sears case as tragedy, we will, like Wright (2000) recast and redirect the story to focus upon those who have been “written out” of the epic tale. Recognising Martinez’s victory as something that will involve costs and an on-going organizational legacy, our “tragic” account of the Sears case suggests that for the more junior ranks of the organization, Martinez’s triumph may appear somewhat pyrrhic. Yet as we attempt to consider change at Sears from the bottom-up we confront a problem: Rucci et al. offer a monological, top-down overview of the change process. As a result, very few junior members of the organization actually appear in the narrative. In this regard, the epic rendering of the Sears case has similarities with the Tank Man tale produced by Western journalists in that its cast-list has written-out or hidden many of the actors and actions, which our tragic “re-view” would redeem. Indeed, it is worth noting that in Rucci’s rendering of the tale those more junior members of the organization not written-out altogether make, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, only the very briefest of appearances before slipping “off stage” permanently. For example, the staff that produced, distributed and serviced the catalogue business, and the employees in the 113 stores “slated for closing” appear and then promptly disappear from the case report.

Where more junior members of the organization merit “speaking parts” in the Harvard rendering of change, they have a “walk-on” status and do not appear as characters in their own right. Instead they are brought forth as exhibits to the greater glory of Sears or the aggrandisement of Martinez as a man who will not shrink from difficult decisions. Discussing the processes of change at Sears associated with this tough stance on decision-making Rucci et al. draw our attention to the struggles and exertions, which were necessary to remodel the company. They note that: When the [Phoenix] team got back to Chicago, a lot of people complained about the extra workload. They had no time to spend on task forces, they insisted, because they had to run the company. The message came back that they had to do both. They had to find the strategic answers and create operational strategy. For several weeks everyone struggled. As the deadline for recommendations approached, the sense of urgency grew. The task forces began meeting weekly at weekly, at 7 a.m. or earlier. (Months later, when many people wondered if the 7 o’clock grind had to go on for ever, they needed to be reminded that no one ever told them they had to meet at that hour, or every week at all (Rucci et al., 1998, p. 87).

In the light of this enforced pace of working and the associated yet unmentioned costs of this workload, there is much to be said for a “re-view” that recasts and redirects the transformation of Sears as a tragedy involving: A protagonist: Downtrodden workers and managers A villain: Martinez

In a tragic tale, which deals with: A predicament: Unrecognised stress and injury of victims

And employs the following tropes: Unity: “They” are to blame Motive: Profit and self-promotion Fixed qualities: Noble workers, evil leaders

To produce key: Emotions: Sorrow, anger.

The Sears case as comedy Our tragic rendering of the Sears tale portrayed workers as the victims of Martinez’s ambitions. In our comic rendering of the Sears case we recast and redirect our tale in a slightly different way such that the junior members of the organization are transformed from silenced victims to become, instead, patient observers of the human condition – who, like Loki, delight in mischief and in the misfortunes of others (Lancelyn-Green, 1970). Reflecting this concern with mischief and misfortune, Gabriel (2000) argues that comedies produce mirth and amusement by inviting us to laugh at the misfortune of others. Yet to laugh in this way – at rather than with another – we must exercise a

Managing change at Sears

27

JOCM 18,1

28

degree of social and moral detachment. If we are to laugh at another we must not empathise with the object of our laughter. Crucially we must not feel the pain, which the object of our mirth endures (Bergson, 1980), for this would surely move us to other emotional responses. In comedies, therefore, the laughter of the audience is often sustained by a dramatic device, which casts the main protagonist (and the butt of the joke) as a deserving fool, who encounters misfortune as a deserved chastisement. The epic rendering of the Sears case, as we have seen, places emphasis on the statistical linkages which, we are assured, make the employee-customer-profit chain a powerfully predictive tool and the key to the future success of the Sears corporation. Thus Rucci et al. (1998) conclude their report on Sears by flaunting the employee-customer-profit model’s confident prediction of a rosy future. They observe that: . . .in the course of the last 12 months employee satisfaction on the Sears TPI [Total Performance Indicators] has risen by 4%, and customer satisfaction by almost 4%. But if our model is correct – and its predictive power is extremely good – that 4% improvement in customer satisfaction translates into more than $200 million in additional revenues in the past twelve months (Rucci et al., 1998, p. 97, emphasis added).

Yet, the Sears Annual Report for 1998 records that actual revenues increased by only $36 million in comparison to 1997. Indeed, the Sears Annual Report for 2000 mocks the vanity of Rucci, Kirn and Quinn when it observes that the company’s net income actually began to decline in 1997 and continued its decline throughout 1998 and into 2001, with only a minor and short-lived improvement in income during 1999. Given both the nature and the timing of these events it is possible to “re-view” the Sears case as a comedy. In this “re-view” of the Sears case, Martinez becomes the deserving fool who should have known better than to claim mastery of the complex and non-linear flow of organization (Stacey et al., 2000). Recast and reorganized as a comedy, therefore, the Sears case involves: A foolish protagonist: Martinez the vain fool A force, which confounds plans: Natural complexity

In a tale of comedy which visits deserved misfortune on a vain and meddling protagonist as it deals with: A predicament: An unpredicted outcome

And employs the following tropes: Providential significance: The model fails Unity: “They” deserve their comeuppance Agency: Agency as the model is constructed Impotence: As nature reasserts itself Fixed qualities: Vanity

To produce key: Emotions: Mirth, schadenfreude.

Concluding comments Noting that both “thinly-sliced” accounts of change and more critical contextualist/processual analyses of change have a tendency to produce rather linear and monological renderings of the complexities of organization, this paper has employed the tools of narrative of analysis in an attempt to reveal the rich, complex and equivocal nature of change management. Analysing a moment in recent history, we have attempted to break down the divisions between “stories”, “histories” and “reports”. In addition we have attempted to break down the barriers, which would separate active storytellers from passive listeners in the hope that we might foster the development of bottom-up stories of change. Taking the “transformation” of Sears, Roebuck and Company as our example, we have recast an epic rendering of this drama to offer two alternative “re-views” of this celebrated tale of “corporate transformation”. These “re-views” have been designed to explore the complexities and ambiguities of organized life from the perspectives of those actors, ideas and orientations normally written-out of such organizational dramas. Re-viewing the “epic” rendering of the Sears case produced by the HBR, first as tragedy and then as comedy, we have sought to generate alternative readings of the change management process. In these endeavours no attempt has been made to promote one “re-view” of the Sears case above another. Indeed it is worth reiterating that the production of these “re-views” does not exhaust the potential “re-storying” of the Sears case (for example, we have not been able to pursue the ways in which the experiences of change at Sears were mediated by gender and race) – although it does exhaust the word limits of the typical academic journal. Within limits, therefore, we have sought to produce “re-views” of Sears and its change process designed to redirect our attention to those actors and those aspects of organization that tend to be occluded by the desire to produce (however, critically) authoritative and single-voiced renderings of the processes and problems of change management. References Bergson, H. (1980), “Laughter”, in Meredith, G. (Ed.), Comedy, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Boje, D. (1991), “The storytelling organization: a study of story performance in an office-supply firm”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 36, pp. 106-26. Boje, D. (2001), Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research, Sage, London. Boje, D., Alvarez, R. and Schooling, B. (2001), “Reclaiming story in organization: narratologies and action sciences”, in Linstead, S. and Westwood, R. (Eds), The Language of Organization, Sage, London. Buchanan, D. (2003), “Getting the story straight: illusions and delusions in the organizational change process”, Tamara: The Journal of Critical Postmodern Organizational Science, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 7-21. Burrell, G. (1997), Pandemonium: Towards a Retro-Organization Theory, Sage, London. Clark, P. (2000), Organisations in Action: Competition between Contexts, Routledge, London. Collins, D. (1998), Organizational Change: Sociological Perspectives, Routledge, London. Czarniawska, B. (1997), Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

Managing change at Sears

29

JOCM 18,1

30

Dawson, P. (1994), Organizational Change: A Processual View, Paul Chapman Publishing, London. Gabriel, Y. (2000), Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions and Fantasies, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gabriel, Y. (2002), “Essai: on paragrammatic uses of organizational theory – a provocation”, Organization Studies, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 133-51. Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (Eds) (1998), Discourse and Organization, Sage, London. Holquist, M. (1990), Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World, Routledge, London. Lancelyn-Green, R. (1970), Myths of the Norsemen: Retold from the Old Norse Poems and Tales, Penguin, London. Latour, B. (1987), Science in Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Linstead, S. and Westwood, R. (Eds) (2001), The Language of Organization, Sage, London. Marx, K. (1978), The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Foreign Language Press, Peking. Morgan, G. and Sturdy, A. (2000), Beyond Organizational Change: Structure, Discourse and Power in UK Financial Services, Macmillan, London. O’Connor, H.S. (1995), “Paradoxes of participation: textual analysis and organizational change”, Organisation Studies, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 769-803. Pettigrew, A. (1985), The Awakening Giant: Continuity and Change in ICI, Blackwell, Oxford. Rucci, A. (1997), “Should HR survive? A profession at the crossroads”, Human Resource Management, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 169-73. Rucci, A., Kirn, S. and Quinn, R. (1998), “The employee-customer-profit chain at Sears”, Harvard Business Review, pp. 82-97. Stacey, R., Griffin, D. and Shaw, P. (2000), Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking?, Routledge, London. Stratford, S. (1997), “Bringing Sears into the new world”, Fortune, Vol. 136 No. 7, pp. 183-4. Weick, K. (1995), Sensemaking in Organizations, Sage, London. Wright, P. (2000), Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine, Faber and Faber, London. Further reading Hamel, G. (2000), “Waking up IBM: how a gang of unlikely rebels transformed big blue”, Harvard Business Review, pp. 137-46, July-August. Sears Annual Report, 1998. Sears Annual Report, 2000.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Discourses of disrupted identities in the practice of strategic change The mayor, the street-fighter and the insider-out

Discourses of disrupted identities 31

Nic Beech and Phyl Johnson Graduate School of Business, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK Abstract Purpose – To explore identity dynamics in the lived experience of a strategic change over time. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data were collected through a longitudinal engagement with the focal organisation. Narrative analysis was used to trace the identity dynamics of senior figures in an organisation as it went through strategic change. This entailed a change of CEO and chairman, alterations to the composition of the board and the executive team and, in association with these changes in personnel, alterations to the strategy and direction of the company. Findings – The identity dynamics were at times comfortable and uncomfortable fits for the individuals involved, and over time expectations and realisations impacted on the processes of change in ways that were unexpected and unintentional for the actors. The outcome of the analysis shows the disruptive impact of identity dynamics on the practice of strategic change. Research limitations – The nature of the research undertaken does not seek to represent a holistic case study but, rather, is focused on a depth analysis of selected interactional data. Practical implications – A critique of traditional views of resistance to change is presented and an alternative approach to analysing reactions to change is proposed. Originality/value – The paper contributes a narrative approach to the discursive analysis of strategic change. It also elaborates the significance of “identity work” in such settings. Keywords Narratives, Change management, Work identity Paper type Research paper

Organizational becoming and micro-strategizing There is a perceived ideal in narratives of strategic change that they should have coherence, credibility (Barry and Elmes, 1997) and a unifying plot line (Jeffcutt, 1994). Similarly, in some theories of identity change, it is argued that it is preferable to have a unifying strand which may be, for example, a shared ethos (Fiol, 2002). However, theories of strategic change (Mintzberg, 1978; Pettigrew, 1985; Johnson, 1987; Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991) and theories of identity (Coupland, 2001; Thomas and Linstead, 2002) acknowledge unintended and disruptive occurrences which counter-pose the perceived unifying ideal. Although such theories acknowledge the unintended aspect of change, little has been done to explain or account for it in detail (see Balogun and Johnson, 2005, forthcoming, as an exception). This paper seeks to engage a dialogue about the intersection of strategic change and identity dynamics addressing the explanatory agenda. An approach is adopted that focuses on change as a continual process of becoming (rather than a succession of stable states) at the micro-strategy level. Tsoukas and Chia (2002) have argued that social reality is not composed of solid objects that are complete and in some sense “finished” interacting with each other.

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 pp. 31-47 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510579832

JOCM 18,1

32

Rather, they regard social reality as always being in a state of becoming. As James (1996, p. 263) put it: “what really exists is not things made but things in the making”. Organizational change situations are not populated by fixed identities operating according to fixed routines, but are ongoing processes in which actors’ beliefs are interwoven, habits and new actions collide, new experiences are encountered and have to be accounted for in the sense-making of actors. Chia (1999) sees the act of organizing as the attempt to control or impose a pattern on the ongoing state of change and flux. Hence “change” and “organization” are in tension with each other. For Chia, change is like a “constant ballooning” of newness in sometimes unpredictable ways that do not conform to expected patterns. This paper does not seek to discuss the metaphysics of becoming, rather to engage with Tsoukas and Chia’s critique of studies that treat change as if it were an object rather than a process. They argue that this misses the point. What ends up being studied are the points of organization, i.e. points of stability and patterning, in-between change. In short, there is frequently a focus on organization rather than on the processes of changing. In order to focus on changing, they propose that studies should examine how actors “reweave their webs of beliefs and habits of action in response to local circumstances and new experiences and how managers influence and intervene into the stream of organizational actions” (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002, p. 580). The crucial thing, therefore, is not to be able to show that one structure replaces another, or that one culture replaces another, but rather to examine the processes in between the existence of the two states of being. This is something that traditional methods of research may not be best fitted for. The argument offered here is that narrative analysis provides one approach that might be helpful in this regard. A new development in the strategic change literature is compatible to the focus on change as conceived by Tsoukas and Chia (2002). The shift from an episodic perspective (from state A to state B) to an understanding of strategic change as incremental is well established (Quinn, 1980; Mintzberg and Waters, 1985). However, recently there has been a proposition that there is a need to shift the object of study. Traditionally, change at the level of the organization or industry has been explored, but it has been argued that a more micro-level analysis is necessary in order to gain a fuller understanding of the dynamics of strategic change (Johnson et al., 2003; Wilson and Jarzabowski, 2004; Whittington, 2004). One impetus for this concern with a micro-level of detail is the resource-based theory of the firm, which has proposed that strategic advantage is to be found in embedded, idiosyncratic routines and behaviours (Ambrosini and Bowman, 2001; Barney, 1995). Additional arguments also come from empirical research on organizational innovation and situated practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Johnson and Huff, 1998). In sum, there is a move, exemplified within micro-strategy literature, which argues that in order to understand the embedded processes of strategic change, there is a need to incorporate the lived experience of the strategist in the analysis (Samra-Fredricks, 2003). This paper seeks to take up the twin challenges of researching organizational changing (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002) and adopting a detailed micro analysis of the lived experience of the strategists as they go through change (Johnson et al., 2003). There are many possible theoretical constructions that could be used to combine these two foci. The focus here is on identity dynamics. The argument being that identity dynamics are particularly relevant as they are processes through which strategists make sense of

what is going on and what they are doing over time: both sense-making processes that have been argued to be important in strategic change (Balogun and Johnson, 2004). Our approach is to use narrative analysis in an ongoing change situation. The way actors play (or do not play) roles affects the movement of the plot and the reactions of others in a way that is compatible with the notion of changing (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). As the narrative develops over time its shape could not be entirely predicted or controlled. In the unfolding of the narrative, it feeds back into, and influences the next direction, of itself. Strategists make sense of their actions, the context and interactions with others through a process of narrating everyday life. Stories are a way in which actors impose or perceive patterns in their “lived experience” (Sims, 2003), and hence narrative analysis has the potential to reveal something about the micro-strategic processes of change. Alternative levels of focus in discourse analysis have been outlined by Grant et al. (2001). At the macro-level are meta-discourses that focus on dominant paradigms and institutional practices. At the meso-level the focus is on interpersonal and group-based interaction, and the micro-level focus is on the intrapersonal. In Grant et al.’s terms, this study is at the meso-level and this matches what is termed the micro level in the strategy literature. There are several facets of narratives that make their analysis particularly fit for the purpose here. They are naturally dynamic as they contain a flow of action and interaction. They also hold moral and symbolic dynamism in that they illustrate lessons and morals for the audience (Ford and Ford, 2003): i.e. they guide and instruct action. As Barry and Elmes (1997) have argued, narrative is a form of meaning making in which people recognise or attribute meaningfulness in specific experiences by perceiving them as being parts of a whole. Achieving narrative coherence entails attributing people to roles which carry with them expectations about behaviour, routines, protocols and discourses of what is regarded as normal (Czarniawska, 1997). For example, Mueller et al. (2004) show how a pluralistic public sector health service organization manages to function despite the heterogeneity of actors. Each side in the debate attempted to appropriate the discourse of “new public sector management” in order to further their own agendas. This provided a meeting point for debate, also having the impact of reinforcing the dominant discourse. There are various barriers that potentially prevent narrative coherence. There may be a lack of role-fit with actors (Boje, 1995), or there can be accidental seepage between different parts of the role performance. Goffman (1961) has shown the significance of audiences becoming aware of “back-stage” elements of performance that were not intended for display “front-stage”. Alternatively, Barry and Elmes (1997) have argued that successful strategic narratives of change will have certain facets. These include achieving coherence amongst diversity, achieving credibility through broad acceptance of the readership, and operating on either epic or romantic plot lines (Jeffcutt, 1994) in which the heroes are victorious. These views are consistent with other research in the area. For example, Dunford and Jones (2000) trace three narratives of change which indicate that the ability to construct a discourse of coherence is particularly important in times of change. The change managers in their study were particularly concerned with the idea of audience and themselves as “sense-givers” providing. Other studies regard the discursive and narrative processes of strategic change as essentially active and a process of negotiation between groups. Hardy et al. (2000) and Mueller et al. (2004) are concerned with the ways in which actors are able to

Discourses of disrupted identities 33

JOCM 18,1

34

mobilise discursive resources to their own ends. Discursive resources include the gaining of: “voice”, the acknowledged right to be heard, legitimised use of dominant discourses and use of rhetorical techniques which influence the location of power relations. Whilst the facets identified by Barry and Elmes and Dunford and Jones may be desirable, it is notable that in situations that are changing, there is a high possibility that they will be missing. Rather, one is likely to find a situation of polyphony; disagreement as to what constitutes credibility and plot lines that will be more convoluted than the romantic and epic forms. Hence, the ability to gain and manage discursive resources may be both crucial and subject to considerable uncertainty. The aim of this paper is to explore this potential area of uncertainty and complexity and to discuss disruption in the sensemaking patterns that emerged. Method In this study, data were gained from an organization engaged in a process of change[1]. The approach here was concerned with how talk in and around a strategic team constitutes a process of change itself. The aim was to understand the multiple lines of narrative (Sims, 2003) through which actors in a situation, and we as researchers, made sense of events, the self and others (Thomas and Linstead, 2002). The narrative analysis used below is regarded as a subset of interpretative discourse analysis (Hardy, 2001). One researcher acted as coach to an executive team and CEO. Via this activity, the talk of executives engaged in a process of change was accessed. The events talked about by the executives covered the period from January 2001 to October 2003. The data collection period that is covered in this paper extends from February 2003 to October 2003. The narrative based data were collected through: (1) a formal set of interviews with senior and middle managers; (2) a video recording of a strategy discussion at an executive team meeting; (3) personal coaching sessions with the CEO; and (4) field notes recorded during visits to the organization to carry out: . development work with middle managers; and . an off-site development event for the executive. The field notes captured informal as well as formal contact during this period and included face-to-face interaction, telephone and e-mail contact. The organization studied, PN Services, operates in the service sector in an industry that is highly sensitive with regard to the release of information. Consequently, both the name of the organization, its members and the industry itself have been either changed or not identified in the account that follows. The primary sources of data for this narrative are listed in Table I, with those in bold being the central characters of the title. Data analysis The analytic process moved through several stages. First, the data were explored to reveal the dominant narrative(s). Secondly, the dominant narrative was examined with a general concern with identity and change. The third stage involved a theory-data iterative loop. The emergent outcome of that process was the selection of the

categories; coherence, credibility, epics and romance (Barry and Elmes, 1997) as the most effective theoretical explanators to be used to interrogate the dynamics of change of identity. Here, we were interested in exploring the extent to which these categories could provide sufficient explanations of the data. A key outcome from the analysis was that they could not adequately explain disruption and disturbance in what may have been assumed to be smooth-running lines of narrative. Fundamental activities undertaken to facilitate the above process revolved around the following practices broadly accepted in narrative analysis. Data were transcribed and analysed using a process expounded by Silverman (1993). Within the narrative structures there was an ordering (sequence and choice between alternatives) of events and actions (Silverman, 1993). The analysis emphasised an overall narrative which was not monological (Czarniawska, 1997), but which entailed divergence and voices of difference. The narrative presented below traces a series of stages of development (indicated by sub-headings), and within each stage, quotations from different actors are used to illustrate the various perceptions present.

Discourses of disrupted identities 35

The organizational context There is information about the firm which does not identify it, but which assists in the contextualisation of the narratives. It is a privately owned firm with a 120-year history. The ownership of the firm has been predominantly in the hands of a number of senior managers with some outside ownership. Since 1995, it has become exclusively internally owned with a much broader range of employees holding shares in the firm. In the industry as a whole, PN Services is a small firm employing some 250 employees, where as larger organizations in the same industry employ several thousands. The majority of the employees are professional knowledge workers with some administrative and technical support. They operate in a niche position and at the time of study involved in the process of shifting their basis of differentiation from “traditional and reliable supplier” to “sparky and flexible” provider. This shift in their basis of differentiation was intended to keep ahead of industry change and, more particularly, to grow the business. A narrative of disruptions in identity change Bringing an outsider in as CEO to inhabit the role of the tough guy: finding a new hero Up until January 2001 when Alex joined as CEO, Royston was in the position of joint chair and CEO role. He had been with the company since 1985 and joined as a partner Name Royston – Major Alex – Streetfighter Benjamin – Insider-out Laurence David Andrew Marcus

Position

Changed position within PN Services

CEO and Chair N/a Executive team member and anticipated to be next CEO Executive team member Executive team member Executive team member Executive team member

Chair CEO Resigned as executive team member N/a N/a N/a N/a

Table I. Primary data sources in PN services

JOCM 18,1

of this privately owned business. He was the last of a group of three partners who had run the business for the previous 10 years. We were the triumvirate who essentially ran the ship (Royston).

36

He described himself as “an old man” as he recalled the history of the firm through a prolonged period of good conditions within the industry. The general employee reaction to Royston’s presence was the good behaviour of a child: tone of voice dropping, sitting up straight, showing polite and respectful attention. He stressed the aspects of the paternalistic and gentlemanly culture that he himself personified. This was also specifically commented on by executive team member, Laurence. At that time, our belief in partnership was key, very paternalistic; sharing the gains and the good times was important. There was a family feel to the business, people felt looked after (Royston). It was a paternal organization and quite sleepy as a consequence. The two remnants of that structure: Royston and Benjamin, (whose father and grandfather where previously senior partners of the business) still bring an awful lot of that paternal approach to the company (Laurence).

Royston moved from key executive position of chief service officer in his words, “the position that is the engine of the business”, into the role of CEO. Then in 1995, the triumvirate broke up, the two other partners left the firm and he took sole charge. He instituted a buy-back policy of the shares that had left the firm’s control (reinstating 100 per cent internal ownership) and led the firm into a period of significant growth. By 1999, Royston wanted to change personally and wanted, or saw a need for, the organization to change. Others commented on this. It was a gentleman’s club. It was a privilege for us to be able to play in an easy environment. We would be dead within seconds if we tired to carry on with that now (Benjamin).

In January 2001, it was decided that Royston would maintain his position as chair of the board but that a new CEO would be appointed. This appointee was Alex. There were three possibilities, two of whom were internal and an external to be head hunted. We needed a change of style, someone who could really push innovation through. He’s (Alex) a young CEO and came to us knowing nothing about our business and the Service Department was unfamiliar to him. He’s rough and ready. He has rough edges and a style that lays down the law (Royston).

The media reported the recruitment highlighting Alex’s reputation and the clear change from the past. Alex also highlighted the change for the business in his comments to the press. Alex has been regarded by some as an unusual choice by Royston. It was met by surprise in some quarters (Press comment). It has the perception of being a little sleepy and self-satisfied. I want to get rid of the patriarchal feeling (Alex).

Members of the executive team saw the appointment of Alex as signalling a distinct change, and characterised him in a clear way.

We were going through a bit of a, I suppose a business that was not managed in a tough sort of hard way, it was all a bit soft to be quite frank and so we’re moving from soft to a tougher sort of environment and that is why we brought in Alex so you might say. But it is tough to be in a more toughly managed company. Appointing Alex was a brave decision. But this is why Alex is here, we needed a bit more speed and implementation and he pushes people much harder than I’ve ever been pushed before (Marcus).

Discourses of disrupted identities

Alex is, as you know, a physically larger than life figure, he gets up, he wanders around, talks, deals with people direct, engages: we need more of that (David).

37

Alex is different. Alex is the street fighter, you hit him he’ll hit you back (Laurence). Alex is a bit of a hell raiser. He’s loud, you certainly know when he’s in the room; he swears, he blusters, he shouts. Very different from Royston, he’s more fatherly more gentlemanly, that’s what we’re used to (Middle manager).

New outside CEO plays the tough guy: the hero is heroic Alex initiated major change in the business. He instituted the first redundancy program in the firm’s history. In addition, he made a series of aggressive hires poaching staff from much bigger firms. He employed new people into key service provision positions and brought two new and younger members of staff on to the executive team and removed another. People saw Alex as the tough guy taking the tough decisions and putting everyone in the firm under performance pressure. Discussion of him within the firm revolved around this type of behaviour. Here, middle managers are talking about Alex pressuring one of the executive team members to improve his performance and how Alex’s style made him a difficult person to be managed by. We all saw that Alex was gunning for him and we just stood back and watched him lean very heavily on him. He was under a lot of pressure to perform (Middle manager). I’m dreading my meeting with him today, I’ve heard he’s in a foul mood and it’s “fucking this” and “fucking that”. I find that so intimidating (Middle manager). This market is very tough you have to fight for your 15%. You’ve got to fight and claw and bitch to get it and it’s that urgency which is being forced upon us by Alex. We needed a different management style and we’ve got it. The reason we went off and hired Alex, rather than to be perfectly blunt, was because he has got that attitude and I don’t. Well, that’s life. Thank god he’s here, if it was left to Royston and me, we’d spend the whole time fiddling around (Benjamin).

Alex also recognised the sense of tough guy identity that could exist around him. They all come from this paternalistic background where everybody defers to the senior person. I don’t come from that background at all, I come from the kind of background where the strongest person wins, and part of that is also force. The force of the argument. That’s the kind of background I come from and so as far as I’m concerned, that’s what I’m doing (Alex). If I think you’re a complete idiot I’ll tell you, I’m just not good at hiding it (Alex). I’ve got a tendency to shut things off that I’m bored with or people I’m bored with (Alex).

JOCM 18,1

However, Alex also had a motivational side. Many in the executive team commented about the infectiousness of his enthusiasm when he became interested or engaged with something: He really liked my idea, he started to cheer up, he got excited. It’s great when that happens (David).

38

The tough outsider wants to change his identity: the hero wants to be a different kind of hero Over time, Alex had less and less interest in being the overt power broker in the firm and began to think of himself as a conductor of an orchestra rather than the tough guy at the top. He was undergoing significant change in his life and wanted to step out of his relationship with power as a controlling phenomenon. I think there is a lack of confidence that affects me as much as it affects other people. Everybody is to a greater or lesser extent concerned about their position and the amount of power that they have actually got, and that makes people react. And you see, I sometimes feel that I don’t have enough power and therefore what I do wrongly is, I reinforce the power by controlling. I actually exaggerate the fact that I have got the power by using it to control. I know that I do it. I just remind people that although I’m just a incomer and I’m new, and I don’t understand a lot of things, actually, I am the Chief Executive. I suppose what I am really saying is that I have been too defensive. I need to be less defensive. Then I would get more out of the people here. I think that that is generally true of everybody (Alex).

In addition, he was fully aware that a lot of people around him wanted him to play the tough guy role. I can do that if they want me to, it’s easy, I know how to do it, but it’s not what I want and it’s not what’ll be good for the firm. It’s inappropriate for me to be directive, it emasculates the business and undermines the very talent the business is built on (Alex).

He was aware of his reputation, but was nonetheless trying to change his style and press ahead with changes in the business that would lead to the kind of empowered culture he was looking to be the leader of. I am intelligent enough to see that just being the way that I am is as much part of the problem as anyone else is (Alex).

He initiated a culture change program, including an image change described in the press as a shift from “fusty and traditional to vibrant and fresh”. The culture change message was one of a meritocracy where all have access to success and are most likely to achieve it by working as a team. To support this, he implemented a bonus system where the bonus received did not depend on position in the hierarchy (as it had in the past), but rather on current performance and peer review. In this observable way, the more junior staff had equal access to big bonuses. He held monthly meetings that became known as “town meetings” where he toured departments within the firm, gathered staff around him, delivered news of the latest events, key performance indicators and answered questions. Alex’s town meetings are great, they make him accessible to us (Middle manager). It’s good seeing Alex at his town meetings (Middle manager). The town meetings make Alex seem approachable (Middle manager).

Old rival is killed off: the tough guy hero is back The natural plot line of the Alex making his preferred identity change became disrupted when, in late May, after a prolonged period of consultation with Royston (company Chairman) and other members of his executive, Alex removed Benjamin from the executive team and from his role as sales director. Alex attributed this action to Benjamin’s poor performance. Benjamin had been one of the internal candidates for Alex’s job and, prior to Alex’s arrival, had been assumed to be Royston’s natural successor. He had been described by Royston as someone who was “wedded to PN Services, he’s been here boy and man”. You ask my children, you know, what is most important to me in this world and it’s the company. They have tolerated it because it’s given them a good life. But, you know, you cut my neck off here and it says PN Services (Benjamin).

Benjamin was considered to be the epitome of old PN Services just as Alex was the epitome of the new. This move was a shock for others and was the dominant topic of conversation during interactions with Alex and the executive team members. The sense of confusion is captured in this quote from an executive team member. This is a hell of a shake-up for people, we all know Benjamin, he’s worked for the business for so long; people here have loved the guy. People don’t know what’s going to happen (Marcus).

After consultation with the chairman and the executive team, Alex believed that the process of removing Benjamin had been executed carefully and diplomatically. Alex himself found the whole process in his words “emotionally draining”. After having been informed of Alex’s decision, Benjamin travelled overseas on behalf of the company for a lengthy period of time. When he returned, he immediately took leave with possibly stress related ill-health. When he was in the office, he was manifesting his distressed state. When he was talking to colleagues, he was negative about Alex and had been claiming that other members of the executive were sympathetic to his situation, feeling wary of Alex’s possible actions. I think Alex is the only person on the executive who can do the job he does but he definitely needs balance or else he’s dangerous. He is danger to himself if you know what I mean. I am saying that if you are going to have someone who provokes so much change you simply have to have a huge number of anchors just to keep the thing on an even keel. And, you know, Royston would say that one of the things in his job is to keep a balance to Alex. Well I think Alex needs it (Benjamin). How he (Alex) is treating me is important because the executive are all, I mean, [name] is not doing a good job as [function]. It’s just not working, so he could be next. What we don’t want here is this is climate of fear. I think you will find a great deal of sympathy and loss of eye-contact when you bring it up (with other colleagues) because I think everyone is very uncomfortable about it. But I don’t think at the end of the day anybody will challenge it. The Chief Executive has made a decision. They’ll either back him or sack him. But I hired him, he is looking after my money. I expect him to make the right decisions for the business; if he doesn’t then we would fire him even quicker. If he doesn’t do a good job, then as I say, I am the biggest shareholder in the business. So, the boot will be on the other foot. That’s why I sleep at night (Benjamin).

Discourses of disrupted identities 39

JOCM 18,1

40

Towards the end of the summer period, Alex had begun to feel rather unsupported by his senior colleagues in fighting off the rumours and stories circulating around the firm. He resolved to seek the overt support of his peers. This happened in three ways: first, in informal sessions with his directors; second, in a meeting with Benjamin with the HR director present; third, during a developmental away-day for the executive team. Each of these was a planned and deliberate course of action chosen by Alex. In this way, his potential tough guy heroic plot line that others projected on to him was disrupted. A traditional plot would see the hero removing the scapegoat alone and in heroic character. However, Alex involved others by undertaking a consultative process concerning Benjamin. He displayed weakness by admitting he was uncertain what to do. This coincided with other out of character actions, such as instigating participative leadership and personal development plans for all the executive. In the second of these interventions, in late August, the HR director facilitated a dialogue where Benjamin expressed how he had felt utterly rejected by the firm and by Alex. It’s a hell of a way to fall when your father and grandfather were here before you (Benjamin).

Alex expressed how he had felt in response to Benjamin’s “bad mouthing” him and that had to stop. Alex explained in detail why Benjamin’s performance was not acceptable and how the decision had been arrived at. Alex reported back what his words had been in that meeting. Your peers understand why this has happened, I feel hurt that you have been bad mouthing me as I went to some lengths to spare you and have consequently taken some of the flack for you. Let me tell you again why I made the decision I made (Alex).

They agreed that they needed to work more amicably together as Benjamin was still a member of the board and, in a reduced role, a member of the sales team. They agreed to try to have coffee each week and ease their way through this difficult transition. During the executive team away day in early September, Alex expressed his sense of vulnerability and also his uncertainty about how to deal with Benjamin. He was given enthusiastic support from his executive team. A clear strategy of how to handle Benjamin (delineate his role and get him to sell his significant share holding in the company) was worked out for Alex to implement. Alex made moves to suggest Benjamin should vacate his executive office and to seek agreement for a share sell-down. The atmosphere between them became very difficult again with Alex expressing in anger: “I just want that bastard who’s bad mouthing me out of my life”. Benjamin’s anger began to turn towards Royston as well as Alex. Two weeks later, Benjamin resigned from his employment at PN Services, but remained on the board as a non-executive director. His letter of resignation expressed his view that in his 50s, the time was right for him to move into a non-executive position. He wished to be as helpful as possible to the company in that role, and felt confident this would be possible. Benjamin began this narrative episode expressing frustration having been overlooked for the role of CEO, he then moved into a position of being the poor performer letting the side down in his directorial role. For a brief

period in the summer of 2003 after his removal, he began to be the subject of sympathetic gossip in the organization that cast him in the role of Alex’s victim, the scapegoat, with talk about the other directors suggesting they were worrying about who would be next. For the senior members of the organization, he finally moved into the role of villain with his continual disruptive behaviour towards Alex and latterly Royston. He ended the period of study in a position of frustrated compromise, with complete resignation from any executive role being the only way he could retain a relationship with the company he had long and strong emotional commitment to. Benjamin anticipated an identity shift into the role of leader, instead he became the reluctant outsider: the insider who was out. In informal discussion, Alex reflected that his resignation was “the best possible result really when you think what might of happened. When I think back I don’t think there’s anything I’d have done differently”. Alex was content to allow Benjamin to remain on the board for a year, as long as he was out of the way of day-to-day operations. Had the tough guy been tough enough: was there a hero after all? Royston, however, was against allowing Benjamin to remain on the board. Alex reported that it was Royston’s view that Alex should have removed Benjamin from the business entirely. For him at least, it may have seemed that Alex was not fulfilling the tough guy role for which he had been hired. Royston had always anticipated his identity shifting as he took an increasingly back stage advisory role not taking the hard decisions. This was disrupted, he ended up in a position being where at that time, the identity projected on to him was one of being more forceful voice than Alex. Others also raised questions over Alex’s performance. Some people thought that Benjamin could have been dealt with sooner and in stronger terms and that there were other performance issues to be addressed amongst the senior executives that were going unmanaged. I know he has to take difficult decisions, but I have concerns about his decisiveness, he’s lacking self confidence at the moment. I think he really lacks self-confidence possibly because he’s come into this close-knit type family business and maybe worries about a shareholder revolt against him or something. He’s not being autocratic enough, I don’t really know why. I think he knows what needs to be done but is finding that tough for some reason (David). What I’ve seen happening to him is he started off coming in looking much more feisty and up for a big change and, you know, moderated that a lot to, you know, “it’s difficult for people in the business to change”. I think he needs to change back. Alex is, I think, quite uncomfortable. He knew it was right but he was quite uncomfortable with the whole issue and actually was very worried about perception around the office. So, you have probably got a feeling there of an executive, who hasn’t quite come of age, is not quite sure of his perception and a wee bit nervous (Andrew).

Alex is now continuing to work with his executive team in the way he wishes to work. That is, based on a participative leadership style. He is encouraging the personal development of each of his directors, requiring them to produce clear plans for the development of their own coaching leadership style and to spread this throughout the firm. Under Alex’s leadership, the firm has had a very successful year and

Discourses of disrupted identities 41

JOCM 18,1

morale appears to be high. Nonetheless, there has been some talk of Alex reverting to his tough guy role. I’ve noticed him slipping into his more machoistic style again and that will only spread around the firm if people think it’s acceptable (Middle manager).

42

In this final phase, Alex did not stick to a conventional plot line. He verged on the heroic change-maker, but his special skill of being the tough guy was punctured. He displayed a needy side to his character by seeking the support of others. This could have translated into a redemption plot in which his new ways resolved the situation. But at the end, he was unable to remain redeemed and started to revert to macho actions associated with his initial role type. He too ends the data collection period in a potentially unclear and disrupted position as the final reports of him are around losses of temper and a return to the identity of the tough guy who is now less heroic. Privately at least, he still wishes to maintain a view of himself in a more nurturing role; the conductor of the orchestra remaining his chosen metaphor. The identity dynamics that occurred between the three major players in the dominant narrative captured at PN Services from February 2003 till October 2003 are given in Table II. Discussion It is clear that in the narrative presented here, the ideals of coherency, credibility (Barry and Elmes, 1997), a unifying plot line (Jeffcutt, 1994) and a unifying identity or ethos (Fiol, 2002) were missing. The interest here is in understanding how and why this should be the case. The argument offered is that key types of disjuncture can disrupt smooth lines of narratives and that two of these are illustrated in the data presented earlier. Moreover, it is proposed that an understanding of these types of disjuncture is important for those practicing and theorising strategic change. In this setting, the key strategic actors seemed to be less concerned with the “audience as sense-givers” (Dunford and Jones, 2000), and more focused on their own construction of the situation and intervention into it. This resonates with the active use of discursive resources discussed by Hardy et al. (2000) and Mueller et al. (2004). However, in this data, the issues of tensions and narratives running beyond control were particularly significant. These are issues for micro-strategizing

Table II. Identity shifts in the three main characters: the major, the street-fighter and the insider-out

Character

Identity one

Identity two

Roy, the major

Benevolent and visible leader

Figure head

Benjamin, the insider-out Alex, the streetfighter

Possible successor to Roy Heroic tough guy

Poor performer

Identity three

Identity four

Villain for Forceful voice, Benjamin but divorced from previous decision-making power Victim of Villain Alex

Developing as a Villainous Vulnerable nurturing leader tough guy leader to be supported

Identity five

Identity six

–

–

Reluctant outsider

–

Weakened Tough Hero guy returns

(Johnson et al., 2003) as they not only introduce a heightened perspective of uncertainty but offer a way of understanding the dynamics of that uncertainty. Disjunctures can occur in different ways and in the narrative analysis presented above, there are examples of two key types of disjuncture. First, there is an example of seepage between front-stage and back-stage (Goffman, 1961). Front-stage interactions are those in which an actor intentionally projects a message to a particular audience. Back-stage interactions are those which can occur between actors, but which the audience is not intended to hear. For example, shop assistants may always be polite when addressing a customer front-stage, but may be less than polite about the same customer when having their coffee break together back-stage. Seepage between the back- and front-stage occurs in the narrative presented above when, for example, Alex displays his feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty to the executive team. Before this, he has discussed these feelings with one of the researchers in a private setting. This earlier discussion was back-stage in the sense that it was unobservable by the executive-team-as-audience, but it prepared him to be able to perform front-stage in his normal decisive way. However, what actually happened was that Alex treated the earlier private meeting almost as a rehearsal and took what was legitimate back-stage interaction from the private setting into front-stage action at the away day. In a sense, it was admitting weakness in order to gain strength to act. At one level this was perceived as legitimate and the executive team joined in to help Alex decide on a way forward with Benjamin. However, later, perhaps after reflection, some members of the team were critical of Alex for his lack of decisiveness at this point in the story. One reason for this later reaction could be the seepage between what should have been back-stage activity. The executive team members were forced to perceive a degree of oscillation between the expected identity: “Alex as strong”, and the unexpected identity: “Alex as weak”. In cases of strategic change where identity dynamics occur, it could be expected that considerable “identity work” (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002) would need to occur back-stage. In PN Services, the changes in organizational style entailed considerable personal identity changes and these had significant emotional impacts on those involved. The possibilities for working through such emotional identity changes in public are potentially fraught with danger. Over-emotional expression and talk could alienate others. Equally, false attributions of agency and cause may occur (e.g. transferring blame onto others) having long-lasting relationship effects. There could be disappointment and even resentment when another person fails to play the identity role that is naturally expected of them. It would be possible to work though these emotional responses back-stage such that relationships can be transformed and re-established on a new footing in which changed identities are acknowledged. Techniques such as counselling and coaching (Clutterbuck and Megginson, 2002; Kilburg, 2000) can help in this back-stage work. However, if the identity work is done in the presence of people who are providing a complimentary role-identity to oneself, emotional and interactive dysfunction could predominate. Such disturbances to the smoothness of perception may lead to fluctuations (such as approval followed by disapproval) in the conceptions applied to the character or the situation. The suggestion here is not that identity dynamics should be conducted entirely back-stage. Clearly, there is a need for interaction, engagement and mutual development over time. Rather, that intentional or unintentional seepage between what

Discourses of disrupted identities 43

JOCM 18,1

44

is best kept back-stage and what is presentable front-stage is likely to disrupt both identity dynamics and strategic change. A second type of disjuncture is where there is narrative non-conformity. This occurs where person B fails to conform to person A’s narrative of B’s place in their (A’s) personal identity narrative. This type of disjuncture does not necessarily require person A to have a conscious narrative of self in mind. Rather, the disjuncture can be with a taken-for-granted or subconscious conception of the dynamic of the self. An example is Roy’s perception of Alex. Roy’s personal identity narrative includes himself as a stalwart of the original team, a performer but also a paternalist. He regards himself as old and is planning ahead for retirement. However, he does not want his replacement to be from the same mould as himself. He wants his successor to change the business and adopt a different style. Alex starts off in the “right” mode. He is decisive, introduces a redundancy strategy, unthinkable in the old way of doing things, and Roy watches from the safe distance of the chairmanship. However, Alex starts to fail to comply with the narrative. He displays weakness and indecisiveness when he was meant to be the “tough guy” and he fails to achieve closure and neatness on important issues, e.g. Benjamin’s role on the board. Because Alex has allowed this to carry on for a further year the result is that it will be highly unlikely that everything will be resolved by the time Roy retires. Hence, Roy experiences a disjuncture between Alex – bringer of tough neatness and closure, and Alex – OK on some things, but frustrating on others. Strategic change may typically be envisaged in epic or romantic narrative forms. These entail the overcoming of adversity through the agency of the heroes, the integration of divergent perspectives and the elimination of villains and anti-heroes. Where there are dynamics of identity as well as strategic change, a layer of complexity is introduced. That is, both the context and the various subtexts are all changing and not necessarily in unison. For example, the person cast as hero may transform to anti-hero by changing their approach, or by revealing that their character does not conform to that which was expected. This can provoke a range of reactions. There may be acceptance of the new role-identity by others. There may be attempts to reform the person, for example, through the use of social sanctions to achieve conformity to role-identity expectations. Alternatively, others may recast themselves to oppose the person. For example, if the hero becomes anti-hero, others may recast themselves as heroes to defeat the (new) anti-hero. In such processes, people are engaged in “rewriting” themselves as well as rewriting the person who has broken the narrative line. Such activities are likely to trigger considerable identity work that may be productive in some circumstances, but may lead to personal and organizational dysfunction in others. The proposition here is that strategic change, when viewed as micro-strategic processes rather than successive organizational states, is highly susceptible to processes of disjunction and disruption. Whilst an ideal may be that people can make sense of strategic change through a coherent narrative that is credible for all parties, in messy, socially constructed reality, there is a high chance of actors making sense of the situation differently and impacting on each others sense-making processes. Exploring strategic change through narrative analysis provides an opportunity for research to be sensitive to the micro level dynamics that have macro level impacts. It can also add to the extant literature in highlighting processes through which disruption can occur.

An understanding of such processes is potentially useful at the practical level. If the impacts of the type of dynamics described are dismissed as “resistance to change” or the emotional reactions of individuals, then they are unlikely to be properly addressed. It is possible to drive through change without addressing them, by, for example, using coercive power to overcome “resistance”. However, where such tactics are regarded as unethical or undesirable, alternatives are needed. One alternative is to analyse the nature of identity dynamics through the narrative and work back-stage to develop new or changed role-identities which can fit with a developing organizational identity. However, if this is to accommodate plurivocality, organizational identity may need to be reconceived. Rather than seeking uniformity, it may be appropriate to seek a broader conception of identity, or “family resemblance” as Wittgenstein (1958) puts it. This would entail areas of sharedness or compatibility of purpose, without requiring singular conformity: a family has a recognisable identity without requiring all members to be the same as each other. In some organizational situations, it may be desirable and possible to develop and adopt narratives of change that are coherent, uniform and accepted by all. Alternatively, where there are subcultures, different interest groups or divergent opinions of they best way to approach the future, “family-resemblance style narratives” may be preferable. Such narratives would acknowledge natural disruptions and seek to be sufficiently open to allow alternative interpretations and differences to coexist. The greater the extent to which this was commonly accepted, the greater the extent to which back-stage identity work could be legitimately brought front-stage. Expectations and acceptance of what is allowable within the narrative then become more expansive, ultimately reducing the perception of narrative-non-conformity. Note 1. The organization that was the data source for the narrative reported here characterised itself as a town and “Town Meetings” were held. We have called the Chairman who was ceremonial head of the town “the Mayor” as a reflection of this. The CEO was referred to as a “street-fighter” by actors in the situation. The characterisation “insider-out” was not used by the actors but refers to the transition that occurs for a third key character who was originally a main contender for the CEO role but who ultimately left the organization. References Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. (2002), “Identity regulation as organizational control: producing the appropriate individual”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 39 No. 5, pp. 619-44. Ambrosini, V. and Bowman, C. (2001), “Tacit knowledge: some suggestions for operationalisation”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 38 No. 6, pp. 811-29. Balogun, J. and Johnson, G. (2004), “Organizational restructuring and middle manager sensemaking”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 523-49. Balogun, J. and Johnson, G. (2005), “For intended strategies to unintended outcomes: the impact of the change recipient”, Organization Studies (forthcoming). Barney, J.B. (1995), “Looking inside for competitive advantage”, The Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 49-61. Barry, D. and Elmes, M. (1997), “Strategy retold: toward a narrative view of strategic discourse”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 429-53.

Discourses of disrupted identities 45

JOCM 18,1

46

Boje, D. (1995), “Stories of the storytelling organization: a postmodern analysis of Disney as ‘Tamara-land’”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 997-1035. Chia, R. (1999), “A ‘rhizomic’ model of organizational change and transformation: perspective from a metaphysics of change”, British Journal of Management, Vol. 10, pp. 209-27. Clutterbuck, D. and Megginson, D. (2002), Mentoring Executives and Directors, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. Czarniawska, B. (1997), Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Dunford, R. and Jones, D. (2000), “Narrative in strategic change”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 9, pp. 1207-26. Fiol, C.M. (2002), “Capitalizing on paradox: the role of language in transforming organizational identities”, Organization Science, Vol. 13 No. 6, pp. 653-66. Ford, J.D. and Ford, L.W. (2003), “Conversations and the authoring of change”, in Holman, D. and Thorpe, R. (Eds), Management and Language, Sage, London. Goffman, E. (1961), Encounters: Two Studies of Interaction, Bobbs-Merrill, New York, NY. Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (2001), “Organizational discourse: key contributions and challenges”, International Studies of Management and Organization, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 5-23. Hardy, C. (2001), “Researching organizational discourse”, International Studies of Management and Organization, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 25-48. Hardy, C., Palmer, I. and Phillips, N. (2000), “Discourse as a strategic resource”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 9, pp. 1227-48. James, W. (1996), A Pluralistic Universe, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE. Jeffcutt, P. (1994), “The interpretation of organization: a contemporary analysis and critique”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 225-50. Johnson, G. and Huff, A. (1998), “Everyday innovation/everyday strategy”, in Hamel, G., Prahalad, C.K., Thomas, H. and O’Neal, D. (Eds), Strategic Flexibility: Managing in a Turbulent Environment, Wiley, New York, NY. Johnson, G., Melin, L. and Whittington, R. (2003), “Guest editors’ introduction: micro strategy and strategizing: towards an activity-based view”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 3-22. Kilburg, R.R. (2000), Executive Coaching: Developing Managerial Wisdom in a World of Chaos, American Psychological Association, Washington DC. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991), Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. Mintzberg, H. (1978), “Patterns in strategy formation”, Management Science, Vol. 24 No. 9, pp. 934-48. Mintzberg, H. and Waters, J.A. (1985), “Of strategies, deliberate and emergent”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 6, pp. 257-72. Mueller, F., Sillince, J., Harvey, C. and Howoth, C. (2004), “A rounded picture is what we need: rhetorical strategies, arguments and the negotiation of change in a UK hospital trust”, Organization Studies, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 75-93. Pettigrew, A. (1985), The Awakening Giant: Continuity and Change in ICI, Blackwell, Oxford. Pettigrew, A. and Whipp, R. (1991), Managing Change for Competitive Success, Blackwell, Oxford. Quinn, J.B. (1980), Strategies for Change: Logical Incrementalism, Irwin, New York, NY.

Samra-Fredricks, D. (2003), “Strategizing as lived experience and strategists’ everyday efforts to shape strategic direction”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 141-74. Silverman, D. (1993), Interpreting Qualitative Data, Sage, London. Sims, D. (2003), “Between the millstones: a narrative account of the vulnerability of middle managers’ storying”, Human Relations, Vol. 56 No. 10, pp. 1195-211. Thomas, R. and Linstead, A. (2002), “Losing the plot? Middle managers and identity”, Organization, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 71-93. Tsoukas, H. and Chia, R. (2002), “On organizational becoming: rethinking organizational change”, Organization Science, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 29-33. Whittington, R. (2004), “Strategy after modernism: recovering practice”, European Management Review, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 62-8. Wilson, D. and Jarzabowski, P. (2004), “Thinking and acting strategically: new challenges for interrogating strategy”, European Management Review, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 14-20. Wittgenstein, L. (1958), Philosophical Investigations, 2nd ed., Blackwell, Oxford. Further reading Berger, A.A. (1997), Narratives in Popular Culture, Media and Everyday Life, Sage, London. Propp, V. (1975), Morphology of the Folktale, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.

Discourses of disrupted identities 47

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

JOCM 18,1

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Discourse as strategic coping resource: managing the interface between “home” and “work”

48

Susanne Tietze Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK Abstract Purpose – To provide insight into the consequences of telework from the perspective of the teleworker and the household. The paper discusses the consequences of telework for the formulation of identities. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on empirical work, which comprises home visits to teleworkers and therefore includes observational data and interview data. The data are analysed following a particular framework, which is views discourse as a “strategic resource” and draws on the vocabulary of performativity and connectivity to investigate why some “discursive acts” take successfully while others fail. Findings – It is shown that teleworkers and their households need to engage in strategies to protect and reconfirm their respective identities. This is achieved through the enactment of regulatory as well as self-regulatory (identity) acts. Originality/value – The paper is located in the household of teleworkers and therefore, includes this less well researched perspective. The linking of the conceptual framework (strategic resource) with the location of the study in the household in order to investigate the theme “identity” is an innovative feature, which shows that (internal) self-regulatory identity acts are equally or even more important than (external) regulatory acts. Keywords Work identity, Change management, Teleworking, Individual behaviour Paper type Research paper

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 pp. 48-62 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510579841

Introduction: “anywhere, anytime” – “somewhere, sometime” Organizational boundaries, both internal and external, have become subject to change and challenge. As a consequence, new organizational patterns and forms emerge, some of which are temporally and spatially “dispersed”. Unlike bureaucratic organizations, such dispersed organizations are not based on any assumptions that (paid) work is to be conducted at pre-set times and within rigidly structured and closely monitored spaces. Rather, such “dispersal” implies a shift in expectation with regard to how, where and when work should be done ( Jackson and van der Wielen, 1998): work activity is seen as liberated from temporal and spatial boundedness. It could be argued that the flexibility associated with the rupturing of this “boundedness” will enable agents to work “anywhere, anytime” and with “anyone” (Kurland and Bailyn, 1999). The use of the prefix “any” before adverbial indicators of time, space and agency seems to denote that work activity can be situated into and conducted within a context-free, socio-cultural vacuum. Refuting this assumption, the paper suggests that any up-rooting of work does not propel it into context-free time and space, but necessitates its re-rooting into the concreteness of somewhere, sometime and someone – into culturally defined spaces and times and into existing social networks.

In this paper home-based telework is taken as the exemplary case to investigate how dispersed work organization requires such re-rooting to occur within the cultural space of “home” and how the whole household (not just the teleworker) has to develop and establish new forms of co-operation, co-ordination and control. In managing the home-work interface, these households have to “cope with” the arrival of paid work into a culturally different context, that of “home”. “Coping strategies” enlist and operationalize particular discursive resources, which enable individual agents to find solutions to the co-existence of previously (mostly and at least notionally) kept separate contexts, “home” and (paid) “work”. Positioned into an approach, which understands organizations as ongoing social process performed in language, telework and its consequences for the construction of identities are introduced. It is argued that households need to cope discursively with the arrival of paid work. The method section provides the background to the empirical work as well as the conceptual framework through which coping strategies are analysed in the next sections. The interactive linkages between discursive acts are established and it is explained why discursive acts succeed or fail. In the final section, the main points of the paper are briefly summarised and implications for understanding organizational change are drawn. Discourse and organizational change In this paper organizations are viewed as an ongoing social process, which is constructed and performed in language (Doolin, 2003; Law, 1994). Language is not a representative tool, but predominantly performative, productive and formative. The centrality of language and language use in the generation and change of all forms of organization is based on the assumption that reality is socially constructed and human beings are engaged in making sense of the continuously constructed social world (Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Oswick et al., 2000). Studies on stories (Boje, 1995; Gabriel, 2000), metaphor (Morgan, 1986; Grant and Oswick, 1996) and narrative (Czarniawska, 1997; Doolin, 2003) have explored in depth the performative language processes via which human actors achieve such sense-giving in the context of contesting and conflicting conditions. In particular, the study and analysis of discourse emerged as one of the primary means of exploring organizational change (Doolin, 2003; Hardy et al., 2000; Heracleous and Barrett, 2001). Discourses are organized system of meaning, which frame and influence the way people understand their realities and act upon them (Burr, 1995). People actively engage with such discourses and in doing so, they dynamically (re)shape and develop them (Hardy et al., 2000) with a view to justify or legitimate particular actions or outcomes (Knights and Murray, 1994). Such discursive activity has to be situated in meaningful context and be recognised as such by other social actors/discourse users in order to become meaningful social action. Consequently, discourse users find themselves in complex and continually shifting networks of relationships as they shape discourse/s and discourse/s shape their actions. This “shaping” of discourse is not a neutral, rational process, rather it is informed by relationships of power and control (Grant et al., 1998; Tietze et al., 2003), because not all discourse users have equal access to the material and symbolic resources of discourse/s – some “warrant voice” (Potter and Wetherell, 1987) more easily than others (Hardy et al., 2000).

Discourse as strategic coping resource 49

JOCM 18,1

50

It follows from this brief discussion that taking a discursive-processual approach to organizations implies that in order to understand organizational change the bodies of knowledge, the practices and the language used by organizational actors needs to be investigated (Morgan and Sturdy, 2000). In this spirit, this paper follows two lines of investigation. The first one examines how the household copes discursively with the arrival of paid work. The second one examines why some discursive acts “take” while others fail or remain precarious at best. Home-based teleworking In recent years teleworking, which literally means working at a distance, has spread and has increasingly become subject to commentary and investigation (Dwelly and Bennion, 2003; Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Tremblay, 2002). It is sometimes viewed – and problematised – as providing opportunity to resolve business problems such as reducing (estate) costs, ensuring motivation and commitment of core staff and delivering overall organizational flexibility, if managed and co-ordinated appropriately (Davenport and Pearlson, 1998; Harris, 2003). Such drives to achieve flexibility are not exclusively driven by management fiat or business imperatives, but individual employees increasingly request flexible work packages in order to better organize and manage the various demands and responsibilities of their overall lives (Bailey and Kurland, 2002). Home-based telework in particular has gained prominence in the vocabulary and practices of management and forms part of the public debate on work/life or work/home balance (Dwelly and Bennion, 2003; Felstead et al., 2002). Some progress has been made in identifying and understanding the spread, depth and patterns of “working from home” practices, their incidence and range in relation to local labour markets (Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Felstead et al., 2001; Papalexandris and Kramar, 1999; Phizacklea and Wolkowitz, 1995; Tremblay, 2002), and recent studies have turned to exploring the impact of working from home on processes of gendering (Sullivan and Lewis, 2001), problematising the construction of work and the household (Brocklehurst, 2001; Felstead and Jewson, 2000), the temporal composition of paid and unpaid work (Tietze and Musson, 2002), issues of surveillance (Fairweather, 1999) and infiltration of the household with images and practices of work (Hochschild, 1997). However, empirically informed studies situated directly in the household and thus incorporating the “[social] other” (Brocklehurst, 2001) are still few and far between (see Bailey and Kurland (2002), for analysis of status quo of research on telework). In this regard the location of this study in the household adds some insight into the consequences of organizational change from the point of view of a frequently excluded group of “stakeholders”. Home-based telework and the construction of identity Human beings have to work at their identity continuously in order to be able to express who they are, what they do, where they come from and where they are heading to in their social worlds (Gergen, 1991). Identity formation is bound to context – to specific situations defined by time and space (Adam, 1995; Baldry, 1999; Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Shome, 2003; Tietze and Musson, 2002). It provides trajectories for how one should act, think and even feel in the creation and expression of (professional) identities. The dispersed work organization has severely dented the spatial and temporal context of identity formulation. Whereas in traditional work organizations

(as geographically and chronologically separate from the home) questions of identity were easier to address. Theoretically at least [1] it was possible to be “an employee”, “a manager”, “a colleague”, “a professional” associated with a particular identity at particular places (“the office”, “the factory floor”, “the canteen”) at particular times (mainly from 9 am to 5 pm), while one could be “a parent”, “partner/spouse”, “friend/neighbour” outside the temporal/spatial map of paid work. Tietze and Musson (2002) show that homeworkers could not “but engage in identity work, but that the realisation of unbroken life projects remain[ed] precarious, indeed”. Similarly, Fairweather (1999, pp. 114-119, 120-142) argue that the most powerful sources of meaning and identity are “work” and “home” and that in and through home-based telework their respective values, ideas and roles collide, forcing the teleworker (and the household) to become “entrepreneurs of the self” (Felstead and Jewson, 2000, p. 115). Such entrepreneurialism requires changing the network of relational identities which, in turn, necessitates both teleworker and household to “cope with” such change in the existing household matrix. In Western industrialised societies, a major source of defining who we are, what we do and where we are headed in the weaving of narrative self-definition is our occupational identity (Whitehead and Dent, 2001), the central, distinctive and discursive activities that typify our line of work and relate to the context of that work (Watson, 2002). Such “relating” implies the presence of other social actors, whose acceptance or indeed rejection of (emergent) identities play a crucial part in the establishment of identities. This understanding of identities as “relational” (Gergen, 1991, 1994; Watson and Harris, 1999) emphasises the ongoing (discursive) interchange between actors to the extent that social life is seen as a network of reciprocating, conflicting and resisting “other” identities. For the home-located teleworkers the relational network changes in so far as household members take on a more prominent role in affirming (or contesting) their professional identities. Therefore, teleworkers have to “work hard” at establishing their occupational identities. They do so by drawing on discourses available to them. These take the form of codes, enacted scripts and symbolic behaviour to enact and protect their professional identities (Nippert-Eng, 1996; Pratt and Rafaeli, 1997; Rafaeili and Pratt, 1993) vis-a`-vis the agents of the household (which include themselves). Such acts of identity then take both material (wearing of particular clothes) and symbolic form (the cultural meaning associated with such clothes). Coping with home-based telework The arrival of paid work at home, then, directly concern the construction and renegotiation of identities. This is not to say that such teleworking households begin to engage in deeply philosophical discussion, in which they address the complexities and vicissitudes of their lives. Rather, it is acknowledged in the literature that the teleworkers and their households have to “cope with” the coinciding of (paid) “work” and “home” and that they do so by finding practical solutions to the “problems” arising from the arrival of paid work (Tietze et al., 2002). These practical solutions are acknowledged and captured by the term “coping strategy” and comprise a gamut of actions, ranging from the deployment of artefacts, symbolic management, dress codes, routines and culturally codifiable conducts or scripts. They comprise a continuum ranging from integration to segmentation or separation strategies

Discourse as strategic coping resource 51

JOCM 18,1

52

(Campbell-Clark, 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996; Standen, 2000). In other words, teleworkers and families have to find designated spaces and times in which paid work activity can be pursued. Practically, this implies changing a particular space, which might previously have been a private place, a guest room, in such ways that it becomes recognisable to teleworkers and the members of their households as a work place, e.g. an office; changing a particular time (a block of time or particular blocks of time) to become recognisable as work time (by introducing “office hours” into the household). In doing so the (cultural) boundaries around what constitutes “work” and what constitutes “home” are redrawn (Felstead and Jewson, 2000). Coping strategies, then, are enacted discursively in that actors draw on available cultural scripts and repositories of meaning to actively construct a new network of relationships. Methods I undertook two studies into the experience of home-based telework. A pilot study (conducted from 1999 to 2000), comprising ten households, was followed by a conceptually and empirically expanded study (from 2000 to 2002) of a further 25 teleworking households. Initially, I was interested in understanding the mere practicalities of home-based telework from the perspective of the individual teleworker and their households. The second study retained this interest, but focused more clearly on the themes discussed in this paper (how do actors cope discursively; why do some discursive acts take while others fail). These studies, then, were meant to be explorative in character rather than representative of wider patterns, trends or instances of home-based telework. The analytic method comprised the interpretation of findings in the light of a particular conceptual framework. It is acknowledged that different approaches and different interpretations are possible, so no claims to represent any universal truths are being made. Nevertheless, the study systematically investigates its areas of interest and offers insights into an emergent form of (work) organization (Yanow, 2000). Teleworkers were visited in their homes. These visits included “a tour of the house”, an interview with them and the possibility to at least talk to other members of the household. These teleworkers were diverse in industrial, sectoral or functional background, degrees of seniority and career development, but they were all in a long-term employment relationship with one employer and had been (voluntarily) working from home for some time, though for no longer than 16 months, so that the experience of having to deal with its implications were still accessible in their minds. While some teleworked regularly (one and a half to three days a week), others did so more sporadically but for longer periods. All the teleworkers can be described as management professionals, who had a business/management education to degree level and who had established successful careers in the middle layers of their respective organizations. As such they were involved in high discretion work and self-directed in the pursuit and conduct of their activities. Thus, their common denominator was the particular intellectual and emotional dispositions they had to develop as part of the professionalisation and socialisation into “management”. These acted as internal control devices, which the teleworkers drew on to exercise self-discipline (Seron and Ferris, 1995; Watson and Harris, 1999). Of the teleworkers 13 were male, 12 were female [2]. Their age spanned from 33 to 48 years; 18 were married or cohabited, four in long-term relationships, three were single. 20 had children, while two of the single

teleworkers had children from previous relationships. Of those 18 cohabiting/married households, nine had only one breadwinner (there was only one female breadwinner), and the remaining nine were dual career households, with our main contact being defined by the family as the “breadwinner”. Conceptual frameworks Coping strategies are described and analysed by employing the conceptual approach developed by Hardy et al. (2000). They understand discourse/s as producing and being produced by concepts, objects and subject positions – relationships that constitute social reality. Using discourse as a strategic resource means that individuals engage in discursive activity to intervene in these relationships – and thereby change the social world. The contexts of such organizing are seen as sites of struggle for meaning produced by competing groups. Applying their terminology and concepts sheds light on the dynamics and context within which concepts, objects and subject positions were negotiated and changed in the visited households. This framework also provides the possibility to explain why some changes were successful, while others remained failed or remained tentative. Also, their stance on discourse and discursive activity is in line with the theoretical position outlined earlier in the paper. By capturing the voice and position of the whole household, “dialogical insights” (Hardy et al., 2000, p. 1244) are provided regarding how discursive activities are performed and why they succeed or fail to connect. The chosen examples are taken from an incident observed during a visit. They are only seemingly mundane. Employing the conceptual framework shows that they constitute and are constitutive of the very (coping) strategies which shape and inform the “everyday” of those households. Concepts The concepts are categories, relationships and theories through which one understands the world and is able to relate to each. The categories “work” (and associated roles, values, behaviours, temporalities and places) and “home” (and its respective associations) are, despite having become dented and more fluid, still fundamental moral and practical ordering mechanisms that enable human actors to take on specific roles, enact scripts and consequently to built and maintain relationships with other actors. Objects Using categories implies constituting objects. Even an innocuous object such as a table signifies within the concept of “home” an object which the family uses to share meals. In the conceptual realm of “work” the object’s meaning could change to “desk”, where the filing, computing and conceptual tasks of paid work occur. It is possible that the two conceptualisations clash in that the table is required for both “work” and “home” and struggle over usage have to be addressed, therefore “coping” has to be achieved. Subject positions Individuals speak within particular discourse/s and this implies that they have to take on particular subject positions. In the context of home-based telework, teleworkers might speak as “manager” who has to claim the “table” as his/her desk (object),

Discourse as strategic coping resource 53

JOCM 18,1

because s/he is “at work” (concept). Other members of the household, children for example, might protest, because they usually do their homework at the table at particular times. This struggle – and whose position warrants louder voice – are struggles of power in the context of “working from home”. The three areas are mutually informative and interactive and connected as in three circuits.

54 The circuit of activity The circuit of activity are the discursive statements individuals make to manage meaning in line with their intents; including the creation and dissemination of texts, symbols, narratives and metaphors. These have to be related to particular concepts to create certain objects. A child puts school books and writing utensils onto the object (the table). This constitutes a material as well as a symbolic act which claims time and space, legitimised within the context of “school/learning”. The circuit of performativity The evoked concepts need to be meaningful for those individuals they are aimed at. This is to say the enunciator must warrant voice and the employed discursive resources must possess receptivity. The particular act of putting books on the table must communicate to other household members: I am doing my homework. I am now a learner, entitled to use this time and space for my project. The circuit of connectivity If activity and performativity tie, connectivity occurs in that discursive statements “take” as objects are created and/or changed, subject positions emerge and relate to each other in new ways. Activity and performativy have to accumulate over time in order to influence the context of future discursive activity. The table is used repeatedly in particular veins and becomes material and symbolic part of the established “coping strategy”. Within the newly formed relationships teleworker and child might accept each other’s voice and find a coping strategy that accommodates them both. Alternatively, the teleworker might warrant stronger voice and remove the books of the child. In either case concepts, objects and subject positions are evoked and changed. Acting and coping discursively Examples were taken from the research study to illustrate some of the “practical solutions” developed by teleworking households. This is followed by discussing these examples in the light of the mutually implicated concept, object and subject position and the changes they affected. The discussion focuses on circuits of activity, performativity and connectivity and addresses why some discursive acts succeed while others fail. Concepts, objects and subject positions In home-based telework culturally informed concepts of “work” and “home” meet. Examples provide an insight into the tension and processes on how tension was resolved. These are the symbolic resources used by families to regulate accessibility to agents, spaces and times. All teleworkers reported difficulties in adjusting to working from home. These difficulties did not so much refer to technical or task-related

problems, nor to issues of boredom, isolation or surveillance, but addressed questions of their identity. They found it harder to establish “who they were”, “felt in-between”, or not quite sure of “whether I am supposed to be a father or a manager first and foremost” [when working from home]. One family implemented a traffic light system, which consisted of a traffic light made of cardboard and with removable red, yellow and green patches, positioned on the “office door”. The office used to be a multiple-purpose room, accommodating the occasional overnight guest/s, in which family members played – the children of four and six had a scalextric system – or worked domestically (sewing, ironing). The meaning of the colour coding was clear: red for “no access under no circumstances for anyone”; orange for “if something happens I can be interrupted, but not by the kids”; green for “it’s ok to interrupt. I am probably just about to finish work”. Other households employed variations of this system (a red flag/white flag system; “closed” or “open” signs; signs indicating “office hours” or simply stating “go away”; but also the use of internal telephone lines for work calls or practices including “knocking at the door” to check on availability). In a similar vein dress codes and particular routines were drawn on to orchestrate the flows of “the household” and of “work”. Dress codes ranged from suit, white shirt and tie to a more relaxed “dressing at ease”, though none of the teleworkers dressed completed as “in leisure and home”. However, all teleworkers used dress codes and in some cases routines of hygiene to signal to other household members their current involvement with (paid) work and their consequent (non)availability. Interestingly, for men the wearing of a tie was the most important piece of clothing they used to communicate this to the household (mainly the tie was worn, but it was also hung around the door handle to indicate non-availability). For women the role of lipsticks (sometimes differently colours for “work” or “home”), jewellery (in particular ear rings) and “having presentable hands” performed communicative acts intended for other household members. Furthermore, they were also self-regulatory acts, inciting and sustaining self-discipline and self-image. These are then the very acts of identity, taking the form of acts of self-explanation and self-regulation. Particular grooming routines such as showering in the morning, putting on make-up, combing hair, using perfume/aftershave, were part of preparing for paid work routines, which most teleworkers continued to adhere to. Indeed, for some teleworkers these activities became extended and took on a more profound significance. Other than such non-verbal acts, the households had developed symbolically loaded catchphrases to manage the “work/home” interface. For example, in one household the teleworker was in the initially stages of working from home so beleaguered by domestic requests that she exclaimed: “pretend I am not here!” This had been established as a family catchphrase, which was used by the other family members whenever they wanted to avoid involvement in certain activities. Similarly, one teleworker had sent her friend away, who had called unannounced for a cup of tea, with the words: “come back at seven!” She also began to use this phrase quite regularly as a means to indicate her non-availability. A variation on this linguistic behaviour is the usage of professional scripts, in that one teleworkers described his engagement with in particular children when “at work” as potentially difficult and conflict-prone. He reverted to “treating the children” [when working from home] “professionally, courteously, but briefly”. This was echoed in other households. For example, one

Discourse as strategic coping resource 55

JOCM 18,1

56

teleworker addressed her family as half-jokingly as “colleagues” whenever she wanted their attention. Commentary and discussion In this section the above described discursive acts are discussed within the conceptual framework developed by Hardy et al. (2000). A distinction is drawn between regulatory and self-regulatory acts. It is demonstrated why and how their enactment is problematic and precarious. Concepts, objects, subject positions In the previous section discursive acts were described. They were enunciated by discourse users in their attempts to achieve their particular goals. In acting discursively a new environment is created, because in transforming spatial and temporal boundaries the social world of the household is reshaped: rooms change their meaning; times change their pattern and rhythm, identities emerge. The primary initiators of such change are the teleworkers themselves, who take their subject position within the conceptual context of paid work. This bestows upon them a considerable amount of authority: they “warrant voice”, so that changes which suit their purposes and projects can be implemented. Furthermore, these subject positions also provide a legitimising source, because acts of claiming space and time were not so much seen as capricious whims, but as necessary and rightful actions in the pursuit of providing for the family. Thus, discursive acts of putting signs on doors, wearing particular clothing and following particular grooming activities are enactment strategies, employed to “cope with” the “collision of” (Felstead and Jewson, 2000, p. 115) two different conceptual worlds. Discourses, however, are not monolithical objects, but multi-authored process, they are dialogical in nature. They intermingle with each other, and vie for power and control (Grant et al., 1998; Tietze et al., 2003). Therefore, the conceptual context of the household, based on different spatial/temporal orders and different moral rationalities (Nippert-Eng, 1996) is not the passive recipient of discursive acts enunciated from subject positions taken within the conceptual context of paid work. In the interviews it became clear that there was no univocal acceptance of those discursive acts. Children, partners and spouses made their voices heard by reclaiming some of the spaces and times occupied by paid work and refuted the “industrial overtones” (Hochschild, 1997, p. 41) of the household. The older child undermined the “traffic light system” by hiding the coloured patches or changing their order, thus protesting against having been created as “intruders” or “visitors”. A spouse started to use the catchphrase “come back at seven” whenever he did not want to engage with his teleworking wife and support her in her work tasks. A teenage boy addressed his parents increasingly as “colleagues” in discussions about his rights and responsibilities in the household, thus attempting to create a more equal playing field between himself and his parents. In other words, the introduction and implementation of discursive acts changed the symbolic and material aspects of the household and in doing so, it also changed social relationships within it: new objects and new subject positions were created. Children, who were addressed as “colleagues” or treated “professionally” are perceived and treated in line with the conceptual world of paid work. This, in turn, affects their position as both subject and object in particular discourses. As active discourse users

they will utilise those aspects of their new position, which enable them to pursue their own interests and plans. Thus, discursive activity introduced into the household did indeed change its spatial/temporal map as well as the subject positions of all its members. Such change became visible in the organization of boundaries around spaces and times and in identity acts employed by teleworkers. These performed acts are part of the very dialogue between paid work and home in that meaning flowed between their respective agents, who appropriated, contested and changed meaning in such material and symbolic exchanges. Gergen’s (1991, 1994) notion of “relational identities” is helpful to appreciate the precariousness of interdependent identities, which are based on ongoing exchange (of material and symbolic resources), which are frequently contested, and which can never be affirmed “totally” and “definitely”. Many of the acts were used as a “regulatory device” to communicate across the work-home boundary or interface (Campbell-Clark, 2000; Standen, 2000). Such acts told household members when access to the teleworker was available. Other than communicative/regulatory purpose, they also fulfilled a second important function related to the sense of self or the identity of teleworkers. In this regard they are “self-regulatory” acts: catapulted out off the cultural context of paid work, which traditionally told them “who they were”, “what they were about” and “how to relate to others”, teleworkers found it sometimes difficult to maintain a sense of their occupational/professional identities (Watson and Harris, 1999; Whitehead and Dent, 2001) within the different cultural context. The establishment of boundaries through discursive acts then also served to reaffirm and establish their identities as dedicated and committed professionals. However, the absence of other social actors associated with traditional work places and times (work colleagues, secretarial/clerical staff, office mates) made it harder for the teleworkers to maintain their occupational identities. The relocation of paid work into a culturally different context and its network of relationships (family, friends, neighbours, but also builders, postmen, gardeners) interrupted the weaving of a narrative self-definition and posed challenge to their identity. In coping with this situation, teleworkers acted discursively in two ways. First, they enacted (new) boundaries and thus they redefined the spatial/temporal map of the household. Second, they worked hard at enacting their identities and (re)rooting their professional selves into the conceptual world of the household. The use of clothes, accessories and grooming activities were enlisted for social others as much as for themselves to tell them “who they were”, “where they were going” and “how they were to act”: “[Teleworkers] must judge in what ways and to what extent they will draw lines between relations of production and social reproduction in their lives. They must invent a landscape for themselves, with few cues or support from elsewhere.” (Felstead and Jewson, 2000, p. 115; Tietze and Musson, 2002). Circuits of activity, performativity and connectivity The description, explanation and interpretation of discursive activity needs to be expanded to include why some acts “take”, while others seem to require constant attention, reaffirmation and perseverance. Circuit of activity Discursive statements, both verbal and non-verbal, have been described. Individuals use them to manage meaning in line with their intents. In using them, particular

Discourse as strategic coping resource 57

JOCM 18,1

58

concepts (paid work or the household) are evoked. Regulatory activity was used to manage the “traffic of relationships” between the two conceptual worlds. The regulation of time and space through material and symbolic referents created a new object, a new or least partially changed temporal/spatial map of the household. Second, there are self-regulatory acts, comprising discursive activity at the service of maintaining and protecting the identities of teleworkers. Through home-based location these identities have been re-contextualised, which made them less stable and predictable. Discursive statements deriving from the conceptual world of work are enlisted to protect such precarious identities. Circuit of performativity Discursive activity needs to be meaningful for those individuals at which they are aimed at. For such directive activity to occur enunciators must be able to “warrant voice” and their activity must resonate with other actors. Overall, the activities used by teleworking enunciators were successful in pursuing their goals for two reasons. First, they used systems, which resonated well enough with household members to achieve regulatory effect. The traffic light system, for example, is taken from a familiar general meaning system, which household members knew and accepted. Second, the teleworkers’ subject positions are embedded in the wider context of paid work, which is viewed as a priori necessity for the existence and survival of the household. As such teleworkers “warrant voice” and carry a mandate to speak and act. However, despite such a powerful position, problems occurred within the circuit of performativity, because household members resisted and challenged the discursive acts. In a similar vein, self-regulatory acts were problematic in their performative value. The teleworkers’ subject position were simultaneously informed by the conceptual worlds of “work” and “home” – they were embedded in partly conflicting and contradictory worlds (Felstead and Jewson, 2000). Such in-betweeness implies that teleworkers have to warrant voice to establish their work or professional identities at the expense of their domestic and private ones. The dilemma is ultimately irresolvable and was reflected in continuous and permanent identity work. Teleworkers extended considerable energy and emotional effort to cope with the extended states of flux. Circuits of connectivity The final circuit is created when new discursive statements “take”. They became successfully rooted as new routines and practices. Thus new subject positions and practices emerge and provide trajectory for the future shaping of concepts, objects and subjects. While in some households – more so in households with children – such operations encountered resistance and hindrance, overall teleworkers warranted voice loudly and legitimately in the eyes of others, so that new boundaries were established, subject positions and new objects created or partially transformed. The regulatory acts “took”, since the teleworkers could strategically intervene in the construction of their social worlds: “to move specific statements from rhetoric to practice” (Hardy et al., 2000, p. 1244). In contrast, the self-regulatory acts did not “take” so easily. Suspended between two different conceptual worlds teleworkers had to continuously persuade themselves that

they were “at work”. Teleworkers had to protect their sense of self as tied into their professional identities; they did so in equivocal circumstances and by enlisting particular symbolic and material referents. While these acts “took” often in the eyes of the other household members, they did not “take” as frequently in the eyes of the teleworkers themselves, who found it difficult to cope with the paradoxical position to be both subject and object of their own “warranting voice”. Yet such self-management was precarious and dependent on the continuous exercise of self-discipline. Thus, the regulatory challenge had turned inward-bound (Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Tietze and Musson, 2002) onto themselves. Conclusion Taking issue with the notion that work can be conducted “anywhere, anytime and with anyone”, the article explored the consequences of anchoring paid work activity into the conceptually different world of “the home”. Based on an understanding of organizations as ongoing social process, an empirical study into the experience of home-based telework was used to shed light on how change was enacted discursively and why some such acts succeeded (or failed) in providing trajectories for meaningful social action. Building on the distinction between acts of regulation (directed toward social others) and acts of self-regulation (directed toward the self), it was shown that the self-regulatory acts were more difficult to establish, because of the continuous suspension of the teleworker between “home” and “work”. Such suspension necessitated the (re)negotiation of interdependent identities before new practices and routines could be established. The “dispersed” work organization has indeed burst its traditional boundaries and in doing so loosened existing networks of identities, practices and patterns. Within the context of this study, there are several implications for the “organizational change” agenda. First, it has to become more inclusive of a larger variety of “stakeholders”; family members, friends and neighbours are directly effected by the arrival of paid work. The study of organizational change also should expand to explore the niches and nooks of places and times outside the formal organizational boundaries. If the management of organizational change has to concern itself with a much more diverse range of stakeholders, practical and ethical questions arise on “where to draw the boundaries?” Second, organizational change affects the construction of (professional) identities, which are controlled “from the inside”. Here, the management of organizational change needs to “turn away” from its fascination with big strategy and “turn inside” to consider the meaning individuals attach to their work, their homes, their selves. Last, but not least, in focusing on the role of the framing power of discourse, individuals might be enabled to make more informed choices with respect to practices they wish to take up or to reject. To conclude, home-based telework symbolises contemporary dilemmas, caused by and expressive of organizational and social change. At the core of such change are questions of identity and ethical considerations concerning the organization of our life worlds, those of work, those of home and the evolving spaces and times “in-between”. Notes 1. It is acknowledged that the separation of “work” and “home” was never a complete and absolute one. Indeed, Perin (1998) points to the “myth of discontinuation”. However,

Discourse as strategic coping resource 59

JOCM 18,1

60

concurring with Felstead and Jewson (2000) this articles takes the view that “home” and “work” continue to be important and different sources of identity formation. The concrete arrival of paid work into the home, therefore, creates a force field of tension, which actors need to cope with discursively. 2. Respondents, whether male or female, exercised self-discipline in coping with the meeting of “home” and “work”. For the research themes of this paper, gender issues did not make a far-reaching difference in how coping was achieved. Findings did bear out established knowledge that women tend to be more poly-chronic in organizing time and space. However, this orientation was only moderate, rather than drastic. The interested reader is referred to Bryant (2000) and Sullivan and Lewis (2001) for discussion of homebased telework and gender. References Adam, B. (1995), Timewatch, Polity Press, Cambridge. Bailey, D.E. and Kurland, N.B. (2002), “A review of telework research: findings, new directions, and lessons for the study of modern work”, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Vol. 23, pp. 383-400. Baldry, C. (1999), “Space – the final frontier”, Sociology, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 535-53. Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1966), The Social Construction of Reality, Penguin Books, London. Boje, D. (1995), “Stories of the storytelling organization: a postmodern analysis of Disney as Tamar-Land”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 997-1035. Brocklehurst, M. (2001), “Power, identity and new technology homework: implications for new forms of organizing”, Organization Studies, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 445-66. Bryant, S. (2000), “At home on the electronic frontier: work, gender and the information highway”, New Technology, Work and Employment, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 19-33. Burr, V. (1995), An Introduction to Social Constructionism, Routledge, London. Campbell-Clark, S. (2000), “Work/family border theory: a new theory of work/family balance”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 6, pp. 747-70. Czarniawska, B. (1997), Narrating the Organization, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Davenport, T.H. and Pearlson, K. (1998), “Two cheers for the virtual office”, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 39 No. 6, pp. 51-65. Doolin, B. (2003), “Narratives of change: discourse, technology and organization”, Organization, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 751-70. Dwelly, T. and Bennion, Y. (2003), Time to Go Home: Embracing the Homegrowing Revolution, The Work Foundation, London. Fairweather, B. (1999), “Surveillance in employment: the case of teleworking”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 39-49. Felstead, A. and Jewson, N. (2000), In Work at Home: Toward and Understanding of Homeworking, Routledge, London. Felstead, A., Jewson, N., Phizacklea, A. and Walters, S. (2001), “Working at home: statistical evidence for seven key hypotheses”, Work, Employment and Society, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 215-31. Felstead, A., Jewson, N., Phizacklea, A. and Walter, S. (2002), “Opportunities to work at home in the context of work-life balance”, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 54-76. Gabriel, Y. (2000), Storytelling in Organizations, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Gergen, K. (1991), An Invitation to Social Construction, Sage, London. Gergen, K. (1994), Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Grant, D. and Oswick, C. (Eds) (1996), Metaphor and Organization, Sage, London.

Discourse as strategic coping resource

Grant, D., Kennoy, T. and Oswick, C. (Eds) (1998), Discourse and Organization, Sage, London. Hardy, C., Palmer, I. and Phillips, N. (2000), “Discourse as strategic resource”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 9, pp. 1227-48. Harris, L. (2003), “Home-based telework and the employment relationship: managerial challenges and dilemmas”, Personnel Review, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 405-21. Heracleous, L. and Barrett, M. (2001), “Organizational change as discourse”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44 No. 4, pp. 755-78. Hochschild, A. (1997), The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work, Metropolitan Books, New York, NY. Jackson, P. and van der Wielen, J.M. (Eds) (1998), Teleworking: International Perspective: From Telecommuting to the Virtual Organisation, Routledge, London. Knights, D. and Murray, F. (1994), Managers Divided: Organization Politics and IT Management, Wiley, Chichester. Kurland, N. and Bailyn, L. (1999), “Telework: the advantages and challenges of working here, there, anywhere and anytime”, Organizational Dynamics, pp. 53-68. Law, J. (1994), Organizing Modernity, Blackwell, Oxford. Morgan, G. (1986), Images of Organizations, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA. Morgan, G. and Sturdy, A. (2000), Beyond Organisational Change: Structure Discourse and Power in UK Financial Services, Macmillan, London. Nippert-Eng, C. (1996), Home and Work, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Oswick, C., Keenoy, T. and Grant, D. (2000), “Discourse, organizations and organizing: concepts, objects and subjects”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 9, pp. 115-23. Papalexandris, N. and Kramar, R. (1999), “Flexible working patterns: towards reconciliation of family and work”, Employee Relations, Vol. 19 No. 6, pp. 581-95. Perin, C. (1998), “Work, space and time on the threshold of a new century”, in Jackson, P. and van der Wielen, J.M. (Eds), Teleworking: International Perspective: From Telecommuting to the Virtual Organisation, Routledge, London, pp. 40-55. Phizacklea, A. and Wolkowitz, C. (1995), Homeworking Women: Gender Ethnicity and Class at Work, Sage, London. Potter, J. and Wetherell, M. (1987), Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour, Sage, London. Pratt, M. and Rafaeli, A. (1997), “Organizational dress as a symbol of multilayered social identities”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 40 No. 4, pp. 862-98. Rafaeili, A. and Pratt, M. (1993), “Tailored meanings: on the meaning and impact of organizational dress”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 1-32. Seron, C. and Ferris, K. (1995), “Negotiating professionalism: the gendered social capital of flexible time”, Work and Occupations, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 22-47. Shome, R. (2003), “Space matters: the power and practice of space”, Communication Theory, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 39-56.

61

JOCM 18,1

62

Standen, P. (2000), “The home/work interface”, in Daniels, K., Lamond, D.A. and Standen, P. (Eds), Managing Telework: Perspectives from Human Resource Management and Work Psychology, Thomson Learning, London, pp. 83-92. Sullivan, C. and Lewis, S. (2001), “Home-based telework, gender and the synchronization of work and family: perspectives of teleworkers’ and their co-residents”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 123-45. Tietze, S. and Musson, G. (2002), “When ‘work’ meets ‘home’: temporal flexibility as lived experience”, Time & Society, Vol. 11 No. 2/3, pp. 315-34. Tietze, S., Cohen, L. and Musson, G. (2003), Understanding Organization through Language, Sage, London. Tietze, S., Harris, L. and Musson, G. (2002), “When work comes home: coping strategies of teleworkers and their families”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 41 No. 4, pp. 385-96. Tremblay, D.G. (2002), “Balancing work and family with telework? Organizational issues and challenges for women and managers”, Women in Management Review, Vol. 17 No. 3/4, pp. 157-70. Watson, T.J. (2002), “Speaking professionally – occupational anxiety and discursive ingenuity among human resource specialists”, in Whitehead, S. and Dent, M. (Eds), Managing Professional Identities, Routledge, London, pp. 99-115. Watson, T.J. and Harris, P. (1999), The Emergent Manager, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Whitehead, S. and Dent, M. (2001), Managing Professional Identities, Routledge, London. Yanow, D. (2000), Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis, Sage, London. Further reading Sennett, R. (1998), The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, Norton and Company, London. Steward, B. (2000), “Changing times: the meaning, measurement and use of time in teleworking”, Time & Society, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 57-74.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

“What you’ll say is . . . ”: represented voice in organizational change discourse Donald L. Anderson

Represented voice in organizational change 63

University College, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA Abstract Purpose – Following Bakhtin, organizational discourse scholars have examined ways in which organizational actors draw on and negotiate historical texts, weave them with contemporary ones, and transform them into future discourses. This paper examines how this practice occurs discursively as members in a high-tech corporation conduct an organizational change. Design/methodology/approach – This paper interprets discourse excerpts from meetings of a project team in the western US. Through participant-observation and discourse analytic methods, the data gathered consists of field notes, over 33 hours’ worth of team meeting conversation and five hours of interview data. Findings – Through the use of represented voice, organizational members work out how an action or practice has sounded in the past as spoken by another member, and they articulate how proposed organizational changes might sound in the future. By making these inferences, members are able to discursively translate between a single situated utterance and organizational practices. Practical implications – The analysis suggests that organizational change occurs when people temporarily stabilize the organization through the voicing of current practices (as references to what “usually happens” via what is “usually said”) and new practices (as references to what might be said in the future). It is when these practices are solidified and made real through these translations between identity, voice, and organizational practices that members are able to draw comparisons and transformations between “past” and “future” language, and thereby experience and achieve organizational change. Originality/value – The paper furthers our knowledge of how organizational members discursively negotiate meanings during the process of organizational change through a specific discourse pattern. Keywords Organizational change, Narratives Paper type Research paper

In the 20 years that have passed since Pettigrew’s (1985) critique of the change literature, we have seen several studies that have tried to meet his challenge to focus more attention on the processes and contexts of change. Dissatisfaction with the prescriptions and control orientation of dominant management perspectives has led many researchers to closer examinations of the structures and discourses of change, as well as a rethinking of the relationship between organization and change. By looking beyond how managers define and control change, and rejecting the notion that change is a specific phenomenon based in an objective reality, recent perspectives on organizational change propose that change is an evolving achievement, a process of sharing and constructing new meanings and interpretations of organizational activity. When we look beyond prescriptive approaches but look instead at how change is This essay is adapted from the author’s doctoral dissertation completed under the direction of Professor Karen Tracy. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 International Communication Association convention in San Diego, California.

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 pp. 63-77 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510579850

JOCM 18,1

64

constructed and formed in conversation, change becomes a process of the spreading, sharing, interpreting, adopting and rejecting of meanings and ideas (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996). This perspective has given rise to social constructionist and discourse approaches to organizational change that examine how organizational members negotiate meaning in the change process through various discursive practices and textual objects. Dominant theories of change assuming a stable organization punctuated by moments of change (Lewin’s (1951) “unfreeze-change-refreeze” model) have been soundly criticized by those who suggest that the reverse is true. Chia (1999) argues that contemporary theories of organizational change represent a “pervasive commitment to an ontology of being which privileges outcomes and end-states rather than an ontology of becoming in which movement, process and emergence are emphasized” (Chia, 1999, p. 215). Alternatively, he suggests revising the analytic attention to provide primary focus on the organizing process, not on change, because “organization” is the patterning of a continually changing reality, so “it is organization, not change, which is the exception” (Chia, 1999, p. 226). Researchers ought to direct attention to how organizational members work to develop stability during moments of change in organized and patterned fashions. Going farther, Chia (1999, p. 224) proposes that the concept of organizational change itself is an “oxymoron”. For process thinkers, however, organization is stabilizing and simple locating. The ontological act of organization is an act of arresting, stabilizing and simplifying what would otherwise be the irreducibly dynamic and complex character of lived-experience. Organization is an inherently simplifying mechanism, and the idea of “complex” organization(s) is in effect an oxymoron. . . For, organization acts to arrest and convert the otherwise wild and infrangible forces of nature into a more predictable and, hence, liveable world.

Taking this perspective seriously implies that the act of organizing is fundamentally the process of concentrating divergent and living meanings into fixed and stabilized ones. Chia (1997, p. 699) writes that the objective of organizing is to “construct legitimate objects of knowledge for a knowing subject – ‘man’, ‘notes of a musical score’, ‘factory hands’” and so on. None of these objects are ever fully static, but the object of their creation is to consider them so, as organizational discourse works to make them stable. The figure-ground relationship between organization and change is reconfigured from this perspective. Change is seen as the usual state and organizing is explained as an alternative to giving ontological priority to organization and considering change as the exceptional state (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). In this reconfiguration, the development and transformation of meaning during the change process as it happens through discourse becomes the primary focus of attention. One notable contribution to this perspective has been Morgan and Sturdy’s (2000) extensive study of organizational change in a financial institution. Morgan and Sturdy develop a social approach to change that contrasts with the dominant managerialist and political perspectives. Managerialist approaches to change seek to understand the comprehensive and universal practices that allow change to occur, often defined as stages or phases. Political approaches to change seek to understand the change process as a matter of how organizing processes work when there are competing interest groups or stakeholders. The social approach they advocate, influenced significantly by social and cultural discourse theorists, views change processes through the language, symbols, concepts and discourses that organizational

members use as they construct and transform organizational meaning. They write that the social approach to change acknowledges that “bodies of knowledge are constructed which are often transmitted and translated by organizational participants into routines and procedures which, in turn, constitute or contribute towards the construction of new or adapted knowledges and practices” (Morgan and Sturdy, 2000, pp. 18-9). The construction process that Morgan and Sturdy advocate has been seen as primarily a discursive one, or what Ford and Ford (1995, 1999, 2003) in a series of articles on the subject call an unfolding series of conversations. The job of the manager is to manage discourse in order to create and manage new concepts, meanings, and contexts for action. Looking at organizational discourse provides a site for examining how the stabilizing function of organization noted by Chia is discursively performed and historically enacted. Discourse studies inform us how members accomplish the activity of organizing through discourse, noting how members discursively construct meaning in patterned ways in their attempts at achieving organization (Oswick et al., 2000). Textualizing practices in conversation and in writing act to construct organizational narratives that solidify and strengthen particular meanings and interpretations (Anderson, 2004; Linstead, 1999; Robichaud, 1999). This means a close examination of the language used at particular occasions during the change process, which language practices are used and how they are interpreted. As Barrett et al. (1995, pp. 358-9) explain about organizational change, “crucial to understanding this process are the patterns of discourse through time as organizations achieve stability through patterns of interaction cycles and the evolution of rules for interpreting gestures and utterances”. As conversations produce new concepts and meanings, we can note the ways in which “change occurs when tensions within a community’s discourse patterns produce the beginnings of a new discourse . . . .In other words, change occurs when one way of talking replaces another way of talking” (Barrett et al., 1995, p. 370). Contributions from organizational discourse studies have shown, however, that any new discourse is not purely new and is never strictly replaced or substituted outright from earlier discourses. Instead, each new discourse draws on and transforms texts and meanings adopted previously in the organization. Historical meanings add significant constraints on the development of future meanings. Following Bakhtin, organizational discourse scholars suggest ways in which organizational members draw on and negotiate historical texts, weave them with contemporary ones, and transform them into future discourses (Deetz et al., 2004; Grant et al., 2004). Intertextual analysis has become a particular area of focus for organizational discourse as we examine how concepts and meanings become developed, transformed, fragmented and changed across multiple sites and occasions. The concept of intertextuality helps us to see the appropriation of interpretation from one situation to another, the fragmentation, development, evolution, and change of meaning as it happens through dialogue (Fairclough, 1992a, b). In this way, the current text becomes part of future contexts and texts (Keenoy and Oswick, 2004). This has political implications as some contributions are highlighted and legitimated and others are minimized and constrained. Dominant meanings become reinforced or modified; contested meanings may work themselves in to the dominant discourse patterns or may struggle to become widely adopted (van Dijk, 1993; Wodak, 1997). Intertextual analysis builds on the social constructionist

Represented voice in organizational change 65

JOCM 18,1

66

approach by recognizing that the organization consists of a variety of multiple texts that may be brought to bear on the current context. We do not know very much, however, about how organizational members negotiate these past and future meanings during the process of organizational change. How do language practices allow organizational members to work out new discourses within the context of preferred and historically rooted discourses in the organization, and thereby achieve organizational change? This attention to the discursive practices of change would demonstrate how organizational members negotiate past and future texts as they work out the adoption of new organizational practices (Keenoy and Oswick, 2004). We would see how they bring historical texts to bear on the current context and how they work out which meanings to retain, which to discard, and which to modify, for future discourses. Bakhtin elaborates on how this dialogical change works. He notes that past events and ideas are always being reinterpreted and changed through present conversations to the extent that they can never be completely closed to additional re-interpretation. He writes that “past meanings . . . born in the dialogue of past centuries” are meanings that are never completely finalized, as they “will always change (be renewed) in the process of subsequent, future development of the dialogue” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 170). Those past meanings may be forgotten but “at certain moments of the dialogue’s subsequent development along the way they are recalled and invigorated in renewed form (in a new context)” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 170). The social and historical texts of the past are brought to bear as the texts and contexts for new interactions. Bakhtin’s work shows us one possibility for how organizational members negotiate past and future meanings in his concept of double-voiced words in which speakers use quotes from other earlier speakers for their own purposes. Bakhtin (1984) distinguishes between various ways that speakers can bring the words and speech styles of other speakers into their own speech. He points out that these methods involve using direct quotes from others (intended to be heard as quotations), using indirect quotes (reporting another’s speech without a direct quote), or parody, irony, and stylization which involve the mimicking of another’s style. But what these methods all have in common is that they contain the presence of two “speech centers” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 187), or two individuals’ voices represented in a single utterance. Because two voices are involved, Bakhtin refers to these utterances as “double voiced”. But these voices are not simply repeated, they are used by the speaker for a new purpose. He writes that: Someone else’s words introduced into our own speech inevitably assume a new (our own) interpretation and become subject to our evaluation of them; that is, they become double-voiced. . . Our practical everyday speech is full of other people’s words: with some of them we completely merge our own voice, forgetting whose they are; others, which we take as authoritative, we use to reinforce our own words; still others, finally, we populate with our own aspirations, alien or hostile to them. (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 195)

In this paper I investigate how a project team uses these double-voiced quotations, or represented voice, during an attempt at organizational change. I argue that members represent prior and future voices as ways of translating between organizational practices, identities and situated utterances (voices). In doing so, organizational members consciously work out, how an action or practice has sounded in the past as spoken by another member and they articulate how proposed organizational changes might sound in the future. By making these inferences, members are able to

discursively move between a single situated utterance and organizational practices, implicating individual identity as they describe what language choices are appropriate for which roles. It is when these practices are solidified and made real through these translations between identity, voice and organizational practices that members are able to draw comparisons and transformations between “past” and “future” language and thereby experience and achieve organizational change. When research in organizational settings has examined reported speech, the traditional focus has been on the linguistic structure of the report, or how the other speech structurally fits in the utterance of the current speaker. In this regard these traditional examinations have had little to say about the organizational goals or meanings achieved by reported speech. Baynham and Slembrouck (1999), in an examination of reported speech in institutional discourse, write that early work on reported speech was primarily concerned with the degree of accuracy in the speaker’s representation of the original utterance. But examination of the functions of repeated or represented speech in organizational settings has shown that professionals mutually co-construct ways of talking and evaluating situations and ideas within a shared vocabulary (Goodwin, 1994; Linell, 1998; Sarangi, 1998). Other functions have been enumerated by Myers (1999a, b), who argues that reported speech can function to intensify events by dramatizing experience in narrative form and to support one’s position by offering evidence from a third party. Myers finds that representations from others can be hypothetical in order to explore possible future utterances or to develop counter-arguments. He also argues that reported speech can reproduce one utterance in order to serve as an example of a typical repeated pattern of many prior utterances. I argue that it is these double-voiced words that function to allow the project team to discursively translate between their understandings of organizational practices and situated utterances of members. Sometimes these repeated utterances occur as speakers representing themselves, sometimes speakers refer to utterances authored by specific organizational members and still other times the utterance is represented as authored by a general category of members (i.e. managers). But in all cases the representation has a similar function – to translate between representations of ideas about routine organizational practices, organizational members’ actions and individual utterances. It is this discursive translation practice that connects changes in organizational practices with changes in organizational discourse. Setting, method and materials This paper interprets discourse excerpts from meetings of a project team at a high-tech corporation in the western US. “Techco”, the name I give to this organization, manufactures products for use in large corporate computing environments. (The name of the organization and the names of speakers in transcripts are pseudonyms.) Just fewer than half of Techco’s employees are located at its corporate headquarters, with several thousand employees in offices around the globe, including subsidiaries in Latin America, Australia, Europe and Asia. Techco has gone through periods of significant turmoil in the past several years as revenues have stalled and new management was brought in to improve productivity and cut costs. As one of his final acts, the former company president brought in a consulting organization to study Techco and make recommendations for change. One of the

Represented voice in organizational change 67

JOCM 18,1

68

changes recommended by the consulting group was to Techco’s process for forecasting sales demand for its products. Most manufacturing organizations find significant incentives to forecast sales accurately. Building more products than customers want means excess costly inventory; building too few means that customers wait weeks or months to receive their orders and thus might decide to purchase elsewhere. The consulting group found that Techco had millions of dollars tied up in excess inventory. To remedy this problem, a project team was put together with representatives from sales, manufacturing, finance, marketing and product development. The team was given the responsibility to understand the current process and to redesign it to increase the company’s forecast accuracy. This case study represented an appropriate one for a discourse study of organizational change, since all members all represented defined elements of the process and members had the explicit goal and objective to achieve an organizational change. I studied Techco as a participant-observer for one year, from October 2000 to 2001. With the approval of Techco management, my university’s institutional review board and the project manager, I studied this forecasting team from its first meeting. For 4 months the team met at least weekly. Meetings varied in length from 1 h to a full day but averaged 2 h, and the team granted me permission to audiotape every team meeting. In addition, I interviewed five of the core team members individually in semi-structured formal interviews (each lasting approximately 60 min) and I audio-taped these interviews as well. In all, I gathered over 33 h worth of team meeting conversation and 5 h of interview data. I transcribed each of the audiotapes at a moderate level, including pauses and overlapping speech but not intonation or volume for a total of almost 300 single-spaced pages of transcript data. Data analysis generally proceeded in the manner prescribed by grounded theory (Charmaz, 2000; Glaser and Strauss, 1967), involving sorting transcript excerpts containing representations of the past and future in discourse, re-sorting, and verifying categories. Excerpts used in the paper come substantially from two of the most important team meetings, one in which participants spent time understand the current forecasting process and a second near the end of the project in which they were most concerned with generating ideas for how the new process would work. In these two meetings participants concentrated on the current (and past) process and the new (future) process. The themes developed in the next sections emerged as patterned ways that the team represented voices during project team meetings, with two functions: to represent routine practices of the past and to demonstrate potential future voices of a proposed practice.

Representations of voice in the team’s change discussions Represented voices demonstrate routinized practices This first use of represented voices consisted of quotations from organizational members from prior occasions. These prior utterances were brought into the current discussion as the routinization of previous conversations, through the voices of both named and categorical organizational members. An organizational practice was summarized and represented as the usual course of business by using a quote from another organizational member.

Voice of named person After several meetings of evaluating the problems with the current forecasting process and benchmarking other organizations’ processes, the project manager, Kevin Norris, scheduled a full-day meeting of the project team about two months into the project to allow the team to debate a new process. In this meeting the team sorted through each department’s needs from the forecast itself, and then moved from this discussion to decide how the new process should be structured to meet the needs of each department. A question occurred in this meeting, however, about how the current process worked. A member suggested that Larry, an employee in the Finance department, typically used the forecast from the field sales group as the starting point for any forecast. Other members questioned Larry: Excerpt 1 (tape 8, 1034 [?]: 1035 Larry: 1036 Tom: 1037 Larry: 1038 1039 1040 1041 1042 1043 [?]: 1044 1045 Larry: 1046 1047 1048 1049 Jackie:

lines 1034-1049) You’re not, Larry, are you, you’re not really doing that? Yeah. Absolutely. When we do our [product group] meeting, you know the sheet that puts America’s forecast, remember? I go around the room “okay Americas what’s your best guess, Europe what’s yours?” We add ‘em up, I got product marketing in there I got Dave in there I got Jeff Medeiros in there, I got Evan Meisner in there, they say “okay now maybe it oughta be this”, and then I go back and I look at history I say “okay second to third quarter’s flat”, you know this is The perception is that the field, we get representation from the field, they more than not drive those numbers We do this but it’s not a very formal process, I mean I sit out there and say “okay here’s the field forecast” you know what I mean, and I’ll go up to product marketing and say “give me your forecast before the meeting”, or I go up, it’s an informal process. Well should we formalize it with field input?

As the group struggles with what the new process should be, they call on Larry, a long-term Techco employee, to explain how the process has worked in the past. In order to explain how the general organizational practice of holding the forecasting meetings has worked, Larry uses quotations to accomplish this purpose. Larry’s repetition of typical statements made at the forecasting meeting centers the group discussion around usual practices, the routine elements of the forecasting process. In this excerpt, Larry reports speech of his own as well as those of specific other people in lines 1038-39, 1040-41, and 1045-48. In each of these cases, he reports these quotes by implicitly or explicitly reporting on what he or others usually “say” in the course of their daily work lives. Larry reports these past quotes in the present tense without reference to a particular time or occasion. That is, instead of reporting “Last

Represented voice in organizational change 69

JOCM 18,1

70

Thursday I said”, or “In mid-September they said”, Larry uses the present tense form, “in this meeting I say”. By describing the general practice in the language of specific quotes from specific individuals, Larry translates between the language used on specific occasions to a practice no longer situated at a specific occasion (the product line meeting of 9 July) but across all occasions of this kind (all product line meetings). In effect, then, Larry has represented the “genre” of the forecasting meetings, and it is this genre that forms the basis for the group’s discussion of how to change the forecasting process. If we were to examine this utterance from a traditional “reported speech” perspective, we might compare Larry’s representation of how the forecasting meetings happen with how they “really” happen as we might hear it if we were to attend the meetings. However, it does not necessarily matter whether Larry’s representation of this meeting type is a precise duplication of any previous statement. Rather, Larry’s quotes from past meetings function in a particular way in this meeting, as a construction of an activity-type, a genre of discussion for discussion. In other words, Larry’s utterance can be seen as a summary of a particular situated utterance as a kind of speech (and by implication, an organizational practice). By doing so, Larry’s representations of his prior utterances in team meetings temporarily stabilize this kind of utterance as a genre, a momentary “fixing” of organizational practice as a potential object for change. That other members understand this to be the case is evidenced by Jackie’s final statement, “Well, should we formalize it with field input?” which proposes an official institutional sanction of Larry’s representation of the current practice. In the context of a discussion about change, the group hears what the current and past general practices are, and then moves to a discussion of change. Voice of categorical person Another way the group represented voices from the past was not in the voices of a specific organizational member, but instead in the voices of types of membership categories, such as “salespeople” and “managers”. In the first meeting of the team, Kevin (the project manager) showed the group published research which described forecasting processes in organizations as four stages of sophistication. Those organizations whose forecasting processes operated with the characteristics of stage 1 were the most elementary, while those at stage 4 were the most sophisticated. For each category of the process (use of statistics, cycle time, performance measurement), members of the group offered opinions on the company’s current stage. Excerpt 2, tape 1, lines 707-714 707 Scott: In Europe (they’re at) stage three maybe, (Tom: yeah) (here we come up with) 708 market share capture over a given period of time, who the accounts are, the 709 competitors, follow-on product, portfolio, a lot of it goes back though into that 710 initial business case forecast that covers [our usual number of] years, right, um 711 and then, and then, it crosses to a gate, okay, or pre-gate and it is then sanitized

712 713 714

from top management saying, “well, we’re not going to come close to these numbers”, ( ) saying they’re way out of line, so it sort of takes it back a stage, (to) the part of the process, so again I don’t think it’s well represented hereScott, an employee representing one of the product line organizations, explains the difference between forecasting processes in the US and in Europe. Earlier in this meeting members had generally agreed that the US processes fit stages 1 and 2, but in this case Scott offers a reason to consider Techco’s European processes as more mature. His conclusion is that the European process is more sophisticated and more robust than the US process because in the US the managers reduce what they consider overly aggressive or optimistic predictions of revenue for new products (the word he chooses is “sanitized”). He offers a subtle criticism of management behavior in this practice by saying that in changing the forecasted revenue numbers, management is causing the process to be less sophisticated in terms of the stages that Kevin is describing.

Like Larry’s representation in the earlier excerpt, product development representative Scott backs up his opinion about the current state of the organization by using a quote from the past. He describes the routinized practices of what happens with a business case for a new product, when marketing specialists try to predict how much revenue a product will bring. Scott represents what happens when the business case is shared with senior management by quoting their speech. Instead of naming an individual as the author of this utterance, however, Scott leaves it as a group category. Similar to the earlier excerpt, Scott’s point about the organization’s current routine practices is made through voicing an utterance intended to be heard as the voice of another person. Both of these excerpts show how organizational members merge voices from the past (their own or those of other organizational members) through the use of represented discourse. They show that organizational members use utterances as representations for behavior. That is, organizational members frequently represent routinized practices as routinized speech. The practice of representing double-voiced speech of specific and categorical organizational members serves not only to tie the group’s current discussion to an understanding of its customary routines from the past, but to demonstrate a link between three elements – a conceptual understanding of the practice, repeated behaviors, and repeated utterances. Represented voices demonstrate future voices in practice A second representation of voices occurred in the project team as the team developed a new forecasting process. This occurred in two ways, when the project team positioned a proposed idea in the expected future voices of named and categorical organizational members. This practice allowed organizational members to imagine how a proposal for a change to the forecasting process might work when future meetings are held – how the new process would “sound” in a meeting. Here I discuss these two representations of voice.

Represented voice in organizational change 71

JOCM 18,1

72

Voice of named person Since Techco gave reports every 13 weeks to investors on sales revenue and expenses, the timing of the new process was critical. Salespeople would have to give input early enough in a particular quarter to allow members of the project team to combine sales predictions worldwide and to agree on manufacturing totals by product line. A conflict erupted in the team meeting as team members from finance and marketing wanted updates every month from the sales force, but representatives from the sales group indicated that monthly updates would take too much time. The team then debated the merits of a quarterly update from salespeople instead of a monthly update. Excerpt 3 continues this discussion: Excerpt 3, tape 8, lines 364-375 364 Kevin: So basically what we’re saying is once a quarter we’re gonna ask our field reps 365 what they think is happening out in the market 366 Jackie: I’m gonna officially, I ask ‘em all the time but I’m going to officially make them 367 Kevin: Four times a year, is that all, I mean (if there’s a change in market) 368 Larry: Well, something that’s happening is you’re gonna go out and ask for a commit 369 forecast in the second month, come month four at the very first week you’re 370 gonna start owin’ Pat-, you’re owing Patricia an update. You okay [points to 371 Jackie], you’re probably gonna go out there that first week of week four you 372 probably (filter) up, and say “okay guys give me a new second quarter so I 373 know how to change it from what I gave Patricia in February”. Right? 374 Jackie: What I should do, no, what you should do is just “where’s your where are your 375 opportunities in [sales software application]”?

This excerpt begins with Kevin providing a summary of the group’s apparent decision at that point, that once every 13 weeks salespeople would be asked to provide forecasting input. The team’s representative from the sales department, Jackie, emphasizes that this would be a formal occasion (with submitted reports, spreadsheets, numbers, etc.), though this practice happens unofficially more frequently. In the face of Kevin’s resistance to the infrequent nature of this proposed practice, Larry summarizes the practice in a new way. Larry explains how the timing change will impact Jackie by quoting Jackie’s future speech, by saying, in essence, “What you’ll say is”. Larry is performing Jackie’s voice here, imagining her approaching a group of salespeople with a forecast request. Given the proposal that the group is discussing (related to timing and data collection) and Jackie’s role in the sales force as a financial manager (with responsibility for collecting and reporting forecasting data), the language that Larry is suggesting Jackie use when she implements the new process is entirely reasonable. To demonstrate the translation of the proposal into what it will mean for Jackie (and others in the same role), Larry quotes Jackie’s future request to the salespeople. It is not likely that Jackie would give her rationale each time she requests a forecast from the salespeople (“so I know how to change it from what I gave Patricia in February”), but Larry does this elaboration to

accomplish the translation of the idea under consideration into the interpretation of its meaning for an individual. By beginning “What I should do” (line 374), Jackie consents to the personalization of Larry’s suggestion (speaking in her voice), but then alters his wording to include not only herself, but to other people with a role like hers, (by saying “what you should do is”). She participates with Larry in voicing the imagined conversation with salespeople, by saying “where are your opportunities”. It seems clear that she is not referring to Larry here. Although he is in a finance role he interacts only rarely with salespeople, so it is not likely that this phrasing would be interpreted as her suggestion that he inquire of salespeople about their opportunities in the sales system. Rather, Jackie is translating again from a specific future utterance of her own to a future routinized practice of a particular category of organizational members. Voice of categorical person In a second conversation later in the same team meeting, members of the group used reported speech for a similar purpose but did so in a different manner. The conversation had shifted topics to discussing how compensation might be used to encourage more accurate forecasting, in other words, how to financially reward employees who accurately predict how many sales they will have in the upcoming quarter. The proposal was this: salespeople who accurately forecast how many products they would sell – therefore how many manufacturing should build – would be given a financial bonus. The consequence of this proposal was that employees who missed their forecast would not be compensated. For example, a salesperson who predicted that he or she would sell 100 of a certain product and sold that amount would be given a bonus, but another salesperson with the same prediction who only sold 80 would not be given the monetary incentive. At this point Jackie recognized the implications of this proposal: Excerpt 4, tape 8, lines 652-660 652 Jackie: And you would never want anybody to not do a deal because it would screw up 653 Tom: their forecast, to go over their forecast 654 Tom: Yeah but that’s my point, that’s my point 655 Jay: “I’m sorry I cannot sell you this deal because” 656 Jackie: “It would go over my forecast!” ((laughter)) 657 Tom: “I can’t I have to sell it to you next quarter” 658 Dan: Or “I can’t sell it to you cause it’s not in the system” 659 Tom: It’s a very difficult thing to, it’s easy to say “let’s go do it” it’s very difficult when 660 you think through all of the implications that fall out from it

In Excerpt 4, by beginning “you would never want anybody to not do a deal”, Jackie reminds the group of the widely recognized company value that a salesperson with a potential sale should generally make a sale. In response, Jay (also a representative from the sales department) pretends to be a salesperson, imaging a conversation between a salesperson and a customer. He is clearly being sarcastic here as evidenced by the group’s knowing laughter, imagining a conversation that might happen if compensation were to be withheld for a wrong forecast, or if a salesperson is more committed to a forecast – and therefore personal compensation – than customers. In doing so, Jay works from another widely recognized assumption that people,

Represented voice in organizational change 73

JOCM 18,1

74

particularly salespeople, will behave in ways that result in their maximizing personal revenue wherever possible. Jackie is able to finish his sentence because of her shared understanding of this organizational value. Jackie and Jay serve as credible messengers of this language because of their titles and roles that identify them as people with connections to the sales community. By implicitly and explicitly reminding the group of two shared values, Jackie and Jay bring into the dialogue the language of the sales organization. Two elements of the phrasing in this excerpt work to translate the generic proposition into the utterance of a nonspecific salesperson. First, Jay uses the same word as Jackie (“deal”) in his imaginary utterance. Instead of “do a deal”, as Jackie puts it, however, Jay uses “sell you this deal”. Jay’s phrasing emphasizing the act of selling is a more specific action than Jackie’s phrasing which refers more generically to the act of doing. Second, instead of “anybody” not doing this deal, Jay puts it in the first person, to “I cannot sell you this deal”. In summary, Jay’s alteration of this phrase functions to put Jackie’s imagined generic person and situation, “anybody” and “do a deal”, into specific terms, “I” (Jay acting as an imagined salesperson) and “sell this deal”. In making these alterations, Jay translates the general idea under discussion into a potential future performance and enactment of this idea. Jay’s quoting of a salesperson functions as an ironic statement about the potential for people to comply with an organizational policy (compensation) that leads to results directly opposed to the purpose of the policy. Bakhtin (1984, p. 184) writes that: In the ordinary speech of our everyday life such a use of another’s words is extremely widespread, especially in dialogue, where one speaker very often literally repeats the statement of the other speaker, investing it with new value and accenting it in his own way – with expressions of doubt, indignation, irony, mockery, ridicule, and the like.

Jay merges the voice of the salesperson with his own voice, and in doing so demonstrates the irony of the implications of the group’s proposal to compensate forecast accuracy. Like the functions of reported speech described earlier, these imaginary future utterances serve to translate ideas, actions, and utterances. Larry’s voicing of Jackie’s future speech (in Excerpt 3) is not only intended to give her the potential phrasing to use, but his elaboration of the instructions in the utterance (“so I know how to change it from what I gave Patricia in February”) also provides an explicit explanation of her associated actions and how those all fall out from the proposed practice under discussion. Similarly, Jay’s joke in Excerpt 4 works to collaborate with Jackie’s explanation of the unfortunate consequences of the compensation proposal to elaborate a translation from proposal to specific future speech. Conclusion I have argued that the discursive practice of represented voice that allows organizational members to make a logical inference between organizational practices (what members consider to be organizational routines) and the individual speech of members. Members represent the past in ways that organizational members “usually” talk, which allows them to think of organizational routines as genres of speech. Organizational members achieve generalized meanings about organizational life by reporting past utterances as representative of all events of a certain kind. They do this

by representing voices of specific organizational members as well as in the voice of member categories, such as managers. These generalized understandings, however, are constructions of organizational members. Members frame “the undifferentiated flux of raw experience” (Chia, 2000, p. 513) into routines and genres out of everyday speech, and then consider those routines as potential areas for change. Crucially, organizational members smooth over and filter variations in embodied routines through repetition of typical speech patterns heard in any routine. Abstracting and distancing in the form of repeated speech allows the routine to be discussed as a generic object, a stable practice agreed upon by members that can then be opened up as a possible object of change. These representations of current practice stabilize it for the purpose of change. Once these representative utterances become stabilized as the current organizational practice, members identify possible changes to the general practice, which implies new kinds of utterances. They “try on” (Barrett et al., 1995) this new language by considering the logical implications of any proposed organizational change as it might sound in the future by articulating the proposal in the voice of an organizational member on a future occasion. While this trying on process is hypothetical, not enacted in an actual practice, it gives organizational members the opportunity to hear how organizational members might work out the new practice in discourse. They then began to critique the future language and debate whether the proposed change would be an effective one. The analysis suggests that organizational change occurs when people temporarily stabilize the organization through the voicing of current practices (as references to what “usually happens” via what is “usually said”). These stabilized forms are what people take to be the enduring patterns that happen over time. Members propose new practices which imply shifts in activities, behaviors, and speech, and members make these inferences on their own through represented discourse. By voicing these new practices people can judge the merit of the proposed practice as they hear how those practices might sound in the voices of organizational members (specific people or roles). It is this translation between past, present and future discourses that allows organizational members to make the transformation from past to future organizational meanings, and by implication, to achieve organizational change.

References Anderson, D.L. (2004), “The textualizing functions of writing for organizational change”, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 141-64. Bakhtin, M.M. (1984), Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX. Barrett, F.J., Thomas, G.F. and Hocevar, S.P. (1995), “The central role of discourse in large-scale change: a social construction perspective”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 352-72. Baynham, M. and Slembrouck, S. (1999), “Speech representation and institutional discourse”, Text, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 439-57.

Represented voice in organizational change 75

JOCM 18,1

76

Charmaz, K. (2000), “Grounded theory: objectivist and constructivist methods”, in Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd ed., Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 509-35. Chia, R. (1997), “Essai: Thirty years on: from organizational structures to the organization of thought”, Organization Studies, Vol. 18 No. 6, pp. 685-707. Chia, R. (1999), “A ‘rhizomic’ model of organizational change and transformation: perspective from a metaphysics of change”, British Journal of Management, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 209-29. Chia, R. (2000), “Discourse analysis as organizational analysis”, Organization, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 513-18. Czarniawska, B. and Joerges, B. (1996), “Travels of ideas”, in Czarniawska, B. and Sevon, G. (Eds), Translating Organizational Change, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 13-48. Deetz, S., Broadfoot, K. and Anderson, D.L. (2004), “Multi-levelled, multi-method approaches in organizational discourse”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London. Fairclough, N. (1992a), “Discourse and text: linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis”, Discourse & Society, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 193-217. Fairclough, N. (1992b), Discourse and Social Change, Polity Press, Oxford. Ford, J.D. and Ford, L.W. (1995), “The role of conversations in producing intentional change in organizations”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 541-70. Ford, J.D. and Ford, L.W. (1999), “Organizational change as shifting conversations”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 480-500. Ford, J.D. and Ford, L.W. (2003), “Conversations and the authoring of change”, in Holman, D. and Thorpe, R. (Eds), Management and Language: The Manager as Practical Author, Sage, London, pp. 141-56. Glaser, B.G. and Strauss, A.L. (1967), The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Aldine, Chicago, IL. Goodwin, C. (1994), “Professional vision”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 96 No. 4, pp. 606-33. Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (2004), “Introduction: organizational discourse: exploring the field”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London. Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (2004), “Organizing textscapes”, Organization Studies, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 135-42. Lewin, K. (1951), Field Theory in Social Science, Harper and Row, New York, NY. Linell, P. (1998), “Discourse across boundaries: on recontextualization and the blending of voices in processional discourse”, Text, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 143-57. Linstead, S. (1999), “An introduction to the textuality of organizations”, Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 1-10. Morgan, G. and Sturdy, A. (2000), Beyond Organizational Change: Structure, Discourse and Power in UK Financial Services, Macmillan, London. Myers, G. (1999a), “Functions of reported speech in group discussions”, Applied Linguistics, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 376-401. Myers, G. (1999b), “Unspoken speech: hypothetical reported discourse and the rhetoric of everyday talk”, Text, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 571-90. Oswick, C., Keenoy, T.W. and Grant, D. (2000), “Discourse, organizations, and organizing: concepts, objects and subjects”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 9, pp. 1115-23.

Pettigrew, A. (1985), The Awakening Giant: Continuity and Change in ICI, Blackwell, Oxford. Robichaud, D. (1999), “Textualization and organizing: illustrations from a public decision process”, Communication Review, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 103-24. Sarangi, S. (1998), “Rethinking recontextualization in professional discourse studies: an epilogue”, Text, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 301-18. Tsoukas, H. and Chia, R. (2002), “On organizational becoming: rethinking organizational change”, Organization Science, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 567-82. van Dijk, T. (1993), “Principles of critical discourse analysis”, Discourse & Society, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 249-83. Wodak, R. (1997), “Critical discourse analysis and the study of doctor-patient interaction”, in Gunnarson, B., Linell, P. and Nordberg, B. (Eds), The Construction of Professional Discourse, Longman, London, pp. 173-200.

Represented voice in organizational change 77

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

JOCM 18,1

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Post-crisis discourse and organizational change, failure and renewal

78

Matthew W. Seeger Department of Communication, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA

Robert R. Ulmer Department of Communication, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Julie M. Novak and Timothy Sellnow Department of Communication, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA Abstract Purpose – To examine the post 9/11 communication of the bond-trading firm, Cantor Fitzgerald and its CEO Howard Lutnick, according to the discourse of renewal framework. Design/methodology/approach – This case-study of the discourse of renewal draws upon the messages and statements made by the company and its employees following the 9/11 attacks. The discourse of renewal framework emphasizes provisional responses, prospective statements, and the role of the leader as a symbol of stability in the face of a crisis. Findings – This study provides support for viewing crisis as change-inducing events with the potential to fundamentally alter the form, structure and direction of an organization. Renewal discourse helped the company survive an attack where over 600 employees were killed and the company offices completely destroyed. While a crisis inevitably create severe harm, it also has the potential to serve as a renewing force for the organization. Research limitations/implications – Few examples of post-crisis discourse of renewal have been examined in the literature and more research is needed. Work needs to identify the conditions necessary for this kind of discourse. Practical implications – Organizations may have the opportunity to fundamentally reframe a crisis, focusing on the opportunities that arise from these events. Originality/value – This paper explores both organizational crisis and organizational discourse from unique positions. Discourse is positioned as the means whereby crisis can become a positive force for change Keywords Disasters, Organizational change, Narratives, Social dynamics Paper type Research paper

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 pp. 78-95 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510579869

Crisis and disaster studies have become increasingly popular as scholars come to terms with the seminal nature of these events (Greenberg, 2002; Pauchant and Mitroff, 1992; Perrow, 1999; Seeger et al., 2003). Long-term efforts at strategic planning, innovation, restructuring and organizational redesign can be wiped away by corporate scandals, defective products, toxic spills, employee violence, plant explosions, or terrorist attacks. Moreover, the effects of such disasters can impact an organization’s image and linger for decades. In some cases, the entire industry is tarnished as occurred following

the Bhopal Union Carbide disaster and the Exxon Valdez Oil spill. Crises and disasters, however, can also serve as powerful forces of organizational change, learning, normative readjustment and, in some cases, renewal. Crisis, for example, may point out fallacious assumptions, unforeseen interactions and vulnerabilities. Crisis may also precipitate consensus, cooperation and support (Seeger and Ulmer, 2001, 2002; Ulmer and Sellnow, 2002). In almost all cases, major crises and disasters are equivocal events that place severe demands on sensemaking (Weick, 1988). The ways in which participants, stakeholders and leaders frame and make sense of these events, as reflected in post-crisis discourse, shape both the nature and degree of change. In this analysis, we outline this view of organizational crises as significant change-inducing events. We explore question regarding how the organizational discourse following a crisis shapes the resulting change. We argue that a primary factor in the nature of crisis-induced change is the post-event discourse offered by visible leaders. Specifically, a discourse of renewal can sometimes emerge following major crises. First, we explore the nature of organizational crisis. Second, three primary approaches to crisis and change are described: normative readjustment, organizational learning and the discourse of renewal. The case of the bond-trading firm of Cantor Fitzgerald, and the discourse of its CEO, Howard Lutnick, following the World Trade Center disaster, is used to illustrate the role of post-crisis discourse in organizational change. Our purpose it to explore the discourse of renewal that occurred in this case and extend an understanding of the larger role of such discourse in changes that occur in the aftermath of major crises. Organizational crisis Crises are increasingly common parts of the larger organizational and social landscape of modern life. Whether imposed on the organization by outside forces, such as the events of 9/11, or initiated by management behavior and decisions, such as the case of Enron, crises are sources of profound significance, often precipitating radical, rapid and occasionally positive change. Crisis may become critical lessons for organizations regarding shortsightedness, greed, over reliance on technology, indifference, hubris, or mere stupidity. They may also create unprecedented levels of cooperation and support; help the organization shed outdated assumptions, technologies and products and point out directions for growth and renewal. Organizational crises have been described as “specific, unexpected and non-routine, organizationally-based event or series of events which creates high levels of uncertainty and threat or perceived threat to an organization’s high priority goals” (Seeger et al., 1998, p. 233). Weick (1988, p. 305) characterizes crises as “low probability/high consequence events that threaten the most fundamental goals of the organization. Because of their low probability, these events defy interpretations and impose severe demands on sensemaking”. Established structures, routines, procedures, rules, relationships, norms and belief systems often break down or are judged as insufficient given the conditions of the crisis. In this way, crises are high uncertainty events that challenge the ability of managers to predict their consequence. Pauchant and Mitroff (1992, p. 12) distinguish between incidents (events of limited duration), accidents (systemic disruptions that do not affect basic assumptions and meanings), conflicts (disturbance of symbolic structures) and crisis (“a disruption that physically affects a system as a whole and threatens its basic assumptions, its subjective sense of

Post-crisis discourse

79

JOCM 18,1

80

self, its existential core”). Crises are the primary threat to organizational stability making organizations vulnerable to other crises, takeovers, declines in market share, or even bankruptcy (Smart and Vertinsky, 1977; Pauchant and Mitroff, 1992). Implied in these notions of crisis is a fundamental suspension or disruption of organizational stability and status quo. This includes systemic disorder, high uncertainty, lack of a clear interpretive frame and inadequate understanding of what has happened and the larger implications (Weick, 1988; Turner, 1976). During crises, organizational systems, including communication systems, are disrupted in fundamental ways. Operations may cease, leaving facilities closed and key personnel distracted, incapacitated, missing, or dead. During the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, key personnel were missing, broadcast, radio and cellular telephone communications systems were cut and transportation systems were seriously disrupted. Sometimes disruption is quickly contained and the system rapidly returns to a normal state of operations. In fact, the concept of business continuity has recently emerged as a primary goal of crisis management. Systems disrupted in this manner are less stable, vulnerable to criticism and susceptible to further crises. Moreover, crisis disrupts basic belief structures, premises and assumptions of members (Pauchant and Mitroff, 1992). This fundamental questioning often concerns well-established beliefs about risk and its relationship to the organization, norms for risk avoidance and probabilities for the failure of these norms (Turner, 1976). Such questioning may further destabilize the system. During a crisis and its aftermath, organizational members, crisis stakeholders and the public often experience intense emotional arousal, stress, fear, anxiety and apprehension that they seek to resolve. This intense emotional arousal may result in a rejection of the systems and structures that are seen as associated with the event or causing the event. Following the Valdez Oil spill, many consumers returned their Exxon credit cards and air travel dropped off precipitously following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Models of crisis and change Although organizational change is a robust area of inquiry, the focus is primarily on planned, strategic change (Kotter and Schlesinger, 1979). Strategic change is broadly conceptualized as a planned adaptive process allowing organizational systems and participants to adjust and behave differently to accommodate new contingencies, technologies, values, processes and personnel (Barczak et al., 1988; Cummings and Huse, 1989; Mintzberg, 1984; Kanter, 1983). Communication is an important part of the strategic change process overcoming resistance, reducing uncertainty, persuading employees to embrace the change and facilitating employee participation (Rogers, 1995; Lewis and Siebold, 1998). Additionally, some scholars have pointed to the important role of symbolism in organizational change (Pfeffer, 1981; Fairhurst and Starr, 1996). Transformational leadership, for example, has emphasized the role of the leader’s articulated vision as a factor in change (Eisenbach et al., 1999). Other investigations have focused on the role of language and metaphor in organizational change (Oswick and Montgomery, 1999; Fitzgibbon and Seeger, 2002). A variety of perspectives and models suggest that crisis may also be understood as a force of organizational change. For example, it may serve as attention-getting events, forcing management to focus on a problem that may have previously been neglected. Crisis may also free up scarce resources that otherwise would not be available to solve

a particular problem. Managers and public officials often describe events or problems as “crises” in order to call widespread attention to the problem and free up resources. From a broader perspective, the change-inducting aspects of organizational crisis may be examined from at least three theoretical perspectives: as an example of normative readjustment to severe systemic breakdown (Turner, 1976); as a case of organizational learning (Sitkin, 1996); or as an instance of renewal discourse (Seeger and Ulmer, 2001, 2002; Ulmer and Sellnow, 2002). Normative readjustment Turner (1976) offered a model of crisis as the consequence or outcome of inadequate risk recognition, or a “failure in foresight”. These “intelligence failures” are functions of a wide variety of organizational and cultural phenomena (Turner, 1976, p. 381). He suggested that “disaster occurs because of some inaccuracy or inadequacy in the accepted norms and beliefs”. Beliefs and norms about hazards, precautions and risks allow organizational members and managers to successfully resolve most problems. Crisis occurs, however, when problems judged as insignificant or irrelevant interact with precautionary norms and standards considered adequate. Prior to 9/11, for example, few had even considered a scenario involving hijackers turning airplanes into guided missiles. Moreover, the airline protection procedures and protocols were considered adequate to avoid these kinds of risks. At any given point, Turner argued, this accepted and dominant set of beliefs about risk and the attendant norms, standards and procedures help constitute a sense of normal operations. In fact, most crises are effectively resolved through these routine and normal structures. The onset of a crisis through a dramatic trigger event illustrates the inadequacy of pre-existing beliefs and assumptions regarding risk and challenges norms, structures and procedures for risk avoidance. Turner describes this process as a sudden collapse of beliefs about the world, its risks and hazards and normal procedures and structures of risk-avoidance. This collapse, then, makes room for initial and rapid ad hoc adjustments and initiation of new norms and procedures. As the crisis event evolves and becomes contained, a full cultural adjustment regarding beliefs and avoidance norms occurs so that they are once again compatible with the new post-crisis insights and understandings. The final resolution of a crisis also requires some general consensus about cause, blame and responsibility. Often, a formal inquiry or assessment into the crisis is undertaken by outside agencies to identify a plausible “incubating network of events” associated with the crisis (Turner, 1976, p. 382). These findings and recommendations, then, are used to change core organizational procedures and policies in ways that reflect new understandings of risk (Ray, 1999). Organizational learning Organizational learning has recently emerged as a popular framework for understanding organizational adaptation at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels (Cohen and Sproull, 1996; Sitkin, 1996). Specifically, learning theorists argue that organizational histories sometimes take on the status of critical learning events. Crisis events, even though they are relatively infrequent and non-normative, may be experienced richly throughout the organization in ways that precipitate learning and change. Cohen and Sproull (1996) argue that when histories are viewed as critical events, they are dissected, elaborated, discussed and repeated examined to extract

Post-crisis discourse

81

JOCM 18,1

82

meaning (Sitkin, 1996). Crises, particularly when their impact is severe and where mistakes or “faulty learning” are the cause, often become critical events and opportunities for learning (Sitkin et al., 1999). The story of Chrysler’s near bankruptcy in the early 1980s, for example, took on the narrative structure of a saga as it was told and retold. For those Chrysler employees who survived, the story was a way of reinforcing the mistakes of the past and a mantra for how to avoid them in the future (Fitzgibbon and Seeger, 2002). Detailed investigations in the courts, by commissions or by other governmental bodies, are common features of high-profile crises (Seeger, 1986). Such postmortems are undertaken not only to apportion responsibility, liability and blame, but also to ensure that the lessons of the crisis are learned and that similar events do not occur again. Investigative boards and commissions “collect, synthesize, summarize and disseminate information; identify causes and associated factors; suggest ways in which future crises may be avoided” (Ray, 1999, p. 189-190). Sitkin (1996, p. 542) has even suggested that failure “is an essential prerequisite for learning” as it stimulates basic organizational experimentation. Crises are beneficial to organizations to the degree that they promote specific learning outcomes. First, failure calls attention to a previously under-recognized problem. Second, failure promotes ease of recognition and interpretation by giving clear definition to a specific kind of problem. Third, failures, particularly large-scale failures, stimulate the search for solutions by demonstrating the associated costs. Fatal airline crashes stimulate an intensive effort to identify the probable cause because the high cost in lost lives, legal liability and reduced profitability. Fourth, crises are motivational often resulting in a spirit of cooperation and commitment to rebuild among employees, managers and members of the community. Fifth, failure may result in an adjustment of risk tolerances. Sitkin (1996, p. 549) suggests that such adjustments enhance risk tolerance or modify and refine understanding of risk. A sixth outcome of failure related to organizational leaning is that it stimulates “increased variation in organizational response repertoires”. Finally, organizational failure promotes experimentation and practice leading to a systemic “orientation that is more flexible and adaptive” (Sitkin 1996, p. 550). Crises as critical incidents and as failures represent important opportunities for learning outside more established learning routines and structures. Crisis and renewal A third view regarding the role of crisis and change focuses on the ways post-crisis discourse constitutes prospective meaning among stakeholders. This work, known as the discourse of renewal, builds from organizational discourse and discourse analysis in an effort to go beyond traditional understandings of post-crisis discourse. Traditional approaches focus almost exclusively on strategic portrayals of responsibility, blame, scapegoating, denial of responsibility, justification and related strategies (Allen and Caillouet, 1994; Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 1995). In some post-crisis contexts, however, a form of cooperation and healing emerges that is not concerned with strategic portrayal of causation and blame or with restoring a damaged image or reputation. Some organizations are able to almost immediately embark on rebuilding or renewal following a crisis. These organizations are able to constitute a frame for the event that is empowering and motivational to those affected by the crisis and which engenders cooperation and support from others. It is also important to note that change discourse can have an impact on an expansive context of stakeholders

(O’Connor, 2000). Although the discourse of renewal in this analysis is directed toward external stakeholder such discourse can also have a powerful impact on internal stakeholders and broader audiences (Seeger and Ulmer, 2001). O’Connor (2000, p. 176) explains the contextual factors that may impact change discourse suggesting that “organizational change is an act of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) that dialogues across large expanses of time (linking the past, present and future) and space (linking the organization, its parent company, its workers and its competitors)”. In this case, we view the context of the discourse of renewal as impacting and overlapping to other audiences even though the primary direction of the discourse is to larger audiences external to Cantor Fitzgerald. Moreover, renewal discourse links the past, before the crisis, the present, the crisis itself and the future a new rejuvenated organization. Seeger and Ulmer (2001), for example, explored Aaron Feuerstein, owner of Malden Mills, a textile firm in Lawrence, Massachusetts and Milt Cole, owner of a lumber company in Logansport, Indiana. In both cases, these CEOs responded to the destruction of their factories, not by apologizing, investigating, shifting blame, or denying responsibility, but by immediately and publicly committing to continue paying workers and rebuild their facilities. They did so even when there was little economic justification for this action. The responses offered by Feuerstein and Cole were widely reported in the press as powerful examples of management virtue and commitment to the community (Seeger and Ulmer, 2001). This public pledge to rebuild and to maintain support for employees eliminated protracted arguments over causation and blame and moved instead to a future plans and prospects. The potential harm caused by the events was contained and reduced because employees were not asked to endure financial hardship while waiting for the organizations to reopen. In addition, the events themselves as well as the CEO’s self-less responses took on the status of significant events, promoting important lessons about community, commitment and cooperation. In fact, Feuerstein was invited to State of the Union address by then President Clinton and held up as a model of management ethics. A post crisis discourse of renewal is characterized by four features (Seeger and Ulmer, 2001). First, this discourse is prospective, seeking to describe activities related to future goals and development as opposed to retrospective seeking to explain or interpret what happened in the past. Discourse of renewal focuses, therefore, on organizational discourse as expression and the means by which a new organizational reality is created. Whether by a CEO or other organizational members, organizational discourse immediately following a devastating crisis reiterates the cyclical relationship between espoused values and the expression of shared values (Grant et al., 1998). Typically, post-crisis discourse has a retrospective focus, primarily because the organization is looking back to explain and justify past acts. In contrast, renewal discourse focuses on the future; how the crisis induced-limitations can be overcome and what new opportunities can be explored. Second, discourse of renewal focuses on the ability of the organization to reconstitute itself from a blank slate, without previous constraints or artificial limitations. Seeger and Ulmer identified this form of discourse through the investigation of industrial fires. Fires typically create almost complete destruction and there is often little left to build upon. While this may be particularly devastating from one perspective, from another it creates an entirely free context within which to reconstruct the organization. New equipment, facilities, procedures and methods may all be constructed. The resulting organizations may be more

Post-crisis discourse

83

JOCM 18,1

84

profitable than before the crisis. A third characteristic of this discourse is its provisional rather than strategic nature. Most often, post-crisis discourse involves a carefully constructed strategy to avoid increasing legal liability or enhancing the expectations of various stakeholders. Public relations professionals are consulted to create ambiguous statements that limit additional liability. Post-crisis discourse of renewal is more natural and honest, typically a monologic approach and often grounded in what the CEO wishes or hopes might happen. This form of discourse may even be drive by senior executive’s internal value systems and patterns of conduct. While a strategic response and a provisional response are not mutually exclusive, the latter is more authentic, genuine and immediate. Ulmer and Sellnow (2002) examined the role of discourse of renewal following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. They found that communication focused on stakeholder commitment, commitment to correction of security lapses and core values. Stakeholders such as the New York Police Department and the New York Fire Department received “Surprisingly few complaints of incompetence or irresponsibility” following 9/11 (Ulmer and Sellnow, 2002, p. 363). In addition, in terms of correction, organizations such as the airlines that were impacted by the crisis “committed to making whatever changes were needed to regain the confidence of the American people”. In terms of core values, governmental, public and private organizations openly communicated “greater goals of independence and freedom” in their “post-crisis advertisements” (Ulmer and Sellnow, 2002, p. 364). Finally, the discourse of renewal reaffirms the CEO or leader’s role as the interpreter or framer of meaning following a crisis (Fairhurst and Starr, 1996). The CEO occupies a prominent place and following a crisis is often called on to explain and interpret what happened. She or he has the opportunity to offer an initial interpretation when the uncertainty surrounding the crisis is often still quite high. After a loss of sensemaking induced by a crisis, the CEO begins to construct a singular and coherent organizational discourse that contributes to the development of a new shared meaning (Grant et al., 1998). In some cases, this post-crisis interpretation may be compelling and constitute extraordinary efforts by followers to rebuild and recreate the organization. Method This study employs a case study method to develop, in rich detail, descriptions of how the events, decision-making processes and external communication of Cantor Fitzgerald were portrayed in the media coverage following the 11 September 2001 crisis (Yin, 1984). Case studies are widely employed in the examination of crises (see Turner, 1976; Perrow, 1984; Benoit, 1995; Sellnow et al., 2001). In this study, we focus specifically on the role of Cantor Fitzgerald’s actions and messages to create a post-crisis discourse of renewal. In this manner, the Cantor Fitzgerald case serves as an exemplar of how post-crisis communication can function to create a mediated message of organizational renewal. Thus, the data for this study include transcripts of television interviews conducted with Howard Lutnick and national and international coverage by major print media sources for the 18 months following the 9/11 tragedy. We also employ various accounts of the case published in the general and business press. Key events in the case and coherent themes of communication are described from the perspectives of organizational crisis and renewal. Specifically, we examine the scale of harm associated with this event, the initial framing of the crisis by Lutnick, the

reservoir of good will generated for the company and the ways in which questions of cause and blame functioned. Observations regarding Lutnick’s messages and the associated change at Cantor Fitzgerald’s are discussed and highlighted. Cantor Fitzgerald Cantor Fitzgerald (CF) is an international brokerage firm that operated out of the 101-105th floors of Tower One of the World Trade Center. CF “is responsible for transacting $200 billion of securities a day, or $50 trillion a year, more than the American and New York Stock Exchanges and Nasdaq combined” (Barbash, 2003, p. 7). The firm specializes in bond trading and on 11 September 2001, was the largest and most productive bond brokerage firm in the world, employing 1000 workers. CF was known as a daringly competitive firm on the edge: “sometimes a sharp elbowed firm, regulators have more than once accused Cantor of cutting too close to the edge of market rules” (Henriques and Lee, 2001b, p. C01). Bernie Cantor, the founder of CF, was a colorful and well-liked leader of the organization before his passing in 1996 (Henriques and Lee, 2001b, p. C01). He was an avid collector of Rodin sculptures and had more than 80 pieces on display including The Thinker and The Three Shades (Barbash, 2003). However, after he died, struggle for control of the company became a critical incident for CF as some saw Howard Lutnick’s bid for the chairmanship as “insensitive” (Henriques and Lee, 2001b, p. C01). Reports suggest that both Cantor’s wife and Lutnick hurled “lacerating insults” during the court proceedings (Henriques and Lee, 2001b, p. C01) However, Lutnick eventually took control of the company. Lutnick’s personal qualities before the crisis were described as having a “single mindedness, determination to make money and a certain ruthlessness about how to do it” (Hill et al., 2001, 10). In nine years, he moved from the bottom up at CF and, by age 29, had held positions as a bond broker all of the way to Chief Executive. When the plane hit the World Trade Center just below the 101st floors of the World Trade Center, most of the CF employees were trapped above the initial impact. As a result 658 CF employees died, a large number of whom were hired by Howard Lutnick (Barbash, 2003). The Bond-trading firm lost a greater percentage of its employees than any other single company impacted by 9/11. Lutnick survived only because he was taking his son Kyle to his first day of kindergarten. His only brother, Gary Lutnick, was killed. In the aftermath of the crisis, Howard Lutnick became the face of the tragedy for CF and a personification of the losses Wall Street had suffered. What follows is a discussion of Lutnick’s novel response to his firm’s tragedy. We argue that his high profile monologic response was instrumental in changing the company and in saving it. We suggest that Lutnick’s post-crisis communication was a kind of renewing discourse that allowed a new CF, as attested by novel decisions and actions, to emerge from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Howard Lutnick’s response to the 2001 terrorist attacks Scale of harm Scale of harm concerns the impact or the relative seriousness of the crisis. Organizational crises often have devastating effects on the organization and sometime impede the fundamental ability of the organization to operate. Ironically, those crises

Post-crisis discourse

85

JOCM 18,1

86

that produce more harm are likely to create more opportunity for change. The scale of harm for CF was particularly intense. The company’s headquarters were housed in the World Trade Center and almost 700 employees lost their lives due to the attacks. Equipment and many records were lost, even though CF had established a back-up facility in New Jersey following the earlier 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (Henriques and Lee, 2001a). By any objective measure, however, the entire organization was decimated. With only 300 remaining employees to handle both the effects of the crisis and the day-to-day work many, including Howard Lutnick, did not believe it would be possible for the company to continue (Barbash, 2003). The damage also extended to survivors. Barbash (2003, p. 8) explains the emotional impact for Howard Lutnick and CF: “Of the wives, thirty-eight were pregnant, fourteen of them for the first time. Forty-six of the lost were engaged to be married; there were at least two weddings planned for the following weekend. Worst of all, these were young people with young families, some with three and four children. Nine hundred and fifty-five sons and daughters lost a father or mother”. The funerals and grieving process alone would take months along with telephone calls to grieving spouses, family members, parents and other relatives. The sheer volume of correspondence, insurance forms, death certificates and paperwork, was overwhelming for Lutnick and the surviving members of the firm. One of the first television interviews that Lutnick gave was with ABC’s Connie Chung. At this time, he publicly communicated the cumulative emotion and impact of the crisis he was experiencing. Crying uncontrollably, Lutnick told Chung he hasn’t gone to hospitals to search for his brother. Asked why, he heaved sobs and held up his list of 700 names. Here’s everybody I got! He wailed. Find somebody on this list. Because if you find someone on this list, then I got to call them. I get to give somebody else some hope, some dreams. Maybe, maybe they get to kiss their kids. It’s, it’s – I’d love to find my brother, but I’d love to find, I’d love to find their brother, or their wife, or their husband, or anything, anything.

This sincere emotional outpouring from a CEO known for his tough approach captured the attention of the nation. The roughly 300 surviving employees were not in the WTC buildings for a variety of reasons including picking up dry-cleaning, vacation, stopping for coffee, dropping off children, or simply caught in traffic (Barbash, 2003). All those CF employees who had made it to work on time died in the attack. Such overwhelming devastation required that Lutnick, as CEO, speak out about the events and about how he planned to respond. While most observers suggested that given the scope of harm, CF was for all intents and purposes dead, Lutnick offered an entirely new and compelling reason for the company to rebuild. Initial framing of an equivocal event Widely acknowledged in the crisis literature is that initial public responses are critical to sensemaking, framing and uncertainty reduction concerning the event and the future. Those impacted by the crisis typically face tremendous stress and uncertainty. Weick (1993, p. 634) characterizes these events as cosmological episodes in which “people suddenly and deeply feel that the universe is no longer a rational, orderly system”. For this reason, organizational leaders must provide a resonating message, narrative or frame that is meaningful to stakeholders and engenders their support.

Such support communicated through monologic organizational discourse is critical to organizational renewal. Following the devastation of 9/11, surviving employees and customers of CF needed information about the state of the organization. Employees needed to know how to proceed in terms of their jobs and customers needed to know how, or if, their orders of 11 September 2001 would be processed. Poorly functioning computer systems and therefore electronic communication systems, coupled with partially destroyed human resource, organizational and transaction files exacerbated internal communication. Lutnick took several public stances and commitments that served to frame the event for surviving employees and their families, for the general public, the media, customers and even competitors (Barbash, 2003). What is salient about Lutnick’s initial statements is that they are intense, emotional and provisional. They served as meaningful and powerful public commitments that immediately framed the event for CF’s stakeholders. On 13 September, when Lutnick spoke with ABC’s Connie Chung, he talked of trying to go up to the offices on floors 101-105 to see if he could get just one employee out but he could not make it “due to the collapse of Tower 2 . . . Smoke all but overwhelmed him” (Russakoff and Eunjung Cha, 2001, p. A24). Chung then asked Lutnick about his missing brother and he provided a powerful and emotional response that was replayed in the media over the next several months. He then offered a fundamentally new justification for CF as a profitable enterprise that grew directly out of the devastation; “There is only one reason to be in business – it is because we have to make our company be able to take care of our 700 families”, he said sobbing. “700 families. Help them. 700 families. I just can’t say it. I can’t say it without crying. That’s my American Dream now” (Russakoff and Eunjung Cha, 2001, p. A24). Howard Lutnick’s emotional response to the crisis immediately gave stakeholders a clear and compelling vision for CF’s future. His comments garnered immediate and widespread media attention. The emotional story of a CEO of a major bond-trading firm that had lost the majority of its workforce played well on television, particularly against the backdrop of the WTC attacks. In addition, Lutnick’s statements gave a human face to the tragedy. The impact of the event was personified in Lutnick; a quintessential Wall Street CEO. Employees also had a vision of CF’s future. From these statements, employees knew that they would be working to fill orders and by so doing provide for the families affected by the crisis. Initial public statements in the face of high uncertainty and confusion can be particularly compelling in generating support and commitment. Beyond CF’s employees and grieving family members, Lutnick also spoke to his customers and competitors. Following the crisis, he assured customers that CF would still be in business. The very idea of Wall Street reopening however was jarring. Barbash (2003, p. 32) reported that “When the members of the Bond Market Association decide the market will open Thursday, [Lutnick did not] say they are callous or that his best friend and his only brother are dead. He listen[ed] in amazement to their plans and thinks of all he needs to keep the firm from going under”. On the morning of Tuesday, 11 September 2001, CF had conducted “nearly twenty five hundred trades worth billions of dollars” (Barbash, 2003, p. 33). CF would have to be able to cover these transactions if the company was to continue. In some cases CF had executed trades, while clients had not carried through on the deals. CF, in these

Post-crisis discourse

87

JOCM 18,1

cases, was left owing money. Lutnick also spoke to competitors and customers explaining that they would try to maintain the transactions from before 9/11 and fulfill trades when the markets reopened. The surviving members would work in honor of those who passed away and to support their families.

88

The reservoir of goodwill Although Lutnick’s dramatic and emotional response certainly resonated with CF’s audiences following 9/11, his reputation prior to 11 September was not untarnished. He was known for walking close to the regulatory edge with some of his business practices and was widely recognized for his single-minded competitive toughness. However, following the events of 9/11 and his emotional commitment to the families of victims, Lutnick was widely touted as a hero and a responsible businessperson. Research on crisis management suggests that stakeholders are highly attracted to virtuous emotional responses and are likely to become advocates for the crisis stricken organization, providing both support and good will from which the organization can draw (Seeger and Ulmer, 2002; Ulmer, 2001; Ulmer and Sellnow, 1995). When Lutnick spoke about the crisis, he provided public commitments about CF’s future and the role of customers in supporting that future. He noted, “if every money manager of a pension fund just gave us a little bit of business, then maybe we’ll survive” (Dunne, 2001, p. 39). On Monday 17 September, CF saw tremendous support from customers seeking to boost CF and its business. Lutnick explained that: Monday was an amazing thing to witness. All of the accounts – money managers, mutual funds, hedge funds – they reached out to help us. They pumped us up with so much business, and we had one of the busiest days ever. And when I went home that night, I told Alison, “I think we’re done. Because we cannot process the trades, and we’ve got no margin of error here. We were crushed with kindness, I thought” (Barbash, 2003, p. 60-61).

Many people who saw Lutnick on television also gave money. It is not uncommon for organizations to receive personal donations following crises. Malden Mills for instance, received personal donations for years after Aaron Feuerstein paid worker salaries for months while the plant was being rebuilt (Ulmer, 2001). Personal contributions illustrate the power of initial compassionate responses to organizational crises. These responses often reach beyond their intended publics and impact citizens, competitors and government. Later on, CF would receive loans from the federal government to rebuild. Compelling stories about the vision of the organization are integral to establishing and receiving good will from stakeholders. It is important to note that even though CF received much support following the crisis, the bond industry is both complex and cutthroat. Lutnick characterized the difficult and complex new atmosphere following 9/11. He explained that his first discussions with competitors were anything but personal. These are guys I do business with regularly. Spoken to on countless occasions. Had dinner with. You would expect “I am so glad to hear your voice Howard”. Or “I’m so very, very, sorry”. But they could not say those things because they had long-standing agendas. If they said, “I’m sorry”, then the next thing out of their mouths would have had to be – “Is there anything I can do for you?” What they did was eliminate the personal . . . Essentially they said, “Howard, I understand that bad things have happened to you, but this is a business conversation. And in this business conversation you’re screwed” (Barbash, 2003, p. 45).

Clearly, CF was in a very precarious position with regard to its competitors even though Lutnick experienced many advantages from his initial response and the good will that followed. However, it is also evident that competitors had to deal with the complexity of the situation in their own way. By focusing on business, they were able to avoid putting their own organizations at risk and were able to meet their own goals. One could also imagine that these business relationships have endured long-standing battles and disagreements. As a result, one could expect that in a highly competitive business that some competitors would maintain the status quo and some may even try to capitalize off of the disaster. Questions of cause and blame and the nature of the event Owing to the nature of crises, organizations often must account for cause and attribute blame for the event. Issues of cause, blame and responsibility are typically played out in image restoration that often dominates all aspect of post-crisis discourse (Allen and Caillouet, 1994; Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 1995). However, there are times when cause and blame do not surface as primary rhetorical imperatives following crisis. These cases create room for a discourse of renewal to emerge. The events of 9/11 as terrorist attacks initiated by outside forces did not create questions regarding CF’s blame or responsibility. The overriding theme in these cases concerned rebuilding and renewal and moving beyond the crisis. These statements give stakeholders hope and illustrate that the organization has a strategy for moving beyond the crisis. This discourse was not uncommon following 9/11 particularly within the Wall Street community. On 13 September, for example, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter ran a full page Wall Street Journal, ad, signed by its chairman, Philip Purcell. The ad stated that many of its employees had made it home but some had not (Barbash, 2003, p. 43): “Thanks to our network of over 60,000 people throughout the world, including those in New York City, our assets and all of our clients’ assets are completely safe. And we are ready to begin as soon as the markets reopen”. CF also began running advertisements some of which met with mixed reviews. Carmen (2002, p. B01) explains that “A Slate columnist has raised the question of whether Cantor’s new ad campaign, in which surviving employees somberly address the public, flaunts ‘the pain and loss of the firm as a form of emotional blackmail and suggesting that doing business with Cantor Fitzgerald is a way of helping those who suffered a great loss on Sept. 11’”. It is important to understand the context in which these advertisements emerged. Once the threat of more attacks was over, trading firms like Morgan Stanley and CF needed to tell their customers that they were going to move forward. These advertisements were necessary to let customers know that their investments were safe and that when the markets opened each customer’s assets would be managed as usual. In situations where cause and blame are not in question, the primary rhetorical imperative becomes moving beyond the crisis and resuming normal operations. Most often, it is the CEO that must convince stakeholders that the organization is ready for business. While such statements may seem crass and insensitive given the scale of the loss, they are necessary for the continuance of the organization. Crisis leaders and crisis stakeholders Much of the crisis literature focuses on the role of leaders and their communication with stakeholders. This research discusses the form and content responses required to

Post-crisis discourse

89

JOCM 18,1

90

calm employees and those directly impacted by the crisis. Form refers “to how a crisis response should be presented” (Coombs, 1999, p. 126). Content involves “the actual messages contained in the crisis response” (Coombs, 1999, p. 127). Key issues related to form involve visiting the scene of the crisis and providing clear and accurate messages to stakeholders. Content recommendations typically involve meeting the informational needs of stakeholders following the crisis such as explaining how problems the organization is experiencing will be resolved. Lutnick’s original positive and supportive framing of the event had a powerful impact on stakeholders, particularly family members who relied on CF employees for support. In one of his many public remarks he explained, “We have a new class of partner here – these families, he said with his voice choking ‘I have to take care of these families’” (Laurence, 2001, p. 8). This emotional response provided the key ingredients according to form recommendations. Lutnick was out in front of his stakeholders showing concern about their well being. In addition, Lutnick at first met regularly with grief stricken families. Initially, he did an excellent job of keeping families informed about the crisis and how CF was going to move forward. Barbash (2003, p. 38) observed that he spoke to families twice a day “and while others avoid putting their grief into words, [he spoke] frankly about what he went through”. However, as time went on Lutnick spent less time with families and more attending to CF’s business needs. This was a severe miscalculation as cable television host Bill O’Reilly began to question grieving widows about the nature of their CF settlements. By 12 November 2001, USA Today publicly noted that Lutnick had “poorly communicated with victims’ families” about specifics related to the crisis (Knox, 2001, p. 1B). Some criticized Lutnick for “his decision to take victims off the payroll on 15 September, while rescuers still searched the rubble” (Knox, 2001, p. 1B). Implied within these criticisms was whether Lutnick was backtracking on his promises. Lutnick, however, moved to provide $1 million of his own money to start a foundation for victims (Dunne and Sapsted, 2001). In addition, though the company stopped paying salaries after 15 September, Lutnick committed to paying company-provided life insurance even without death certificates. In lieu of continuing salaries, Lutnick committed to pay out 25 per cent of CF’s profits for the next five years (Barbash, 2003, p. 67). In all CF provided “life insurance for all of its employees, with a maximum benefit of $100,000”. Moreover, CF noted, “families will receive workers compensation payments, social security benefits, will retain 401K plans and in some cases will receive stock options” (DeMarco, 2001, p. 36). A year after 11 September 2001, CF had made significant profits and Lutnick kept his word to the victim’s families. He announced that that CF will “make $100 million and give $25 million to these families. We gave bonuses of $45 million before Thanksgiving to each and every one of those families. You know, this is our life. This is our commitment. It is our mission because these were our friends, our real, real friends” (Insana and Herera, 2002). Lutnick had operated in a manner consistent with his earlier public commitments to provided compensation. He did so by resurrecting a company essentially destroyed by the attacks. Discussion The events of 9/11 initiated profound social and organizational changes to a wide variety of organizations and institutions. Clearly, for airlines, travel companies,

government agencies and financial services organizations, this was a significant event that included both powerful lessons and immediate imperatives to change. No organization was more directly affected than CF. Despite being essentially destroyed, the company emerged from the wreck of the World Trade Center and reconstituted and renewed itself around a new raison d’etre; that of helping the families of victims. This was a radical departure for a firm previously known for its cutthroat approach to competition and a relentless drive for profits. Howard Lutnick’s public and compelling response to the devastation of his firm is consistent with the four features of discourse of renewal described earlier. He framed a vision of the firm’s future, offered specific commitments and generated support from a wide variety of stakeholders. The discourse of renewal emphasizes the role of the leader in framing the meaning of a crisis event. The opportunity to frame the meaning of the event in terms of a new raison d’etre for CF was enhanced by the scale of harm. Lutnick was able to generate and capitalize on the good will created by the disaster. His discourse was both prospective and reconstitutive. CF was recreated out the 9/11 rubble as Lutnick offered a prospective vision of what this reconstructed company would do. The fact that the cause for this disaster was external to CF, and that blame was not an issue, also created a context more conducive to a discourse of renewal. Rather than arguing about blame and cause, Lutnick was able to ask for help and talk about the future. The prospective orientation helped create identifiable goals that individual CF employees as well as other stakeholders could work toward. Lutnick’s articulation of a new raison d’etre for the firm gave employees, customers and members of the community a focus for their efforts and an outlet for the natural need to do something constructive. Finally, the discourse surrounding CF was provisional in that Lutnick’s emotional outpouring of loss and a need to take some action was neither strategic nor pre-planned. The obvious emotional pain, personal loss and sincerity of his response bolstered Lutnick’s credibility, even while some critics suggested that he was exploiting the disaster. Four factors in the case of CF and Lutnick’s discourse of renewal warrant special attention. First, the public commitment made by Lutnick on network television the day after the event was significant in generating support and, later, in constraining the organization. Weick (1988) described public commitments as powerful enactments, difficult to deny or undo. The very public and unusual commitment to use company profits to offset the harm cased by an attack on the company created widespread support and goodwill. It also provided a new meaning for the firm’s profit-making endeavors. Later, when it appeared that CF might move away from these goals, Lutnick reiterated his public commitments. A second factor concerns the discourse of renewal framework. In its earlier formulations, discourse of renewal argued that a pre-event reservoir of good will among key stakeholders is necessary for organizations to promote renewal following a crisis. CF did not enjoy such a resource and in fact was known as a firm that emphasized profitability above all else. The nature of the event and the scope of harm, however, overwhelmed this negative reputation and created an outpouring of public sympathy and support. Essentially, the crisis wiped away CF’s previous reputation and created an opportunity for Lutnick to recreate his image. A third conclusion concerns the value basis of renewal discourse. In general, discourse of renewal is grounded in a larger set of values and ethics, such as

Post-crisis discourse

91

JOCM 18,1

92

commitment to community and employees and a sense of corporate social responsibility. In the case of CF and the 9/11 attacks, the values that emerged and supported a discourse of renewal concerned helping the victims and reducing the harm to families. The values Lutnick proposed for a renewed CF moved beyond mere profit-making. Fourth, the organizational discourse examined here involves messages primarily communicated through public or external communication channels. While Lutnick did meet with surviving employees individually and in small groups, few public records of these meetings exists. Moreover, as with many crises, internal channels of communication were disrupted or destroyed. Lutnick, as with many CEOs facing crisis, was forced to turn to public channels of communication. In addition, it was key in this case for Lutnik to not only convince his employees that the company could survive, but to garner wide spread support from external groups, especially customers and regulators. Finally, it is important to point out that Lutnick’s discourse of renewal might be perceived by some as exploiting the crisis and the victims of the 9/11 disaster. In particular, advertisements announcing that CF was back in business were judged by some as in poor taste. Lutnick’s tearful request that money managers send CF business so the company could help the families was also critiqued as self-serving. At the time, other organizations, including some charitable groups, faced similar charges. Discourses of renewal often are susceptible to these kinds of charges. Lutnick’s personal loss and obvious sincerity, however, helped diffuse these criticisms. His behavior was ultimately judged as an example of responsible social conduct in the face of a devastating loss.

Conclusion Crises are likely to become increasingly common events in the life of organizations. Managers, therefore, will be required to respond to the radical changes, disruptions and uncertainty imposed by crisis. Conventional wisdom suggests that crises are primarily negative events creating severe hardship and organizational decline. The ability of organizations like CF to survive, rebuild and even renew themselves will depend on the ability to learn from these events, create a new sense of normal and constitute compelling and meaningful discourses that promote cooperation, support and renewal. This discourse of renewal creates an opportunity after a crisis to fundamentally re-order the organization down to its core purpose. Crises, in these cases, create not only severe devastation, but a unique opportunity for systemic change and fundamental re-invention. In normal times, such fundamental change would require long-term strategic efforts as well as major investments of time and resources without guaranteed success. Crises, however, disrupt the status quo in basic ways allowing for new assumptions, methods and organizational values to emerge. Many outdated assumptions, impediments, inertia and political resistance to change are removed during a crisis. Attention and energy are focused on the immediate and obvious need. While CF remains a company cut from the tough tradition of Wall Street, its culture and mission has been fundamentally altered by the events of 9/11 and the resulting effort to provide support to the families. For CF, 9/11 was not only a time of destruction and loss, but also a time of change and renewal.

References Allen, W.M. and Caillouet, R.H. (1994), “Legitimation endeavors: impression management strategies used by an organization in crisis”, Communication Monographs, Vol. 61, pp. 44-62. Barbash, T. (2003), On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11: A Story of Loss and Renewal, Harper Collins, New York, NY. Barczak, G., Smith, C. and Wilemon, D. (1988), “Managing large-scale organizational change”, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 17, pp. 23-35. Benoit, W.L. (1995), Accounts, Excuses and Apologies, University of New York Press, Albany, NY. Carmen, T. (2002), “Loss and profit; we remember, we create, we make a buck. How should we feel?”, The Washington Post, pp. 01, (25 August 2002). Cohen, M.D. and Sproull, L.S. (Eds) (1996), Organizational Learning, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Coombs, W.T. (1995), “Choosing the right words: the development of guidelines for the selection of the appropriate crisis-response strategies”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 8, pp. 447-76. Coombs, W.T. (1999), “Information and compassion in crisis responses: a test of their effects”, Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol. 11, pp. 125-42. Cummings, T.G. and Huse, E.F. (1989), Organizational Development and Change, 3rd ed., West, St Paul, MN. DeMarco, P. (2001), “Kin of WTC brokerage’s lost staff will get profit share”, Daily News, 26 September, p. 36. Dunne, H. (2001), “Cantor to give 24pc of profits to families”, Daily Telegraph, 21 September, p. 39. Dunne, H. and Sapsted, D. (2001), “The day the joking stopped Cantor Fitzgerald has become a grimly familiar name in the past week”, Daily Telegraph, 20 September, p. 21. Eisenbach, R., Watson, K. and Pillai, R. (1999), “Transformational leadership in the context of organizational change”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 12 No. 2. Fairhurst, G.T. and Starr, R.A. (1996), The Art of Framing, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Fitzgibbon, J.E. and Seeger, M.W. (2002), “Audiences and metaphors of globalization in the Daimler Chrysler AG merger”, Communication Studies, Vol. 53, pp. 40-55. Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (1998), “Introduction: organizational discourse: of diversity, dichotomy, and multi-disciplinarity”, in Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (Eds), Discourse and Organization, Sage, London, pp. 1-13. Greenberg, B.S. (Ed.) (2002), Communication and Terrorism: Public and Media Responses to 9/11, Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ. Henriques, D. and Lee, J. (2001a), “After the attacks: the trading firm; flinty bond trader leads his firm out of the rubble”, New York Times, pp. 10, 15 September. Henriques, D. and Lee, J. (2001b), “Unwilling to surrender”, Toronto Star, pp. 1, 16 September. Hill, A., Knight, R. and Wiggins, J. (2001), “An American survivor: man of the year Howard Lutnick: The chairman of the bond broking firm devastated on 11 September is more respected than liked. But now has a higher motive to make money”, Financial Times, pp. 10, 22 December. Insana, R. and Herera, S. (2002), “Howard Lutnick, Cantor Fitzgerald chairman discusses his company’s losses from the World Trade Center Attacks and the company’s recovery and support of victims’ families”, CNBC.

Post-crisis discourse

93

JOCM 18,1

Kanter, R.M. (1983), The Change Masters, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY. Knox, N. (2001), “Cantor battles back from tragedy”, USA Today, pp. 1, 12 November. Kotter, J.P. and Schlesinger, L.A. (1979), “Choosing strategies for change”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 57 No. 2, pp. 106-14.

94

Laurence, C. (2001), “‘I have to take care of these families’: Charles Laurence finds Cantor Fitzgerald’s hard man traumatized, but defiant, after last week”, Sunday Telegraph, 16 September, p. 8. Lewis, L.K. and Siebold, D.R. (1998), “Reconceptualizing organizational change implementation as a communication problem: a review of literature and research agenda”, in Roloff, M.E. (Ed.), Communication Yearbook, Vol. 21, pp. 231-75. Mintzberg, H. (1984), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Free Press, New York, NY. O’Connor, E.S. (2000), “Plotting the organization: the embedded narrative as a construct for studying change”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 26, pp. 174-92. Oswick, C. and Montgomery, J. (1999), “Images of an organization: the use of metaphor in a multinational company”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 12 No. 6. Pauchant, T.C. and Mitroff, I.I. (1992), Transforming the Crisis-Prone Organization, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Perrow, C. (1999), Normal Accidents, 2nd ed., Basic Books, New York, NY. Pfeffer, J. (1981), “Management as symbolic action: the creation and maintenance of organizational paradigms”, in Cummings, L.L. and Staw, B.M. (Eds), Research in Organizational Behavior, JAI Greenwich, CT, Vol. 5. Ray, S.J. (1999), Strategic Communication in Crisis Management: Lessons from the Airline Industry, Quorum Books, Westport, CT. Rogers, E.M. (1995), Diffusion of Innovations, 4th ed., Free Press, New York, NY. Russakoff, D. and Eunjung Cha, A. (2001), “Sketches of the missing: hard-working early risers”, Washington Post, 14 September, p. 24. Seeger, M.W. (1986), “The challenger tragedy and search for legitimacy”, Central States Speech Journal, Vol. 37, pp. 147-57. Seeger, M.W. and Ulmer, R.R. (2001), “Virtuous responses to organizational crisis: Aaron Feuerstein and Milt Cole”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 31, pp. 369-76. Seeger, M.W. and Ulmer, R.R. (2002), “A post-crisis discourse of renewal: the cases of Malden Mills and Cole Hardwoods”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 30, pp. 126-42. Seeger, M.W., Sellnow, T.L. and Ulmer, R.R. (1998), “Communication, organization and crisis”, in Roloff, M.E. (Ed.), Communication Yearbook, Vol. 21, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 231-75. Seeger, M.W., Sellnow, T.L. and Ulmer, R.R. (2003), Communication and Organizational Crisis, Praeger, Westport, CT. Sellnow, T., Seeger, M.W. and Ulmer, R.R. (2002), “Chaos theory, informational needs and the North Dakota floods”, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Vol. 30, pp. 269-92. Sitkin, S.B. (1996), “Learning through failure: the strategy of small losses”, in Cohen, M.D. and Sproull, L.S. (Eds), Organizational Learning, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 541-78. Sitkin, S.B., Sutcliffe, K.M. and Weick, K.E. (1999), “Organizational learning”, in Dorf, R.C. (Ed.), Technology Management Handbook, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 7-76.

Smart, C.F. and Vertinsky, I. (1977), “Designs for crisis decision units”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 22, pp. 640-57. Turner, B. (1976), “The organizational and interorganizational development of disasters”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 21, pp. 378-97. Ulmer, R.R. (2001), “Effective crisis management through established stakeholder relationships: Malden Mills as a case study”, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 14, pp. 590-615. Ulmer, R.R. and Sellnow, T.L. (1995), “External agencies as advocates in organizational crisis communication: the Bismarck Wood House as a case study”, North Dakota Journal of Speech and Theatre, Vol. 8, pp. 56-64. Ulmer, R.R. and Sellnow, T.L. (2002), “Crisis management and the discourse of renewal: understanding the potential for positive outcomes of crisis”, Public Relations Review, Vol. 28, pp. 361-5. Weick, K.E. (1988), “Enacted sensemaking in crisis situations”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 25, pp. 305-17. Weick, K.E. (1993), “The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: the Mann Gulch disaster”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 38, pp. 628-52. Weick, K.E. (1995), Sensemaking in Organizations, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Yin, R.K. (1984), Case Study Research: Design and Method, Sage, Newbury Park.

Post-crisis discourse

95

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

JOCM 18,1

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Afterword: why language matters in the analysis of organizational change

96

Haridimos Tsoukas ALBA, Vouliagmeni, Greece and University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Abstract Purpose – This invited article aims to show how the papers in the special issue highlight the advantages of using discourse analysis in order to contribute to our understanding of organizational change. Design/methodology/approach – The article begins by exploring the traditional perspectives used to make sense of organizational change including the behaviorist and cognitivist views. It then discusses how the papers in the special issue highlight the advantages of using discourse analysis. Findings – Compared to either the behaviorist or cognitivist perspectives, a discourse analytic approach is shown to offer greater potential for understanding the nature and complexity of organizational change, especially issues pertaining to the construction of stability and change, and the role of agency. Originality/value – Provides some insights into the advantages of discourse analysis in organizational change. Keywords Language, Narratives, Organizational change Paper type Viewpoint

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 pp. 96-104 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510579878

There are at least three ways to make sense of organizational change and its management: the behaviorist, the cognitivist, and the discursive. The behaviorist view is the oldest and, to a large extent, it still underlies lay accounts and managerialist explorations into the topic (Kotter, 1996; Nadler, 1998). The cognitivist gained ascendancy in the 1980s and early 1990s (Huff, 1990; Huff and Huff, 2000), while the discursive is the latest development following the recent fascination with the linguistic turn in organization studies (Fairclough, 2005; Grant et al., 2004; Holman and Thorpe, 2003; Tietze et al., 2003; Westwood and Linstead, 2001). Below, I will describe briefly each one of these perspectives. The basic tenets of the behaviorist perspective are the following. First, change is modeled on motion and is, thus, episodic – it occurs in successive states. Objects exist in a natural state of stasis from which they move after external force is applied to them, and to which they return (Lewin, 1999/1948). In organizations, typically, the object undergoing change is human behavior and culture. The forces through which change is effected are, typically, managerial requests, orders and commands (rewards and punishments), stemming from the authority relationship managers possess in organizational hierarchies. When, having applied force, objects fail to move, or do not sufficiently move, it means they resist, and ways must be found to overcome their resistance, through, typically, applying stronger force. Secondly, the change agent stands outside the object undergoing change – there is no internal relationship connecting the two. Change is other-directional: others need to change and the change agent is there to make sure they do change. Thirdly, the object undergoing change has a particular structure which, if known, preferably

through scientific means, it can be deliberately altered. The clearer a representation of the structure of the object, the closer to reality one is and, thus, the higher the chances that change will be effective. And fourthly, following on from the previous point, the knowledge describing an object’s structure and how it is likely to change can be objectively described and concentrated in a single mind. The behaviorist view espouses a naturalistic onto-epistemology: it sees organizations being populated by individuals, structures, systems and processes, which can be objectively described and deliberately altered. There is a Cartesian dualism running through the behaviorist way of looking at the management of organizational change: the organization is the body (res extensa) to which the (managerial) mind (res cogitans) applies its higher mental capacity. And just like the mind is more precious than the body (cogito, ergo sum), so managerial intentions and plans are superior to the functioning of the organization. The mind knows; the body behaves. In this line of thinking, the study of organizational change is the study of human behaviors at different points in time. Cognitivists move beyond behaviorists in arguing that the study of behavior is insufficient to account for change. While we may observe people behaving differently over time, the important question is why. This question cannot be answered unless we make sense of how people make sense. What is missing therefore, is the study of the mental processes underlying what people could be observed to do, the way they represent the world. As Stubbart and Ramaprasad (1990, p. 253) remark, “contrary to the behaviorist perspective which treats managers as black boxes, the cognitive science perspective delves into the working of the black-boxes. Managers do not mainly act according to habit, instincts, or environmental determination; their behavior is active and intentional”. Although cognitivists aim at taking “meaning” seriously, rather than overtly observable behavior (mere “arm waving” as Stubbart and Ramaprasad (1990, p. 255) note, meaning has been primarily understood in terms of information-processing. Individuals represent the world in particular ways, which are stored as knowledge structures in the form of “schemas” or “scripts”. To understand intentional action one ought to look into the black box – the individual mind – to see how schemas operate. In a milder version of cognitivism, cognitive map research has aimed to represent managers’ causal knowledge of a particular phenomenon, with the view of enabling managers to first surface their goals, beliefs and assumptions, secondly reflect on them and collectively agree on an aggregated map, and thirdly agree on a course of action for intervention (Eden and Ackermann, 1998). Being strong Cartesians, cognitivists presuppose that the human mind is an internal realm of purely mental operations and computations, which mediate between stimuli and responses. The rules of the mind operate behind individuals’ backs, so to speak. If you get people to think differently – change their minds – different behaviors will follow (Gardner, 2004). Whereas behaviorists seek to change human behavior through reinforcements – rewards and punishments – cognitivists want to intervene into how people think. Again, change is seen as primarily episodic, and knowledge regarding how change may be effected is a function of the accuracy of representations of individuals’ inter-connected cognitive maps. The better the cognitive maps obtained, the more one knows where to intervene. Such knowledge is objective and can be concentrated into a single mind, which, in organizations, is the managerial mind.

Afterword: why language matters

97

JOCM 18,1

98

A discursive perspective places meaning centrally on the research agenda on change. We cannot understand human behavior unless we grasp the meanings informing it. But meaning now is understood to be not just in the mind, in the way people think. It is rather manifested in the way people act. The basis of thinking is concepts, and concepts are expressed in words which derive their meaning from the way they are used in specific language games, which are located in distinct forms of life. Thinking is not an exclusively private affair: in so far as it makes use of concepts, as it must, it is necessarily, to some extent at least, public. The individual is thus thought to be not an isolated cognizer but a participant in a form of life – engaged with others in meaningful activities (Flores, 2000). Individuals first and foremost learn to participate in forms of life from which, subsequently, one can extract some rules that express the norms of that practice. Since the concepts (and symbols more generally) an individual uses derive their meaning from the language game within which they are used, researchers must pay attention not just to the mental content of individuals but to the broader system within which concepts are located and practiced. This broader system is a language game-embedded-within-a-form-of-life; in short it is a discursive practice. A discursive practice is the norms-bound use of a sign system directed at or to achieving something (Harre´ and Gillett, 1994, pp. 28-9). The sign system par excellence in human affairs is, of course, language, ordinary language. Rather than looking for abstract representations in the mind, from a discursive point of view one looks for patterns in the use of words. The rules governing the use of words – the grammar – are discernible in how people account for themselves and others – in how they use discourse. The emphasis placed by discursivists on ordinary language is important since, for them, ordinary language is often concerned with the performance of actions – actions whose performance can take place only via language (e.g. “I now pronounce you husband and wife” or “you are fired”). Even when saying and doing are relatively distinct, they do represent a functionally indissoluble unit. As Bruner remarks (1990, pp. 18-19), “the meaning of talk is powerfully determined by the train of action in which it occurs – ‘Smile when you say that!’ – just as the meaning of action is interpretable only by reference to what the actors say they are up to – ‘So sorry’ for an inadvertent bumping”. From a discursive point of view, what people say is neither dismissed as inconsequential nor is it regarded as predictive of overt behavior: “What [a discursive perspective on the mind] takes as central, rather, is that the relationship between action and saying (or experiencing) is, in the ordinary conduct of life, interpretable. It takes the position that there is a publicly interpretable congruence between saying, doing, and the circumstances in which the saying and doing occur. That is to say, there are agreed-upon canonical relationships between the meaning of what we say and what we do in given circumstances, and such relationships govern how we conduct our lives with one another” (Bruner, 1990, p. 19). From a discursive point of view organizational change is the process of constructing and sharing new meanings and interpretations of organizational activities (Morgan and Sturdy, 2000). It is because the latter are language-dependent institutional realities that they can be redefined and altered (Searle, 1995, 1998). A state-owned organization that is privatized represents a new institutional reality – a new language is used to re-constitute the organization. A TQM program aiming to enhance quality represents

an attempt to redefine the practice of operations. There is hardly an organizational change which does not involve the re-definition, the re-labeling, or the re-interpretation of an institutional activity. Such acts of re-definition and re-interpretation are, partly at least, performative speech acts that help bring about what speakers pronounce (Searle, 1995, 1998). Notice that, from a discursive point of view, language is not simply the medium through which change is brought about, but change occurs in language and, by doing so, language brings about a different state of affairs (Ford and Ford, 1995, p. 542). As Searle (1998, p. 150) remarks, “performatives as well as other declarations create a state of affairs just by representing it as created”. Besides declarations, there are other kinds of performative speech acts, such as assertives, directives, commissives, and expressives (Searle, 1998, pp. 148-52; Ford and Ford, 1995, pp. 544-5). Combinations of speech acts help bring about change in the conduct of other people. While there are several cases in which senior managers’ declarative powers do create a set of new institutional facts, as for example in cases of privatization, replacements of top managers, or new organizational structures, there are several other cases in which declarations need to be combined with other kinds of speech acts for a new institutional reality to be brought about (Ford and Ford, 1995). A new institutional reality is brought about when a sufficient number of people accept its definition and the action consequences that stem from it. To put it differently, performative speech acts need to be accepted by a sufficient number of people for them to become institutional. When there is collective intentionality involved, when, in other words, there is “the collective intentional imposition of function on entities that cannot perform those functions without that imposition” (Searle, 1995, p. 41), as there is organizations, then we have the creation of a new institutional reality. For the manufacturing process, for example, to be reorganized along TQM principles, the components of, and the activities of those involved in it need to be assigned new functions, which are symbolic constructions – they do not possess them intrinsically but are assigned them by the collectivity. Changes in the use of language bring about change in practices, and vice versa. The question is not what comes first, since both saying and doing constitute, in Bruner’ (1990, p. 19) words, “an inseparable unit”. What is empirically interesting to explore is how this unit works. Tietze, for example, describes in her paper in this special issue how working from home (a new practice) compels individuals to re-define the boundaries between “work” and “home”. Symbolic boundaries are reinforced or re-drawn (in Searle’s language, new symbolic functions are assigned) as Tietze shows. Since people make sense of new practices in virtue of discursive practices in which they already partake, Tietze demonstrates how a new discursive template is built by drawing on earlier discursive templates, notably, in this case, that of paid work. A new discursive template needs to be legitimate in the eyes of its actual and potential users, and drawing on the template of “paid work” confers teleworkers such legitimacy. Similarly, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent near destruction of the Wall Street bond-trading firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm’s new discursive template “helping the families of victims”, a discourse normally used by charities and voluntary organizations but not usually associated with Wall Street, legitimated Cantor Fitzgerald to the wider public and was fundamental in mobilizing internal and external support for its renewal

Afterword: why language matters

99

JOCM 18,1

100

(see the Seeger et al. paper in this issue). More broadly, given that individuals and organizations are at the intersection of different discourses, how they make them relevant to current concerns, with what consequences, is a fascinating topic to explore. Although in the cases of teleworking and post-9/11 Cantor Fitzgerald the discursive templates of “paid work” and “helping the families of the victims”, respectively, were well understood and accepted as legitimate by all concerned, in other cases this may not be the case and change agents need to struggle to legitimate their discursive templates first. The case of privatization is a good case in point. In itself, in some countries, “privatization” is a weak discourse and only when used in conjunction with the “market liberalization” and the “limiting of state subsidies” typically mandated by international agencies and supranational entities into which a country has voluntarily been or aspires to be a member of, does “privatization” acquire the status of a quasi-legitimate discourse (Tsoukas and Papoulias, 2005). Again, how a discourse is legitimated, namely through what discursive strategies a new discourse is made to resonate with individuals, or, to use Searle’s language, in what ways does collective intentionality is established and new symbolic functions are assigned, is a very interesting empirical question to explore. It is noteworthy that, as Hardy et al. (2000) remark, a new discursive template creates new “subject positions” for both the change agent and the rest of the actors involved. By making an earlier discursive template relevant to a particular case and, thus, drawing on it to create a new discourse, a change agent creates simultaneously new subject positions for other agents. In other words, the use of a particular discourse bestows agency to several parties, not just the change agent. Tietze shows as much in her paper when she notes that the “paid work” discourse used by teleworkers casts family members to the role of quasi-fellow employees, which they actively take up and selectively mold to suit their purposes. Thus the phrase “come back at seven” used by his teleworking wife when she did not want to be disturbed while working at home, was also used by the husband when he did not want to accommodate his wife. Or a teenage boy would call his parents “colleagues” (a phrase used by his teleworking father to address family members while teleworking at home) in discussions about his rights and responsibilities in the household. As Tietze remarks, the above individuals, as active discourse users, utilize those aspects of their new subject positions which enable them to pursue their own purposes and plans. A similar point is made by Barrett et al. (1995) in their study of the introduction of total quality (TQ) in the US Navy. Seen in discursive terms, a change program such as the TQ created new subject positions for the individuals involved, thus creating conditions for its further, partly unpredictable, development. Barrett et al. (1995, p. 367) describe this process as follows: “When an enlisted person at the telecommunications command hears that he or she is encouraged to offer suggestions for process improvements, he or she may interpret this as an opportunity to make suggestions about the work schedule and ask that the organization consider a flex time program”. In other words, a TQ change program creates a discourse of openness to suggestions for improvements, in which individuals are reconceived to be reflective practitioners who are willing to learn and contribute to improving the workplace processes. The subject position of “reflective practitioners” bestows agency to individuals, who may exercise it in ways that suit their own interests or views of the workplace. This creates momentum to change programs and makes change a continuing process rather than

an episodic event (Orlikowski and Hofman, 1997; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Tsoukas and Papoulias, 2005). Chia and Tsoukas (Chia, 1999; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Chia and Tsoukas, 2004) have argued that change is a fundamental ontological category of lived experience and that organization is an attempt to order and stabilize the intrinsic flux of human action. In that sense, these researchers have argued, change must not be thought of as a property of organization; rather organization must be understood as a property of change – the attempt to simplify and stabilize what would have been an irreducibly dynamic and irreducible lived experience. A discursive perspective to organizational change is particularly sensitive to both the need to stabilize an ever-changing experience and to capturing on-going change. Anderson (in this special issue) beautifully describes how this happens. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1984) concept of “double voice”, he shows that organizational members linguistically represent the past history of a situation they wish to change, especially through the represented voice of specific individuals and member categories (e.g. managers, engineers, etc.). Organizational routines are represented as genres of speech – particular ways members “usually” talk. By doing so, namely by reporting past utterances as representative of habitual ways of doing things (routines), organizational members no doubt smooth over and abstract variations in routines and practices, and thus construct generalized understandings about aspects of organizational life. Through represented voices routines are treated as if they were generic and stable objects, which can be discussed and opened up for possible change. Such change can be effected through members “trying on” new kinds of utterances and considering how a proposed change in an organizational routine might sound in the future by articulating the proposed change in the voice of an organizational member (individual or category member). By envisaging and enacting likely conversations in the future, the conditions are created for a quasi-dialogue through which incremental changes may be noticed. This happens because in a conversation one contextualizes what one hears by weaving utterances into one’s own discourse and thus transforming it into something new (Rorty, 1991, pp. 94-5). In listening, understanding, and responding to the meaning of another’s voiced utterance, one is taking an active stance and is sensitive to its uniqueness within the given conversational context. When individuals contextualize what they hear, as they must in order to generate meaning out of it, they inevitably modify it (Tsoukas, 2005) or, to put in Bakhtinian terms, past meanings are reinterpreted and changed through present dialogues. As Shotter and Cunliffe (2003, p. 17) aptly remark, “it is the particular way in which we voice our utterances, shape and intone them in responsive accord with our circumstances that give our utterances their unique, once-occurrent meanings”. Thus by conceptualizing routines as genres of speech, organizational members are able to envisage different kinds of future conversations, thus generating different kinds of change. Through representing routines as genres of speech organizational members frame (“freeze”) commonly available experience and stabilize meaning, thus producing stability, while by narrativizing representations (speech genres) organizational members create the conditions for the destabilization of meaning and thus change (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001). In either case, stability and change are discursively achieved and are both important.

Afterword: why language matters

101

JOCM 18,1

102

Focusing on the grammar of action (the rules and conventions through which phenomena appear as meaningful), as the discursive perspective does, it makes it conceptually possible to examine the narrative conventions in terms of which stories about change processes may be told (Harre´, 2004, p. 1445). It is not only that change processes may be usefully seen in discursive terms – how individuals through the use language generate change – but that the very account of change is in itself of a narrative form (Bruner, 1990). This is illustrated in the papers by Beech and Johnson, and Collins and Rainwater in this special issue. Beech and Johnson show how the different narratives produced framed the identity of the senior managers involved, while Collins and Rainwater demonstrate how a heroic narrative of the changes at Sears Roebuck, recounted in an article in the Harvard Business Review, can be retold as tragedy and comedy. Why might one want to undertake a narrative analysis of change? Because, as Beech and Johnson point out, different narratives generate or imply different identities for those involved (Boje, 2003; Gabriel, 2000). How Alex, for example, the new CEO at PN Services studied by the authors, tells the story of strategic change in the company and the role he reserves for himself in that story, will shape his own identity and will influence the way he acts towards others as well as the reactions he will elicit. That story is malleable and fluid, depending on events and evolving interpretations. Similarly, as Collins and Rainwater observe, re-telling a change process account makes the readers or the hearers re-view the change process since it directs their attention to those actors and those aspects of the organization that were marginalized in the “official” story. By highlighting the narrative aspects of a change process account, a discursive perspective makes organizational members sensitive to the positioning of the narrator in relation to the story told. Questions of narrative perspective (who sees?) and narrative voice (who says?) can now be discussed (Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001). By bringing into awareness Maturana’s (1979, p. 8) aphorism that “anything said is said by an observer”, a narrative analysis of change processes opens space for a discussion of motives and purposes, power and domination, aspirations and follies, vanity and self-doubt, ambiguity and polyphony. As all papers in the special issue usefully demonstrate, taking language seriously in the analysis of organizational change has multiple benefits vis-a-vis the behaviorist and cognitive perspectives, since it enables organizational members and researchers alike to focus simultaneously on the construction of both stability and change; it is sensitive to the ongoing character of change; and highlights how agency is constructed through the accounts produced. While for behaviorists and cognitivists the world is projected more or less objectively on out mental screens, for discursivists the world appears, or is constructed through, the way people talk and use sign systems more generally. An organization is not “frozen” waiting for the change agent to “unfreeze” it, nor is it crystallized in mental representations in the mind. Stability is important indeed but rather than stability being a property of the world, it is a symbolic construction generated by actors themselves through the way they talk of past practices, habits and routines. And rather than change being a response to rewards and punishments or being effected through “retraining” the mind as if the mind was an abstract disembodied entity, change is produced through the ways people talk, communicate and converse in the context of

practical activities, and collectively reassign symbolic functions to the tasks they engage in and the tools they work with. References Bakhtin, M.M. (1984), Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Barrett, F.J., Thomas, G.F. and Hocevar, S.P. (1995), “The central role of discourse in large-scale change: a social construction perspective”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 31, pp. 352-72. Boje, D. (2003), “Using narrative and telling stories”, in Holman, D. and Thorpe, R. (Eds), Management and Language, Sage, London, pp. 41-53. Bruner, J. (1990), Acts of Meaning, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Chia, R. (1999), “A ‘rhizomic’ model of organizational change and transformation: perspective from a metaphysics of change”, British Journal of Management, Vol. 10, pp. 209-27. Chia, R. and Tsoukas, H. (2004), “Everything flows and nothing abides: towards a ‘rhizomic’ model of organizational change, transformation and action”, Process Studies, Vol. 32, pp. 196-224. Eden, C. and Ackermann, F. (1998), Making Strategy, Sage, London. Fairclough, N. (2005), “Discourse analysis in organization studies: the case for critical realism”, Organization Studies (in press). Flores, F. (2000), “Heideggerian thinking and the transformation of business practice”, in Wrathall, M. and Malpas, J. (Eds), Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honour of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Vol. 2, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 271-91. Ford, J.D. and Ford, L.W. (1995), “The roles of conversations in producing intentional change in organizations”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20, pp. 541-70. Gabriel, Y. (2000), Storytelling in Organizations, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gardner, H. (2004), Changing Minds, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds) (2004), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London. Hardy, C., Palmer, I. and Phillips, N. (2000), “Discourse as a strategic discourse”, Human Relations, Vol. 53, pp. 1227-48. Harre´, R. (2004), “Discursive psychology and the boundaries of sense”, Organization Studies, Vol. 25, pp. 1435-53. Harre´, R. and Gillett, G. (1994), The Discursive Mind, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Holman, D. and Thorpe, R. (Eds) (2003), Management and Language, Sage, London. Huff, A.S. (Ed.) (1990), Mapping Strategic Thought, Wiley, Chichester. Huff, A.S. and Huff, J.O. (2000), When Firms Change Direction, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kotter, J. (1996), Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Lewin, K. (1999/1948), “Group decision and social change”, in Gold, M. (Ed.), The Complete Social Scientist: A Kurt Lewin Reader, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp. 265-84. Maturana, H. (1979) “Biology of cognition”, in Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (Eds), Autopoiesis and Cognition, Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 5-62. Morgan, G. and Sturdy, A. (2000), Beyond Organizational Change, Macmillan, Houndmills.

Afterword: why language matters

103

JOCM 18,1

104

Nadler, D.A. (1998), Champions of Change, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Orlikowski, W.J. and Hofman, D.J. (1997), “An improvisational model for change management: the case of groupware technologies”, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 38, pp. 11-21. Rorty, R. (1991), Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Searle, J.R. (1995), The Construction of Social Reality, The Penguin Press, London. Searle, J.R. (1998), Mind, Language and Society, Basic Books, New York, NY. Shotter, J. and Cunliffe, A. (2003), “Managers as practical authors: everyday conversations for action”, in Holman, D. and Thorpe, R. (Eds), Management and Language, Sage, London, pp. 15-37. Stubbart, C.J. and Ramaprasad, A. (1990), “Comments on the empirical articles and recommendations for future research”, in Huff, A.S. (Ed.), Mapping Strategic Thought, Wiley, Chichester, pp. 251-88. Tietze, S., Cohen, L. and Musson, G. (2003), Understanding Organization through Language, Sage, London. Tsoukas, H. (2005), Complex Knowledge: Studies in Organizational Epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Tsoukas, H. and Chia, R. (2002), “On organizational becoming: rethinking organizational change”, Organization Science, Vol. 13, pp. 567-82. Tsoukas, H. and Hatch, M.J. (2001), “Complex thinking, complex practice: the case for a narrative approach to organizational complexity”, Human Relations, Vol. 54, pp. 979-1013. Tsoukas, H. and Papoulias, D. (2005), “Managing third-order change: the case of the Public Power Corporation (Greece)”, Long Range Planning (in press). Westwood, R. and Linstead, S. (Eds) (2001), The Language of Organization, Sage, London.

Note from the publisher Emerald Structured Abstracts have arrived! Well it is finally happened and all the first issues of the 2005 volume of Emerald journals will contain structured abstracts. Have a look at an article title page in this issue of Journal of Organizational Change Management. That is how they will look from now on. The look will be slightly different in the electronic version on the web site, but this is only a cosmetic variation and takes account of the different media and the way people use the information. The idea took hold at the beginning of 2004 and a small team worked on the design and introduction of structured abstracts throughout the year. Thanks to all the hard work of authors, editors, editorial and production staff at Emerald we can now showcase them for the first time. We believe they provide real benefits to our readers and researchers and that they answer some of the key questions people have about a paper without having to scan or read the entire paper: . What research has been conducted on this topic? . How was the research approached – what methods were used? . What were the main findings? . Are there any literature reviews on this topic and are they selective or inclusive? . So what, they have shown this, but what does this mean in my work/organization? . I want to conduct research in this area, but what questions still need answering? . Has this work got any relevance and value for me? . What did the writer set out to show?

Note from the publisher

105

Structured abstracts supply the answers to this type of question without the researcher having to go any further. Authors can be more confident that their paper will be noticed and read by others with a real interest in the topic or research. As far as possible all our past authors and editorial team members (Editorial advisory boards, etc.) have been alerted to this change. Authors who have been asked to rewrite their abstracts in the new format have readily obliged. The response from all parties has been most gratifying: Structured abstracts are increasing in popularity among the social and behavioral sciences. There’s overwhelming evidence that readers (and indexers) glean more from structured abstracts (Jonathan Eldredge, MLS, PhD, AHIP, Associate Professor, School of Medicine Academic & Clinical Services Coordinator and Author, Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center, Health Sciences Center, The University of New Mexico, USA).

To read more on structured abstracts and their value for researchers and writers read this short paper by Liz Bayley and Jonathan Eldredge outlining their benefits: http:// research.mlanet.org/structured_abstract.html

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005 pp. 105-106 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814

JOCM 18,1

106

Everyone has problems in the digital environment when weighing up the value of any piece of information – information overload is discussed endlessly in the media. Structured abstracts go some way towards a remedy. Emerald is the very first publisher in the management field to introduce structured abstracts. We know this means change for the author and researcher, but the fact that other journals don’t do it should not stop us from making the advancement. It is wonderful to be first in the field with a good idea! We have only two regrets! We did not think of it before and we are unable to go back through more than 40,000 papers already in the database and change the abstracts into structured ones. Having said that, nearly 5,000 new papers will be deposited into our database this coming year and all will be accompanied by a structured abstract. Let us know what you think. E-mail Sue de Verteuil, Head, Editorial Developments, at: [email protected] with your views.