This paper argues for a re‐consideration of the value of process, here represented by the talk of organizational actors. It argues that the talk between organizational actors is an under‐valued organization resource that presently in most organizations is allowed to slip way into obscurity because of its evanescent qualities. It argues this represents an unacceptable loss of a vital layer of organizational knowing, and illustrates this through the utilization of two contrasting case incidents. Accordingly, the paper discusses the potential of re‐presenting talk as a means to prise open the space‐between‐words, and despite the limitations of contextual relevance, suggests these reflexive opportunities will develop deeper, richer and more novel interpretations of knowing.
We examine how discourses are mobilized and deployed by actors in an inter‐organizational domain during a critical industrial relations event. We identify the ways that business interests and union interests in the Melbourne Port industrial dispute of 1997–98 related to each other. We weave concepts from domain theory and organizational discourse theory in deriving the concept of the discursively ordered domain . This suggests that the main processes that occur in a domain are actors’‘mapping’ texts onto discourses and discourses onto interpretive schemes which make certain courses of action rational and sensible. Methodologically, we join an institutional‐historical analysis and a text‐based discourse analysis to gain a well‐rounded understanding of the situation. We extract several discursive frameworks which the major actors mobilized to make sense of the situation, and draw linkages to the actions that those positions made possible. The main findings are that actors in the two networks performed complex mapping in different ways, the material and symbolic outcomes of the dispute are products of those mapping processes, and the material and discursive aspects of the domain interweave. We discuss the value of the concept of discursively ordered domain for mutually enriching domain theory and discourse analysis and for understanding critical events such as major industrial disputes in new ways.
Literary and rhetorical tropes invoke a transference of meaning from the common usage of a word or phrase. Organizational analysis research and writing in this area has concentrated upon the trope of metaphor. In this article it is argued that we should extend our attention to other tropes. To that end, the article identifies and illustrates the saliency of the trope of synecdoche through a discussion of employment relations. Following a brief identification of metaphor within writings on employment relations, the article goes onto discuss synecdoche as one of the ‘four master tropes’. We then argue that the trope is important in relation to how we write about and understand employment relations. Use of the trope is then illustrated through analysis of interview comments on local pay in the National Health Service. Finally, the saliency or prominence of synecdoche is argued through two related arguments, the nature of the rhetorical setting and the rhetorical nature of the employment relations setting.
This is the first of a new twice-yearly feature in JMS in which we invite differing perspectives on a topical issue in the management field. Recent years have seen considerable development of research interest in the internal operation of the organization. The resource-based view (RBV) and the associated capabilities framework have been viewed as an increasingly important, yet somewhat controversial, approach. A number of writers have made significant contributions to the field, including Birger Wernerfelt, Jay Barney, Margaret Peteraf, David Teece, etc. One writer also frequently credited with laying the groundwork for the development of the resource based view is Edith Penrose in her seminal 1959 book The Theory of Growth of the Firm. As part of the development of this framework, recent attention has focused on evaluating the contribution of the resource-based view as a theory for understanding firm behaviour and of some of the authors who have been prominent in its development. For example, the Journal of Management published a special issue in December 2001 that examined developments in the ten years following the special issue devoted to the RBV published in that journal in 1991. The Academy of Management Review published an exchange between Jay Barney, Richard Priem and John Butler concerning the theoretical rigour of Barney's exposition of the RBV. Edith Penrose's contribution to the RBV is also coming under scrutiny. The immediate stimulus for the papers presented here was a paper published in August 2002 in the Strategic Management Journal by Alan Rugman and Alain Verbeke which took a strongly critical view of Penrose's contribution. The first two papers critique Rugman and Verbeke's paper, taking instead a positive view of Penrose's contribution. In the first contribution, Yasemin Kor and Joe Mahoney focus on the contribution of The Theory of Growth of the Firm. The second contribution by Andy Lockett and Steve Thompson examines the contribution to the RBV contained in Penrose's famous case study of The Hercules Powder Corporation and her papers on the growth of international firms. The third paper by Rugman and Verbeke presents a rejoinder to the arguments of Kor and Mahoney and Lockett and Thompson. Rugman and Verbeke entitle their contribution ‘A Final Word on Edith Penrose’. Somehow, this does not seem likely.
The performance of individual stockbrokers differs. This paper aims to make sense of these differences. In a study of 14 stockbrokers, the high performing brokers described their working life in a systematically different way, compared to the low performing brokers. The brokers gave different and conflicting accounts of what, from an outsider's viewpoint, seemed to be very similar work and working conditions. The brokers’ different accounts are interpreted and reconstructed into two opposing conceptions of stockbrokers’ world of working. In an ideal typical sense these two conceptions make sense of, and maybe even explain the stockbrokers’ different levels of performance.
This paper deals with the aftermath of the creation of a new governance structure in the UK National Health Service. We conceptualize this new governance structure as a ‘Trust Hospital Archetype’ in order to establish the promises and limitations of an archetype transition framework. We find that the ‘reality’ of the ‘Trust Hospital Archetype’ is one involving a high degree of contestation. This is confirmed by evidence drawn from interviews, documents, observation and participant observation. In order to analyse contestation, we distinguish between three interpretive schemes – Ideological–New Public Management, Executive Pragmatism and Medical Professionalism; and we outline five scripts – challenging, critiquing, mediating, cautioning and defending. This diversity casts doubt on the usefulness of simplistic managerialism–professionalism dichotomies prevalent in much of the literature. It also suggests modifications to archetype transition theory, which lends too much weight to the role of dominant interpretive schemes.
This study has a dual thrust. Substantively , it revisits Chandler's pragmatic fit‐performance directive (Chandler's ‘efficiency thesis’) or his assertion that firms whose structure matches their strategy become more effective than mismatched firms. It is important to revisit the empirical origin of this result in view of its gradual international extrapolation beyond the time and place in which it originated. By gathering the financial data relevant to the firms cited as examples by Chandler, we identify whether the change to the multidivisional structure did indeed lead to improved financial performance in the mid‐twentieth century American firms he described. Methodologically , it explores a novel approach to the empirical validation of basic theories. Using historical replication, it undertakes a longitudinal, time‐series analysis of a classic theory based on twentieth‐century data, and thus investigates the testing of classic data with a modern tool. We undertake multiple replications. Three separate longitudinal studies are performed, consisting of two forecasting methods applied to 11 individual time series, and a comparison technique applied to the same. These are used with the three most common measures of performance at the time of Chandler's writing. All three methods reveal that the differences predicted by his theory are not borne out by the longitudinal analysis of a core group of Chandler's own exemplary firms. The three sets of longitudinal analyses we present raise some substantive questions regarding this cornerstone of classical theory, and carry positive methodological portents regarding the use of historical replication as a stepping‐stone for twenty‐first‐century research.
Drawing on social constructionist theory this paper applies discourse analysis to ten narratives told by service delivery staff in one distribution network. The analysis looks at how the narratives construct the organization through their constructions of self (the narrator), customer and manufacturer and their constructions of the relationships linking these three sets of actors. The paper argues that the narrators construct the self either as an organizational customer or an organizational partner. The two constructions locate conflict either within the organization or at the customer–organizational boundary respectively. The implications of this are suggested. Contrasts between the manner in which organizational members construct the self as customer or partner and the construction of the organizational member in the internal customer literature are highlighted and briefly discussed.