Language and Communication at Work Discourse, Narrativity, and Organizing

This book examines language and communication as an inherent part of on-going organizational processes. It explores language and communication as constitutive of work; analyses how they actually 'work'; and examines their role as part of strategic and institutional work in and around organizational phenomena.

With the growing influence of discursive and narrative perspectives on organizing, organizational scholars are focusing increasing attention on the constitutive role that language and communication play in organizational processes. This view conceptualizes language and communication as bringing organization into being in every instant and is therefore inherently sympathetic to a process perspective. However, our understanding of the role of language in unfolding organizational processes and as a part of organizational action is still limited. This volume brings together empirical and/or conceptual contributions from leading scholars in organization and communication to develop understanding of language and communication as constitutive of work, and also analyze how language and communication actually work to achieve influence in the context of organizations. It aims to elucidate the role language, communication, and narrativity play as part of strategic and institutional work in and around organizational phenomena. In keeping with the preceding volumes in the Perspectives on Process Organization Studies series, this collection demonstrates why we need to start thinking processually and offers a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to studying these 'works in process' that we call organizations, companies, businesses, institutions, communities, associations, or NGOs.

1 - Language and Communication at Work: Discourse, Narrativity, and Organizing: Introducing the Fourth Volume of Perspectives on Process Organization Studies
2 - Impersonating the Organization: Reflections on the Communicative Constitution of Organization
3 - Analyzing Interaction in Meetings: Perspectives from Critical Discourse Studies and the Discourse-Historical Approach
4 - Power, Politics and Organizational Communication: An Ethnomethodological Perspective
5 - From Speech Acts to Act Speeches: Collective activity, a discursive process speaking the language of habits.
6 - Time, Space, and Calculation in Discursive Practices: Insights from the Crow s Flight Chronotope of the Darwin Expedition
7 - Spatial Design as Sociomaterial Practice: A (Dis)Organizing Perspective on Communicative Constitution
8 - Studying Talk-at-Work: An Analysis of the Discursive Processes of Management Coaching Conversations
9 - Quantum Storytelling: An Ontological Perspective on Process
10 - Narrative and the Construction of Myths in Organizations
11 - Temporal Work in Coordination: Co-orienting Around a Fleeting Object of Concern
12 - Moral Judgements as Organizational Accomplishments: Insights from a Focused Ethnography in the English Healthcare Sector
13 - Between the Saying and the Said: From Self-reflexivity to Other-vulnerability in The Research Process

François Cooren is Professor and chair of the Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal, Canada. He is past president of the International Communication Association (ICA, 2010-2011) and the current president of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA, 2012-2014). His research interests lies in organizational communication, language and social interaction, communication theory and pragmatics. He has published seven books (both as an author and editor), close to 50 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and more than twenty book chapters. Haridimos Tsoukas is the Columbia Ship Management Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Cyprus, Cyprus and a Professor of Organization Studies at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. He has published widely in several leading academic journals and was the Editor-in-Chief of Organization Studies (2003-2008). He is the editor (with Christian Knudsen) of The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory (Oxford University Press, 2003). He has also edited Organizations as Knowledge Systems, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 (with N. Mylonopoulos) and Managing the Future: Foresight in the Knowledge Economy, Blackwell, 2004 (with J. Shepherd). His book Complex Knowledge: Studies in Organizational Epistemology was published by Oxford University Press in 2005. He is also the author of the book If Aristotle were a CEO (in Greek, Kastaniotis, 2005, 2nd edition). Eero Vaara is Professor of Management and Organization at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. He is a permanent Visiting Professor at EMLYON Business School, France, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Lancaster University, UK, and an Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research interests focus on organizational and institutional change, strategic practices and processes, multinational corporations and globalization, management education, and methodological issues in organization and management research. He has worked especially on discursive and narrative approaches. His work has been published in leading journals and several books. Ann Langley is professor of management at HEC Montréal and Canada research chair in strategic management in pluralistic settings. Her research focuses on strategic change, leadership, innovation and the use of management tools in complex organizations with an emphasis on processual research approaches. She has published over 50 articles and two books.