COMMUNICATION: DISCOURSE AS ACTION

Finding the Organization in the Communication: Discourse as Action

Finding the Organization in the Communication: Discourse as Action

What's the main point the author is trying to make?

Organisational discourse as a field of enquiry has been attracting increasing attention in recent years (Grant et al., 2001), but, in the small firm sector in particular, there are still very few empirical discursive analyses of organisation and managing. Discursive organisation studies have also struggled in mainstream organisation teaching, writing and consulting, against a perception that they are simply “an obsession with talk” and “an intellectual luxury” (Grant et al., 2001, p. 5). As Grant and Perren (2002, p. 193) conclude, a “functionalist paradigm pervades the elite discourse of research in leading journals and acts as a potential barrier to other perspectives”.

How do I feel about that?

The article discusses that the spirit of taking an alternative perspective, this paper, which is drawn from an ethnographic study that explored connections between managers' formal management development courses and their management practice, has two intentions. The first is to illustrate methodologically and conceptually how understanding of entrepreneurial management can be enhanced through a discourse perspective which focuses on discourse as both noun and verb (Sambrook and Stewart, 1998) encompassing discursive resources and discursive practices. From this, the second intention is to demonstrate that organisational discourse has more practical utility than traditional dismissals have suggested.

The conceptual framework for this study places the concept of discourse at the centre of understanding organisation, management and learning. This is explained and defined below, but as illustrated, discourse is deployed in three ways. First, a network perspective on organisations is taken, in which “talk” is seen as essential to the everyday processes of organising. Second, management is conceived as a discursive practice and third, learning is understood as an encounter with new discourse. The first part of this paper elaborates on these perspectives before explaining the research design and introducing the companies.

Do I think that the point is going to restrict me or offer new opportunities?

The concept of discourse has been variously defined, or often not defined at all. At the simplest level the term refers solely to spoken dialogue (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975), although commonly the term is also used to encompass written as well as spoken text (e.g. Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984; Potter and Wetherell, 1987). With the recognition that “texts” can be multi-semiotic, discourse has been widened by some to encompass music and art, (for example, Fairclough, 1995). Others define discourse more broadly, as discursive practices: not only language, but also ideas and philosophies (Van Dijk, 1997). If discourse is understood in this way, discursive practices “do not just describe things, they do things” (Potter and Wetherell, 1987, p. 6), in other words, talk is intended to shape practices; discourse is “a piece of language in action” (Watson, 2000, p. 4).

Why?

As Sambrook and Stewart's (1998) distinction between discourse as noun and as verb provides useful clarification, enabling discourse to be understood as a coherent, but not ...