Ironies in the Discursive Struggle of Pilots Defending the Profession

Real, Kevin; Putnam, Linda L.

doi:10.1177/0893318905276561

Cited by 49 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…For example, Dent (2003) has studied the professional-managerial relationships in a hospital under threat, exploring the ironic stance adopted by medical staff in the face of managerialization (and also hospital closure). Real and Putnam (2005) reported how a splinter group of pilots opposed to a management settlement used ironic strategies to defend their professional status, in combination with routine practices of resistance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two Faces of Organizational Irony: Endemic and Pragmatic

Hoyle

Wallace

2008

Organization Studies

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This paper puts forward a perspective on organizational irony framed in terms of two reciprocal faces, as a contribution to the developing interest in irony as a tool for organizational analysis. Endemic irony explores theoretical approaches implying that irony is a characteristic of all organizations, extended by contingent manifestations in contemporary organizations. Pragmatic irony conceptualizes how organization members engage in ironic strategies and deploy verbal irony as modes of coping -with both endemic discrepancies between intention and outcome, and contingent contradictions generated through major change efforts. This perspective is offered as a heuristic for exploring organizations whose members are inherently confronted by irony. First, those philosophical, literary and organization theory approaches to irony are reviewed which relate most closely to organizational irony. Second, the endemic nature of organizational irony is elaborated. Third, distinctive manifestations of irony in contemporary organizations that extend endemic irony are discussed. Fourth, instances of pragmatic irony in contemporary organizations, conceived as the reciprocal of endemic irony, are explored. Finally, the value of an ironic perspective as a means of understanding organizations is asserted and suggestions offered for future theory-building and research.Keywords: endemic irony, pragmatic irony, ironic disposition, ambiguity, principled infidelity 'Irony: The modern mode: either the devil's mark or the snorkel of sanity.' Julian Barnes (1984) Flaubert's ParrotThe use of irony as a trope for understanding organizations has been a relatively recent development in organizational studies. Inevitably, given the hyperreferential character of the concept of irony, a variety of approaches has been adopted but, as yet, none has emerged that could be regarded as canonical. The process continues and the purpose of this paper is to contribute to it by proposing two distinct aspects of organizational irony which can be regarded as reciprocal: endemic and pragmatic. We argue that irony is endemic in social life generally and hence inherent in the logic of organizations. We further argue that while organizational members have of necessity to learn to live with irony, there is an aspect of irony which allows for a degree of agency. We use the term pragmatic irony to refer to the strategies which organizational members use to cope with the ambiguities and dilemmas that endemic irony engenders.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two Faces of Organizational Irony: Endemic and Pragmatic

Hoyle

Wallace

2008

Organization Studies

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“…As this study reveals, union leaders often make sense of bargaining and contracts by relying on symbols of warfare, for example, fighting, confrontation, and combat. However, past studies show that overreliance on military metaphors often produces practices consistent with these symbols (Real & Putnam, 2005). Thus, using combat language to depict negotiations can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies that foster talking past each other and reaching an impasse.…”

Section: Theoretical and Practical Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Union framing of conflict‐related issues in the entertainment industry

Fuller

Putnam

2018

Conflict Resolution Qtrly

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This study examined the conflict framing of union leaders as they reacted to changes in the entertainment industry. The analysis revealed how participants named conflict‐based issues and attributed blame for them, cast them as whole stories, or reframed them. Overall, the leaders of two types of unions differed in their naming and blaming of controversial issues. This study suggested that naming and blaming of conflict‐based issues operated differently for the two types of unions. Leaders who employed naming singled out critical agenda items and often used reframing, while union leaders who depicted issues as whole stories resisted reframing the issues.

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“…In the present study, the practice of consultants, as it emerged, was to simply submit their PowerPoint slides to the databases, which they considered neither very useful nor relevant to their work (see interview statements above). This can be interpreted as a silent form of resistance to or even subversion of organizational demands (see also the studies by Lynch, 2009, andReal &Putnam, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pervasive Power of PowerPoint: How a Genre of Professional Communication Permeates Organizational Communication

Schoeneborn

2013

Organization Studies

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This paper examines the pervasive role of Microsoft's presentation software PowerPoint as a genre of professional and organizational communication. Frequently, PowerPoint is not only used for the primary function it was initially designed for, i.e., facilitating live presentations, but also for alternative purposes such as project documentation. Its application in a neighboring domain, however, poses a functional dilemma: does the PowerPoint genre preserve the features of its primary function, i.e., presentation, or rather adapt to the new function, i.e., documentation? By drawing on a communicationcentered perspective, this paper examines PowerPoint's role in the domain of project documentation as a clash between the constitutive affordances of professional and of organizational communication. To investigate this issue empirically, I conducted a case study at a multinational business consulting firm. The study allows identification of three distinct PowerPoint subgenres, which differ in how they adapt to the function of project documentation. This paper contributes to organization studies by specifying the boundary conditions under which a genre of professional communication such as PowerPoint can be expected to maintain its genre-inherent characteristics even in the face of contradictory organizational requirements and to impose these characteristics on a neighboring domain of organizational communication practices.

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Ironies in the Discursive Struggle of Pilots Defending the Profession

Cited by 49 publications

References 25 publications

Two Faces of Organizational Irony: Endemic and Pragmatic

Two Faces of Organizational Irony: Endemic and Pragmatic

Union framing of conflict‐related issues in the entertainment industry

The Pervasive Power of PowerPoint: How a Genre of Professional Communication Permeates Organizational Communication

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