Constructing the Ideal Worker Identity: The Rhetorical Construction of Discursive Resources in<i>Undercover Boss</i>

Meisenbach, Rebecca J.; Feldner, Sarah Bonewits

doi:10.1080/10570314.2019.1566564

Cited by 3 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Possible studies could examine how organizations act to revivify, negotiate, ameliorate, or challenge the uneven distribution of sexual, racial, and colonial processes. Attending to how organizations are caught up in larger cultural discourses would benefit the study of media in organizational rhetoric (Conrad, 1988; Meisenbach & Feldner, 2019). Practically, attention to differential relations could produce more equitable policies and procedures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizational Rhetoric as Subjectification

Hanchey

Jensen

2021

Management Communication Quarterly

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Given arguments that organizational rhetoric is disconnected from contemporary and useful trends in rhetorical theory writ-large, we build a case for rethinking organizational rhetoric’s founding concept of identification through recent innovations in rhetorical theory. Drawing from theories of psychoanalysis, racialization, and coloniality, we argue for an alternative understanding of organizational rhetoric premised on subjectification, where subjectification is the process through which a subject is brought into being on the basis of shifting contexts, relations, and imbrication in forces of power. We highlight three facets of organizational subjectification that can contribute to innovative organizational rhetorical research: differential relations, dependence on Otherness, and uneven mutuality. These facets, we argue, highlight how processes of coloniality and racialization are fundamental to our very being and becoming, providing a means of understanding organizational rhetoric as inherently political.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizational Rhetoric as Subjectification

Hanchey

Jensen

2021

Management Communication Quarterly

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“…In all situations, the surface-level interpretation of the narrative emphasizes hard work and honest feedback are rewarded. Meisenbach and Feldner (2019) critically characterized these narratives as heroic and providing discursive resources for the ideal worker identity. Employees were heroes persevering through hardship and selflessly serving their organizations.…”

Section: About Undercover Bossmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Critical analyses of Undercover Boss have interrogated the construction of the ideal worker identity (Meisenbach & Feldner, 2019), neoliberal values and class (Aho, 2016;Winslow, 2016), corporate personhood (McGlothlin, 2014), and corporate persona (St. John, 2015). Cumberland and Alagaraja (2016) interviewed past undercover bosses about how their experiences on the show positively changed them and their organizations.…”

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confidence: 99%

Dissent in Reality: A Commentary on Representations of Organizational Dissent on Undercover Boss

Helens‐Hart

Haugen

Lloyd

2022

International Journal of Business Communication

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Reality television that allegedly takes us inside organizations provides researchers with abundant data to consider how culture industries narrate and shape understandings of (un)idealized work practices. Within this context, we explored organizational dissent on the reality television show Undercover Boss. Recent research has theorized how dissent is a co-constructed process between dissenters and recipients. A challenge to exploring this process, however, is witnessing dissent as it unfolds over time and between supervisors and subordinates. Through a qualitative content analysis of eight seasons of Undercover Boss, we examined how the dissent life cycle was depicted. We determined beneath displays of exemplary employees and redeemed bosses vowing their commitment to employee concerns, a more problematic narrative existed. Despite attempts to highlight how employees can provide insightful, quality feedback, the program privileged showing bosses’ authority, business acumen, and how they facilitated and framed dissent messages. Dissent interactions ultimately supported executive business interests and demonstrated dysfunctional dissent processes.

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“…Examining discursive resources provides the opportunity to examine the intersection of micro- and macro-discourses (Wieland, 2010) as members draw upon more habitual or established discourses that may be derived from organizational practices, symbols, or texts (Meisenbach & Feldner, 2019) and/or from the “wider historical, socio-cultural, and societal context” (Tienari & Vaara, 2016, p. 462; cf. Brown & Humphreys, 2003).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the plurality of individual responses that a profound organizational event might evoke, we examine the discursive resources members draw upon in constructing their organizations' identities (cf. Larson & Pearson, 2012;Meisenbach & Feldner, 2019;Wieland, 2010). Discursive resources are defined as the "concepts, expressions, or other linguistic devices that, when deployed in talk, present explanations for past and/or future activity that guide interactants' interpretation of experience while molding individual and collective action" (Kuhn, 2006(Kuhn, , p. 1341.…”

Section: A Discursive Resource Approach To Organizational Identity Wo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Tearing the Fabric” or “Weaving the Tapestry”? A Discursive Resources Approach to Identity-Implicating Organizational Events

Sheep

Rheinhardt

Hollensbe

et al. 2022

Management Communication Quarterly

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How do organizational members discursively construct large-scale organizational events that have identity implications? Whereas previous studies have focused primarily on collectively construed organizational identity threats and, to a lesser degree, identity opportunities, we move beyond past work to examine how individual members construct a single organizational event in divergent and more nuanced ways. Taking a discursive resources approach to members’ discourse in response to a watershed event in the Episcopal Church, we find that members engage in organizational identity work processes as a means of constructing an identity-implicating event. Through their identity work, which involves the construction of (in)coherence among an organization’s multiple identities, members construct an event as aligned with some organizational identities yet misaligned with others. Our study has implications for research on organizational identity and identity work, organizational events, and discursive resources.

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Constructing the Ideal Worker Identity: The Rhetorical Construction of Discursive Resources inUndercover Boss

Cited by 3 publications

References 36 publications

Organizational Rhetoric as Subjectification

Organizational Rhetoric as Subjectification

Dissent in Reality: A Commentary on Representations of Organizational Dissent on Undercover Boss

“Tearing the Fabric” or “Weaving the Tapestry”? A Discursive Resources Approach to Identity-Implicating Organizational Events

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