Journal of

OrganizationalChangeManagementDiscourse and organizationalchangeGuest Editors: David Grant, Grant Michelson,Cliff Oswick and Nick Wailes

Volume 18 Number 1 2005

ISBN 1-84544-092-7 ISSN 0953-4814

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Access this journal online __________________________ 3

Editorial advisory board ___________________________ 4

About the Guest Editors ___________________________ 5

Guest editorial: discourse and organizational changeDavid Grant, Grant Michelson, Cliff Oswick and Nick Wailes ____________ 6

Managing change at Sears: a sideways look at a taleof corporate transformationDavid Collins and Kelley Rainwater_________________________________ 16

Discourses of disrupted identities in the practice ofstrategic change: the mayor, the street-fighter andthe insider-outNic Beech and Phyl Johnson_______________________________________ 31

Journal of

Organizational ChangeManagement

Discourse and organizational change

Guest EditorsDavid Grant, Grant Michelson, Cliff Oswick and Nick Wailes

ISSN 0953-4814

Volume 18Number 12005

CONTENTS

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Discourse as strategic coping resource: managing theinterface between ‘‘home’’ and ‘‘work’’Susanne Tietze _________________________________________________ 48

‘‘What you’ll say is . . .’’: represented voice inorganizational change discourseDonald L. Anderson _____________________________________________ 63

Post-crisis discourse and organizational change,failure and renewalMatthew W. Seeger, Robert R. Ulmer, Julie M. Novak andTimothy Sellnow ________________________________________________ 78

Afterword: why language matters in the analysis oforganizational changeHaridimos Tsoukas______________________________________________ 96

Note from the publisher____________________________ 105

CONTENTScontinued

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagementVol. 18 No. 1, 2005p. 4#Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

James BarkerHQ USAFA/DFMColorado Springs, USA

David BarryUniversity of Auckland, New Zealand

Jean BartunekBoston College, USA

Dominique BessonIAE de Lille, France

Steven BestUniversity of Texas-El Paso, USA

Michael BokenoMurray State University, Kentucky, USA

Mary BoyceUniversity of Redlands, USA

Warner BurkeColumbia University, USA

Adrian CarrUniversity of Western Sydney-Nepean, Australia

Stewart CleggUniversity of Technology (Sydney), Australia

David CollinsUniversity of Essex, UK

Cary CooperLancaster University Management School,Lancaster, UK

Ann L. CunliffeUniversity of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Robert DennehyPace University, USA

Eric DentUniversity of Maryland University College,Adelphi, USA

Alexis DownsUniversity of Central Oklahoma, USA

Ken EhrensalKutztown University, USA

Max EldenUniversity of Houston, USA

Andre M. EverettUniversity of Otago, New Zealand

Dale FitzgibbonsIllinois State University, USA

Jeffrey FordOhio State University, USA

Jeanie M. ForrayWestern New England College, USA

Robert GephartUniversity of Alberta, Canada

Clive GilsonUniversity of Waikato, New Zealand

Andy GrimesLexington, Kentucky, USA

Heather HopflUniversity of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK

Maria HumphriesUniversity of Waikato, New Zealand

Arzu IseriBogazici University, Turkey

David JamiesonPepperdine University, USA

Campbell JonesManagement Centre, University of Leicester, UK

David KnightsKeele University, UK

Monika KosteraSchool of Management, Warsaw University, Poland

Terence KrellRock Island, Illinois, USA

Hugo LeticheUniversity for Humanist Studies, Utrecht,The Netherlands

Benyamin LichtensteinUniversity of Hartford, Connecticut, USA

Stephen A. LinsteadDurham Business School, University of Durham, UK

Slawek MagalaErasmus University, The Netherlands

Rickie MooreE.M. Lyon, France

Ken MurrellUniversity of West Florida, USA

Eric NielsenCase Western Reserve University, USA

Walter NordUniversity of South Florida, USA

Ellen O’ConnorChronos Associates, Los Altos, California, USA

Cliff OswickKing’s College, University of London, UK

Ian PalmerUniversity of Technology (Sydney), Australia

Michael PeronThe University of Paris, Sorbonne, France

Gavin M. SchwarzUniversity of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Abraham ShaniCalifornia Polytechnic State University, USA

Ralph StableinMassey University, New Zealand

Carol SteinerMonash University, Australia

David S. SteingardSt Joseph’s University, USA

Ram TenkasiBenedictine University, USA

Tojo Joseph ThatchenkeryGeorge Mason University, Fairfax, USA

Christa WalckMichigan Technological University, USA

Richard WoodmanGraduate School of Business, Texas A&MUniversity, USA

About the Guest EditorsDavid Grant is Professor of Organizational Studies, the School of Business, at theUniversity of Sydney. He is also a co-director of the International Centre for Research inOrganizational Discourse, Strategy and Change. His primary area of research interestis organizational discourse, especially where it relates to organizational changeinitiatives. He has co-edited a number of books including the Handbook ofOrganizational Discourse (2004, with Cynthia Hardy, Cliff Oswick and Linda Putnam)and published in a range of management and organization journals includingOrganization Studies, Academy of Management Review, Organization, HumanRelations, The Journal of Management Studies, Text and The Journal of AppliedBehavioral Sciences. E-mail: d.grant@econ.usyd.edu.au

Grant Michelson is a Senior Lecturer in Work and Organisational Studies, theSchool of Business, at the University of Sydney. His research interests includeorganizational change with a particular emphasis on the processes of rumour andgossip, taboos in management and organizational practice, and ethical considerationsin work contexts. His research on these and other topics have appeared in a range ofoutlets such as Journal of Management Studies, British Journal of Industrial Relations,Journal of Business Ethics, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources and theAustralian Journal of Management. E-mail: g.michelson@econ.usyd.edu.au

Cliff Oswick is Professor of Organization Theory and Communication at TheManagement Centre, University of Leicester. He is also a co-director of theInternational Centre for Research in Organizational Discourse, Strategy and Changeand a regional editor for the Journal of Organizational ChangeManagement. His currentresearch interests are concerned with the application of aspects of discourse to thestudy of organisations, organising processes and organisational change. He hasco-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 andOrganization Studies. E-mail: c.oswick@le.ac.uk

Nick Wailes is a Senior Lecturer in Work and Organisational Studies, the School ofBusiness, at the University of Sydney. His current research interests include the impactof enterprise resource planning systems on management and organizations. He is aco-editor of International and Comparative Employment Relations (2004, with GregBamber and Russell Lansbury) and has published work in a range of internationaljournals including Industrial Relations, British Journal of Industrial Relations,International Journal of Human Resource Management and Journal of Business Ethics.E-mail: n.wailes@econ.usyd.edu.au

About the GuestEditors

5

Journal of Organizational ChangeManagement

Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005p. 5

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814

Guest editorial: discourse andorganizational change

David Grant and Grant MichelsonUniversity of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Cliff OswickUniversity of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Nick WailesUniversity of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the contribution that discourse analysis can make tounderstanding organizational change.

Design/methodology/approach – It identifies five key contributions. Discourse analyticapproaches: reveal the important role of discourse in the social construction of organizationalchange; demonstrate how the meaning attached to organizational change initiatives comes about as aresult of a discursive process of negotiation among key actors; show that the discourses of changeshould be regarded as intertextual; provide a valuable multi-disciplinary perspective on change; andexhibit a capacity, to generate fresh insights into a wide variety of organizational change relatedissues.

Findings – To illustrate these contributions the paper examines the five empirical studiesincluded in this special issue. It discusses the potential for future discursive studies oforganizational change phenomena and the implications of this for the field of organizationalchange more generally.

Originality/value – Provides an introduction to the special issue on discourse and organizationalchange.

Keywords Organizational change, Research methods, Narratives

Paper type General review

This special issue is the first of two issues that the Journal of Organizational ChangeManagement has devoted to the topic of discourse and organizational change. Thefollowing five papers are all empirical studies and utilise a variety of discourse analyticperspectives and methodologies. In taking this approach they provide innovativeanalyses of the concept of organizational change and explore the inter-relationships orconnections between change as discourse and change as strategy, as process and as aset of outcomes or forms.

The two special issues reflect a growing interest among researchers inexamining the organizational discourse(s) that may be used to describe, analyse,theorise and enact, the processes, and practices that constitute organizationalchange. This turn to discourse is, in part, driven by a growing disillusionmentwith more mainstream theories and approaches to the study of change (Barrettet al., 1995; Heracleous and Barrett, 2001; Heracleous, 2002; Marshak, 2002).Moreover, it has also been reinforced by wider developments in organizationalstudies such as the turn to critical theory and post-modern styles of thinking(Heracleous and Barrett, 2001; Reed, 2000).

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagementVol. 18 No. 1, 2005pp. 6-15q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814DOI 10.1108/09534810510579814

In this paper we examine the contribution of discourse analysis to the study oforganizational change. In the first section we identify five specific features of analyticapproaches to the study of organizational discourse(s) that can contribute to the studyof organizational change. In the second section we illustrate the insights discourseanalysis can bring to the study of organization change by reviewing the five empiricalstudies included in this special issue. We conclude by discussing the potential forfuture discursive studies of organizational change phenomena and the implications ofthis for the field of organizational change more generally.

Discourse and the study of organizational change: five key contributionsA number of commentators have suggested that our understanding of organizationalchange would be better served if we were, for example, to “re-think” (Tsoukas andChia, 2002; Grant et al., 2002) or “re-conceptualise” (Pettigrew et al., 2001) the variousforms, processes and outcomes associated with it. Similarly, Collins (2003, p. v), hasargued that we need to:

. . .provoke a “re-imagined” world of change: A world where change is understood not as anexception to the norm of stability; not as an outcome that is known in advance and discussedin retrospect; not as something that can be made to unfold to the rhythm of “clock-time”; butas the defining character of organization; a fuzzy and deeply ambiguous process, whichimplicates both author and subject in the quest for new and different ways to understand oneanother.

We concur with Collins’ perspective. We are also sympathetic to his call to adopt anapproach 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 aquest for knowledge that addresses the concerns and ambitions of the everyday peopleaffected by change (Collins, 2003, pp. v-vi). However, the key point for us, is thatanswering Collins’ call to provoke a re-imagined world of change along the lines of theabove quote is best achieved used discourse analytic approaches. This is notsomething Collins (2003) explicitly advocates, although as his paper (co-authored withRainwater) in this special issue indicates, it is an approach that he himself has electedto adopt.

The purpose of this special issue is then to demonstrate that in order to fullyunderstand organizational change, one needs to engage with it as a discursivelyconstructed object. Where we refer to discourse and its occurrence in organizations, weare referring to the practices of talking and writing, the visual representations, and thecultural artifacts which bring organizational related objects into being through theproduction, dissemination and consumption of texts (Phillips and Hardy, 2002; Grantet al., 2004). These texts can be considered to be a discursive “unit” and a manifestationof discourse (Chalaby, 1996) and discourse analysis involves their systematic study. Itis not, however, simply a collection of methods; it is “a related collection of approachesto 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 approachesmight be expected to contribute to our understanding of organizational change in fivesignificant respects.

Guest editorial

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Organizational change as a socially constructed realityFirst, discourse analysis allows the researcher to identify and analyse the keydiscourses by which organizational change is formulated and articulated. Morespecifically, and as all of the papers in this special issue show, taking a discourseanalytic approach demonstrates that for an organization’s members, discourse plays acentral role in the social construction of their reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1967;Searle, 1995) As such, it brings an object (for example, an organizational changeinitiative) into being so that it becomes a material reality in the form of the practicesthat it invokes (Hardy, 2001, p. 27). As part of this process, discourse “rules in” certainways of talking about the change initiative that are deemed as acceptable, legitimateand intelligible while also “ruling out”, limiting and restricting the way we talk aboutor 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 ofeffecting organizational change (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000a, p. 1127).

Organizational change as a negotiated meaningSecond, discourse analysis enables the researcher to show how, via a variety ofdiscursive interactions and practices, particular discourses go on to shape andinfluence the attitudes and behaviour of an organization’s members in relation tochange (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 meaningsare created, and supported via discursive interactions among organizational actors(Alvesson and Karreman, 2000b). This constructive process involves the negotiation ofmeaning (Mumby and Stohl, 1991) among different actors with different views andinterests and results in the emergence of a dominant meaning that can be seen as aparticular discourse. The emergence of this dominant meaning occurs as alternativediscourses are subverted or marginalized and is indicative of the power relationshipsthat may come into play. As Fairclough (1995, p. 2) explains, the “power to controldiscourse is seen as the power to sustain particular discursive practices with particularideological investments in dominance over other alternative (including oppositional)practices”. Discourse analytic studies, such as those in this special issue demonstratethat, although some discourses related to change may dominate, “their dominance issecured as part of an ongoing struggle among competing discourses that arecontinually reproduced or transformed through day-to-day communicative practices”(Hardy, 2001, p. 28). More specifically, they can also be seen to demonstrate thatdominant meanings emerge from the context under which they are negotiated. Thisbrings us on to the third contribution of discourse analysis to understandingorganizational change.

Organizational change as an intertexual phenomenomTo 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; Kressand Threadgold, 1988) analyses of organizational discourses. Such studies identify andanalyse specific, micro-level instances of discursive action and then locate them in the

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context of other macro-level, “meta” or “grand” discourses (Alvesson and Karreman,2000a). As Fairclough and Wodak (1997, p. 277) have pointed out:

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

Fairclough and Wodak’s observation demonstrates that the negotiation of meaningsurrounding an instance of organizational change unfolds through the complexinterplay of both socially and historically produced texts (Alvesson and Karreman,2000a; Keenoy and Oswick, 2004) that are part of a continuous, iterative and recursiveprocess (Taylor et al., 1996; Grant and Hardy, 2004). In short, any text is seen as “a linkin a chain of texts, reacting to, drawing in and transforming other texts” (Faircloughand Wodak, 1997, p. 262). The value of this approach is that it takes us beyond simpleexaminations of verbal and written interaction and allows us to appreciate theimportance of “who uses language, how, why and when” (van Dijk, 1997, p. 2). Morespecifically, it means that when studying a particular discursive interaction,organizational change researchers ought to consider other discursive interactionsoperating at different levels and at different times, which are linked to, and inform,their interpretations of the immediate instance of change under scrutiny (Keenoy andOswick, 2004; O’Connor, 2000). The papers in this special issue – all of which could beseen as intertextual – can be seen to contribute to our understanding of theseprocesses.

A multi-disciplinary perspective of organizational changeFourth, discourse analysis is multi-disciplinary in origin – it is informed by a varietyof sociological, socio-psychological, anthropological, linguistic, philosophical,communications and literary based studies and approaches (Alvesson andKarreman, 2000b; Grant et al., 2004). This means that those researching discoursesof 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) andconversation analysis (Boden, 1994; Fairhurst and Cooreen, 2004; Woodilla, 1998). Therange of methodologies available to the researcher wishing to conduct empiricalstudies of discourse within organizational settings can be seen as a virtue (Phillips andHardy, 2002). It assists discourse focused research into organizational change to studya 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 arrayof methodologies available with which to test it. Further, the extensive choice ofmethodologies available facilitates analysis of an enormous range of data types (Grantet al., 2004; Phillips and Hardy, 2002). The papers presented in this issue illustrateseveral empirically strong methodologies that may be employed in order to studyorganizational change related discourses. These include narrative, and storytellinganalysis, conversation analysis and the analysis of the metaphors and rhetoricaldevices used by key actors involved in organizational change.

An alternative approach to the study of a variety of organizational change related issuesDiscourse analysis is seen to offer an alternative approach to the research of a widevariety of organizational change related issues thereby generating new insights.

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The increasing interest in, and use of, discourse analytic approaches amongorganizational change researchers has led to studies that add to our knowledge andunderstanding of change in relation to a wide range of phenomena such asorganizational 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 inproducing intentional change in organizations (Ford and Ford, 1995) and havediscursively 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 andDicke, 2001; Dunford and Jones, 2000). The studies in this special issue exemplify thecapacity of discourse analytic approaches to generate fresh insights into a variety ofchange related issues. These include: corporate transformation; corporate renewal; theframing and routinization of change; and identity and change.

Five discursive analyses of organizational changeThe papers in this special issue all contribute to our understanding of organizationalchange and clearly illustrate of the potential contributions of discursive analysisdiscussed in the previous section. The first paper by David Collins and KelleyRainwater engages with celebrated interpretations of organizational change whereby“success” stories are lauded and such companies are regarded as exemplars of modernbusiness 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 corporatetransformation. Rather than simply trying to uncover “what really happened” in theturnaround at Sears, Roebuck and Company, they use narrative and storytellingapproaches to reveal the polysemic nature of the change. In particular, the authorschallenge the simplicity of sequential and linear understandings of organizationalturnarounds by invoking the audience in the narrative and story, as well as discussingthe more protagonist roles of heroes and fools. It is therefore possible to view the caseof organizational change in numerous ways. The authors choose to highlight twoalternative interpretations – tragedy and comedy – to reveal the complexities andambiguities of change management. The paper does not privilege one account overanother but reveals the possibility of “re-storying” previously reported cases (whethercelebratory or critical) of organizational change.

In the following paper, Nic Beech and Phyl Johnson also use narrative analysis toexamine change in organizations. However, their focus is different in that attention isplaced on how the key organizational actors constructed and interpreted their ownsituation in the change process. This focus resonates with an active utilization ofdiscursive resources. The authors contend that change is a “continual process ofbecoming” for actors and they reject analyses of organizational change which focus onthe 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-levelprocesses of change by looking at the senior management group in one company and

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the alterations to their identity as the change was personally experienced. It is arguedthat what happens at this level can have wider consequences in the context oforganizational change. What the analysis of the identities of the managementexecutives in this case reveals is that a broader narrative coherence in, and unifyingdirection for, the organization were missing. Rather, significant disjunctures anddisruptions in the actors’ identity and sensemaking were evident.

Identity is a theme also addressed in the third paper in this special issue. This paperintroduces the need for a more nuanced view of change by examining the spatiallocation in which work activities are carried out. In her contribution, Susanne Tietzechallenges conventional views of organizational change which accept both identifiableorganizational boundaries in a specific place, and the performance of work activitiesexclusively within those boundaries, as given. The author uses the case of tele-workingto highlight the dispersion and “reach” of contemporary organizations as the domainsof “home” and “work” collide. Those who engage in tele-work seek to use discourse as acoping resource. However, even more than this, Tietze argues that it is the entirehousehold (and not just the tele-worker) that has to learn to cope with the wider changein work organization introduced by tele-work. It has, for example, affected howtele-workers construct and express their professional or occupational identities. Suchidentities can either be affirmed or contested by other household members and a rangeof discursive resources are subsequently enacted to protect their identities. Sheconcludes by noting that future studies of organizational change may need to rethinkwhat boundaries are established for the organization, as well as considering a varietyof stakeholders (family members, friends and neighbours) not normally associatedwith change efforts.

The fourth paper also picks up on a recurrent theme in this collection. DonaldAnderson discusses representations of voice by organizational members in a changeprocess and demonstrates the importance of historical continuities in terms of howlanguage adopted in the past can shape language in the future. The study is located ina high-tech company and Anderson interprets a range of discourse excerpts frommembers of a project team to establish his argument. Voice (of the individual, ofspecific others’ and of categories of organizational members such as managers) enablegeneralized meanings to emerge. He shows how organizational members discursivelyconstruct meaning in patterned ways and that new discourses seldom appear in anindependent fashion. Instead, each “new” discourse draws on and transforms texts andmeanings previously used in the organization. Processes of framing and routinizationof language are then considered by members of the project team as possible areas oforganizational change. The change occurs when people temporarily stabilize theorganization through the voicing of current practices. By voicing actual practices,individuals can then evaluate how they might sound in the voices of organizationalmembers. This allows the inter-relationships between past, present and futurediscourses to emerge, and therefore the shift from past to future organizationalmeanings, or organizational change, to take place.

Matthew Seeger, Robert Ulmer, Julie Novak and Timothy Sellnow in their paperexamine organizational change as it relates to crisis and disaster. In particular, theyfocus on the comments (or voice) of the chief executive officer in the Wall Streetbond-trading firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost nearly 700 of its 1000 employees in theWorld Trade Centre attacks in September 2001. Seldom do studies of organizational

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change focus on corporations, which have experienced widespread personal tragedy asarticulated through substantial loss of human life. Such crises and disasters aresignificant change-inducing events and, not least of all, place severe demands onsensemaking in organizations. By looking at the role of the chief executive officer, theauthors identify a “discourse of renewal” as Cantor Fitzgerald expressed a newpurpose in the post-September 2001 period. The leader was therefore, critical in givingmeaning to the crisis. Using a variety of discursive devices, including rhetoric andmetaphor, he enabled the situation to be reframed and, in turn, shaped the nature anddegree of organizational change. In this way, the identity of the company was“remade”. The discursive use of public sympathy and support resources by thecompany helps account for this positive outcome. This finding stands in contrast toconventional wisdom, which suggests that such disasters are primarily negativeevents, which lead to organizational decline. However, as the case shows this is by nomeans inevitable.

Discussion and conclusionThe implications of discourse analysis for the study of organizational change areneatly captured by Haridimos Tsoukas in his Afterword to the collection. In particular,he notes that some other views of making sense of organizational change, includingthose of the behaviuorist and cognitivist perspectives, 1offer a more limited approachto our understanding of organizational change than potentially does discourseanalysis. This is because these two perspectives tend to project a more objectified viewof the world. For those adopting a discursive perspective, this world is constructedthrough 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 meansuniversally shared. Further, the role of actors and the construction of their identity inorganizational change, as well as how the narrative of change unfolds, need to bewoven into the account of change. In other words, to understand change, we need tounderstand how it is discursively constructed and interpreted.

This paper has highlighted the ontological and epistemological role of discourse inshaping organizational change and, in so doing, noted the ability of discourse analysisto open up analytical space for alternative accounts of the processes forms andoutcomes of organizational change. We have asserted that discourse analyticapproaches reveal the role of discourse in the social construction of organizationalchange initiatives, emphasizes that the meaning attached to organizational changeinitiatives comes about as a result of a process of negotiation among key actors, andshows that the discourses of change should be regarded as intertextual. We have alsoargued that the value of discourse analytic approaches to the study of organizationalchange, in part, lies with their facilitating a multi-disciplinary perspective of change aswell as their capacity as an alternative approach to the study of a variety oforganizational change related issues to generate fresh insights into these issues. Theseobservations are commensurate with those ofAlvesson and Karreman (2000b), p. 145),who have observed that the value of discursive approaches to the study oforganizational phenomena, is that they offer the researcher insights into theambiguous and constructed nature of the data with which they must work, whilst atthe same time allowing them space for more relaxed, freer and bolder ways of

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

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 organizationsthrough 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-scalechange: a social construction perspective”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 31No. 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 practiceperspective”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), The Handbook ofOrganizational 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 asorganizational discourse”, in Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C. and Putnam, L. (Eds), TheHandbook of Organizational Discourse, Sage, London, pp. 79-104.

Clark, T. and Salaman, G. (1996), “Telling tales: management consultancy as the art ofstorytelling”, 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 CriticalPostmodern Organizational Science, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. iv-xi.

Czarniawska, B. (1998), ANarrative Approach to Organization Studies, Sage, Newbury Park, CA.

Du Gay, P. and Salaman, G. (1992), “The culture of the customer”, Journal of ManagementStudies, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 615-34.

Dunford, R. and Jones, D. (2000), “Narrative and strategic change”, Human Relations, Vol. 53No. 9, pp. 1207-26.

Fairclough, N. (1995), Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, Language inSocial 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 MultidisciplinaryIntroduction, Sage, London, pp. 258-84.

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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. andPutnam, 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 inorganizations”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 541-70.

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.

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Hardy, C. (2001), “Researching organizational discourse”, International Studies of Managementand 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 organizationalchange”, Strategic Change, Vol. 11 No. 5, pp. 253-62.

Heracleous, L. and Barrett, M. (2001), “Organizational change as discourse: communicativeactions 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 atHay Management Consultants”, Long Range Planning, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 485-94.

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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 andthe dialectic of control”, Discourse and Society, Vol. 2, pp. 313-32.

O’Connor, E. (2000), “Plotting the organization: the embedded narrative as a construct forstudying change”, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 210-28.

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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.

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Phillips, N. and Hardy, C. (2002), Discourse Analysis: Investigating Processes of SocialConstruction, Sage, Newbury Park, CA.

Reed, M. (2000), “The limits of discourse analysis in organizational analysis”, Organization, Vol. 7No. 3, pp. 524-30.

Searle, J. (1995), The Construction of Social Reality, Allen Lane, London.

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Tsoukas, H. and Chia, R. (2002), “Organizational becoming: rethinking organizational change”,Organization Science, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 567-82.

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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

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Managing change at Sears:a sideways look at a tale ofcorporate transformation

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

Kelley RainwaterSt 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 BusinessReview. Noting that “contextual” and “processual” attempts to revise the tale of Sears and itstransformation would tend to exchange one monological rendering for another, albeit more criticalaccount, the paper “re-views” the case in an attempt to make space for perspectives and narrativesnormally edited out of narratives of change management.

Design/methodology/approach – Building upon a critical review of the literature concerned withorganizational 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 thecase, 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 theneed for approaches to the narration of change that can give voice to perspectives denied by bothcelebratory and critical accounts of change management.

Originality/value – The paper offers an innovative “re-view” of a celebrated account of changemanagement and invites the reader to make room for voices and perspectives normally lost withinnarratives of change.

Keywords Change management, Storytelling, Transformational leadership

Paper type Case study

IntroductionIt has become a commonplace argument to suggest that many accounts of change andits management are limited analytically and weak in terms of their practicalapplication (Pettigrew, 1985; Dawson, 1994; Collins, 1998) because they consider only a“thin slice” (Clark, 2000) of organizational variables, wrenched from their widersocio-economic and historical contexts. Reflecting upon the limitations of theseaccounts of change and its management, Pettigrew (1985) argued for a “contextual”approach to change, designed to analyse the interactions of context and action throughtime.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

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

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagementVol. 18 No. 1, 2005pp. 16-30q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814DOI 10.1108/09534810510579823

While accepting that contextual and processual accounts of change (Dawson, 1994)offer an improvement on the “thinly-sliced” accounts of organizational changeproduced by the frameworks of “Heathrow Organization Theory” (Burrell, 1997), anumber of authors have suggested that there is a need to reconsider the merits of theseattempts to provide situated explorations (and explanations) of the change process. Forexample, Morgan and Sturdy (2000) have argued that Pettigrew’s “contextual” analysisof the processes of change is both flawed and limiting. Indeed they suggest thatPettigrew’s analysis retains a pluralist orientation and refuses to analyse organizationin discursive terms (Grant et al., 1998; Linstead and Westwood, 2001).

Buchanan (2003) has also expressed dissatisfaction with contextualist andprocessual accounts of the change process. Building upon empirical analyses of changemanagement, he argues that these models of change lead to a distorted understandingof organizational dynamics because they insist on the production of single-voiced andauthoritative renderings of the change process. Thus, Buchanan asserts that there is aneed to explore analytical frameworks, which will allow us to seek out and give voiceto the many different and distinctive understandings of organization and change,silenced by the predominant voices that speak to and for contextualist and processualframeworks.

Reflecting this call to explore analytical approaches designed to give voice toarguments and perspectives muffled or silenced by contextualist and processualaccounts of change, this paper offers a “sideways look” (Holquist, 1990) or aself-conscious “re-view” of a “turnaround” change process, which has been celebratedin 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 thiscompany offered by the HBR celebrates the “transformation” of Sears from falteringgiant to corporate beacon and suggests that the company should be regarded as anexemplar of modern business leadership.

In offering a “sideways look” at the Sears case, this paper attempts to “re-view” theturnaround of Sears in the light of recent accounts of narrative and storytelling(Gabriel, 2000; Boje, 2001), which stress polyphony and polysemy. Unlike the accountsoffered 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, localunderstandings of the Sears case. In pursuing these local and fragmentedunderstandings 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 Searsexperience, which are absent from the Harvard case and often occluded from thosemore critical accounts, which would seek to place organizational change in acontextualist or processual framework.

Accordingly, the paper is structured as follows: we begin, fittingly enough with astory. Our story involves a number of young men – a tank commander, a tank driver, agunner (whose names are unknown) and another man (whose name remains thesubject of speculation (Wright, 2000)) – a popular protest, Deng Xiaoping and a 40 tonNorinco Type 69/59 main battle tank. Yet, as we shall see this is a tale that transgressesthe normal conventions of storytelling. Indeed, our tale is, in poetic terms a poor story.

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It is a story that has passed into history despite having no clear beginning, a disputedmiddle and an ending that fragments in its prematurity. Yet, we will argue that thisfragmenting tale can teach us much about the processes of change and about ourattempts to render these meaningful.

Having relayed this fragmenting tale, our second main section attempts to tease outits significance as it considers the debates and controversies, which have grown uparound narratives and storytelling in organizations. In our third main section we buildupon this account of storytelling as we offer an exposition and analysis of the Searscase, discussed by Rucci et al. (1998). “Re-viewing” the Sears case in the light of ouranalysis of storytelling, we will attempt to destabilise (Latour, 1987) the Harvard taleas we consider the potential of (and for) more local understandings of the changeprocess.

The tale of “Tank Man”We begin with a story. Thanks to the reporting of the world’s journalists this story isknown across the globe. As rendered by Western journalists, this tale normallyinvolves a young man, a tank and a morally bankrupt regime. Yet, this story has noclear beginning. It has instead a backdrop.

In early May 1989, Chinese students staged a small demonstration in TiananmenSquare, initially to demand an end to state corruption. In a short time however, thisdemonstration grew in both size and scope such that by the middle of this month, thesquare was occupied by a large body of students, demanding dialogue with anddemocratic accountability from their leaders.

On 4th June many of these protestors were shot and killed as the People’s LiberationArmy (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 tothe middle of the road and stopped in the path of the lead tank. This man had a bicyclewith him and was carrying two small bags. The journalists who had been covering thedemonstrations for some time were stunned by this man’s actions. Trained in themantra of journalism – readers need to know who, what, when, where and why – theyspeculated on the identity and occupation of this man. In the absence of more concreteinformation an identity was constructed. The man it was agreed, was probably astudent. His bags probably contained books and perhaps a little shopping. A beginningto 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 toshoot at the demonstrators and now, on his way home from the library, he had beenshocked to see tanks rolling down the Avenue. Of course, no one knows for sure whothis man was, nor can they be sure about his thoughts and actions. But this beginningis as good as any, given, as we shall see, that the middle parts of our tale are also opento dispute.

So now we have a beginning: Tank Man is a mild-mannered student, an ordinaryman studying for a degree, who finds himself in the middle of the road, facing down acolumn of battle tanks, because he can no longer trust his leaders. Transformed from aman 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 ofthis encounter were struck by Tank Man’s bravery and by his willingness to take a

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stand, alone. This man it was generally agreed was a hero and the world’s journalistscelebrated him as such. In the face of a violent and authoritarian regime he had had thecourage to confront a column of armoured vehicles. Tank Man it was agreed was aninspiration to us all.

Yet, as we noted, the middle of our tale is disputed. Indeed, Deng Xiaoping suggeststhat the tale of Tank Man has been distorted by Western propaganda. Deng’srendering of this tale introduces a larger cast of characters. It recasts Tank Man as “ascoundrel” bringing disorder to China as it introduces a new hero to the cast-list. ForDeng the true heroes of this encounter are the PLA for he reasons that Tank Man couldnot have stopped the tanks. The PLA, he argues, could easily have continued down theAvenue of Eternal Peace but they exercised restraint in the face of this scoundrel’sprotests.

Given the activities of the 4th June it is difficult to give credence to thisaccount of the PLA. Yet, Deng’s attempt to “spin” this encounter is instructivenonetheless. In attempting to challenge the Western media’s depiction of TankMan, Deng introduces a wider cast of characters and concerns, which begin tofragment and disrupt what had been, until now, a rather familiar tale. Indeed, hisnarrative invites us to make space for alternative and more local renderings of theTank Man tale because he encourages us to consider the actions of a smallnumber of young men, within the lead tank, who have hitherto been ignored bythe tellers of the Tank Man tale.

In a story where so little can be known with certainty, one thing is clear. Historyrecords that the tank stopped. But who stopped the tank? Journalists, struck by thedrama of the moment and by the poetics of their trade have suggested that Tank Manstopped the tank. Yet, this is not quite true. While Tank Man clearly obstructed thepath 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 theTank Man tale because he ordered the tank driver to stop. Yet, he also concedes thatthe tank’s driver might be the real hero for he may have ignored the commander’s orderto crush Tank Man. Who can say for sure?

So how does the tale end? Having fabricated a beginning and been offered a choiceof “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. Perhapsyou 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’scommander. 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 thisfragmented and fragmenting tale can teach us much about the processes of changemanagement because it encourages us to seek out and take seriously, the local usersand local narratives, which persist despite attempts to produce “top-down” andauthoritative renderings of the change management process. In the next section,therefore, we will examine the debates, which shape the literature on “organizationalstorytelling”. 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 arguethat the Tank Man tale helps to illuminate orientations and experiences, which have

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

Storytelling in organizationsIn 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 tosay that much of this work calls on and is, in part, derived from earlier attempts tocatalogue and harvest stories, contemporary interest in storytelling is distinctiveinsofar as it is predicated on the understanding that organizational stories havemeaning and significance only when they are analysed, in context, as organic and vitalconstituents of organization. Recent interest in organizational storytelling, therefore,has been driven by an understanding that organizational stories are not merereflections of organizational reality, but are, instead, properly viewed as creators oforganizational meaning and organizational realities. Thus, Gabriel suggests that theincreasing interest in stories has been facilitated by postmodern scholarship and itstendency to see stories (as generators and creators of meaning) everywhere. However,Gabriel disputes this tendency to “see stories everywhere” – as the creators andgenerators of meaning – on two counts. First, as we shall see below, he argues that notall narratives qualify as stories. Secondly, he argues that stories do not always andeverywhere generate meaning because while stories are portable and travel well, theyare 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 withpolysemy as it attempts to uncover worlds and experiences, which are otherwisedenied in official corporate (hi)stories. Following Weick’s (1995) account ofsensemaking, he begins by noting that on a day-to-day basis, people confront a keyproblem: how to make sense of a “complex soup” of ambiguous and half-understoodproblems, events and experiences. In their attempts to come to terms with thisambiguous flow of experience, Boje suggests that people construct and retrace theirlives, retrospectively through stories. But for Boje, stories have a particular meaningand significance. Indeed, Boje warns us that we must distinguish “stories” from“narratives” (which for ease of exposition we will reproduce as “narratives”) if we areto understand the richness of organizational sensemaking. Indeed, he warns us, thatNarratives are not to be confused with stories. Narratives, he argues, stand aloof fromthe flow of experience. Narratives are plotted, directed and staged to produce a linear,coherent and monological rendering of events, whereas “stories” “areself-deconstructing, flowing, emerging and networking, not at all static” (Boje, 2001,p. 1).

Reflecting upon the narrative understanding of organization, which comes to usfrom such august sources as the HBR, Boje argues that academic analysis hasconfused stories with narratives. Thus, he complains that “so much of what passes foracademic 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 thesemonologues of business endeavour, Boje (2001, p. 1) introduces the concept of the“antenarrative”, which, he argues, resituates the concerns of the field of organizationstudies by allowing us to catch sight of the “fragmented, non-linear, incoherent,

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collective and unplotted” soup, which is organization. This focus upon flow andfragmentation 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 ofstaging 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 hesuggests that his “antenarrative” represents “a bet” (or “an ante”) that retrospectivesensemaking may emerge in the future from the stories, which come before narrativeaccounts.

This account of stories and narratives overlaps, to some degree, with the accountoffered by Gabriel (2000). In common with Boje, Gabriel notes that stories offer localand intimate accounts of situations, events and predicaments. Indeed, reflecting uponthe complexities associated with the analysis of stories and storytelling, Gabriel arguesthat story-work – literally the art of constructing meaningful stories – is a delicatelywoven product of intimate knowledge. Also in common with Boje, Gabriel is clear thatit is vitally important to distinguish “stories” from other “narrative” forms. Yet hereGabriel’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 aimsand larger methods – Gabriel notes that “proper” stories are, in truth, special forms ofnarrative. Reversing Boje’s argument, therefore, Gabriel is firm in the understandingthat 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 invitefactual 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 containfactual or symbolic materials but tend to lack both a plot and characters),“proto-stories” (which while they may have a rudimentary plot remain incompleteinsofar as they offer a beginning and a middle but no end) and “reports” (which offer anhistoric rather than a poetic rendering of events, and so, produce stubbornly factualand causative as opposed to symbolic accounts) from “proper” stories. Disputing Boje’sreservations regarding plots and direction, therefore, Gabriel insists that (properlyso-called) stories build on “poetic” qualities, and so, depend upon plots, embroidery andembellishment.

Yet, despite their dispute over terminology, Gabriel and Boje seem to concur that theanalysis of storytelling offers a means to resituate and recapture the flow and theplurality of organization. Thus, Gabriel seems to agree with Boje’s suspicion ofnarrative, when he argues that “stories” are quite unlike histories and “reports”.Reports, he warns us are monological, invite factual verification and so, seek tocrystallise events, whereas stories are local, organic and polyphonic and depend uponpoetic licence for the generation of meaning. Indeed, Gabriel suggests that thisdependence upon poetic licence makes storytelling difficult because it places thestoryteller in the hands of an audience who must be willing to indulge the embroideryand embellishment of the entertainer. Yet he warns us that not all are willing to grantstorytellers such a warrant. Indeed, he notes that tellers of tales often confront

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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’sattempt to make a categorical distinction between “stories” and “histories” introduces aproblematic and paradoxical element to his account of storytelling.

Stories versus histories?Deng Xiaoping has suggested that the PLA should be regarded as the true heroes ofour Tank Man tale. Few, of course, would accept Deng’s account of the Tank Man taleas a fair treatment of fact, but do we really make Deng’s story into a history when wechallenge it? Surely it would be more appropriate to acknowledge the consanguinenature of “stories”, “histories” and “reports”? After all the historical records of theprotests in Tiananmen Square rely on journalistic reports which, as we have seen, havethemselves been the subject of poetic embroidery and embellishment.

Story-teller versus audiences?Gabriel argues that those who interrupt story-tellers with observations and addendaare bores and pedants. While accepting that such interruptions can be frustrating andcan act to undo the poetic elements of a good yarn, we must wonder if this blanketingattack on restive audiences is justified.

Deng’s account of the Tank Man tale recasts and redirects the narrative to highlightthe glorious role of the PLA. But are we pedants when we interrupt Deng’s attempt toglorify the PLA? Might we, as challengers of Deng’s poetic embellishment, not beaccorded a more legitimate denomination? If we as the audience for Deng’s tale prefer adifferent cast list; if we prefer a different hero; if we prefer other characterisations andembellishments, are our interruptions not justified?

So we have a paradox: stories are worthy of study because they reveal the pluraland fragmented nature of organization but we should not, it seems, subject thestoryteller to these very forces. Thus, in making a categorical distinction between“stories” and “reports” and in celebrating the arts of the storyteller, Gabriel seems tosubordinate the listener to the monologue of the storyteller. He argues that stories areof interest to academic researchers because they reveal the organic and polyphonousnature of organization, yet at the same time he seems to warn us that the audience mustknow its place.

In our “re-view” of the Sears case we will attempt to overcome such divisions. Whileacknowledging our debt to Gabriel we will nonetheless mix poetry and history,storytelling and reportage as we attempt to give voice to the local perspectives, trialsand problems that have been written out of the “history” of Sears. Yet before we dothis, we must conclude our analysis of the concepts and preoccupations oforganizational storytelling with an account of the poetic tropes.

The poetic tropesReflecting 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 asthey attempt to make events meaningful. Outlining these poetic tropes, Gabrielsuggests that poetic tropes are the attributes which breathe life into stories. Poeticstories, therefore tend to attribute various tropes to the characters and events, whichconstitute the tale:

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(1) Motive – which might variously define events to be accidental or incidental;

(2) Causal connections – which outline the cause and effects of actions;

(3) Responsibility – where blame and credit are allocated to actors and actions;

(4) Unity – such that a group comes to be defined as such;

(5) Fixed qualities – such that heroes are heroic and villains villainous;

(6) Emotion – to describe the emotional characteristics of actions;

(7) Agency – whereby volition is variously raised or diminished;

(8) Providential significance – which is important in certain tales, where higherforms may seem to intervene to restore justice and order to systems.

The careful organization of these tropes, Gabriel notes, allows for the construction ofmany different plots and characters, such that different arrangements of the poetictropes allow storytellers to produce a number of different “poetic modes” designedvariously 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 andevents.

For example, “epic” tales have particular attributes which, as we have seen, cause Bojediscomfort. Thus “epic” tales tend to have simple and rather linear plot-lines. Theydevote little time to the intricacies and complexities of character development. Insteadthey focus upon action, movement, achievement and closure. In contrast, comic talesare designed to produce laughter. Indeed in the case of the comic tale it is worth notingthat the laughter of the audience is often achieved at the expense of the mainprotagonist. Thus where the qualities of the epic hero lead inevitably to triumph, thecharacter flaws of the main protagonist in the comic tale lead inexorably to failurebecause (for example) the protagonist has had the vanity to interfere in events andprocesses, which exceed human understanding.

In the section that follows, we will attempt to build upon these accounts ofaudiences, narratives, storytelling, heroes and fools as we turn our attention to the taleof Rucci et al. (1998) regarding the turnaround of Sears, Roebuck and Company.

A tale of transformationRucci 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 ofthe company (between 1992 and 1998) “is no longer news”. Recognising this, theauthors promise us an account of change management at Sears that looks beneathsurface events to reveal the change in organizational logic and the changingorganizational 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 headlinesand the headline figures of corporate improvement to consider the development andperformance of the “employee-customer-profit model”, which links the “soft” and

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“hard” elements of Sears to provide a powerfully predictive business model – “a set ofrigorous leading indicators that measure attitudes, impressions and futureperformance” across the company. In this regard we might suggest that theauthority of the HBR report is based upon the understanding that Rucci, Kirn andQuinn, as senior employees of the company, can offer us unique and definitive insightsinto the employee-customer-profit model because they were personally involved in themanagement 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 ofevents 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 itmimics 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.

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This programmatic rendering of the case communicates a general, if skeletalchronicle of the activities associated with recent changes at Sears. Yet the BASICrendering of the HBR narrative is misleading. HBR is no simple chronicler of thebusiness world. Its writers and ghost-writers do not and could not simply “report”events, in part because managers understand that programmes and sub-routineswill not deliver change (Gabriel, 2002). Instead HBR provides managers withaccounts of business today, which qualify as stories in Gabriel’s analysis (and asnarratives 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-lifecourage, which involve characters, events and predicaments. In common with TheReader’s Digest, therefore, HBR produces stories, which call upon symbolicresources for an absent group of readers who are nevertheless invited to identifywith the heroes and their quests. Viewed in these terms the Sears case isreconstituted as an epic story; a tale, which involves the arrival of a hero (Martinez),with special qualities (strength, courage, leadership and determination) and specialpowers (business vision). As the hero of the tale, Martinez faces a predicament ladenwith 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 thepredicament is to be successfully managed. Using all his powers and qualities, ourhero succeeds in producing a successful and sustainable future for Sears. He makesimmediate changes designed to stabilise the company in the short-run. Yet he alsorealises that future success will require a more fundamental alteration to the logic ofthe company. Accordingly, Martinez develops a vision for the future and calls upona loyal group of lieutenants to consider the future he has outlined. This group ofassistants research aspects of the organization (although only Martinez sees thelinkages clearly!) and together with consultants they produce a model which linksthe “soft” and “hard” aspects of the business in a fashion that will allow managersto plan future developments with confidence.

When the HBR narrative ends, therefore, we are left with the understanding thatMartinez is to be honoured and respected because others have been moved to makesuper-human efforts in his name. Indeed, the narrative informs us that Martinez hassucceeded in doing something that has eluded other business leaders: he has producedan understanding of modern business operations (the employee-customer-profit chain),which allows predictive links to be made between the “soft” and “hard” elements ofbusiness.

Following Gabriel (2000), we may put this more concisely. Rucci’s “report” is nomere 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:

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Agency: Martinez chooses, tells, leads, inspires

Motive: Saving Sears – reshaping business

Credit: To Martinez, with some trickling to others

Fixed qualities: Strength, commitment

To produce key:

Emotions: Pride, admiration.

Yet we need not meekly accept this tale of heroic deliverance. Stories as we have seenare fragile. Their casts, plots and meanings tend to change as they travel through timeand across boundaries. This implies that, in a variety of ways, the audience (whethercomposed of readers or listeners) who attend a tale may become simultaneously itsauthors, especially where a licence is earned or granted (Boje, 1991) to recast, redirectand “re-story” (Boje et al., 2001) events. In the section that follows, we will exercise alicence to “re-story” the Sears case as we “re-view” Martinez’s legacy.

Transforming the taleIn The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx (1978, p. 9) observes:

Hegel remarks somewhere that all the events and personalities of great importance in worldhistory 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 Harvardepic. While recognising that there will be many local narratives of the transformation ofSears, we will, for reasons of space, offer just two “re-views” of the Sears case as werewrite and recast the HBR epic, first as tragedy and then as comedy.

The Sears case as tragedyRucci et al.’s epic rendering of the Sears case makes much of Martinez’s ability toinspire 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 thestory to focus upon those who have been “written out” of the epic tale.

Recognising Martinez’s victory as something that will involve costs and anon-going organizational legacy, our “tragic” account of the Sears case suggests that forthe more junior ranks of the organization, Martinez’s triumph may appear somewhatpyrrhic. Yet as we attempt to consider change at Sears from the bottom-up we confronta 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 thenarrative. In this regard, the epic rendering of the Sears case has similarities with theTank Man tale produced by Western journalists in that its cast-list has written-out orhidden 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 juniormembers of the organization not written-out altogether make, like Rosencrantz andGuildenstern, only the very briefest of appearances before slipping “off stage”permanently. For example, the staff that produced, distributed and serviced thecatalogue business, and the employees in the 113 stores “slated for closing” appear andthen promptly disappear from the case report.

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Where more junior members of the organization merit “speaking parts” in theHarvard rendering of change, they have a “walk-on” status and do not appear ascharacters in their own right. Instead they are brought forth as exhibits to the greaterglory of Sears or the aggrandisement of Martinez as a man who will not shrink fromdifficult decisions.

Discussing the processes of change at Sears associated with this tough stance ondecision-making Rucci et al. draw our attention to the struggles and exertions, whichwere necessary to remodel the company. They note that:

When the [Phoenix] team got back to Chicago, a lot of people complained about the extraworkload. They had no time to spend on task forces, they insisted, because they had torun the company. The message came back that they had to do both. They had to find thestrategic answers and create operational strategy. For several weeks everyone struggled.As the deadline for recommendations approached, the sense of urgency grew. The taskforces began meeting weekly at weekly, at 7 a.m. or earlier. (Months later, when manypeople wondered if the 7 o’clock grind had to go on for ever, they needed to be remindedthat 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 costsof this workload, there is much to be said for a “re-view” that recasts and redirects thetransformation 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 comedyOur tragic rendering of the Sears tale portrayed workers as the victims of Martinez’sambitions. In our comic rendering of the Sears case we recast and redirect our tale in aslightly different way such that the junior members of the organization aretransformed from silenced victims to become, instead, patient observers of the humancondition – 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 thatcomedies produce mirth and amusement by inviting us to laugh at the misfortune ofothers. Yet to laugh in this way – at rather than with another – we must exercise a

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degree of social and moral detachment. If we are to laugh at another we must notempathise with the object of our laughter. Crucially we must not feel the pain, whichthe object of our mirth endures (Bergson, 1980), for this would surely move us to otheremotional responses. In comedies, therefore, the laughter of the audience is oftensustained by a dramatic device, which casts the main protagonist (and the butt of thejoke) 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 thestatistical linkages which, we are assured, make the employee-customer-profit chain apowerfully 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 theemployee-customer-profit model’s confident prediction of a rosy future. Theyobserve that:

. . .in the course of the last 12 months employee satisfaction on the Sears TPI [TotalPerformance Indicators] has risen by 4%, and customer satisfaction by almost 4%. But if ourmodel is correct – and its predictive power is extremely good – that 4% improvement incustomer satisfaction translates into more than $200 million in additional revenues in the pasttwelve 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 thevanity of Rucci, Kirn and Quinn when it observes that the company’s net incomeactually began to decline in 1997 and continued its decline throughout 1998 and into2001, 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” theSears case as a comedy. In this “re-view” of the Sears case, Martinez becomes thedeserving fool who should have known better than to claim mastery of the complexand 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 meddlingprotagonist 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.

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Concluding commentsNoting that both “thinly-sliced” accounts of change and more criticalcontextualist/processual analyses of change have a tendency to produce ratherlinear and monological renderings of the complexities of organization, this paper hasemployed the tools of narrative of analysis in an attempt to reveal the rich, complexand 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 wouldseparate active storytellers from passive listeners in the hope that we might foster thedevelopment 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 dramato offer two alternative “re-views” of this celebrated tale of “corporate transformation”.These “re-views” have been designed to explore the complexities and ambiguities oforganized life from the perspectives of those actors, ideas and orientations normallywritten-out of such organizational dramas. Re-viewing the “epic” rendering of the Searscase produced by the HBR, first as tragedy and then as comedy, we have sought togenerate alternative readings of the change management process. In these endeavoursno 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 exhaustthe potential “re-storying” of the Sears case (for example, we have not been able topursue the ways in which the experiences of change at Sears were mediated by genderand 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 changeprocess designed to redirect our attention to those actors and those aspects oforganization that tend to be occluded by the desire to produce (however, critically)authoritative and single-voiced renderings of the processes and problems of changemanagement.

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-supplyfirm”, 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: narratologiesand action sciences”, in Linstead, S. and Westwood, R. (Eds), The Language ofOrganization, Sage, London.

Buchanan, D. (2003), “Getting the story straight: illusions and delusions in the organizationalchange 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, Universityof Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

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Dawson, P. (1994), Organizational Change: A Processual View, Paul Chapman Publishing,London.

Gabriel, Y. (2000), Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions and Fantasies, Oxford UniversityPress, 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 andPower 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 ResourceManagement, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 169-73.

Rucci, A., Kirn, S. and Quinn, R. (1998), “The employee-customer-profit chain at Sears”, HarvardBusiness Review, pp. 82-97.

Stacey, R., Griffin, D. and Shaw, P. (2000), Complexity andManagement: Fad or Radical Challengeto 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.

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Discourses of disrupted identitiesin the practice of strategic change

The mayor, the street-fighter and theinsider-out

Nic Beech and Phyl JohnsonGraduate 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 longitudinalengagement with the focal organisation. Narrative analysis was used to trace the identity dynamicsof senior figures in an organisation as it went through strategic change. This entailed a change of CEOand chairman, alterations to the composition of the board and the executive team and, in associationwith 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 theindividuals involved, and over time expectations and realisations impacted on the processes of changein ways that were unexpected and unintentional for the actors. The outcome of the analysis shows thedisruptive impact of identity dynamics on the practice of strategic change.

Research limitations – The nature of the research undertaken does not seek to represent a holisticcase 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 analternative approach to analysing reactions to change is proposed.

Originality/value – The paper contributes a narrative approach to the discursive analysis ofstrategic 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-strategizingThere is a perceived ideal in narratives of strategic change that they should havecoherence, 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 aunifying 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 andLinstead, 2002) acknowledge unintended and disruptive occurrences whichcounter-pose the perceived unifying ideal. Although such theories acknowledge theunintended 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 toengage a dialogue about the intersection of strategic change and identity dynamicsaddressing the explanatory agenda. An approach is adopted that focuses on change asa continual process of becoming (rather than a succession of stable states) at themicro-strategy level.

Tsoukas and Chia (2002) have argued that social reality is not composed of solidobjects that are complete and in some sense “finished” interacting with each other.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagement

Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005pp. 31-47

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814

DOI 10.1108/09534810510579832

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 operatingaccording to fixed routines, but are ongoing processes in which actors’ beliefs areinterwoven, habits and new actions collide, new experiences are encountered and haveto be accounted for in the sense-making of actors. Chia (1999) sees the act of organizingas 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 islike a “constant ballooning” of newness in sometimes unpredictable ways that do notconform to expected patterns. This paper does not seek to discuss the metaphysics ofbecoming, rather to engage with Tsoukas and Chia’s critique of studies that treatchange as if it were an object rather than a process. They argue that this misses thepoint. What ends up being studied are the points of organization, i.e. points of stabilityand patterning, in-between change. In short, there is frequently a focus on organizationrather 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 circumstancesand new experiences and how managers influence and intervene into the stream oforganizational actions” (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002, p. 580). The crucial thing, therefore, isnot to be able to show that one structure replaces another, or that one culture replacesanother, but rather to examine the processes in between the existence of the two states ofbeing. 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 mightbe helpful in this regard.

A new development in the strategic change literature is compatible to the focus onchange as conceived by Tsoukas and Chia (2002). The shift from an episodicperspective (from state A to state B) to an understanding of strategic change asincremental 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, butit has been argued that a more micro-level analysis is necessary in order to gain a fullerunderstanding of the dynamics of strategic change (Johnson et al., 2003; Wilson andJarzabowski, 2004; Whittington, 2004). One impetus for this concern with a micro-levelof detail is the resource-based theory of the firm, which has proposed that strategicadvantage is to be found in embedded, idiosyncratic routines and behaviours(Ambrosini and Bowman, 2001; Barney, 1995). Additional arguments also come fromempirical research on organizational innovation and situated practice (Lave andWenger, 1991; Johnson and Huff, 1998). In sum, there is a move, exemplified withinmicro-strategy literature, which argues that in order to understand the embeddedprocesses of strategic change, there is a need to incorporate the lived experience of thestrategist in the analysis (Samra-Fredricks, 2003).

This paper seeks to take up the twin challenges of researching organizationalchanging (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002) and adopting a detailed micro analysis of the livedexperience of the strategists as they go through change (Johnson et al., 2003). There aremany 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 areparticularly relevant as they are processes through which strategists make sense of

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what is going on and what they are doing over time: both sense-making processes thathave 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 wayactors play (or do not play) roles affects the movement of the plot and the reactions ofothers 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 orcontrolled. In the unfolding of the narrative, it feeds back into, and influences the nextdirection, of itself. Strategists make sense of their actions, the context and interactionswith others through a process of narrating everyday life. Stories are a way in whichactors impose or perceive patterns in their “lived experience” (Sims, 2003), and hencenarrative analysis has the potential to reveal something about the micro-strategicprocesses of change. Alternative levels of focus in discourse analysis have beenoutlined by Grant et al. (2001). At the macro-level are meta-discourses that focus ondominant paradigms and institutional practices. At the meso-level the focus is oninterpersonal and group-based interaction, and the micro-level focus is on theintrapersonal. In Grant et al.’s terms, this study is at the meso-level and this matcheswhat is termed the micro level in the strategy literature.

There are several facets of narratives that make their analysis particularly fit for thepurpose here. They are naturally dynamic as they contain a flow of action andinteraction. They also hold moral and symbolic dynamism in that they illustratelessons and morals for the audience (Ford and Ford, 2003): i.e. they guide and instructaction. As Barry and Elmes (1997) have argued, narrative is a form of meaning makingin which people recognise or attribute meaningfulness in specific experiences byperceiving them as being parts of a whole. Achieving narrative coherence entailsattributing 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 serviceorganization manages to function despite the heterogeneity of actors. Each side in thedebate attempted to appropriate the discourse of “new public sector management” inorder to further their own agendas. This provided a meeting point for debate, alsohaving the impact of reinforcing the dominant discourse.

There are various barriers that potentially prevent narrative coherence. There maybe a lack of role-fit with actors (Boje, 1995), or there can be accidental seepage betweendifferent parts of the role performance. Goffman (1961) has shown the significance ofaudiences becoming aware of “back-stage” elements of performance that were notintended for display “front-stage”. Alternatively, Barry and Elmes (1997) have arguedthat successful strategic narratives of change will have certain facets. These includeachieving coherence amongst diversity, achieving credibility through broadacceptance of the readership, and operating on either epic or romantic plot lines(Jeffcutt, 1994) in which the heroes are victorious. These views are consistent withother research in the area. For example, Dunford and Jones (2000) trace three narrativesof change which indicate that the ability to construct a discourse of coherence isparticularly important in times of change. The change managers in their study wereparticularly concerned with the idea of audience and themselves as “sense-givers”providing. Other studies regard the discursive and narrative processes of strategicchange 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

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mobilise discursive resources to their own ends. Discursive resources include thegaining of: “voice”, the acknowledged right to be heard, legitimised use of dominantdiscourses and use of rhetorical techniques which influence the location of powerrelations.

Whilst the facets identified by Barry and Elmes and Dunford and Jones may bedesirable, it is notable that in situations that are changing, there is a high possibilitythat 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 moreconvoluted than the romantic and epic forms. Hence, the ability to gain and managediscursive resources may be both crucial and subject to considerable uncertainty. Theaim of this paper is to explore this potential area of uncertainty and complexity and todiscuss disruption in the sensemaking patterns that emerged.

MethodIn 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 teamconstitutes a process of change itself. The aim was to understand the multiple lines ofnarrative (Sims, 2003) through which actors in a situation, and we as researchers, madesense of events, the self and others (Thomas and Linstead, 2002). The narrativeanalysis 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 toOctober 2003. The data collection period that is covered in this paper extends fromFebruary 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 andincluded face-to-face interaction, telephone and e-mail contact.

The organization studied, PN Services, operates in the service sector in an industrythat is highly sensitive with regard to the release of information. Consequently, boththe name of the organization, its members and the industry itself have been eitherchanged or not identified in the account that follows. The primary sources of data forthis narrative are listed in Table I, with those in bold being the central characters of thetitle.

Data analysisThe analytic process moved through several stages. First, the data were explored toreveal the dominant narrative(s). Secondly, the dominant narrative was examined witha general concern with identity and change. The third stage involved a theory-dataiterative loop. The emergent outcome of that process was the selection of the

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categories; coherence, credibility, epics and romance (Barry and Elmes, 1997) as themost effective theoretical explanators to be used to interrogate the dynamics of changeof identity. Here, we were interested in exploring the extent to which these categoriescould provide sufficient explanations of the data. A key outcome from the analysis wasthat they could not adequately explain disruption and disturbance in what may havebeen assumed to be smooth-running lines of narrative.

Fundamental activities undertaken to facilitate the above process revolved aroundthe following practices broadly accepted in narrative analysis. Data were transcribedand analysed using a process expounded by Silverman (1993). Within the narrativestructures there was an ordering (sequence and choice between alternatives) of eventsand actions (Silverman, 1993). The analysis emphasised an overall narrative whichwas not monological (Czarniawska, 1997), but which entailed divergence and voices ofdifference. The narrative presented below traces a series of stages of development(indicated by sub-headings), and within each stage, quotations from different actors areused to illustrate the various perceptions present.

The organizational contextThere is information about the firm which does not identify it, but which assists in thecontextualisation 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 seniormanagers with some outside ownership. Since 1995, it has become exclusivelyinternally 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. Themajority of the employees are professional knowledge workers with someadministrative and technical support. They operate in a niche position and at thetime 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 theirbasis of differentiation was intended to keep ahead of industry change and, moreparticularly, to grow the business.

A narrative of disruptions in identity changeBringing an outsider in as CEO to inhabit the role of the tough guy: finding a new heroUp until January 2001 when Alex joined as CEO, Royston was in the position of jointchair and CEO role. He had been with the company since 1985 and joined as a partner

Name PositionChanged position within PN

Services

Royston – Major CEO and Chair ChairAlex – Streetfighter N/a CEOBenjamin – Insider-out Executive team member

and anticipated to be next CEOResigned as executive teammember

Laurence Executive team member N/aDavid Executive team member N/aAndrew Executive team member N/aMarcus Executive team member N/a

Table I.Primary data sources in

PN services

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of this privately owned business. He was the last of a group of three partners who hadrun the business for the previous 10 years.

We were the triumvirate who essentially ran the ship (Royston).

He described himself as “an old man” as he recalled the history of the firm through aprolonged period of good conditions within the industry. The general employeereaction to Royston’s presence was the good behaviour of a child: tone of voicedropping, sitting up straight, showing polite and respectful attention. He stressed theaspects of the paternalistic and gentlemanly culture that he himself personified. Thiswas also specifically commented on by executive team member, Laurence.

At that time, our belief in partnership was key, very paternalistic; sharing the gains and thegood 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 thatstructure: Royston and Benjamin, (whose father and grandfather where previously seniorpartners 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, “theposition that is the engine of the business”, into the role of CEO. Then in 1995, thetriumvirate broke up, the two other partners left the firm and he took sole charge. Heinstituted a buy-back policy of the shares that had left the firm’s control (reinstating100 per cent internal ownership) and led the firm into a period of significant growth. By1999, Royston wanted to change personally and wanted, or saw a need for, theorganization 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 easyenvironment. 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 ofthe 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 ServiceDepartment was unfamiliar to him. He’s rough and ready. He has rough edges and a style thatlays down the law (Royston).

The media reported the recruitment highlighting Alex’s reputation and the clearchange from the past. Alex also highlighted the change for the business in hiscomments to the press.

Alex has been regarded by some as an unusual choice by Royston. It was met by surprise insome quarters (Press comment).

It has the perception of being a little sleepy and self-satisfied. I want to get rid of thepatriarchal feeling (Alex).

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

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

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).

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 heroicAlex initiated major change in the business. He instituted the first redundancyprogram in the firm’s history. In addition, he made a series of aggressive hirespoaching staff from much bigger firms. He employed new people into key serviceprovision positions and brought two new and younger members of staff on to theexecutive team and removed another. People saw Alex as the tough guy taking thetough decisions and putting everyone in the firm under performance pressure.Discussion of him within the firm revolved around this type of behaviour. Here, middlemanagers are talking about Alex pressuring one of the executive team members toimprove his performance and how Alex’s style made him a difficult person to bemanaged by.

We all saw that Alex was gunning for him and we just stood back and watched him lean veryheavily 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 andbitch to get it and it’s that urgency which is being forced upon us by Alex. We needed adifferent management style and we’ve got it. The reason we went off and hired Alex, ratherthan 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 fiddlingaround (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 thesenior person. I don’t come from that background at all, I come from the kind of backgroundwhere 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 whatI’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).

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However, Alex also had a motivational side. Many in the executive team commentedabout the infectiousness of his enthusiasm when he became interested or engaged withsomething:

He really liked my idea, he started to cheer up, he got excited. It’s great when that happens(David).

The tough outsider wants to change his identity: the hero wants to be a different kind ofheroOver time, Alex had less and less interest in being the overt power broker in the firmand began to think of himself as a conductor of an orchestra rather than the tough guyat the top. He was undergoing significant change in his life and wanted to step out ofhis 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 ofpower that they have actually got, and that makes people react. And you see, I sometimes feelthat I don’t have enough power and therefore what I do wrongly is, I reinforce the power bycontrolling. I actually exaggerate the fact that I have got the power by using it to control. Iknow that I do it. I just remind people that although I’m just a incomer and I’m new, and Idon’t understand a lot of things, actually, I am the Chief Executive. I suppose what I am reallysaying is that I have been too defensive. I need to be less defensive. Then I would get more outof 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 thetough 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’snot what’ll be good for the firm. It’s inappropriate for me to be directive, it emasculates thebusiness 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 andpress ahead with changes in the business that would lead to the kind of empoweredculture 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 problemas anyone else is (Alex).

He initiated a culture change program, including an image change described in thepress as a shift from “fusty and traditional to vibrant and fresh”. The culture changemessage was one of a meritocracy where all have access to success and are most likelyto achieve it by working as a team. To support this, he implemented a bonus systemwhere the bonus received did not depend on position in the hierarchy (as it had in thepast), but rather on current performance and peer review. In this observable way, themore junior staff had equal access to big bonuses.

He held monthly meetings that became known as “town meetings” where he toureddepartments within the firm, gathered staff around him, delivered news of the latestevents, 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).

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Old rival is killed off: the tough guy hero is backThe natural plot line of the Alex making his preferred identity change becamedisrupted when, in late May, after a prolonged period of consultation with Royston(company Chairman) and other members of his executive, Alex removed Benjaminfrom the executive team and from his role as sales director. Alex attributed this actionto Benjamin’s poor performance. Benjamin had been one of the internal candidates forAlex’s job and, prior to Alex’s arrival, had been assumed to be Royston’s naturalsuccessor. He had been described by Royston as someone who was “wedded to PNServices, 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 thecompany. They have tolerated it because it’s given them a good life. But, you know, you cutmy neck off here and it says PN Services (Benjamin).

Benjamin was considered to be the epitome of old PN Services just as Alexwas the epitome of the new. This move was a shock for others and was thedominant topic of conversation during interactions with Alex and the executiveteam members. The sense of confusion is captured in this quote from an executive teammember.

This is a hell of a shake-up for people, we all know Benjamin, he’s worked for the business forso 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 theprocess of removing Benjamin had been executed carefully and diplomatically. Alexhimself found the whole process in his words “emotionally draining”.

After having been informed of Alex’s decision, Benjamin travelled overseas onbehalf of the company for a lengthy period of time. When he returned, he immediatelytook leave with possibly stress related ill-health. When he was in the office, he wasmanifesting his distressed state. When he was talking to colleagues, he was negativeabout Alex and had been claiming that other members of the executive weresympathetic 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 definitelyneeds balance or else he’s dangerous. He is danger to himself if you know what I mean. I amsaying that if you are going to have someone who provokes so much change you simply haveto 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 thinkAlex needs it (Benjamin).

How he (Alex) is treating me is important because the executive are all, I mean, [name] is notdoing a good job as [function]. It’s just not working, so he could be next. What we don’t wanthere is this is climate of fear. I think you will find a great deal of sympathy and loss ofeye-contact when you bring it up (with other colleagues) because I think everyone is veryuncomfortable 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 hiredhim, he is looking after my money. I expect him to make the right decisions for the business; ifhe doesn’t then we would fire him even quicker. If he doesn’t do a good job, then as I say, I amthe biggest shareholder in the business. So, the boot will be on the other foot. That’s whyI sleep at night (Benjamin).

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Towards the end of the summer period, Alex had begun to feel rather unsupportedby his senior colleagues in fighting off the rumours and stories circulating aroundthe firm. He resolved to seek the overt support of his peers. This happened in threeways: first, in informal sessions with his directors; second, in a meeting withBenjamin with the HR director present; third, during a developmental away-day forthe executive team. Each of these was a planned and deliberate course of actionchosen by Alex. In this way, his potential tough guy heroic plot line that othersprojected on to him was disrupted. A traditional plot would see the hero removingthe scapegoat alone and in heroic character. However, Alex involved othersby undertaking a consultative process concerning Benjamin. He displayedweakness by admitting he was uncertain what to do. This coincided with otherout of character actions, such as instigating participative leadership and personaldevelopment plans for all the executive.

In the second of these interventions, in late August, the HR director facilitated adialogue where Benjamin expressed how he had felt utterly rejected by the firm and byAlex.

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 andthat had to stop. Alex explained in detail why Benjamin’s performance was notacceptable and how the decision had been arrived at. Alex reported back what hiswords had been in that meeting.

Your peers understand why this has happened, I feel hurt that you have been bad mouthingme as I went to some lengths to spare you and have consequently taken some of the flack foryou. 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 wasstill 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 difficulttransition.

During the executive team away day in early September, Alex expressed his senseof vulnerability and also his uncertainty about how to deal with Benjamin. He wasgiven enthusiastic support from his executive team. A clear strategy of how to handleBenjamin (delineate his role and get him to sell his significant share holding in thecompany) was worked out for Alex to implement.

Alex made moves to suggest Benjamin should vacate his executive office and toseek agreement for a share sell-down. The atmosphere between them became verydifficult again with Alex expressing in anger: “I just want that bastard who’s badmouthing me out of my life”. Benjamin’s anger began to turn towards Royston as wellas Alex.

Two weeks later, Benjamin resigned from his employment at PN Services, butremained on the board as a non-executive director. His letter of resignation expressedhis view that in his 50s, the time was right for him to move into a non-executiveposition. He wished to be as helpful as possible to the company in that role, and feltconfident this would be possible. Benjamin began this narrative episode expressingfrustration having been overlooked for the role of CEO, he then moved into a positionof being the poor performer letting the side down in his directorial role. For a brief

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period in the summer of 2003 after his removal, he began to be the subject ofsympathetic gossip in the organization that cast him in the role of Alex’s victim, thescapegoat, with talk about the other directors suggesting they were worrying aboutwho would be next. For the senior members of the organization, he finally moved intothe role of villain with his continual disruptive behaviour towards Alex and latterlyRoyston. He ended the period of study in a position of frustrated compromise, withcomplete resignation from any executive role being the only way he could retain arelationship with the company he had long and strong emotional commitment to.Benjamin anticipated an identity shift into the role of leader, instead he became thereluctant outsider: the insider who was out.

In informal discussion, Alex reflected that his resignation was “the best possibleresult really when you think what might of happened. When I think back I don’t thinkthere’s anything I’d have done differently”. Alex was content to allow Benjamin toremain on the board for a year, as long as he was out of the way of day-to-dayoperations.

Had the tough guy been tough enough: was there a hero after all?Royston, however, was against allowing Benjamin to remain on the board. Alexreported that it was Royston’s view that Alex should have removed Benjamin from thebusiness entirely. For him at least, it may have seemed that Alex was not fulfilling thetough guy role for which he had been hired. Royston had always anticipated hisidentity shifting as he took an increasingly back stage advisory role not taking thehard 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 thatBenjamin could have been dealt with sooner and in stronger terms and that there wereother performance issues to be addressed amongst the senior executives that weregoing unmanaged.

I know he has to take difficult decisions, but I have concerns about his decisiveness, he’slacking self confidence at the moment. I think he really lacks self-confidence possibly becausehe’s come into this close-knit type family business and maybe worries about a shareholderrevolt against him or something. He’s not being autocratic enough, I don’t really know why. Ithink 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 upfor a big change and, you know, moderated that a lot to, you know, “it’s difficult for people inthe 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 uncomfortablewith 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 notquite 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 personaldevelopment of each of his directors, requiring them to produce clear plans for thedevelopment of their own coaching leadership style and to spread this throughoutthe firm. Under Alex’s leadership, the firm has had a very successful year and

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morale appears to be high. Nonetheless, there has been some talk of Alex reverting tohis tough guy role.

I’ve noticed him slipping into his more machoistic style again and that will only spreadaround the firm if people think it’s acceptable (Middle manager).

In this final phase, Alex did not stick to a conventional plot line. He verged on theheroic change-maker, but his special skill of being the tough guy was punctured. Hedisplayed a needy side to his character by seeking the support of others. This couldhave 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 machoactions associated with his initial role type. He too ends the data collection period in apotentially unclear and disrupted position as the final reports of him are around lossesof temper and a return to the identity of the tough guy who is now less heroic. Privatelyat least, he still wishes to maintain a view of himself in a more nurturing role; theconductor of the orchestra remaining his chosen metaphor.

The identity dynamics that occurred between the three major players in thedominant narrative captured at PN Services from February 2003 till October 2003 aregiven in Table II.

DiscussionIt is clear that in the narrative presented here, the ideals of coherency, credibility (Barryand 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 thisshould be the case. The argument offered is that key types of disjuncture can disruptsmooth lines of narratives and that two of these are illustrated in the data presentedearlier. Moreover, it is proposed that an understanding of these types of disjuncture isimportant 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 ownconstruction of the situation and intervention into it. This resonates with the active useof discursive resources discussed by Hardy et al. (2000) and Mueller et al. (2004).However, in this data, the issues of tensions and narratives running beyondcontrol were particularly significant. These are issues for micro-strategizing

Character Identity one Identity twoIdentitythree Identity four

Identityfive

Identitysix

Roy, themajor

Benevolentand visibleleader

Figure head Villain forBenjamin

Forceful voice,but divorcedfrom previousdecision-makingpower

– –

Benjamin,theinsider-out

Possiblesuccessor toRoy

Poor performer Victim ofAlex

Villain Reluctantoutsider

–

Alex, thestreet-fighter

Heroic toughguy

Developing as anurturing leader

Villainoustough guy

Vulnerableleader to besupported

WeakenedHero

Toughguyreturns

Table II.Identity shifts in the threemain characters: themajor, the street-fighterand the insider-out

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(Johnson et al., 2003) as they not only introduce a heightened perspective of uncertaintybut offer a way of understanding the dynamics of that uncertainty.

Disjunctures can occur in different ways and in the narrative analysis presentedabove, there are examples of two key types of disjuncture. First, there is an example ofseepage between front-stage and back-stage (Goffman, 1961). Front-stage interactionsare 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 theaudience is not intended to hear. For example, shop assistants may always be politewhen addressing a customer front-stage, but may be less than polite about the samecustomer when having their coffee break together back-stage. Seepage between theback- and front-stage occurs in the narrative presented above when, for example, Alexdisplays 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. Thisearlier discussion was back-stage in the sense that it was unobservable by theexecutive-team-as-audience, but it prepared him to be able to perform front-stage in hisnormal decisive way. However, what actually happened was that Alex treated theearlier private meeting almost as a rehearsal and took what was legitimate back-stageinteraction 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 wasperceived as legitimate and the executive team joined in to help Alex decide on a wayforward with Benjamin. However, later, perhaps after reflection, some members of theteam were critical of Alex for his lack of decisiveness at this point in the story. Onereason for this later reaction could be the seepage between what should have beenback-stage activity. The executive team members were forced to perceive a degree ofoscillation between the expected identity: “Alex as strong”, and the unexpectedidentity: “Alex as weak”.

In cases of strategic change where identity dynamics occur, it could be expected thatconsiderable “identity work” (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002) would need to occurback-stage. In PN Services, the changes in organizational style entailed considerablepersonal identity changes and these had significant emotional impacts on thoseinvolved. The possibilities for working through such emotional identity changes inpublic are potentially fraught with danger. Over-emotional expression and talk couldalienate others. Equally, false attributions of agency and cause may occur(e.g. transferring blame onto others) having long-lasting relationship effects. Therecould be disappointment and even resentment when another person fails to play theidentity role that is naturally expected of them. It would be possible to work thoughthese emotional responses back-stage such that relationships can be transformed andre-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 donein 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 asapproval followed by disapproval) in the conceptions applied to the character or thesituation. The suggestion here is not that identity dynamics should be conductedentirely back-stage. Clearly, there is a need for interaction, engagement and mutualdevelopment over time. Rather, that intentional or unintentional seepage between what

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is best kept back-stage and what is presentable front-stage is likely to disrupt bothidentity dynamics and strategic change.

A second type of disjuncture is where there is narrative non-conformity. This occurswhere 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 requireperson A to have a conscious narrative of self in mind. Rather, the disjuncture can bewith a taken-for-granted or subconscious conception of the dynamic of the self. Anexample is Roy’s perception of Alex. Roy’s personal identity narrative includes himselfas a stalwart of the original team, a performer but also a paternalist. He regards himselfas old and is planning ahead for retirement. However, he does not want his replacementto be from the same mould as himself. He wants his successor to change the businessand 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 Roywatches from the safe distance of the chairmanship. However, Alex starts to fail tocomply with the narrative. He displays weakness and indecisiveness when he wasmeant to be the “tough guy” and he fails to achieve closure and neatness on importantissues, e.g. Benjamin’s role on the board. Because Alex has allowed this to carry on fora further year the result is that it will be highly unlikely that everything will beresolved 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 frustratingon 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, theintegration 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 complexityis introduced. That is, both the context and the various subtexts are all changing andnot necessarily in unison. For example, the person cast as hero may transform toanti-hero by changing their approach, or by revealing that their character does notconform to that which was expected. This can provoke a range of reactions. There maybe acceptance of the new role-identity by others. There may be attempts to reform theperson, for example, through the use of social sanctions to achieve conformity torole-identity expectations. Alternatively, others may recast themselves to oppose theperson. For example, if the hero becomes anti-hero, others may recast themselves asheroes 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 narrativeline. Such activities are likely to trigger considerable identity work that may beproductive in some circumstances, but may lead to personal and organizationaldysfunction in others.

The proposition here is that strategic change, when viewed as micro-strategicprocesses rather than successive organizational states, is highly susceptible toprocesses of disjunction and disruption. Whilst an ideal may be that people can makesense of strategic change through a coherent narrative that is credible for all parties, inmessy, socially constructed reality, there is a high chance of actors making sense of thesituation differently and impacting on each others sense-making processes. Exploringstrategic change through narrative analysis provides an opportunity for research to besensitive to the micro level dynamics that have macro level impacts. It can also add tothe extant literature in highlighting processes through which disruption can occur.

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An understanding of such processes is potentially useful at the practical level. If theimpacts of the type of dynamics described are dismissed as “resistance to change” orthe 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, usingcoercive power to overcome “resistance”. However, where such tactics are regarded asunethical or undesirable, alternatives are needed. One alternative is to analyse thenature of identity dynamics through the narrative and work back-stage to develop newor changed role-identities which can fit with a developing organizational identity.However, if this is to accommodate plurivocality, organizational identity may need tobe reconceived. Rather than seeking uniformity, it may be appropriate to seek abroader conception of identity, or “family resemblance” as Wittgenstein (1958) puts it.This would entail areas of sharedness or compatibility of purpose, without requiringsingular conformity: a family has a recognisable identity without requiring allmembers to be the same as each other. In some organizational situations, it may bedesirable and possible to develop and adopt narratives of change that are coherent,uniform and accepted by all. Alternatively, where there are subcultures, differentinterest groups or divergent opinions of they best way to approach the future,“family-resemblance style narratives” may be preferable. Such narratives wouldacknowledge natural disruptions and seek to be sufficiently open to allow alternativeinterpretations and differences to coexist. The greater the extent to which this wascommonly accepted, the greater the extent to which back-stage identity work could belegitimately brought front-stage. Expectations and acceptance of what is allowablewithin the narrative then become more expansive, ultimately reducing the perceptionof narrative-non-conformity.

Note

1. The organization that was the data source for the narrative reported here characterised itselfas a town and “Town Meetings” were held. We have called the Chairman who wasceremonial 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 bythe actors but refers to the transition that occurs for a third key character who was originallya main contender for the CEO role but who ultimately left the organization.

References

Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. (2002), “Identity regulation as organizational control: producingthe appropriate individual”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 39 No. 5, pp. 619-44.

Ambrosini, V. and Bowman, C. (2001), “Tacit knowledge: some suggestions foroperationalisation”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 38 No. 6, pp. 811-29.

Balogun, J. and Johnson, G. (2004), “Organizational restructuring and middle managersensemaking”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 523-49.

Balogun, J. and Johnson, G. (2005), “For intended strategies to unintended outcomes: the impactof the change recipient”, Organization Studies (forthcoming).

Barney, J.B. (1995), “Looking inside for competitive advantage”, The Academy of ManagementExecutive, 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.

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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: perspectivefrom 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, Universityof 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 organizationalidentities”, 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. andThorpe, 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 andchallenges”, International Studies of Management and Organization, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 5-23.

Hardy, C. (2001), “Researching organizational discourse”, International Studies of Managementand 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 aTurbulent Environment, Wiley, New York, NY.

Johnson, G., Melin, L. and Whittington, R. (2003), “Guest editors’ introduction: micro strategy andstrategizing: towards an activity-based view”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 40No. 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”, StrategicManagement 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.

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Samra-Fredricks, D. (2003), “Strategizing as lived experience and strategists’ everyday efforts toshape 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 middlemanagers’ 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 organizationalchange”, Organization Science, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 29-33.

Whittington, R. (2004), “Strategy after modernism: recovering practice”, European ManagementReview, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 62-8.

Wilson, D. and Jarzabowski, P. (2004), “Thinking and acting strategically: new challenges forinterrogating 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.

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Discourse as strategic copingresource: managing the interfacebetween “home” and “work”

Susanne TietzeNottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Abstract

Purpose – To provide insight into the consequences of telework from the perspective of theteleworker and the household. The paper discusses the consequences of telework for the formulation ofidentities.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on empirical work, which comprises homevisits to teleworkers and therefore includes observational data and interview data. The data areanalysed following a particular framework, which is views discourse as a “strategic resource” anddraws 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 protectand reconfirm their respective identities. This is achieved through the enactment of regulatory as wellas self-regulatory (identity) acts.

Originality/value – The paper is located in the household of teleworkers and therefore, includes thisless well researched perspective. The linking of the conceptual framework (strategic resource) with thelocation of the study in the household in order to investigate the theme “identity” is an innovativefeature, which shows that (internal) self-regulatory identity acts are equally or even more importantthan (external) regulatory acts.

Keywords Work identity, Change management, Teleworking, Individual behaviour

Paper type Research paper

Introduction: “anywhere, anytime” – “somewhere, sometime”Organizational boundaries, both internal and external, have become subject to changeand challenge. As a consequence, new organizational patterns and forms emerge, someof which are temporally and spatially “dispersed”. Unlike bureaucratic organizations,such dispersed organizations are not based on any assumptions that (paid) work is tobe conducted at pre-set times and within rigidly structured and closely monitoredspaces. 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): workactivity is seen as liberated from temporal and spatial boundedness. It could be arguedthat the flexibility associated with the rupturing of this “boundedness” will enableagents 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 seemsto denote that work activity can be situated into and conducted within a context-free,socio-cultural vacuum. Refuting this assumption, the paper suggests that anyup-rooting of work does not propel it into context-free time and space, but necessitatesits re-rooting into the concreteness of somewhere, sometime and someone – intoculturally defined spaces and times and into existing social networks.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagementVol. 18 No. 1, 2005pp. 48-62q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814DOI 10.1108/09534810510579841

In this paper home-based telework is taken as the exemplary case to investigatehow dispersed work organization requires such re-rooting to occur within the culturalspace of “home” and how the whole household (not just the teleworker) has to developand establish new forms of co-operation, co-ordination and control. In managing thehome-work interface, these households have to “cope with” the arrival of paid workinto a culturally different context, that of “home”. “Coping strategies” enlist andoperationalize particular discursive resources, which enable individual agents to findsolutions to the co-existence of previously (mostly and at least notionally) kept separatecontexts, “home” and (paid) “work”.

Positioned into an approach, which understands organizations as ongoing socialprocess performed in language, telework and its consequences for the construction ofidentities are introduced. It is argued that households need to cope discursively withthe arrival of paid work. The method section provides the background to the empiricalwork as well as the conceptual framework through which coping strategies areanalysed in the next sections. The interactive linkages between discursive acts areestablished 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 forunderstanding organizational change are drawn.

Discourse and organizational changeIn this paper organizations are viewed as an ongoing social process, which isconstructed and performed in language (Doolin, 2003; Law, 1994). Language is not arepresentative tool, but predominantly performative, productive and formative. Thecentrality of language and language use in the generation and change of all forms oforganization is based on the assumption that reality is socially constructed and humanbeings 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 languageprocesses via which human actors achieve such sense-giving in the context ofcontesting and conflicting conditions.

In particular, the study and analysis of discourse emerged as one of the primarymeans of exploring organizational change (Doolin, 2003; Hardy et al., 2000; Heracleousand Barrett, 2001). Discourses are organized system of meaning, which frame andinfluence 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 legitimateparticular actions or outcomes (Knights and Murray, 1994). Such discursive activityhas to be situated in meaningful context and be recognised as such by other socialactors/discourse users in order to become meaningful social action. Consequently,discourse users find themselves in complex and continually shifting networks ofrelationships as they shape discourse/s and discourse/s shape their actions.

This “shaping” of discourse is not a neutral, rational process, rather it is informedby relationships of power and control (Grant et al., 1998; Tietze et al., 2003), because notall discourse users have equal access to the material and symbolic resources ofdiscourse/s – some “warrant voice” (Potter and Wetherell, 1987) more easily thanothers (Hardy et al., 2000).

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It follows from this brief discussion that taking a discursive-processual approach toorganizations implies that in order to understand organizational change the bodies ofknowledge, the practices and the language used by organizational actors needs to beinvestigated (Morgan and Sturdy, 2000). In this spirit, this paper follows two lines ofinvestigation. The first one examines how the household copes discursively with thearrival of paid work. The second one examines why some discursive acts “take” whileothers fail or remain precarious at best.

Home-based teleworkingIn recent years teleworking, which literally means working at a distance, has spreadand has increasingly become subject to commentary and investigation (Dwelly andBennion, 2003; Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Tremblay, 2002). It is sometimes viewed –and problematised – as providing opportunity to resolve business problems such asreducing (estate) costs, ensuring motivation and commitment of core staff anddelivering overall organizational flexibility, if managed and co-ordinated appropriately(Davenport and Pearlson, 1998; Harris, 2003). Such drives to achieve flexibility are notexclusively driven by management fiat or business imperatives, but individualemployees increasingly request flexible work packages in order to better organize andmanage the various demands and responsibilities of their overall lives (Bailey andKurland, 2002). Home-based telework in particular has gained prominence in thevocabulary and practices of management and forms part of the public debate onwork/life or work/home balance (Dwelly and Bennion, 2003; Felstead et al., 2002).

Some progress has been made in identifying and understanding the spread, depthand patterns of “working from home” practices, their incidence and range in relation tolocal labour markets (Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Felstead et al., 2001; Papalexandrisand Kramar, 1999; Phizacklea and Wolkowitz, 1995; Tremblay, 2002), and recentstudies have turned to exploring the impact of working from home on processes ofgendering (Sullivan and Lewis, 2001), problematising the construction of work and thehousehold (Brocklehurst, 2001; Felstead and Jewson, 2000), the temporal compositionof 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 thehousehold and thus incorporating the “[social] other” (Brocklehurst, 2001) are still fewand far between (see Bailey and Kurland (2002), for analysis of status quo of researchon telework). In this regard the location of this study in the household adds someinsight into the consequences of organizational change from the point of view of afrequently excluded group of “stakeholders”.

Home-based telework and the construction of identityHuman beings have to work at their identity continuously in order to be able to expresswho they are, what they do, where they come from and where they are heading to intheir social worlds (Gergen, 1991). Identity formation is bound to context – to specificsituations defined by time and space (Adam, 1995; Baldry, 1999; Felstead and Jewson,2000; Shome, 2003; Tietze and Musson, 2002). It provides trajectories for how oneshould act, think and even feel in the creation and expression of (professional)identities. The dispersed work organization has severely dented the spatial andtemporal context of identity formulation. Whereas in traditional work organizations

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(as geographically and chronologically separate from the home) questions of identitywere easier to address. Theoretically at least [1] it was possible to be “an employee”, “amanager”, “a colleague”, “a professional” associated with a particular identity atparticular 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 therealisation of unbroken life projects remain[ed] precarious, indeed”. Similarly,Fairweather (1999, pp. 114-119, 120-142) argue that the most powerful sources ofmeaning and identity are “work” and “home” and that in and through home-basedtelework their respective values, ideas and roles collide, forcing the teleworker (and thehousehold) 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 theexisting household matrix.

In Western industrialised societies, a major source of defining who we are, what wedo and where we are headed in the weaving of narrative self-definition is ouroccupational identity (Whitehead and Dent, 2001), the central, distinctive anddiscursive 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, whoseacceptance or indeed rejection of (emergent) identities play a crucial part in theestablishment of identities. This understanding of identities as “relational” (Gergen,1991, 1994; Watson and Harris, 1999) emphasises the ongoing (discursive) interchangebetween actors to the extent that social life is seen as a network of reciprocating,conflicting and resisting “other” identities. For the home-located teleworkers therelational network changes in so far as household members take on a more prominentrole in affirming (or contesting) their professional identities. Therefore, teleworkershave to “work hard” at establishing their occupational identities. They do so bydrawing on discourses available to them. These take the form of codes, enacted scriptsand 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 thehousehold (which include themselves). Such acts of identity then take both material(wearing of particular clothes) and symbolic form (the cultural meaning associatedwith such clothes).

Coping with home-based teleworkThe arrival of paid work at home, then, directly concern the construction andrenegotiation of identities. This is not to say that such teleworking households begin toengage in deeply philosophical discussion, in which they address the complexities andvicissitudes of their lives. Rather, it is acknowledged in the literature that theteleworkers 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” arisingfrom the arrival of paid work (Tietze et al., 2002). These practical solutions areacknowledged and captured by the term “coping strategy” and comprise a gamut ofactions, ranging from the deployment of artefacts, symbolic management, dresscodes, routines and culturally codifiable conducts or scripts. They comprise acontinuum ranging from integration to segmentation or separation strategies

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(Campbell-Clark, 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996; Standen, 2000). In other words, teleworkersand families have to find designated spaces and times in which paid work activity canbe pursued. Practically, this implies changing a particular space, which mightpreviously have been a private place, a guest room, in such ways that it becomesrecognisable 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) tobecome recognisable as work time (by introducing “office hours” into the household).In doing so the (cultural) boundaries around what constitutes “work” and whatconstitutes “home” are redrawn (Felstead and Jewson, 2000). Coping strategies, then,are enacted discursively in that actors draw on available cultural scripts andrepositories of meaning to actively construct a new network of relationships.

MethodsI undertook two studies into the experience of home-based telework. A pilot study(conducted from 1999 to 2000), comprising ten households, was followed by aconceptually and empirically expanded study (from 2000 to 2002) of a further 25teleworking households. Initially, I was interested in understanding the merepracticalities of home-based telework from the perspective of the individual teleworkerand their households. The second study retained this interest, but focused more clearlyon the themes discussed in this paper (how do actors cope discursively; why do somediscursive acts take while others fail). These studies, then, were meant to beexplorative in character rather than representative of wider patterns, trends orinstances of home-based telework. The analytic method comprised the interpretation offindings in the light of a particular conceptual framework. It is acknowledged thatdifferent approaches and different interpretations are possible, so no claims torepresent any universal truths are being made. Nevertheless, the study systematicallyinvestigates 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 thehousehold. These teleworkers were diverse in industrial, sectoral or functionalbackground, degrees of seniority and career development, but they were all in along-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 theexperience 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 somore sporadically but for longer periods. All the teleworkers can be described asmanagement professionals, who had a business/management education to degree leveland who had established successful careers in the middle layers of their respectiveorganizations. As such they were involved in high discretion work and self-directed inthe pursuit and conduct of their activities. Thus, their common denominator was theparticular intellectual and emotional dispositions they had to develop as part of theprofessionalisation and socialisation into “management”. These acted as internalcontrol devices, which the teleworkers drew on to exercise self-discipline (Seron andFerris, 1995; Watson and Harris, 1999). Of the teleworkers 13 were male, 12 werefemale [2]. Their age spanned from 33 to 48 years; 18 were married or cohabited, four inlong-term relationships, three were single. 20 had children, while two of the single

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teleworkers had children from previous relationships. Of those 18 cohabiting/marriedhouseholds, nine had only one breadwinner (there was only one female breadwinner),and the remaining nine were dual career households, with our main contact beingdefined by the family as the “breadwinner”.

Conceptual frameworksCoping strategies are described and analysed by employing the conceptual approachdeveloped by Hardy et al. (2000). They understand discourse/s as producing and beingproduced by concepts, objects and subject positions – relationships that constitutesocial reality. Using discourse as a strategic resource means that individuals engage indiscursive activity to intervene in these relationships – and thereby change the socialworld. The contexts of such organizing are seen as sites of struggle for meaningproduced by competing groups.

Applying their terminology and concepts sheds light on the dynamics and contextwithin which concepts, objects and subject positions were negotiated and changed inthe visited households. This framework also provides the possibility to explain whysome changes were successful, while others remained failed or remained tentative.Also, their stance on discourse and discursive activity is in line with the theoreticalposition outlined earlier in the paper. By capturing the voice and position of the wholehousehold, “dialogical insights” (Hardy et al., 2000, p. 1244) are provided regardinghow 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 areonly seemingly mundane. Employing the conceptual framework shows that theyconstitute and are constitutive of the very (coping) strategies which shape and informthe “everyday” of those households.

ConceptsThe concepts are categories, relationships and theories through which one understandsthe world and is able to relate to each. The categories “work” (and associated roles,values, behaviours, temporalities and places) and “home” (and its respectiveassociations) are, despite having become dented and more fluid, still fundamentalmoral and practical ordering mechanisms that enable human actors to take on specificroles, enact scripts and consequently to built and maintain relationships with otheractors.

ObjectsUsing categories implies constituting objects. Even an innocuous object such as a tablesignifies 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”, wherethe filing, computing and conceptual tasks of paid work occur. It is possible that thetwo 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 positionsIndividuals speak within particular discourse/s and this implies that they have to takeon particular subject positions. In the context of home-based telework, teleworkersmight speak as “manager” who has to claim the “table” as his/her desk (object),

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because s/he is “at work” (concept). Other members of the household, children forexample, might protest, because they usually do their homework at the table atparticular times. This struggle – and whose position warrants louder voice – arestruggles of power in the context of “working from home”.

The three areas are mutually informative and interactive and connected as in threecircuits.

The circuit of activityThe circuit of activity are the discursive statements individuals make to managemeaning in line with their intents; including the creation and dissemination of texts,symbols, narratives and metaphors. These have to be related to particular concepts tocreate 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 andspace, legitimised within the context of “school/learning”.

The circuit of performativityThe 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 discursiveresources must possess receptivity. The particular act of putting books on the tablemust communicate to other household members: I am doing my homework. I am now alearner, entitled to use this time and space for my project.

The circuit of connectivityIf activity and performativity tie, connectivity occurs in that discursive statements“take” as objects are created and/or changed, subject positions emerge and relate toeach other in new ways. Activity and performativy have to accumulate over time inorder to influence the context of future discursive activity. The table is used repeatedlyin particular veins and becomes material and symbolic part of the established “copingstrategy”. Within the newly formed relationships teleworker and child might accepteach other’s voice and find a coping strategy that accommodates them both.Alternatively, the teleworker might warrant stronger voice and remove the books ofthe child. In either case concepts, objects and subject positions are evoked and changed.

Acting and coping discursivelyExamples were taken from the research study to illustrate some of the “practicalsolutions” developed by teleworking households. This is followed by discussing theseexamples in the light of the mutually implicated concept, object and subject positionand the changes they affected. The discussion focuses on circuits of activity,performativity and connectivity and addresses why some discursive acts succeedwhile others fail.

Concepts, objects and subject positionsIn home-based telework culturally informed concepts of “work” and “home” meet.Examples provide an insight into the tension and processes on how tension wasresolved. These are the symbolic resources used by families to regulate accessibility toagents, spaces and times. All teleworkers reported difficulties in adjusting to workingfrom home. These difficulties did not so much refer to technical or task-related

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problems, nor to issues of boredom, isolation or surveillance, but addressed questionsof 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 andforemost” [when working from home].

One family implemented a traffic light system, which consisted of a traffic lightmade of cardboard and with removable red, yellow and green patches, positioned onthe “office door”. The office used to be a multiple-purpose room, accommodating theoccasional overnight guest/s, in which family members played – the children of fourand six had a scalextric system – or worked domestically (sewing, ironing). Themeaning of the colour coding was clear: red for “no access under no circumstances foranyone”; 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”. Otherhouseholds 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 alsothe use of internal telephone lines for work calls or practices including “knocking at thedoor” to check on availability). In a similar vein dress codes and particular routineswere drawn on to orchestrate the flows of “the household” and of “work”. Dress codesranged from suit, white shirt and tie to a more relaxed “dressing at ease”, though noneof the teleworkers dressed completed as “in leisure and home”. However, allteleworkers used dress codes and in some cases routines of hygiene to signal to otherhousehold members their current involvement with (paid) work and their consequent(non)availability. Interestingly, for men the wearing of a tie was the most importantpiece of clothing they used to communicate this to the household (mainly the tie wasworn, but it was also hung around the door handle to indicate non-availability). Forwomen the role of lipsticks (sometimes differently colours for “work” or “home”),jewellery (in particular ear rings) and “having presentable hands” performedcommunicative acts intended for other household members. Furthermore, they werealso self-regulatory acts, inciting and sustaining self-discipline and self-image. Theseare then the very acts of identity, taking the form of acts of self-explanation andself-regulation. Particular grooming routines such as showering in the morning,putting on make-up, combing hair, using perfume/aftershave, were part of preparingfor paid work routines, which most teleworkers continued to adhere to. Indeed, forsome teleworkers these activities became extended and took on a more profoundsignificance.

Other than such non-verbal acts, the households had developed symbolically loadedcatchphrases to manage the “work/home” interface. For example, in one household theteleworker was in the initially stages of working from home so beleaguered bydomestic requests that she exclaimed: “pretend I am not here!” This had beenestablished as a family catchphrase, which was used by the other family memberswhenever they wanted to avoid involvement in certain activities. Similarly, oneteleworker had sent her friend away, who had called unannounced for a cup of tea, withthe words: “come back at seven!” She also began to use this phrase quite regularly as ameans to indicate her non-availability. A variation on this linguistic behaviour is theusage of professional scripts, in that one teleworkers described his engagement with inparticular children when “at work” as potentially difficult and conflict-prone. Hereverted to “treating the children” [when working from home] “professionally,courteously, but briefly”. This was echoed in other households. For example, one

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teleworker addressed her family as half-jokingly as “colleagues” whenever she wantedtheir attention.

Commentary and discussionIn this section the above described discursive acts are discussed within the conceptualframework developed by Hardy et al. (2000). A distinction is drawn between regulatoryand self-regulatory acts. It is demonstrated why and how their enactment isproblematic and precarious.

Concepts, objects, subject positionsIn the previous section discursive acts were described. They were enunciated bydiscourse users in their attempts to achieve their particular goals. In actingdiscursively a new environment is created, because in transforming spatial andtemporal boundaries the social world of the household is reshaped: rooms change theirmeaning; times change their pattern and rhythm, identities emerge.

The primary initiators of such change are the teleworkers themselves, who taketheir subject position within the conceptual context of paid work. This bestows uponthem a considerable amount of authority: they “warrant voice”, so that changes whichsuit their purposes and projects can be implemented. Furthermore, these subjectpositions also provide a legitimising source, because acts of claiming space and timewere not so much seen as capricious whims, but as necessary and rightful actions inthe pursuit of providing for the family. Thus, discursive acts of putting signs on doors,wearing particular clothing and following particular grooming activities are enactmentstrategies, 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, theyare dialogical in nature. They intermingle with each other, and vie for power andcontrol (Grant et al., 1998; Tietze et al., 2003). Therefore, the conceptual context of thehousehold, based on different spatial/temporal orders and different moral rationalities(Nippert-Eng, 1996) is not the passive recipient of discursive acts enunciated fromsubject positions taken within the conceptual context of paid work. In the interviews itbecame 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 andtimes 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 hidingthe coloured patches or changing their order, thus protesting against having beencreated as “intruders” or “visitors”. A spouse started to use the catchphrase “come backat seven” whenever he did not want to engage with his teleworking wife and supporther in her work tasks. A teenage boy addressed his parents increasingly as“colleagues” in discussions about his rights and responsibilities in the household, thusattempting to create a more equal playing field between himself and his parents. Inother words, the introduction and implementation of discursive acts changed thesymbolic and material aspects of the household and in doing so, it also changed socialrelationships within it: new objects and new subject positions were created. Children,who were addressed as “colleagues” or treated “professionally” are perceived andtreated in line with the conceptual world of paid work. This, in turn, affects theirposition as both subject and object in particular discourses. As active discourse users

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they will utilise those aspects of their new position, which enable them to pursue theirown interests and plans. Thus, discursive activity introduced into the household didindeed change its spatial/temporal map as well as the subject positions of all itsmembers. Such change became visible in the organization of boundaries around spacesand times and in identity acts employed by teleworkers. These performed acts are partof the very dialogue between paid work and home in that meaning flowed betweentheir respective agents, who appropriated, contested and changed meaning in suchmaterial and symbolic exchanges. Gergen’s (1991, 1994) notion of “relational identities”is helpful to appreciate the precariousness of interdependent identities, which are basedon ongoing exchange (of material and symbolic resources), which are frequentlycontested, and which can never be affirmed “totally” and “definitely”.

Many of the acts were used as a “regulatory device” to communicate across thework-home boundary or interface (Campbell-Clark, 2000; Standen, 2000). Such acts toldhousehold members when access to the teleworker was available. Other thancommunicative/regulatory purpose, they also fulfilled a second important functionrelated 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, whichtraditionally told them “who they were”, “what they were about” and “how to relate toothers”, teleworkers found it sometimes difficult to maintain a sense of theiroccupational/professional identities (Watson and Harris, 1999; Whitehead and Dent,2001) within the different cultural context. The establishment of boundaries throughdiscursive acts then also served to reaffirm and establish their identities as dedicatedand committed professionals. However, the absence of other social actors associatedwith traditional work places and times (work colleagues, secretarial/clerical staff, officemates) made it harder for the teleworkers to maintain their occupational identities. Therelocation of paid work into a culturally different context and its network ofrelationships (family, friends, neighbours, but also builders, postmen, gardeners)interrupted the weaving of a narrative self-definition and posed challenge to theiridentity. In coping with this situation, teleworkers acted discursively in two ways.First, they enacted (new) boundaries and thus they redefined the spatial/temporal mapof the household. Second, they worked hard at enacting their identities and (re)rootingtheir 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 forthemselves to tell them “who they were”, “where they were going” and “how they wereto act”: “[Teleworkers] must judge in what ways and to what extent they will drawlines between relations of production and social reproduction in their lives. They mustinvent a landscape for themselves, with few cues or support from elsewhere.” (Felsteadand Jewson, 2000, p. 115; Tietze and Musson, 2002).

Circuits of activity, performativity and connectivityThe description, explanation and interpretation of discursive activity needs to beexpanded to include why some acts “take”, while others seem to require constantattention, reaffirmation and perseverance.

Circuit of activityDiscursive statements, both verbal and non-verbal, have been described. Individualsuse them to manage meaning in line with their intents. In using them, particular

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concepts (paid work or the household) are evoked. Regulatory activity was used tomanage the “traffic of relationships” between the two conceptual worlds. Theregulation of time and space through material and symbolic referents created a newobject, a new or least partially changed temporal/spatial map of the household. Second,there are self-regulatory acts, comprising discursive activity at the service ofmaintaining and protecting the identities of teleworkers. Through home-based locationthese identities have been re-contextualised, which made them less stable andpredictable. Discursive statements deriving from the conceptual world of work areenlisted to protect such precarious identities.

Circuit of performativityDiscursive activity needs to be meaningful for those individuals at which they areaimed at. For such directive activity to occur enunciators must be able to “warrantvoice” and their activity must resonate with other actors.

Overall, the activities used by teleworking enunciators were successful in pursuingtheir goals for two reasons. First, they used systems, which resonated well enough withhousehold members to achieve regulatory effect. The traffic light system, for example,is taken from a familiar general meaning system, which household members knew andaccepted. Second, the teleworkers’ subject positions are embedded in the wider contextof paid work, which is viewed as a priori necessity for the existence and survival of thehousehold. As such teleworkers “warrant voice” and carry a mandate to speak and act.However, despite such a powerful position, problems occurred within the circuit ofperformativity, because household members resisted and challenged the discursiveacts.

In a similar vein, self-regulatory acts were problematic in their performative value.The teleworkers’ subject position were simultaneously informed by the conceptualworlds of “work” and “home” – they were embedded in partly conflicting andcontradictory worlds (Felstead and Jewson, 2000). Such in-betweeness implies thatteleworkers have to warrant voice to establish their work or professional identities atthe expense of their domestic and private ones. The dilemma is ultimately irresolvableand was reflected in continuous and permanent identity work. Teleworkers extendedconsiderable energy and emotional effort to cope with the extended states of flux.

Circuits of connectivityThe final circuit is created when new discursive statements “take”. They becamesuccessfully rooted as new routines and practices. Thus new subject positions andpractices emerge and provide trajectory for the future shaping of concepts, objects andsubjects.

While in some households – more so in households with children – such operationsencountered resistance and hindrance, overall teleworkers warranted voice loudly andlegitimately in the eyes of others, so that new boundaries were established, subjectpositions and new objects created or partially transformed. The regulatory acts “took”,since the teleworkers could strategically intervene in the construction of their socialworlds: “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 twodifferent conceptual worlds teleworkers had to continuously persuade themselves that

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they were “at work”. Teleworkers had to protect their sense of self as tied into theirprofessional identities; they did so in equivocal circumstances and by enlistingparticular symbolic and material referents. While these acts “took” often in the eyes ofthe other household members, they did not “take” as frequently in the eyes of theteleworkers themselves, who found it difficult to cope with the paradoxical position tobe both subject and object of their own “warranting voice”. Yet such self-managementwas precarious and dependent on the continuous exercise of self-discipline. Thus, theregulatory challenge had turned inward-bound (Felstead and Jewson, 2000; Tietze andMusson, 2002) onto themselves.

ConclusionTaking issue with the notion that work can be conducted “anywhere, anytime and withanyone”, the article explored the consequences of anchoring paid work activity into theconceptually different world of “the home”. Based on an understanding oforganizations as ongoing social process, an empirical study into the experience ofhome-based telework was used to shed light on how change was enacted discursivelyand why some such acts succeeded (or failed) in providing trajectories for meaningfulsocial action. Building on the distinction between acts of regulation (directed towardsocial others) and acts of self-regulation (directed toward the self), it was shown thatthe self-regulatory acts were more difficult to establish, because of the continuoussuspension of the teleworker between “home” and “work”. Such suspensionnecessitated the (re)negotiation of interdependent identities before new practices androutines could be established.

The “dispersed” work organization has indeed burst its traditional boundaries andin doing so loosened existing networks of identities, practices and patterns. Within thecontext 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 paidwork. The study of organizational change also should expand to explore the niches andnooks of places and times outside the formal organizational boundaries. If themanagement of organizational change has to concern itself with a much more diverserange of stakeholders, practical and ethical questions arise on “where to draw theboundaries?” Second, organizational change affects the construction of (professional)identities, which are controlled “from the inside”. Here, the management oforganizational change needs to “turn away” from its fascination with big strategyand “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 ofdiscourse, individuals might be enabled to make more informed choices with respect topractices they wish to take up or to reject.

To conclude, home-based telework symbolises contemporary dilemmas, caused byand expressive of organizational and social change. At the core of such change arequestions of identity and ethical considerations concerning the organization of our lifeworlds, 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 andabsolute one. Indeed, Perin (1998) points to the “myth of discontinuation”. However,

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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 concretearrival of paid work into the home, therefore, creates a force field of tension, which actorsneed 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 afar-reaching difference in how coping was achieved. Findings did bear out establishedknowledge 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 toBryant (2000) and Sullivan and Lewis (2001) for discussion of homebased telework andgender.

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“What you’ll say is . . . ”:represented voice in

organizational change discourseDonald L. Anderson

University College, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA

Abstract

Purpose – Following Bakhtin, organizational discourse scholars have examined ways in whichorganizational actors draw on and negotiate historical texts, weave them with contemporary ones, andtransform them into future discourses. This paper examines how this practice occurs discursively asmembers in a high-tech corporation conduct an organizational change.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper interprets discourse excerpts from meetings of aproject team in the western US. Through participant-observation and discourse analytic methods, thedata gathered consists of field notes, over 33 hours’ worth of team meeting conversation and five hoursof interview data.

Findings – Through the use of represented voice, organizational members work out how an action orpractice has sounded in the past as spoken by another member, and they articulate how proposedorganizational changes might sound in the future. By making these inferences, members are able todiscursively translate between a single situated utterance and organizational practices.

Practical implications – The analysis suggests that organizational change occurs when peopletemporarily 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 thefuture). 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 transformationsbetween “past” and “future” language, and thereby experience and achieve organizational change.

Originality/value – The paper furthers our knowledge of how organizational members discursivelynegotiate 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 changeliterature, we have seen several studies that have tried to meet his challenge to focusmore attention on the processes and contexts of change. Dissatisfaction with theprescriptions and control orientation of dominant management perspectives has ledmany researchers to closer examinations of the structures and discourses of change, aswell as a rethinking of the relationship between organization and change. By lookingbeyond how managers define and control change, and rejecting the notion that changeis a specific phenomenon based in an objective reality, recent perspectives onorganizational change propose that change is an evolving achievement, a process ofsharing and constructing new meanings and interpretations of organizational activity.When we look beyond prescriptive approaches but look instead at how change is

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

This essay is adapted from the author’s doctoral dissertation completed under the direction ofProfessor Karen Tracy. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 InternationalCommunication Association convention in San Diego, California.

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagement

Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005pp. 63-77

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814

DOI 10.1108/09534810510579850

constructed and formed in conversation, change becomes a process of the spreading,sharing, interpreting, adopting and rejecting of meanings and ideas (Czarniawska andJoerges, 1996). This perspective has given rise to social constructionist and discourseapproaches to organizational change that examine how organizational membersnegotiate meaning in the change process through various discursive practices andtextual objects.

Dominant theories of change assuming a stable organization punctuated bymoments of change (Lewin’s (1951) “unfreeze-change-refreeze” model) have beensoundly criticized by those who suggest that the reverse is true. Chia (1999) argues thatcontemporary theories of organizational change represent a “pervasive commitment toan ontology of being which privileges outcomes and end-states rather than an ontologyof becoming in which movement, process and emergence are emphasized” (Chia, 1999,p. 215). Alternatively, he suggests revising the analytic attention to provide primaryfocus on the organizing process, not on change, because “organization” is thepatterning of a continually changing reality, so “it is organization, not change, which isthe exception” (Chia, 1999, p. 226). Researchers ought to direct attention to howorganizational members work to develop stability during moments of change inorganized and patterned fashions. Going farther, Chia (1999, p. 224) proposes that theconcept of organizational change itself is an “oxymoron”.

For process thinkers, however, organization is stabilizing and simple locating. The ontologicalact of organization is an act of arresting, stabilizing and simplifying what would otherwise bethe irreducibly dynamic and complex character of lived-experience. Organization is aninherently simplifying mechanism, and the idea of “complex” organization(s) is in effectan oxymoron. . . For, organization acts to arrest and convert the otherwise wild and infrangibleforces of nature into a more predictable and, hence, liveable world.

Taking this perspective seriously implies that the act of organizing is fundamentallythe process of concentrating divergent and living meanings into fixed and stabilizedones. Chia (1997, p. 699) writes that the objective of organizing is to “constructlegitimate objects of knowledge for a knowing subject – ‘man’, ‘notes of a musicalscore’, ‘factory hands’” and so on. None of these objects are ever fully static, but theobject of their creation is to consider them so, as organizational discourse works tomake them stable. The figure-ground relationship between organization and change isreconfigured from this perspective. Change is seen as the usual state and organizing isexplained as an alternative to giving ontological priority to organization andconsidering change as the exceptional state (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002).

In this reconfiguration, the development and transformation of meaning during thechange process as it happens through discourse becomes the primary focus ofattention. One notable contribution to this perspective has been Morgan and Sturdy’s(2000) extensive study of organizational change in a financial institution. Morgan andSturdy develop a social approach to change that contrasts with the dominantmanagerialist and political perspectives. Managerialist approaches to change seek tounderstand the comprehensive and universal practices that allow change to occur,often defined as stages or phases. Political approaches to change seek to understandthe change process as a matter of how organizing processes work when there arecompeting interest groups or stakeholders. The social approach they advocate,influenced significantly by social and cultural discourse theorists, views changeprocesses through the language, symbols, concepts and discourses that organizational

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members use as they construct and transform organizational meaning. They write thatthe social approach to change acknowledges that “bodies of knowledge are constructedwhich are often transmitted and translated by organizational participants into routinesand procedures which, in turn, constitute or contribute towards the construction of newor adapted knowledges and practices” (Morgan and Sturdy, 2000, pp. 18-9). Theconstruction process that Morgan and Sturdy advocate has been seen as primarily adiscursive one, or what Ford and Ford (1995, 1999, 2003) in a series of articles on thesubject call an unfolding series of conversations. The job of the manager is to managediscourse in order to create and manage new concepts, meanings, and contexts foraction.

Looking at organizational discourse provides a site for examining how thestabilizing function of organization noted by Chia is discursively performed andhistorically enacted. Discourse studies inform us how members accomplish theactivity of organizing through discourse, noting how members discursivelyconstruct meaning in patterned ways in their attempts at achieving organization(Oswick et al., 2000). Textualizing practices in conversation and in writing act toconstruct organizational narratives that solidify and strengthen particularmeanings and interpretations (Anderson, 2004; Linstead, 1999; Robichaud, 1999).This means a close examination of the language used at particular occasionsduring the change process, which language practices are used and how they areinterpreted. As Barrett et al. (1995, pp. 358-9) explain about organizational change,“crucial to understanding this process are the patterns of discourse through timeas organizations achieve stability through patterns of interaction cycles and theevolution of rules for interpreting gestures and utterances”. As conversationsproduce new concepts and meanings, we can note the ways in which “changeoccurs when tensions within a community’s discourse patterns produce thebeginnings of a new discourse . . . .In other words, change occurs when one way oftalking replaces another way of talking” (Barrett et al., 1995, p. 370).

Contributions from organizational discourse studies have shown, however, that anynew discourse is not purely new and is never strictly replaced or substituted outrightfrom earlier discourses. Instead, each new discourse draws on and transforms textsand meanings adopted previously in the organization. Historical meanings addsignificant constraints on the development of future meanings. Following Bakhtin,organizational discourse scholars suggest ways in which organizational membersdraw on and negotiate historical texts, weave them with contemporary ones, andtransform them into future discourses (Deetz et al., 2004; Grant et al., 2004). Intertextualanalysis has become a particular area of focus for organizational discourse as weexamine how concepts and meanings become developed, transformed, fragmented andchanged across multiple sites and occasions. The concept of intertextuality helps us tosee 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 andtexts (Keenoy and Oswick, 2004). This has political implications as some contributionsare highlighted and legitimated and others are minimized and constrained. Dominantmeanings become reinforced or modified; contested meanings may work themselvesin to the dominant discourse patterns or may struggle to become widely adopted(van Dijk, 1993; Wodak, 1997). Intertextual analysis builds on the social constructionist

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approach by recognizing that the organization consists of a variety of multiple textsthat may be brought to bear on the current context.

We do not know very much, however, about how organizational members negotiatethese past and future meanings during the process of organizational change. How dolanguage practices allow organizational members to work out new discourses withinthe context of preferred and historically rooted discourses in the organization, andthereby achieve organizational change? This attention to the discursive practices ofchange would demonstrate how organizational members negotiate past and futuretexts as they work out the adoption of new organizational practices (Keenoy andOswick, 2004). We would see how they bring historical texts to bear on the currentcontext and how they work out which meanings to retain, which to discard, and whichto modify, for future discourses.

Bakhtin elaborates on how this dialogical change works. He notes that past eventsand ideas are always being reinterpreted and changed through present conversationsto 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 meaningsthat are never completely finalized, as they “will always change (be renewed) in theprocess of subsequent, future development of the dialogue” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 170).Those past meanings may be forgotten but “at certain moments of the dialogue’ssubsequent development along the way they are recalled and invigorated in renewedform (in a new context)” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 170). The social and historical texts of thepast are brought to bear as the texts and contexts for new interactions.

Bakhtin’s work shows us one possibility for how organizational members negotiatepast and future meanings in his concept of double-voiced words in which speakers usequotes from other earlier speakers for their own purposes. Bakhtin (1984) distinguishesbetween various ways that speakers can bring the words and speech styles of otherspeakers into their own speech. He points out that these methods involve using directquotes from others (intended to be heard as quotations), using indirect quotes(reporting another’s speech without a direct quote), or parody, irony, and stylizationwhich involve the mimicking of another’s style. But what these methods all have incommon 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 voicesare involved, Bakhtin refers to these utterances as “double voiced”. But these voices arenot 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 becomedouble-voiced. . . Our practical everyday speech is full of other people’s words: with some ofthem we completely merge our own voice, forgetting whose they are; others, which we take asauthoritative, we use to reinforce our own words; still others, finally, we populate with ourown aspirations, alien or hostile to them. (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 195)

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

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discursively move between a single situated utterance and organizational practices,implicating individual identity as they describe what language choices are appropriatefor which roles. It is when these practices are solidified and made real through thesetranslations between identity, voice and organizational practices that members areable to draw comparisons and transformations between “past” and “future” languageand thereby experience and achieve organizational change.

When research in organizational settings has examined reported speech, thetraditional focus has been on the linguistic structure of the report, or how the otherspeech structurally fits in the utterance of the current speaker. In this regard thesetraditional examinations have had little to say about the organizational goals ormeanings achieved by reported speech. Baynham and Slembrouck (1999), in anexamination of reported speech in institutional discourse, write that early work onreported speech was primarily concerned with the degree of accuracy in the speaker’srepresentation of the original utterance. But examination of the functions of repeated orrepresented speech in organizational settings has shown that professionals mutuallyco-construct ways of talking and evaluating situations and ideas within a sharedvocabulary (Goodwin, 1994; Linell, 1998; Sarangi, 1998). Other functions have beenenumerated by Myers (1999a, b), who argues that reported speech can function tointensify events by dramatizing experience in narrative form and to support one’sposition by offering evidence from a third party. Myers finds that representationsfrom others can be hypothetical in order to explore possible future utterances or todevelop counter-arguments. He also argues that reported speech can reproduceone utterance in order to serve as an example of a typical repeated pattern of manyprior utterances.

I argue that it is these double-voiced words that function to allow the project team todiscursively translate between their understandings of organizational practices andsituated utterances of members. Sometimes these repeated utterances occur asspeakers representing themselves, sometimes speakers refer to utterances authored byspecific organizational members and still other times the utterance is represented asauthored by a general category of members (i.e. managers). But in all cases therepresentation has a similar function – to translate between representations of ideasabout routine organizational practices, organizational members’ actions and individualutterances. It is this discursive translation practice that connects changes inorganizational practices with changes in organizational discourse.

Setting, method and materialsThis paper interprets discourse excerpts from meetings of a project team at a high-techcorporation in the western US. “Techco”, the name I give to this organization,manufactures products for use in large corporate computing environments. (The nameof the organization and the names of speakers in transcripts are pseudonyms.) Justfewer than half of Techco’s employees are located at its corporate headquarters, withseveral thousand employees in offices around the globe, including subsidiaries in LatinAmerica, Australia, Europe and Asia. Techco has gone through periods of significantturmoil in the past several years as revenues have stalled and new management wasbrought in to improve productivity and cut costs.

As one of his final acts, the former company president brought in a consultingorganization to study Techco and make recommendations for change. One of the

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changes recommended by the consulting group was to Techco’s process for forecastingsales demand for its products. Most manufacturing organizations find significantincentives to forecast sales accurately. Building more products than customers wantmeans excess costly inventory; building too few means that customers wait weeks ormonths to receive their orders and thus might decide to purchase elsewhere. Theconsulting 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 fromsales, manufacturing, finance, marketing and product development. The team wasgiven the responsibility to understand the current process and to redesign it to increasethe company’s forecast accuracy. This case study represented an appropriate one for adiscourse study of organizational change, since all members all represented definedelements of the process and members had the explicit goal and objective to achieve anorganizational change.

I studied Techco as a participant-observer for one year, from October 2000 to2001. With the approval of Techco management, my university’s institutionalreview board and the project manager, I studied this forecasting team from itsfirst meeting. For 4 months the team met at least weekly. Meetings varied inlength from 1 h to a full day but averaged 2 h, and the team granted mepermission to audiotape every team meeting. In addition, I interviewed five of thecore team members individually in semi-structured formal interviews (each lastingapproximately 60 min) and I audio-taped these interviews as well. In all, I gatheredover 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 andoverlapping speech but not intonation or volume for a total of almost 300single-spaced pages of transcript data. Data analysis generally proceeded in themanner prescribed by grounded theory (Charmaz, 2000; Glaser and Strauss, 1967),involving sorting transcript excerpts containing representations of the past andfuture in discourse, re-sorting, and verifying categories. Excerpts used in the papercome substantially from two of the most important team meetings, one in whichparticipants spent time understand the current forecasting process and a secondnear the end of the project in which they were most concerned with generatingideas for how the new process would work. In these two meetings participantsconcentrated on the current (and past) process and the new (future) process.The themes developed in the next sections emerged as patterned ways that theteam represented voices during project team meetings, with two functions: torepresent routine practices of the past and to demonstrate potential future voicesof a proposed practice.

Representations of voice in the team’s change discussionsRepresented voices demonstrate routinized practicesThis first use of represented voices consisted of quotations from organizationalmembers from prior occasions. These prior utterances were brought into the currentdiscussion as the routinization of previous conversations, through the voices of bothnamed and categorical organizational members. An organizational practice wassummarized and represented as the usual course of business by using a quote fromanother organizational member.

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Voice of named personAfter several meetings of evaluating the problems with the current forecastingprocess and benchmarking other organizations’ processes, the project manager,Kevin Norris, scheduled a full-day meeting of the project team about two monthsinto the project to allow the team to debate a new process. In this meeting theteam sorted through each department’s needs from the forecast itself, and thenmoved from this discussion to decide how the new process should be structured tomeet the needs of each department. A question occurred in this meeting, however,about how the current process worked. A member suggested that Larry, anemployee in the Finance department, typically used the forecast from the fieldsales group as the starting point for any forecast. Other members questionedLarry:

Excerpt 1 (tape 8, lines 1034-1049)

1034 [?]: You’re not, Larry, are you, you’re not really doing that?1035 Larry: Yeah.1036 Tom: Absolutely.1037 Larry: When we do our [product group] meeting, you know the sheet that puts

America’s1038 forecast, remember? I go around the room “okay Americas what’s your

best1039 guess, Europe what’s yours?” We add ‘em up, I got product marketing in

there I1040 got Dave in there I got Jeff Medeiros in there, I got Evan Meisner in

there, they say1041 “okay now maybe it oughta be this”, and then I go back and I look at

history I say1042 “okay second to third quarter’s flat”, you know this is1043 [?]: The perception is that the field, we get representation from the field,

they more1044 than not drive those numbers1045 Larry: We do this but it’s not a very formal process, I mean I sit out there and

say1046 “okay here’s the field forecast” you know what I mean, and I’ll go up to1047 product marketing and say “give me your forecast before the meeting”,

or I1048 go up, it’s an informal process.1049 Jackie: Well should we formalize it with field input?

As the group struggles with what the new process should be, they call on Larry, along-term Techco employee, to explain how the process has worked in the past.In order to explain how the general organizational practice of holding theforecasting meetings has worked, Larry uses quotations to accomplish this purpose.Larry’s repetition of typical statements made at the forecasting meeting centers thegroup discussion around usual practices, the routine elements of the forecastingprocess.

In this excerpt, Larry reports speech of his own as well as those of specific otherpeople in lines 1038-39, 1040-41, and 1045-48. In each of these cases, he reports thesequotes by implicitly or explicitly reporting on what he or others usually “say” inthe course of their daily work lives. Larry reports these past quotes in the present tensewithout reference to a particular time or occasion. That is, instead of reporting “Last

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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 specificquotes from specific individuals, Larry translates between the language used onspecific occasions to a practice no longer situated at a specific occasion (the productline 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 isthis genre that forms the basis for the group’s discussion of how to change theforecasting process. If we were to examine this utterance from a traditional “reportedspeech” perspective, we might compare Larry’s representation of how the forecastingmeetings happen with how they “really” happen as we might hear it if we were toattend the meetings. However, it does not necessarily matter whether Larry’srepresentation 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 otherwords, Larry’s utterance can be seen as a summary of a particular situated utterance asa kind of speech (and by implication, an organizational practice).

By doing so, Larry’s representations of his prior utterances in team meetingstemporarily stabilize this kind of utterance as a genre, a momentary “fixing” oforganizational practice as a potential object for change. That other membersunderstand this to be the case is evidenced by Jackie’s final statement, “Well, should weformalize it with field input?” which proposes an official institutional sanction ofLarry’s representation of the current practice. In the context of a discussion aboutchange, the group hears what the current and past general practices are, and thenmoves to a discussion of change.

Voice of categorical personAnother way the group represented voices from the past was not in the voices of aspecific organizational member, but instead in the voices of types of membershipcategories, such as “salespeople” and “managers”. In the first meeting of the team,Kevin (the project manager) showed the group published research which describedforecasting processes in organizations as four stages of sophistication. Thoseorganizations whose forecasting processes operated with the characteristics ofstage 1 were the most elementary, while those at stage 4 were the mostsophisticated. For each category of the process (use of statistics, cycle time,performance measurement), members of the group offered opinions on thecompany’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 upwith)

708 market share capture over a given period of time, who the accounts are, the709 competitors, follow-on product, portfolio, a lot of it goes back though into

that710 initial business case forecast that covers [our usual number of] years,

right, um711 and then, and then, it crosses to a gate, okay, or pre-gate and it is then

sanitized

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712 from top management saying, “well, we’re not going to come close tothese

713 numbers”, ( ) saying they’re way out of line, so it sort of takes it backa stage,

714 (to) the part of the process, so again I don’t think it’s well representedhereScott, an employee representing one of the product line organizations,explains the difference between forecasting processes in the US and inEurope. Earlier in this meeting members had generally agreed that the USprocesses fit stages 1 and 2, but in this case Scott offers a reason toconsider Techco’s European processes as more mature. His conclusion isthat the European process is more sophisticated and more robust than theUS process because in the US the managers reduce what they consideroverly aggressive or optimistic predictions of revenue for new products (theword he chooses is “sanitized”). He offers a subtle criticism of managementbehavior in this practice by saying that in changing the forecasted revenuenumbers, management is causing the process to be less sophisticated interms of the stages that Kevin is describing.

Like Larry’s representation in the earlier excerpt, product development representativeScott backs up his opinion about the current state of the organization by using a quotefrom the past. He describes the routinized practices of what happens with a businesscase for a new product, when marketing specialists try to predict how much revenue aproduct will bring. Scott represents what happens when the business case isshared with senior management by quoting their speech. Instead of naming anindividual 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 routinepractices is made through voicing an utterance intended to be heard as the voice ofanother person.

Both of these excerpts show how organizational members merge voices fromthe past (their own or those of other organizational members) through the use ofrepresented discourse. They show that organizational members use utterances asrepresentations for behavior. That is, organizational members frequently representroutinized practices as routinized speech. The practice of representingdouble-voiced speech of specific and categorical organizational members servesnot only to tie the group’s current discussion to an understanding of its customaryroutines from the past, but to demonstrate a link between three elements – aconceptual understanding of the practice, repeated behaviors, and repeatedutterances.

Represented voices demonstrate future voices in practiceA second representation of voices occurred in the project team as the team developed anew forecasting process. This occurred in two ways, when the project team positioneda proposed idea in the expected future voices of named and categorical organizationalmembers. This practice allowed organizational members to imagine how a proposal fora change to the forecasting process might work when future meetings are held – howthe new process would “sound” in a meeting. Here I discuss these two representationsof voice.

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Voice of named personSince 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 earlyenough in a particular quarter to allow members of the project team to combine salespredictions worldwide and to agree on manufacturing totals by product line. A conflicterupted in the team meeting as team members from finance and marketing wantedupdates every month from the sales force, but representatives from the sales groupindicated that monthly updates would take too much time. The team then debated themerits of a quarterly update from salespeople instead of a monthly update. Excerpt 3continues 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 fieldreps

365 what they think is happening out in the market366 Jackie: I’m gonna officially, I ask ‘em all the time but I’m going to officially make

them367 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

commit369 forecast in the second month, come month four at the very first week

you’re370 gonna start owin’ Pat-, you’re owing Patricia an update. You okay

[points to371 Jackie], you’re probably gonna go out there that first week of week four

you372 probably (filter) up, and say “okay guys give me a new second quarter

so I373 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 your375 opportunities in [sales software application]”?

This excerpt begins with Kevin providing a summary of the group’s apparent decisionat that point, that once every 13 weeks salespeople would be asked to provideforecasting 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 ofKevin’s resistance to the infrequent nature of this proposed practice, Larry summarizesthe practice in a new way.

Larry explains how the timing change will impact Jackie by quoting Jackie’s futurespeech, by saying, in essence, “What you’ll say is”. Larry is performing Jackie’s voicehere, imagining her approaching a group of salespeople with a forecast request. Giventhe proposal that the group is discussing (related to timing and data collection) andJackie’s role in the sales force as a financial manager (with responsibility for collectingand reporting forecasting data), the language that Larry is suggesting Jackie use whenshe implements the new process is entirely reasonable. To demonstrate the translationof the proposal into what it will mean for Jackie (and others in the same role), Larryquotes Jackie’s future request to the salespeople. It is not likely that Jackie would giveher rationale each time she requests a forecast from the salespeople (“so I know how tochange it from what I gave Patricia in February”), but Larry does this elaboration to

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accomplish the translation of the idea under consideration into the interpretation of itsmeaning for an individual.

By beginning “What I should do” (line 374), Jackie consents to the personalization ofLarry’s suggestion (speaking in her voice), but then alters his wording to include notonly herself, but to other people with a role like hers, (by saying “what you should dois”). 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 toLarry here. Although he is in a finance role he interacts only rarely with salespeople, soit is not likely that this phrasing would be interpreted as her suggestion that he inquireof salespeople about their opportunities in the sales system. Rather, Jackie istranslating again from a specific future utterance of her own to a future routinizedpractice of a particular category of organizational members.

Voice of categorical personIn a second conversation later in the same team meeting, members of the group usedreported speech for a similar purpose but did so in a different manner. Theconversation had shifted topics to discussing how compensation might be used toencourage more accurate forecasting, in other words, how to financially rewardemployees who accurately predict how many sales they will have in the upcomingquarter. The proposal was this: salespeople who accurately forecast how manyproducts they would sell – therefore how many manufacturing should build – wouldbe given a financial bonus. The consequence of this proposal was that employees whomissed their forecast would not be compensated. For example, a salesperson whopredicted that he or she would sell 100 of a certain product and sold that amount wouldbe given a bonus, but another salesperson with the same prediction who only sold 80would not be given the monetary incentive. At this point Jackie recognized theimplications 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 screwup

653 Tom: their forecast, to go over their forecast654 Tom: Yeah but that’s my point, that’s my point655 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

when660 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”, Jackiereminds the group of the widely recognized company value that a salesperson with apotential sale should generally make a sale. In response, Jay (also a representative fromthe sales department) pretends to be a salesperson, imaging a conversation between asalesperson and a customer. He is clearly being sarcastic here as evidenced by thegroup’s knowing laughter, imagining a conversation that might happen ifcompensation were to be withheld for a wrong forecast, or if a salesperson is morecommitted to a forecast – and therefore personal compensation – than customers. Indoing so, Jay works from another widely recognized assumption that people,

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particularly salespeople, will behave in ways that result in their maximizing personalrevenue wherever possible. Jackie is able to finish his sentence because of her sharedunderstanding of this organizational value. Jackie and Jay serve as credible messengersof this language because of their titles and roles that identify them as people withconnections to the sales community. By implicitly and explicitly reminding the groupof two shared values, Jackie and Jay bring into the dialogue the language of the salesorganization.

Two elements of the phrasing in this excerpt work to translate the genericproposition into the utterance of a nonspecific salesperson. First, Jay uses the sameword as Jackie (“deal”) in his imaginary utterance. Instead of “do a deal”, as Jackie putsit, however, Jay uses “sell you this deal”. Jay’s phrasing emphasizing the act of selling isa more specific action than Jackie’s phrasing which refers more generically to the act ofdoing. 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 toput Jackie’s imagined generic person and situation, “anybody” and “do a deal”, intospecific terms, “I” (Jay acting as an imagined salesperson) and “sell this deal”. Inmaking these alterations, Jay translates the general idea under discussion into apotential future performance and enactment of this idea.

Jay’s quoting of a salesperson functions as an ironic statement about the potentialfor people to comply with an organizational policy (compensation) that leads to resultsdirectly 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 extremelywidespread, especially in dialogue, where one speaker very often literally repeats thestatement 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 sodemonstrates the irony of the implications of the group’s proposal to compensateforecast accuracy.

Like the functions of reported speech described earlier, these imaginary futureutterances serve to translate ideas, actions, and utterances. Larry’s voicing of Jackie’sfuture speech (in Excerpt 3) is not only intended to give her the potential phrasing touse, but his elaboration of the instructions in the utterance (“so I know how to change itfrom what I gave Patricia in February”) also provides an explicit explanation of herassociated actions and how those all fall out from the proposed practice underdiscussion. Similarly, Jay’s joke in Excerpt 4 works to collaborate with Jackie’sexplanation of the unfortunate consequences of the compensation proposal to elaboratea translation from proposal to specific future speech.

ConclusionI have argued that the discursive practice of represented voice that allowsorganizational members to make a logical inference between organizational practices(what members consider to be organizational routines) and the individual speech ofmembers. 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 byreporting past utterances as representative of all events of a certain kind. They do this

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by representing voices of specific organizational members as well as in the voice ofmember categories, such as managers. These generalized understandings, however,are constructions of organizational members. Members frame “the undifferentiatedflux of raw experience” (Chia, 2000, p. 513) into routines and genres out of everydayspeech, and then consider those routines as potential areas for change. Crucially,organizational members smooth over and filter variations in embodied routinesthrough repetition of typical speech patterns heard in any routine. Abstracting anddistancing in the form of repeated speech allows the routine to be discussed as ageneric object, a stable practice agreed upon by members that can then be opened up asa possible object of change. These representations of current practice stabilize it for thepurpose of change.

Once these representative utterances become stabilized as the currentorganizational practice, members identify possible changes to the general practice,which implies new kinds of utterances. They “try on” (Barrett et al., 1995) this newlanguage by considering the logical implications of any proposed organizationalchange as it might sound in the future by articulating the proposal in the voice of anorganizational member on a future occasion. While this trying on process ishypothetical, not enacted in an actual practice, it gives organizational members theopportunity to hear how organizational members might work out the new practice indiscourse. They then began to critique the future language and debate whether theproposed change would be an effective one.

The analysis suggests that organizational change occurs when people temporarilystabilize the organization through the voicing of current practices (as references towhat “usually happens” via what is “usually said”). These stabilized forms are whatpeople take to be the enduring patterns that happen over time. Members propose newpractices which imply shifts in activities, behaviors, and speech, and members makethese inferences on their own through represented discourse. By voicing these newpractices people can judge the merit of the proposed practice as they hear how thosepractices might sound in the voices of organizational members (specific people orroles). It is this translation between past, present and future discourses that allowsorganizational members to make the transformation from past to future organizationalmeanings, and by implication, to achieve organizational change.

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Post-crisis discourse andorganizational change, failure and

renewalMatthew W. Seeger

Department of Communication, Wayne State University, Detroit,Michigan, USA

Robert R. UlmerDepartment of Communication, University of Arkansas at Little Rock,

Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Julie M. Novak and Timothy SellnowDepartment 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 andits CEO Howard Lutnick, according to the discourse of renewal framework.

Design/methodology/approach – This case-study of the discourse of renewal draws upon themessages and statements made by the company and its employees following the 9/11 attacks.The discourse of renewal framework emphasizes provisional responses, prospective statements, andthe 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 thepotential to fundamentally alter the form, structure and direction of an organization. Renewaldiscourse helped the company survive an attack where over 600 employees were killed and thecompany offices completely destroyed. While a crisis inevitably create severe harm, it also has thepotential to serve as a renewing force for the organization.

Research limitations/implications – Few examples of post-crisis discourse of renewal have beenexamined in the literature and more research is needed. Work needs to identify the conditionsnecessary for this kind of discourse.

Practical implications – Organizations may have the opportunity to fundamentally reframe acrisis, focusing on the opportunities that arise from these events.

Originality/value – This paper explores both organizational crisis and organizational discoursefrom unique positions. Discourse is positioned as the means whereby crisis can become a positive forcefor change

Keywords Disasters, Organizational change, Narratives, Social dynamics

Paper type Research paper

Crisis and disaster studies have become increasingly popular as scholars come to termswith 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 terroristattacks. Moreover, the effects of such disasters can impact an organization’s image andlinger for decades. In some cases, the entire industry is tarnished as occurred following

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagementVol. 18 No. 1, 2005pp. 78-95q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814DOI 10.1108/09534810510579869

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 outfallacious assumptions, unforeseen interactions and vulnerabilities. Crisis may alsoprecipitate consensus, cooperation and support (Seeger and Ulmer, 2001, 2002; Ulmerand Sellnow, 2002). In almost all cases, major crises and disasters are equivocal eventsthat place severe demands on sensemaking (Weick, 1988). The ways in whichparticipants, stakeholders and leaders frame and make sense of these events, asreflected in post-crisis discourse, shape both the nature and degree of change.

In this analysis, we outline this view of organizational crises as significantchange-inducing events. We explore question regarding how the organizationaldiscourse following a crisis shapes the resulting change. We argue that a primaryfactor in the nature of crisis-induced change is the post-event discourse offered byvisible leaders. Specifically, a discourse of renewal can sometimes emerge followingmajor crises. First, we explore the nature of organizational crisis. Second, three primaryapproaches to crisis and change are described: normative readjustment, organizationallearning and the discourse of renewal. The case of the bond-trading firm of CantorFitzgerald, and the discourse of its CEO, Howard Lutnick, following the World TradeCenter disaster, is used to illustrate the role of post-crisis discourse in organizationalchange. Our purpose it to explore the discourse of renewal that occurred in this caseand extend an understanding of the larger role of such discourse in changes that occurin the aftermath of major crises.

Organizational crisisCrises are increasingly common parts of the larger organizational and social landscapeof modern life. Whether imposed on the organization by outside forces, such as theevents of 9/11, or initiated by management behavior and decisions, such as the case ofEnron, crises are sources of profound significance, often precipitating radical, rapidand occasionally positive change. Crisis may become critical lessons for organizationsregarding shortsightedness, greed, over reliance on technology, indifference, hubris, ormere stupidity. They may also create unprecedented levels of cooperation and support;help the organization shed outdated assumptions, technologies and products and pointout 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 ofuncertainty 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 “lowprobability/high consequence events that threaten the most fundamental goals of theorganization. Because of their low probability, these events defy interpretations andimpose severe demands on sensemaking”. Established structures, routines, procedures,rules, relationships, norms and belief systems often break down or are judged asinsufficient given the conditions of the crisis. In this way, crises are high uncertaintyevents that challenge the ability of managers to predict their consequence. Pauchantand 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 physicallyaffects a system as a whole and threatens its basic assumptions, its subjective sense of

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self, its existential core”). Crises are the primary threat to organizational stabilitymaking organizations vulnerable to other crises, takeovers, declines in market share, oreven bankruptcy (Smart and Vertinsky, 1977; Pauchant and Mitroff, 1992).

Implied in these notions of crisis is a fundamental suspension or disruption oforganizational stability and status quo. This includes systemic disorder, highuncertainty, lack of a clear interpretive frame and inadequate understanding of whathas happened and the larger implications (Weick, 1988; Turner, 1976). During crises,organizational systems, including communication systems, are disrupted infundamental ways. Operations may cease, leaving facilities closed and keypersonnel distracted, incapacitated, missing, or dead. During the 9/11 terroristattacks, for example, key personnel were missing, broadcast, radio and cellulartelephone communications systems were cut and transportation systems wereseriously disrupted. Sometimes disruption is quickly contained and the system rapidlyreturns to a normal state of operations. In fact, the concept of business continuity hasrecently emerged as a primary goal of crisis management. Systems disrupted in thismanner are less stable, vulnerable to criticism and susceptible to further crises.Moreover, crisis disrupts basic belief structures, premises and assumptions ofmembers (Pauchant and Mitroff, 1992). This fundamental questioning often concernswell-established beliefs about risk and its relationship to the organization, norms forrisk avoidance and probabilities for the failure of these norms (Turner, 1976). Suchquestioning may further destabilize the system. During a crisis and its aftermath,organizational members, crisis stakeholders and the public often experience intenseemotional arousal, stress, fear, anxiety and apprehension that they seek to resolve.This intense emotional arousal may result in a rejection of the systems and structuresthat are seen as associated with the event or causing the event. Following the ValdezOil spill, many consumers returned their Exxon credit cards and air travel dropped offprecipitously following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Models of crisis and changeAlthough organizational change is a robust area of inquiry, the focus is primarily onplanned, strategic change (Kotter and Schlesinger, 1979). Strategic change is broadlyconceptualized as a planned adaptive process allowing organizational systems andparticipants to adjust and behave differently to accommodate new contingencies,technologies, values, processes and personnel (Barczak et al., 1988; Cummings andHuse, 1989; Mintzberg, 1984; Kanter, 1983). Communication is an important part of thestrategic change process overcoming resistance, reducing uncertainty, persuadingemployees to embrace the change and facilitating employee participation (Rogers,1995; Lewis and Siebold, 1998). Additionally, some scholars have pointed to theimportant role of symbolism in organizational change (Pfeffer, 1981; Fairhurst andStarr, 1996). Transformational leadership, for example, has emphasized the role of theleader’s articulated vision as a factor in change (Eisenbach et al., 1999). Otherinvestigations have focused on the role of language and metaphor in organizationalchange (Oswick and Montgomery, 1999; Fitzgibbon and Seeger, 2002).

A variety of perspectives and models suggest that crisis may also be understood asa 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

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a particular problem. Managers and public officials often describe events or problemsas “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 maybe examined from at least three theoretical perspectives: as an example of normativereadjustment to severe systemic breakdown (Turner, 1976); as a case of organizationallearning (Sitkin, 1996); or as an instance of renewal discourse (Seeger and Ulmer, 2001,2002; Ulmer and Sellnow, 2002).

Normative readjustmentTurner (1976) offered a model of crisis as the consequence or outcome of inadequaterisk recognition, or a “failure in foresight”. These “intelligence failures” are functions ofa wide variety of organizational and cultural phenomena (Turner, 1976, p. 381). Hesuggested that “disaster occurs because of some inaccuracy or inadequacy in theaccepted norms and beliefs”. Beliefs and norms about hazards, precautions and risksallow organizational members and managers to successfully resolve most problems.Crisis occurs, however, when problems judged as insignificant or irrelevant interactwith precautionary norms and standards considered adequate. Prior to 9/11, forexample, few had even considered a scenario involving hijackers turning airplanes intoguided missiles. Moreover, the airline protection procedures and protocols wereconsidered 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, mostcrises are effectively resolved through these routine and normal structures.

The onset of a crisis through a dramatic trigger event illustrates the inadequacy ofpre-existing beliefs and assumptions regarding risk and challenges norms, structuresand procedures for risk avoidance. Turner describes this process as a sudden collapseof beliefs about the world, its risks and hazards and normal procedures and structuresof risk-avoidance. This collapse, then, makes room for initial and rapid ad hocadjustments and initiation of new norms and procedures. As the crisis event evolvesand becomes contained, a full cultural adjustment regarding beliefs and avoidancenorms occurs so that they are once again compatible with the new post-crisis insightsand understandings. The final resolution of a crisis also requires some generalconsensus about cause, blame and responsibility. Often, a formal inquiry orassessment into the crisis is undertaken by outside agencies to identify a plausible“incubating network of events” associated with the crisis (Turner, 1976, p. 382). Thesefindings and recommendations, then, are used to change core organizationalprocedures and policies in ways that reflect new understandings of risk (Ray, 1999).

Organizational learningOrganizational learning has recently emerged as a popular framework forunderstanding organizational adaptation at both the microscopic and macroscopiclevels (Cohen and Sproull, 1996; Sitkin, 1996). Specifically, learning theorists argue thatorganizational histories sometimes take on the status of critical learning events. Crisisevents, even though they are relatively infrequent and non-normative, may beexperienced richly throughout the organization in ways that precipitate learning andchange. Cohen and Sproull (1996) argue that when histories are viewed as criticalevents, they are dissected, elaborated, discussed and repeated examined to extract

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meaning (Sitkin, 1996). Crises, particularly when their impact is severe and wheremistakes or “faulty learning” are the cause, often become critical events andopportunities for learning (Sitkin et al., 1999). The story of Chrysler’s near bankruptcyin the early 1980s, for example, took on the narrative structure of a saga as it was toldand retold. For those Chrysler employees who survived, the story was a way ofreinforcing 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 orby other governmental bodies, are common features of high-profile crises (Seeger,1986). Such postmortems are undertaken not only to apportion responsibility, liabilityand blame, but also to ensure that the lessons of the crisis are learned and that similarevents 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 forlearning” as it stimulates basic organizational experimentation. Crises are beneficial toorganizations to the degree that they promote specific learning outcomes. First, failurecalls attention to a previously under-recognized problem. Second, failure promotes easeof recognition and interpretation by giving clear definition to a specific kind ofproblem. Third, failures, particularly large-scale failures, stimulate the search forsolutions by demonstrating the associated costs. Fatal airline crashes stimulate anintensive effort to identify the probable cause because the high cost in lost lives, legalliability and reduced profitability. Fourth, crises are motivational often resulting in aspirit of cooperation and commitment to rebuild among employees, managers andmembers of the community. Fifth, failure may result in an adjustment of risktolerances. Sitkin (1996, p. 549) suggests that such adjustments enhance risk toleranceor modify and refine understanding of risk. A sixth outcome of failure related toorganizational leaning is that it stimulates “increased variation in organizationalresponse repertoires”. Finally, organizational failure promotes experimentation andpractice leading to a systemic “orientation that is more flexible and adaptive” (Sitkin1996, p. 550). Crises as critical incidents and as failures represent importantopportunities for learning outside more established learning routines and structures.

Crisis and renewalA third view regarding the role of crisis and change focuses on the ways post-crisisdiscourse constitutes prospective meaning among stakeholders. This work, known asthe discourse of renewal, builds from organizational discourse and discourse analysisin an effort to go beyond traditional understandings of post-crisis discourse.Traditional approaches focus almost exclusively on strategic portrayals ofresponsibility, blame, scapegoating, denial of responsibility, justification and relatedstrategies (Allen and Caillouet, 1994; Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 1995). In some post-crisiscontexts, however, a form of cooperation and healing emerges that is not concernedwith strategic portrayal of causation and blame or with restoring a damaged image orreputation. Some organizations are able to almost immediately embark on rebuildingor renewal following a crisis. These organizations are able to constitute a frame for theevent that is empowering and motivational to those affected by the crisis and whichengenders cooperation and support from others. It is also important to note thatchange discourse can have an impact on an expansive context of stakeholders

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(O’Connor, 2000). Although the discourse of renewal in this analysis is directed towardexternal stakeholder such discourse can also have a powerful impact on internalstakeholders 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 acrosslarge expanses of time (linking the past, present and future) and space (linking theorganization, its parent company, its workers and its competitors)”. In this case, weview the context of the discourse of renewal as impacting and overlapping to otheraudiences even though the primary direction of the discourse is to larger audiencesexternal to Cantor Fitzgerald. Moreover, renewal discourse links the past, before thecrisis, the present, the crisis itself and the future a new rejuvenated organization.

Seeger and Ulmer (2001), for example, explored Aaron Feuerstein, owner of MaldenMills, a textile firm in Lawrence, Massachusetts and Milt Cole, owner of a lumbercompany in Logansport, Indiana. In both cases, these CEOs responded to thedestruction of their factories, not by apologizing, investigating, shifting blame, ordenying responsibility, but by immediately and publicly committing to continuepaying workers and rebuild their facilities. They did so even when there was littleeconomic justification for this action. The responses offered by Feuerstein and Colewere widely reported in the press as powerful examples of management virtue andcommitment to the community (Seeger and Ulmer, 2001). This public pledge to rebuildand to maintain support for employees eliminated protracted arguments overcausation and blame and moved instead to a future plans and prospects. The potentialharm caused by the events was contained and reduced because employees were notasked to endure financial hardship while waiting for the organizations to reopen. Inaddition, the events themselves as well as the CEO’s self-less responses took on thestatus of significant events, promoting important lessons about community,commitment and cooperation. In fact, Feuerstein was invited to State of the Unionaddress 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 andUlmer, 2001). First, this discourse is prospective, seeking to describe activities relatedto future goals and development as opposed to retrospective seeking to explain orinterpret what happened in the past. Discourse of renewal focuses, therefore, onorganizational discourse as expression and the means by which a new organizationalreality is created. Whether by a CEO or other organizational members, organizationaldiscourse immediately following a devastating crisis reiterates the cyclical relationshipbetween espoused values and the expression of shared values (Grant et al., 1998).Typically, post-crisis discourse has a retrospective focus, primarily because theorganization is looking back to explain and justify past acts. In contrast, renewaldiscourse focuses on the future; how the crisis induced-limitations can be overcome andwhat new opportunities can be explored. Second, discourse of renewal focuses on theability of the organization to reconstitute itself from a blank slate, without previousconstraints or artificial limitations. Seeger and Ulmer identified this form of discoursethrough the investigation of industrial fires. Fires typically create almost completedestruction and there is often little left to build upon. While this may be particularlydevastating from one perspective, from another it creates an entirely free contextwithin which to reconstruct the organization. New equipment, facilities, proceduresand methods may all be constructed. The resulting organizations may be more

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profitable than before the crisis. A third characteristic of this discourse is itsprovisional rather than strategic nature. Most often, post-crisis discourse involves acarefully constructed strategy to avoid increasing legal liability or enhancing theexpectations of various stakeholders. Public relations professionals are consulted tocreate ambiguous statements that limit additional liability. Post-crisis discourse ofrenewal is more natural and honest, typically a monologic approach and oftengrounded in what the CEO wishes or hopes might happen. This form of discourse mayeven 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, thelatter is more authentic, genuine and immediate.

Ulmer and Sellnow (2002) examined the role of discourse of renewal following the 11September 2001 terrorist attacks. They found that communication focused onstakeholder commitment, commitment to correction of security lapses and core values.Stakeholders such as the New York Police Department and the New York FireDepartment received “Surprisingly few complaints of incompetence orirresponsibility” following 9/11 (Ulmer and Sellnow, 2002, p. 363). In addition, interms 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 theAmerican people”. In terms of core values, governmental, public and privateorganizations openly communicated “greater goals of independence and freedom” intheir “post-crisis advertisements” (Ulmer and Sellnow, 2002, p. 364).

Finally, the discourse of renewal reaffirms the CEO or leader’s role as the interpreteror framer of meaning following a crisis (Fairhurst and Starr, 1996). The CEO occupies aprominent place and following a crisis is often called on to explain and interpret whathappened. She or he has the opportunity to offer an initial interpretation when theuncertainty surrounding the crisis is often still quite high. After a loss of sensemakinginduced by a crisis, the CEO begins to construct a singular and coherent organizationaldiscourse 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 constituteextraordinary efforts by followers to rebuild and recreate the organization.

MethodThis study employs a case study method to develop, in rich detail, descriptions of howthe events, decision-making processes and external communication of CantorFitzgerald were portrayed in the media coverage following the 11 September 2001crisis (Yin, 1984). Case studies are widely employed in the examination of crises (seeTurner, 1976; Perrow, 1984; Benoit, 1995; Sellnow et al., 2001). In this study, we focusspecifically on the role of Cantor Fitzgerald’s actions and messages to create apost-crisis discourse of renewal. In this manner, the Cantor Fitzgerald case serves as anexemplar of how post-crisis communication can function to create a mediated messageof organizational renewal. Thus, the data for this study include transcripts of televisioninterviews conducted with Howard Lutnick and national and international coverage bymajor print media sources for the 18 months following the 9/11 tragedy. We alsoemploy various accounts of the case published in the general and business press. Keyevents in the case and coherent themes of communication are described from theperspectives of organizational crisis and renewal. Specifically, we examine the scale ofharm associated with this event, the initial framing of the crisis by Lutnick, the

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reservoir of good will generated for the company and the ways in which questions ofcause and blame functioned. Observations regarding Lutnick’s messages and theassociated change at Cantor Fitzgerald’s are discussed and highlighted.

Cantor FitzgeraldCantor Fitzgerald (CF) is an international brokerage firm that operated out of the101-105th floors of Tower One of the World Trade Center. CF “is responsible fortransacting $200 billion of securities a day, or $50 trillion a year, more than theAmerican 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 largestand 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 elbowedfirm, regulators have more than once accused Cantor of cutting too close to the edge ofmarket rules” (Henriques and Lee, 2001b, p. C01).

Bernie Cantor, the founder of CF, was a colorful and well-liked leader of theorganization before his passing in 1996 (Henriques and Lee, 2001b, p. C01). He was anavid collector of Rodin sculptures and had more than 80 pieces on display includingThe Thinker and The Three Shades (Barbash, 2003). However, after he died, strugglefor control of the company became a critical incident for CF as some saw HowardLutnick’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” duringthe court proceedings (Henriques and Lee, 2001b, p. C01) However, Lutnick eventuallytook control of the company. Lutnick’s personal qualities before the crisis weredescribed as having a “single mindedness, determination to make money and a certainruthlessness about how to do it” (Hill et al., 2001, 10). In nine years, he moved from thebottom up at CF and, by age 29, had held positions as a bond broker all of the way toChief Executive.

When the plane hit the World Trade Center just below the 101st floors of the WorldTrade Center, most of the CF employees were trapped above the initial impact. As aresult 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 thanany other single company impacted by 9/11. Lutnick survived only because he wastaking 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 CFand a personification of the losses Wall Street had suffered. What follows is adiscussion of Lutnick’s novel response to his firm’s tragedy. We argue that his highprofile monologic response was instrumental in changing the company and in savingit. We suggest that Lutnick’s post-crisis communication was a kind of renewingdiscourse that allowed a new CF, as attested by novel decisions and actions, to emergefrom the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

Howard Lutnick’s response to the 2001 terrorist attacksScale of harmScale of harm concerns the impact or the relative seriousness of the crisis.Organizational crises often have devastating effects on the organization and sometimeimpede the fundamental ability of the organization to operate. Ironically, those crises

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that produce more harm are likely to create more opportunity for change. The scale ofharm for CF was particularly intense. The company’s headquarters were housed in theWorld 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-upfacility in New Jersey following the earlier 1993 terrorist attack on the World TradeCenter (Henriques and Lee, 2001a). By any objective measure, however, the entireorganization was decimated. With only 300 remaining employees to handle both theeffects of the crisis and the day-to-day work many, including Howard Lutnick, did notbelieve it would be possible for the company to continue (Barbash, 2003).

The damage also extended to survivors. Barbash (2003, p. 8) explains the emotionalimpact for Howard Lutnick and CF: “Of the wives, thirty-eight were pregnant, fourteenof them for the first time. Forty-six of the lost were engaged to be married; there were atleast two weddings planned for the following weekend. Worst of all, these were youngpeople with young families, some with three and four children. Nine hundred andfifty-five sons and daughters lost a father or mother”. The funerals and grievingprocess 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 andthe surviving members of the firm.

One of the first television interviews that Lutnick gave was with ABC’s ConnieChung. At this time, he publicly communicated the cumulative emotion and impact ofthe crisis he was experiencing.

Crying uncontrollably, Lutnick told Chung he hasn’t gone to hospitals to search for hisbrother. 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 tocall them. I get to give somebody else some hope, some dreams. Maybe, maybe they get tokiss their kids. It’s, it’s – I’d love to find my brother, but I’d love to find, I’d love to find theirbrother, or their wife, or their husband, or anything, anything.

This sincere emotional outpouring from a CEO known for his tough approach capturedthe attention of the nation.

The roughly 300 surviving employees were not in the WTC buildings for a varietyof reasons including picking up dry-cleaning, vacation, stopping for coffee, droppingoff children, or simply caught in traffic (Barbash, 2003). All those CF employees whohad made it to work on time died in the attack. Such overwhelming devastationrequired that Lutnick, as CEO, speak out about the events and about how he planned torespond. While most observers suggested that given the scope of harm, CF was for allintents and purposes dead, Lutnick offered an entirely new and compelling reason forthe company to rebuild.

Initial framing of an equivocal eventWidely acknowledged in the crisis literature is that initial public responses are criticalto sensemaking, framing and uncertainty reduction concerning the event and thefuture. 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, orderlysystem”. For this reason, organizational leaders must provide a resonating message,narrative or frame that is meaningful to stakeholders and engenders their support.

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Such support communicated through monologic organizational discourse is critical toorganizational renewal.

Following the devastation of 9/11, surviving employees and customers of CF neededinformation about the state of the organization. Employees needed to know how toproceed in terms of their jobs and customers needed to know how, or if, their orders of11 September 2001 would be processed. Poorly functioning computer systems andtherefore electronic communication systems, coupled with partially destroyed humanresource, organizational and transaction files exacerbated internal communication.Lutnick took several public stances and commitments that served to frame the eventfor surviving employees and their families, for the general public, the media, customersand even competitors (Barbash, 2003). What is salient about Lutnick’s initialstatements is that they are intense, emotional and provisional. They served asmeaningful and powerful public commitments that immediately framed the event forCF’s stakeholders.

On 13 September, when Lutnick spoke with ABC’s Connie Chung, he talked oftrying to go up to the offices on floors 101-105 to see if he could get just one employeeout but he could not make it “due to the collapse of Tower 2 . . . Smoke all butoverwhelmed him” (Russakoff and Eunjung Cha, 2001, p. A24). Chung then askedLutnick about his missing brother and he provided a powerful and emotional responsethat was replayed in the media over the next several months. He then offered afundamentally new justification for CF as a profitable enterprise that grew directly outof the devastation; “There is only one reason to be in business – it is because we haveto make our company be able to take care of our 700 families”, he said sobbing. “700families. Help them. 700 families. I just can’t say it. I can’t say it without crying. That’smy American Dream now” (Russakoff and Eunjung Cha, 2001, p. A24).

Howard Lutnick’s emotional response to the crisis immediately gave stakeholders aclear and compelling vision for CF’s future. His comments garnered immediate andwidespread media attention. The emotional story of a CEO of a major bond-tradingfirm that had lost the majority of its workforce played well on television, particularlyagainst the backdrop of the WTC attacks. In addition, Lutnick’s statements gave ahuman face to the tragedy. The impact of the event was personified in Lutnick; aquintessential Wall Street CEO. Employees also had a vision of CF’s future. From thesestatements, employees knew that they would be working to fill orders and by so doingprovide for the families affected by the crisis. Initial public statements in the face ofhigh uncertainty and confusion can be particularly compelling in generating supportand commitment.

Beyond CF’s employees and grieving family members, Lutnick also spoke to hiscustomers and competitors. Following the crisis, he assured customers that CF wouldstill 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 MarketAssociation decide the market will open Thursday, [Lutnick did not] say they arecallous or that his best friend and his only brother are dead. He listen[ed] in amazementto their plans and thinks of all he needs to keep the firm from going under”. On themorning of Tuesday, 11 September 2001, CF had conducted “nearly twenty fivehundred trades worth billions of dollars” (Barbash, 2003, p. 33). CF would have to beable to cover these transactions if the company was to continue. In some cases CF hadexecuted trades, while clients had not carried through on the deals. CF, in these

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

The reservoir of goodwillAlthough Lutnick’s dramatic and emotional response certainly resonated with CF’saudiences following 9/11, his reputation prior to 11 September was not untarnished. Hewas known for walking close to the regulatory edge with some of his businesspractices and was widely recognized for his single-minded competitive toughness.However, following the events of 9/11 and his emotional commitment to the families ofvictims, Lutnick was widely touted as a hero and a responsible businessperson.Research on crisis management suggests that stakeholders are highly attracted tovirtuous emotional responses and are likely to become advocates for the crisis strickenorganization, providing both support and good will from which the organization candraw (Seeger and Ulmer, 2002; Ulmer, 2001; Ulmer and Sellnow, 1995).

When Lutnick spoke about the crisis, he provided public commitments about CF’sfuture and the role of customers in supporting that future. He noted, “if every moneymanager of a pension fund just gave us a little bit of business, then maybe we’llsurvive” (Dunne, 2001, p. 39). On Monday 17 September, CF saw tremendous supportfrom customers seeking to boost CF and its business. Lutnick explained that:

Monday was an amazing thing to witness. All of the accounts – money managers, mutualfunds, 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 errorhere. 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 fororganizations to receive personal donations following crises. Malden Mills for instance,received personal donations for years after Aaron Feuerstein paid worker salaries formonths while the plant was being rebuilt (Ulmer, 2001). Personal contributionsillustrate the power of initial compassionate responses to organizational crises. Theseresponses often reach beyond their intended publics and impact citizens, competitorsand government. Later on, CF would receive loans from the federal government torebuild. Compelling stories about the vision of the organization are integral toestablishing and receiving good will from stakeholders.

It is important to note that even though CF received much support following thecrisis, the bond industry is both complex and cutthroat. Lutnick characterized thedifficult and complex new atmosphere following 9/11. He explained that his firstdiscussions with competitors were anything but personal.

These are guys I do business with regularly. Spoken to on countless occasions. Had dinnerwith. 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 theysaid, “I’m sorry”, then the next thing out of their mouths would have had to be – “Is thereanything I can do for you?” What they did was eliminate the personal . . . Essentially theysaid, “Howard, I understand that bad things have happened to you, but this is a businessconversation. And in this business conversation you’re screwed” (Barbash, 2003, p. 45).

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Clearly, CF was in a very precarious position with regard to its competitors eventhough Lutnick experienced many advantages from his initial response and the goodwill that followed. However, it is also evident that competitors had to deal with thecomplexity of the situation in their own way. By focusing on business, they were ableto 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-standingbattles and disagreements. As a result, one could expect that in a highly competitivebusiness that some competitors would maintain the status quo and some may even tryto capitalize off of the disaster.

Questions of cause and blame and the nature of the eventOwing to the nature of crises, organizations often must account for cause and attributeblame for the event. Issues of cause, blame and responsibility are typically played outin image restoration that often dominates all aspect of post-crisis discourse (Allen andCaillouet, 1994; Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 1995). However, there are times when cause andblame do not surface as primary rhetorical imperatives following crisis. These casescreate room for a discourse of renewal to emerge. The events of 9/11 as terrorist attacksinitiated by outside forces did not create questions regarding CF’s blame orresponsibility. The overriding theme in these cases concerned rebuilding and renewaland moving beyond the crisis. These statements give stakeholders hope and illustratethat the organization has a strategy for moving beyond the crisis. This discourse wasnot uncommon following 9/11 particularly within the Wall Street community.

On 13 September, for example, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter ran a full page WallStreet Journal, ad, signed by its chairman, Philip Purcell. The ad stated that many of itsemployees had made it home but some had not (Barbash, 2003, p. 43): “Thanks to ournetwork 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 beginas soon as the markets reopen”. CF also began running advertisements some of whichmet with mixed reviews. Carmen (2002, p. B01) explains that “A Slate columnist hasraised the question of whether Cantor’s new ad campaign, in which survivingemployees somberly address the public, flaunts ‘the pain and loss of the firm as a formof emotional blackmail and suggesting that doing business with Cantor Fitzgerald is away 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 CFneeded to tell their customers that they were going to move forward. Theseadvertisements were necessary to let customers know that their investments were safeand 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 rhetoricalimperative becomes moving beyond the crisis and resuming normal operations. Mostoften, it is the CEO that must convince stakeholders that the organization is ready forbusiness. While such statements may seem crass and insensitive given the scale of theloss, they are necessary for the continuance of the organization.

Crisis leaders and crisis stakeholdersMuch of the crisis literature focuses on the role of leaders and their communicationwith stakeholders. This research discusses the form and content responses required to

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calm employees and those directly impacted by the crisis. Form refers “to how a crisisresponse should be presented” (Coombs, 1999, p. 126). Content involves “the actualmessages contained in the crisis response” (Coombs, 1999, p. 127). Key issues related toform involve visiting the scene of the crisis and providing clear and accurate messagesto stakeholders. Content recommendations typically involve meeting the informationalneeds of stakeholders following the crisis such as explaining how problems theorganization is experiencing will be resolved.

Lutnick’s original positive and supportive framing of the event had a powerfulimpact on stakeholders, particularly family members who relied on CF employees forsupport. In one of his many public remarks he explained, “We have a new class ofpartner here – these families, he said with his voice choking ‘I have to take care ofthese families’” (Laurence, 2001, p. 8). This emotional response provided the keyingredients according to form recommendations. Lutnick was out in front of hisstakeholders showing concern about their well being. In addition, Lutnick at first metregularly with grief stricken families. Initially, he did an excellent job of keepingfamilies 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 avoidputting 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 attendingto CF’s business needs. This was a severe miscalculation as cable television host BillO’Reilly began to question grieving widows about the nature of their CF settlements.By 12 November 2001, USA Today publicly noted that Lutnick had “poorlycommunicated 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 15September, while rescuers still searched the rubble” (Knox, 2001, p. 1B). Implied withinthese criticisms was whether Lutnick was backtracking on his promises.

Lutnick, however, moved to provide $1 million of his own money to start afoundation for victims (Dunne and Sapsted, 2001). In addition, though the companystopped paying salaries after 15 September, Lutnick committed to payingcompany-provided life insurance even without death certificates. In lieu ofcontinuing salaries, Lutnick committed to pay out 25 per cent of CF’s profits for thenext five years (Barbash, 2003, p. 67). In all CF provided “life insurance for all of itsemployees, with a maximum benefit of $100,000”. Moreover, CF noted, “families willreceive workers compensation payments, social security benefits, will retain 401Kplans 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 kepthis word to the victim’s families. He announced that that CF will “make $100 millionand give $25 million to these families. We gave bonuses of $45 million beforeThanksgiving to each and every one of those families. You know, this is our life. Thisis our commitment. It is our mission because these were our friends, our real, realfriends” (Insana and Herera, 2002). Lutnick had operated in a manner consistent withhis earlier public commitments to provided compensation. He did so by resurrecting acompany essentially destroyed by the attacks.

DiscussionThe events of 9/11 initiated profound social and organizational changes to a widevariety of organizations and institutions. Clearly, for airlines, travel companies,

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government agencies and financial services organizations, this was a significant eventthat included both powerful lessons and immediate imperatives to change. Noorganization was more directly affected than CF. Despite being essentially destroyed,the company emerged from the wreck of the World Trade Center and reconstituted andrenewed itself around a new raison d’etre; that of helping the families of victims. Thiswas a radical departure for a firm previously known for its cutthroat approach tocompetition and a relentless drive for profits.

Howard Lutnick’s public and compelling response to the devastation of his firm isconsistent with the four features of discourse of renewal described earlier. He framed avision of the firm’s future, offered specific commitments and generated support from awide variety of stakeholders. The discourse of renewal emphasizes the role of theleader in framing the meaning of a crisis event. The opportunity to frame the meaningof 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. Hisdiscourse was both prospective and reconstitutive. CF was recreated out the 9/11rubble as Lutnick offered a prospective vision of what this reconstructed companywould do. The fact that the cause for this disaster was external to CF, and that blamewas 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 talkabout the future. The prospective orientation helped create identifiable goals thatindividual CF employees as well as other stakeholders could work toward. Lutnick’sarticulation of a new raison d’etre for the firm gave employees, customers andmembers of the community a focus for their efforts and an outlet for the natural need todo something constructive. Finally, the discourse surrounding CF was provisional inthat Lutnick’s emotional outpouring of loss and a need to take some action was neitherstrategic nor pre-planned. The obvious emotional pain, personal loss and sincerity ofhis response bolstered Lutnick’s credibility, even while some critics suggested that hewas exploiting the disaster.

Four factors in the case of CF and Lutnick’s discourse of renewal warrant specialattention. First, the public commitment made by Lutnick on network television the dayafter the event was significant in generating support and, later, in constraining theorganization. Weick (1988) described public commitments as powerful enactments,difficult to deny or undo. The very public and unusual commitment to use companyprofits to offset the harm cased by an attack on the company created widespreadsupport and goodwill. It also provided a new meaning for the firm’s profit-makingendeavors. 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 earlierformulations, discourse of renewal argued that a pre-event reservoir of good willamong key stakeholders is necessary for organizations to promote renewal following acrisis. CF did not enjoy such a resource and in fact was known as a firm thatemphasized profitability above all else. The nature of the event and the scope of harm,however, overwhelmed this negative reputation and created an outpouring of publicsympathy and support. Essentially, the crisis wiped away CF’s previous reputationand 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

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commitment to community and employees and a sense of corporate socialresponsibility. In the case of CF and the 9/11 attacks, the values that emerged andsupported a discourse of renewal concerned helping the victims and reducing the harmto families. The values Lutnick proposed for a renewed CF moved beyond mereprofit-making.

Fourth, the organizational discourse examined here involves messages primarilycommunicated through public or external communication channels. While Lutnick didmeet with surviving employees individually and in small groups, few public records ofthese meetings exists. Moreover, as with many crises, internal channels ofcommunication were disrupted or destroyed. Lutnick, as with many CEOs facingcrisis, was forced to turn to public channels of communication. In addition, it was keyin this case for Lutnik to not only convince his employees that the company couldsurvive, but to garner wide spread support from external groups, especially customersand regulators.

Finally, it is important to point out that Lutnick’s discourse of renewal might beperceived by some as exploiting the crisis and the victims of the 9/11 disaster. Inparticular, advertisements announcing that CF was back in business were judged bysome as in poor taste. Lutnick’s tearful request that money managers send CF businessso 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’spersonal loss and obvious sincerity, however, helped diffuse these criticisms. Hisbehavior was ultimately judged as an example of responsible social conduct in the faceof a devastating loss.

ConclusionCrises are likely to become increasingly common events in the life of organizations.Managers, therefore, will be required to respond to the radical changes, disruptions anduncertainty imposed by crisis. Conventional wisdom suggests that crises are primarilynegative events creating severe hardship and organizational decline. The ability oforganizations like CF to survive, rebuild and even renew themselves will depend on theability to learn from these events, create a new sense of normal and constitutecompelling and meaningful discourses that promote cooperation, support and renewal.This discourse of renewal creates an opportunity after a crisis to fundamentallyre-order the organization down to its core purpose. Crises, in these cases, create notonly severe devastation, but a unique opportunity for systemic change andfundamental re-invention. In normal times, such fundamental change would requirelong-term strategic efforts as well as major investments of time and resources withoutguaranteed success. Crises, however, disrupt the status quo in basic ways allowing fornew assumptions, methods and organizational values to emerge. Many outdatedassumptions, impediments, inertia and political resistance to change are removedduring 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 cultureand mission has been fundamentally altered by the events of 9/11 and the resultingeffort to provide support to the families. For CF, 9/11 was not only a time of destructionand loss, but also a time of change and renewal.

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Afterword: why language mattersin the analysis of organizational

changeHaridimos Tsoukas

ALBA, Vouliagmeni, Greece andUniversity of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Abstract

Purpose – This invited article aims to show how the papers in the special issue highlight the advantagesof using discourse analysis in order to contribute to our understanding of organizational change.

Design/methodology/approach – The article begins by exploring the traditional perspectivesused 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 discourseanalysis.

Findings – Compared to either the behaviorist or cognitivist perspectives, a discourse analytic approachis 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 inorganizational change.

Keywords Language, Narratives, Organizational change

Paper type Viewpoint

There are at least three ways to make sense of organizational change and itsmanagement: the behaviorist, the cognitivist, and the discursive. The behaviorist viewis the oldest and, to a large extent, it still underlies lay accounts and managerialistexplorations into the topic (Kotter, 1996; Nadler, 1998). The cognitivist gainedascendancy in the 1980s and early 1990s (Huff, 1990; Huff and Huff, 2000), while thediscursive is the latest development following the recent fascination with the linguisticturn 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 brieflyeach one of these perspectives.

The basic tenets of the behaviorist perspective are the following. First, change ismodeled on motion and is, thus, episodic – it occurs in successive states. Objects exist in anatural state of stasis from which they move after external force is applied to them, and towhich they return (Lewin, 1999/1948). In organizations, typically, the object undergoingchange 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 theyresist, and ways must be found to overcome their resistance, through, typically,applying stronger force. Secondly, the change agent stands outside the object undergoingchange – 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

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagementVol. 18 No. 1, 2005pp. 96-104q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814DOI 10.1108/09534810510579878

through scientific means, it can be deliberately altered. The clearer a representation of thestructure of the object, the closer to reality one is and, thus, the higher the chances thatchange will be effective. And fourthly, following on from the previous point, theknowledge describing an object’s structure and how it is likely to change can beobjectively described and concentrated in a single mind.

The behaviorist view espouses a naturalistic onto-epistemology: it seesorganizations being populated by individuals, structures, systems and processes,which can be objectively described and deliberately altered. There is a Cartesiandualism running through the behaviorist way of looking at the management oforganizational change: the organization is the body (res extensa) to which the(managerial) mind (res cogitans) applies its higher mental capacity. And just like themind is more precious than the body (cogito, ergo sum), so managerial intentions andplans are superior to the functioning of the organization. The mind knows; the bodybehaves. In this line of thinking, the study of organizational change is the study ofhuman behaviors at different points in time.

Cognitivists move beyond behaviorists in arguing that the study of behavior isinsufficient to account for change. While we may observe people behaving differentlyover time, the important question is why. This question cannot be answered unless wemake sense of how people make sense. What is missing therefore, is the study of themental processes underlying what people could be observed to do, the way theyrepresent the world. As Stubbart and Ramaprasad (1990, p. 253) remark, “contrary tothe behaviorist perspective which treats managers as black boxes, the cognitivescience perspective delves into the working of the black-boxes. Managers do notmainly act according to habit, instincts, or environmental determination; their behavioris active and intentional”.

Although cognitivists aim at taking “meaning” seriously, rather than overtlyobservable 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 knowledgestructures in the form of “schemas” or “scripts”. To understand intentional action oneought 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 representmanagers’ causal knowledge of a particular phenomenon, with the view of enablingmanagers to first surface their goals, beliefs and assumptions, secondly reflect on themand collectively agree on an aggregated map, and thirdly agree on a course of action forintervention (Eden and Ackermann, 1998).

Being strong Cartesians, cognitivists presuppose that the human mind is an internalrealm of purely mental operations and computations, which mediate between stimuliand responses. The rules of the mind operate behind individuals’ backs, so to speak. Ifyou get people to think differently – change their minds – different behaviors willfollow (Gardner, 2004). Whereas behaviorists seek to change human behavior throughreinforcements – rewards and punishments – cognitivists want to intervene into howpeople think. Again, change is seen as primarily episodic, and knowledge regardinghow change may be effected is a function of the accuracy of representations ofindividuals’ inter-connected cognitive maps. The better the cognitive maps obtained,the more one knows where to intervene. Such knowledge is objective and can beconcentrated into a single mind, which, in organizations, is the managerial mind.

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A discursive perspective places meaning centrally on the research agenda onchange. We cannot understand human behavior unless we grasp the meaningsinforming it. But meaning now is understood to be not just in the mind, in the waypeople think. It is rather manifested in the way people act. The basis of thinking isconcepts, and concepts are expressed in words which derive their meaning from theway they are used in specific language games, which are located in distinct forms oflife. 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 thusthought to be not an isolated cognizer but a participant in a form of life – engaged withothers in meaningful activities (Flores, 2000). Individuals first and foremost learn toparticipate in forms of life from which, subsequently, one can extract some rules thatexpress the norms of that practice. Since the concepts (and symbols more generally) anindividual uses derive their meaning from the language game within which they areused, researchers must pay attention not just to the mental content of individuals but tothe broader system within which concepts are located and practiced. This broadersystem is a language game-embedded-within-a-form-of-life; in short it is a discursivepractice.

A discursive practice is the norms-bound use of a sign system directed at or toachieving something (Harre and Gillett, 1994, pp. 28-9). The sign system par excellencein human affairs is, of course, language, ordinary language. Rather than looking forabstract representations in the mind, from a discursive point of view one looks forpatterns 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 usediscourse. The emphasis placed by discursivists on ordinary language is importantsince, 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 pronounceyou husband and wife” or “you are fired”). Even when saying and doing are relativelydistinct, 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 whichit occurs – ‘Smile when you say that!’ – just as the meaning of action is interpretableonly by reference to what the actors say they are up to – ‘So sorry’ for an inadvertentbumping”.

From a discursive point of view, what people say is neither dismissed asinconsequential nor is it regarded as predictive of overt behavior: “What [a discursiveperspective on the mind] takes as central, rather, is that the relationship between actionand saying (or experiencing) is, in the ordinary conduct of life, interpretable. It takes theposition that there is a publicly interpretable congruence between saying, doing, andthe circumstances in which the saying and doing occur. That is to say, there areagreed-upon canonical relationships between the meaning of what we say and what wedo in given circumstances, and such relationships govern how we conduct our liveswith one another” (Bruner, 1990, p. 19).

From a discursive point of view organizational change is the process of constructingand sharing new meanings and interpretations of organizational activities (Morganand Sturdy, 2000). It is because the latter are language-dependent institutional realitiesthat they can be redefined and altered (Searle, 1995, 1998). A state-owned organizationthat is privatized represents a new institutional reality – a new language is used tore-constitute the organization. A TQM program aiming to enhance quality represents

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an attempt to redefine the practice of operations. There is hardly an organizationalchange which does not involve the re-definition, the re-labeling, or the re-interpretationof an institutional activity. Such acts of re-definition and re-interpretation are, partly atleast, 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 themedium 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 declarationscreate a state of affairs just by representing it as created”. Besides declarations, thereare 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 otherpeople.

While there are several cases in which senior managers’ declarative powers docreate a set of new institutional facts, as for example in cases of privatization,replacements of top managers, or new organizational structures, there are several othercases in which declarations need to be combined with other kinds of speech acts for anew institutional reality to be brought about (Ford and Ford, 1995). A new institutionalreality is brought about when a sufficient number of people accept its definition andthe action consequences that stem from it. To put it differently, performative speechacts need to be accepted by a sufficient number of people for them to becomeinstitutional. When there is collective intentionality involved, when, in other words,there is “the collective intentional imposition of function on entities that cannotperform those functions without that imposition” (Searle, 1995, p. 41), as there isorganizations, then we have the creation of a new institutional reality. For themanufacturing process, for example, to be reorganized along TQM principles, thecomponents of, and the activities of those involved in it need to be assigned newfunctions, which are symbolic constructions – they do not possess them intrinsicallybut are assigned them by the collectivity.

Changes in the use of language bring about change in practices, and vice versa. Thequestion 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 ishow this unit works. Tietze, for example, describes in her paper in this special issuehow working from home (a new practice) compels individuals to re-define theboundaries between “work” and “home”. Symbolic boundaries are reinforced orre-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 theyalready partake, Tietze demonstrates how a new discursive template is built bydrawing on earlier discursive templates, notably, in this case, that of paid work. A newdiscursive 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 11September 2001 and the subsequent near destruction of the Wall Street bond-tradingfirm, Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm’s new discursive template “helping the families ofvictims”, a discourse normally used by charities and voluntary organizations but notusually associated with Wall Street, legitimated Cantor Fitzgerald to the wider publicand was fundamental in mobilizing internal and external support for its renewal

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(see the Seeger et al. paper in this issue). More broadly, given that individuals andorganizations are at the intersection of different discourses, how they make themrelevant 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 discursivetemplates of “paid work” and “helping the families of the victims”, respectively, werewell understood and accepted as legitimate by all concerned, in other cases this maynot be the case and change agents need to struggle to legitimate their discursivetemplates first. The case of privatization is a good case in point. In itself, in somecountries, “privatization” is a weak discourse and only when used in conjunction withthe “market liberalization” and the “limiting of state subsidies” typically mandated byinternational agencies and supranational entities into which a country has voluntarilybeen or aspires to be a member of, does “privatization” acquire the status of aquasi-legitimate discourse (Tsoukas and Papoulias, 2005). Again, how a discourse islegitimated, namely through what discursive strategies a new discourse is made toresonate with individuals, or, to use Searle’s language, in what ways does collectiveintentionality is established and new symbolic functions are assigned, is a veryinteresting empirical question to explore.

It is noteworthy that, as Hardy et al. (2000) remark, a new discursive templatecreates new “subject positions” for both the change agent and the rest of the actorsinvolved. 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 simultaneouslynew subject positions for other agents. In other words, the use of a particular discoursebestows agency to several parties, not just the change agent. Tietze shows as much inher paper when she notes that the “paid work” discourse used by teleworkers castsfamily members to the role of quasi-fellow employees, which they actively take up andselectively mold to suit their purposes. Thus the phrase “come back at seven” used byhis 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 ateenage boy would call his parents “colleagues” (a phrase used by his teleworkingfather to address family members while teleworking at home) in discussions about hisrights and responsibilities in the household. As Tietze remarks, the above individuals,as active discourse users, utilize those aspects of their new subject positions whichenable them to pursue their own purposes and plans.

A similar point is made by Barrett et al. (1995) in their study of the introduction oftotal quality (TQ) in the US Navy. Seen in discursive terms, a change program such asthe TQ created new subject positions for the individuals involved, thus creatingconditions for its further, partly unpredictable, development. Barrett et al. (1995, p. 367)describe this process as follows: “When an enlisted person at the telecommunicationscommand hears that he or she is encouraged to offer suggestions for processimprovements, he or she may interpret this as an opportunity to make suggestionsabout 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 suggestionsfor improvements, in which individuals are reconceived to be reflective practitionerswho are willing to learn and contribute to improving the workplace processes. Thesubject position of “reflective practitioners” bestows agency to individuals, who mayexercise it in ways that suit their own interests or views of the workplace. This createsmomentum to change programs and makes change a continuing process rather than

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an episodic event (Orlikowski and Hofman, 1997; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Tsoukasand 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 andthat 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 aproperty of organization; rather organization must be understood as a property ofchange – the attempt to simplify and stabilize what would have been an irreduciblydynamic and irreducible lived experience. A discursive perspective to organizationalchange is particularly sensitive to both the need to stabilize an ever-changingexperience and to capturing on-going change.

Anderson (in this special issue) beautifully describes how this happens. Drawing onBakhtin’s (1984) concept of “double voice”, he shows that organizational memberslinguistically represent the past history of a situation they wish to change, especiallythrough 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 pastutterances as representative of habitual ways of doing things (routines), organizationalmembers no doubt smooth over and abstract variations in routines and practices, andthus construct generalized understandings about aspects of organizational life.Through represented voices routines are treated as if they were generic and stableobjects, which can be discussed and opened up for possible change. Such change can beeffected through members “trying on” new kinds of utterances and considering how aproposed change in an organizational routine might sound in the future by articulatingthe proposed change in the voice of an organizational member (individual or categorymember).

By envisaging and enacting likely conversations in the future, the conditions arecreated for a quasi-dialogue through which incremental changes may be noticed. Thishappens because in a conversation one contextualizes what one hears by weavingutterances 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 ofanother’s voiced utterance, one is taking an active stance and is sensitive to itsuniqueness within the given conversational context. When individuals contextualizewhat they hear, as they must in order to generate meaning out of it, they inevitablymodify it (Tsoukas, 2005) or, to put in Bakhtinian terms, past meanings arereinterpreted 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, shapeand intone them in responsive accord with our circumstances that give our utterancestheir unique, once-occurrent meanings”.

Thus by conceptualizing routines as genres of speech, organizational members areable to envisage different kinds of future conversations, thus generating different kindsof change. Through representing routines as genres of speech organizational membersframe (“freeze”) commonly available experience and stabilize meaning, thus producingstability, while by narrativizing representations (speech genres) organizationalmembers create the conditions for the destabilization of meaning and thus change(Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001). In either case, stability and change are discursivelyachieved and are both important.

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Focusing on the grammar of action (the rules and conventions through whichphenomena appear as meaningful), as the discursive perspective does, it makes itconceptually possible to examine the narrative conventions in terms of which storiesabout change processes may be told (Harre, 2004, p. 1445). It is not only that changeprocesses may be usefully seen in discursive terms – how individuals through the uselanguage generate change – but that the very account of change is in itself of anarrative 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 thedifferent narratives produced framed the identity of the senior managers involved,while Collins and Rainwater demonstrate how a heroic narrative of the changes atSears Roebuck, recounted in an article in the Harvard Business Review, can be retold astragedy and comedy.

Why might one want to undertake a narrative analysis of change? Because, asBeech and Johnson point out, different narratives generate or imply different identitiesfor those involved (Boje, 2003; Gabriel, 2000). How Alex, for example, the new CEO atPN Services studied by the authors, tells the story of strategic change in the companyand the role he reserves for himself in that story, will shape his own identity and willinfluence the way he acts towards others as well as the reactions he will elicit. Thatstory is malleable and fluid, depending on events and evolving interpretations.Similarly, as Collins and Rainwater observe, re-telling a change process account makesthe readers or the hearers re-view the change process since it directs their attention tothose 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 discursiveperspective makes organizational members sensitive to the positioning of thenarrator 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 saidis said by an observer”, a narrative analysis of change processes opens space for adiscussion of motives and purposes, power and domination, aspirations and follies,vanity and self-doubt, ambiguity and polyphony. As all papers in the special issueusefully demonstrate, taking language seriously in the analysis of organizationalchange has multiple benefits vis-a-vis the behaviorist and cognitive perspectives,since it enables organizational members and researchers alike to focussimultaneously on the construction of both stability and change; it is sensitiveto the ongoing character of change; and highlights how agency is constructedthrough the accounts produced.

While for behaviorists and cognitivists the world is projected more or lessobjectively on out mental screens, for discursivists the world appears, or is constructedthrough, the way people talk and use sign systems more generally. An organization isnot “frozen” waiting for the change agent to “unfreeze” it, nor is it crystallized in mentalrepresentations in the mind. Stability is important indeed but rather than stabilitybeing a property of the world, it is a symbolic construction generated by actorsthemselves through the way they talk of past practices, habits and routines. And ratherthan 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 isproduced through the ways people talk, communicate and converse in the context of

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practical activities, and collectively reassign symbolic functions to the tasks theyengage 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-scalechange: 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: perspectivefrom 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”, inWrathall, M. and Malpas, J. (Eds), Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays inHonour 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 inorganizations”, 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 ofOrganizational Discourse, Sage, London.

Hardy, C., Palmer, I. and Phillips, N. (2000), “Discourse as a strategic discourse”, HumanRelations, 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.

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Huff, A.S. (Ed.) (1990), Mapping Strategic Thought, Wiley, Chichester.

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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.

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Note from the publisher

Emerald Structured Abstracts have arrived!Well it is finally happened and all the first issues of the 2005 volume of Emeraldjournals will contain structured abstracts. Have a look at an article title page in thisissue of Journal of Organizational Change Management. That is how they will lookfrom now on. The look will be slightly different in the electronic version on the website, but this is only a cosmetic variation and takes account of the different media andthe way people use the information.

The idea took hold at the beginning of 2004 and a small team worked on the designand introduction of structured abstracts throughout the year. Thanks to all the hardwork of authors, editors, editorial and production staff at Emerald we can nowshowcase them for the first time. We believe they provide real benefits to our readersand researchers and that they answer some of the key questions people have about apaper 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 mywork/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?

Structured abstracts supply the answers to this type of question without the researcherhaving to go any further. Authors can be more confident that their paper will benoticed 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 (Editorialadvisory boards, etc.) have been alerted to this change. Authors who have been askedto rewrite their abstracts in the new format have readily obliged. The response from allparties 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 structuredabstracts (Jonathan Eldredge, MLS, PhD, AHIP, Associate Professor, School of MedicineAcademic & Clinical Services Coordinator and Author, Health Sciences Library andInformatics Center, Health Sciences Center, The University of New Mexico, USA).

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

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Journal of Organizational ChangeManagement

Vol. 18 No. 1, 2005pp. 105-106

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0953-4814

Everyone has problems in the digital environment when weighing up the value ofany 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 structuredabstracts. We know this means change for the author and researcher, but the fact thatother journals don’t do it should not stop us from making the advancement. It iswonderful 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 backthrough more than 40,000 papers already in the database and change the abstracts intostructured ones. Having said that, nearly 5,000 new papers will be deposited into ourdatabase 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: sdeverteuil@emeraldinsight.com with your views.

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