Ascribing materiality and agency to strategy in interaction: A language-based approach to the material agency of strategy

Pälli, Pekka

doi:10.1016/j.lrp.2017.02.008

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…It is through what is written in the strategy that the members interacted with Combine as an organization, rather than by, for example, addressing the CEO (who was present in the meeting). This scenario can be seen as reinforcing the authoritative role of the document (Pälli, 2018). Combine is also not presented as a rigid entity but as a malleable organization through the document in terms of its CSR aspirations.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…During the course of such strategic planning cycles, the documents become increasingly fixed and authoritative. The recognition of the importance of strategy texts also ascribes to the texts performative qualities, as they can influence sense-making in organizations (Pälli, 2018). The basic function of strategy documents is also to guide future action (Pälli et al, 2009), which makes such texts highly relevant for CSR explications.…”

Section: Aspirational Talk In Strategy Texts and Strategic Episodesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Aspirational Talk in Strategy Texts: A Longitudinal Case Study of Strategic Episodes in Corporate Social Responsibility Communication

Penttilä

2019

Business & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines the embeddedness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications in strategic planning. By drawing on the idea that talk and texts about CSR are an essential part of responsibility practices, I study how CSR aspirations—responsibility-related organizational self-descriptions, goals, and ideals that the organization cannot yet live up to or that the organizational constituents deem necessary to maintain—are intertwined with strategy texts and strategic episodes. Conducting a qualitative case study on a series of biennial strategy processes over a 20-year period, I show how CSR aspirations are established in authoritative strategy documents during stakeholder interactions, elaborated in consecutive strategic episodes, extended to new business areas, and evaluated in subsequent communications. These findings contribute to the CSR and strategy literature by showing how (a) aspirational talk can be established and perpetuated through recurrent communicative processes, (b) stakeholder engagement in CSR issues can influence strategy texts and how strategy texts become a part of intertextual organizational communications, and (c) strategic context can be conducive to progressive performativity.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Aspirational Talk In Strategy Texts and Strategic Episodesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aspirational Talk in Strategy Texts: A Longitudinal Case Study of Strategic Episodes in Corporate Social Responsibility Communication

Penttilä

2019

Business & Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…What are texts, for instance? They are the results of inscriptions and as such, they have, as we know, an agency, that is, they can make a difference in organizational settings, especially when they are invoked or that their existence is taken for granted (Brummans, 2007;Cooren, 2004Cooren, , 2008Cooren, , 2009Jahn, 2016Jahn, , 2018Koschmann & McDonald, 2015;Kuhn, 2008;Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2011;Pälli, 2018;Vaara, Sorsa, & Pälli, 2010). Whether they are written in computer files or simply penciled down on a post-it, if they have the capacity to make a difference, it is also, and maybe especially, because they act and say things for or on behalf of their respective authors.…”

Section: Communication: Between Transmission and Constitutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Entanglement: (Socio-) Materiality and Organization Studies

Cooren

2020

Organization Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although we have to welcome the renewed interest in socio-materiality in organization studies, I claim that we are yet to understand what taking matter seriously really means. The mistake we especially need to stop making consists of automatically associating matter to something that can be touched or seen, that is, something tangible or visible, an association that irremediably leads us to recreate a dissociation between the world of human affairs and the so-called material world. To address this issue, I mobilize a communication-centered perspective to elaborate that (1) materiality is a property of all (organizational) phenomena and that (2) studying these phenomena implies a focus on processes of materialization, that is, ways by which various beings come to appear and make themselves present throughout space and time. In the paper I conceptualize the contours of these materialization processes and discuss the implications of this perspective on materiality for organizational theory and research.

show abstract

“…While also relevant to organizational communication studies in general, Luhmann's detailed analysis of the particularities of decision communications speaks directly to the recent discussions about the communicative constitution of strategy-making (Aten and Thomas, 2016;Bencherki, Basque and Rouleau, in press;Cabantous, Gond and Wright, 2018;Cooren. Bencherki, Chaput, and Vásquez, 2015;Pälli, 2018;Vásquez, Bencherki, Cooren, and Sergi, 2018). This research is directly concerned with processes of strategic decision making, examining the way in which they are communicatively constituted.…”

Section: Putting Decisions Back Into Organizational Communication Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Niklas Luhmann’s Radical Communication Approach and Its Implications for Research on Organizational Communication

Cooren

Seidl

2020

AMR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this review essay, we explore how Luhmann's radical communication approach, which conceptualizes communication without recourse to human beings' intentions, can reorient existing research on organizational communication. We show how Luhmann's perspective puts decisions back into organizational communication studies, how it changes our perspective on organizational continuity and on organizational boundaries, and how it redirects our understanding of human agency in organizations. We also discuss three areas in which Luhmann's theory could draw inspiration from other research on organizational communication.

show abstract

Ascribing materiality and agency to strategy in interaction: A language-based approach to the material agency of strategy

Cited by 14 publications

References 30 publications

Aspirational Talk in Strategy Texts: A Longitudinal Case Study of Strategic Episodes in Corporate Social Responsibility Communication

Aspirational Talk in Strategy Texts: A Longitudinal Case Study of Strategic Episodes in Corporate Social Responsibility Communication

Beyond Entanglement: (Socio-) Materiality and Organization Studies

Niklas Luhmann’s Radical Communication Approach and Its Implications for Research on Organizational Communication

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About