A new ensemble of organization development (OD) practices have emerged that are based more on constructionist, post modern and new sciences premises than the assumptions of the early founders. These include practices associated with appreciative inquiry, large group interventions, changing mindsets and consciousness, addressing diversity and multicultural realities, and advancing new and different models of change. We propose that the emerging field of organizational discourse offers sympathetic concepts and research that could add additional insights and theoretical rigour to the New OD. In particular, studies of organizational discourse based upon social constructionist and critical perspectives offer compelling ideas and practices associated with the establishment of change concepts, the role of power and context in relation to organizational change, and specific discursive interventions designed to foster organizational change.

Although organizational change involves a complex set of communicative and languagebased processes, discourse-based approaches for understanding and managing change dynamics have been relatively underutilized by researchers and practitioners. To help address this situation, this article advances an analytic framework for explaining how discourse and organizational change are mutually implicated. Drawing on the research literature, the constructive, multilevel, conversational, political, reflexive, and recursive nature of organizational change discourses are presented and discussed. Implications for research and practice are then reviewed.

Questions have been raised in recent years about the cultural limits and overall efficacy of organization development (OD) to address the current and emerging problems of contemporary organizations. This discussion attempts to speak to both issues by examining the OD model of change, that is, Lewin's three-stage change process of unfreezing, movement, and refreezing. When the OD model is compared to the model(s) of change based in East Asian and Confucian cultural traditions, different assumptions about change are revealed. The analysis suggests that different culturally based models of change exist and are likely to lead adherents to employ different change methods and approaches. Consideration of both models as valid points to a possible synthesis that would address developmental and transformational change processes. More research into the change models and assumptions inherent in different cultures and cosmologies is needed not only to inform current OD practice but to expand the range of change theories and methods available for dealing with contemporary organizational issues.

This article presents a conceptualization of organizational discourse as situated symbolic action, drawing from the fields of speech act theory, rhetoric, ethnography of communication and social constructionism. This conceptualization is illustrated through analysis of an episode of negotiated order accessed through an organization development intervention; a meeting of senior managers of Systech, a major IT organization, to decide on a new business model. This perspective helps to respond to some of the key challenges facing the organizational discourse field in terms of developing more clearly specified conceptualizations of discourse suited to the organizational level of analysis, achieving a more holistic and discourse-sensitive understanding of empirical contexts by organizational researchers, and illustrating that organizational discourse analysis is not simply an intellectual luxury but can have pragmatic, relevant implications.

F or most leaders and change agents, one seven-word expression has become synonymous with resistance to change: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" On the surface, it's a straightforward, rather blunt statement of fact and advice: "Don't mess with what's already working." As usually interpreted, however, it's a slogan of resistance, defiantly asserting: "No change is wanted or needed here; go tinker somewhere else!" Considered symbolically, it may also reveal an unarticulated set of assumptions about change and the organization in question. Every individual, and for that matter, cultural system, views and interprets empirical events through a set of beliefs and assumptions. Often these beliefs and assumptions are subconscious and rarely examined or questioned. They just are. Yet they exert a profound influence over how a person sees a situation, and what actions will or will not be taken. If, for example, someone implicitly assumes that interpersonal communication is like calling another person on the telephone, then any miscommunication might be attributed to a "bad connection" or "static on the line." Viewed as a computerto-computer interface, the difficulties might be alternatively defined as "incompatible software or hardware." Depending on the implicit view, different remedies are likely to be suggested: "Let's hang up and try again," or "Let's make sure we are both using the same (computer) language." This discussio n advances the proposition that these underlying, usually unarticulated understandings about a situation are often shaped and revealed metaphorically. Furthermore, because these understandings are critical to how people assess the need for change-and indeed, their conception of change itself-paying attention to managing the metaphors of change becomes a critical competency for leaders and change agents. Metaphors and Metaphoric Analysis A metaphor is a form of symbolic, rather than literal, expression. The Webster New World Dictionary defines a metaphor as: "A figure of speech containing an implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used for one thing is applied to another, e.g., the curtain of night." Beyond their usefulness to poets and politicians, some psychologists assert that metaphors serve as the essential bridge between the literal and the symbolic, between cognition and affect, and between the conscious and the unconscious. As such, metaphors are often the medium for understanding and presenting ideas, insights, and intuitions not always available to analytic reasoning and discourse. Others, including linguists and philosophers, go further to suggest that metaphors serve as a primary method for understanding and expressing abstract, affective, and/or intuitive experience. From these points of view, the statement "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" is more than a phrase signifying resistance to change. It is the manifest expression of a deeper, sometimes preconscious, symbolic construct that informs and maintains "reality" for the speaker. It is, therefore, a k...