This much-needed systematic 2006 exploration of the emerging field of organizational discourse addresses scholarly perspectives as well as empirical applications of the concepts. The interpretive, functional, critical, and structurational perspectives are examined in detail, and application chapters illustrate how discourse theory can be employed in field research.

This major work from renowned scholars in the field, analyzes the role of language and symbolic media and shows how this enables us to move to new levels of understanding of contemporary organizational issues. An introductory chapter examines the role and growing importance of discourse in the study of organizations. It critically evaluates the contributions of various disciplines and defines organizational discourse as a subject area. The chapters in the first section, Talk and Action, explore the relationship between discourse, action and interaction and their impact on organizational structure and behaviour. Stories and Sensemaking focuses on the analytical potential of the `story' as a means of illuminating the ways in

Our knowledge and understanding of organizations is both enabled and constrained by invisible relationship of power that are embedded in the ways in which we act and speak. The notion of discourse has been used by many authors to describe and study these phenomena, and this volume offers a succinct but comprehensive introduction to the vast field of critical organizational discourse analysis. Targeted at graduate and doctoral students, and at non-specialist academic who need to familiarize with the academic debate on the subject, the book harnesses the power of metaphors to describe the many faces of discourse.

How can we study organizations from a discursive perspective? What are the characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of each perspective on organizational discourse? To what extent do discourse and communication constitute the organizational world? This accessible book addresses these questions by showing how classical organizational themes, objects and questions can be illuminated from various discursive perspectives. Six approaches are presented and explained: semiotics, rhetoric, speech act theory, conversation analysis/ethnomethodology, narrative analysis, and critical discourse analysis. These six perspectives are then mobilized throughout the book to study coordination and organizing, organizational culture and identity, as well as negotiation, decision making and conflicts in the context of meetings. The unifying thread of this volume is the communicative constitutive approach (CCO) to organizations, as implicitly or explicitly advocated by the great majority of organizational discourse analysts and theorists today. Throughout Organizational Discourse, this theme will help readers distinguish between discursive perspectives and other approaches to organizational life, and to understand how discourse matters in organizations.

This edited volume brings together leading international researchers from across the social sciences to examine the theoretical premises, methodological options and critical potentials of the Essex School of discourse analysis, founded on the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In doing so, it presents a clear picture of a poststructuralist and post-foundational research program to postdisciplinary discourse research. Divided into three parts, it begins by elaborating the ontological, theoretical and methodological foundations of the Essex School’s approach to discourse analysis. The second part provides empirical case studies showing how the Essex School research program informs and instructs empirical discourse research. In the concluding third part authors explain how and with what possible consequences this strand of discourse research contributes to social practices of critique. It offers a crucial contribution to the further methodologization and operationalization of the Essex School’s approach so as to make it a viable alternative to discourse-analytical approaches that take dominant positions in today’s ‘field of discourse studies’. The book's transdisciplinary focus will attract readers who use discourse analysis in all areas of the social sciences and humanities, particularly applied linguistics, cultural anthropology, sociology, philosophy and history.

Providing an overview of domains such as study, methodologies and perspectives used in research, this text shows how discourse analysis has moved beyond its roots in literary theory to become an important approach in the study of organizations.