Stories from the Front‐line: How they Construct the Organization*

Abstract

 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.

Convenient fictions and inconvenient truths: Dilemmas of diversity at three leading accountancy firms

“…However, we argue that the characteristic of contingency can be productively employed in relation to diversity. This approach is necessary because the very notion of difference invokes a requirement for managers to deal with multiple versions of the 'truth' (Hopkinson, 2003). Making sense of stasis and change in this manner allows us to frame the 'puzzle' confronted by managers as a question of meaning such that inching towards improved outcomes for women within organizations might be seen in terms of "good people struggling to make sense" rather than as "bad ones making poor decisions" (Snook, 2001, pp.…”

“…Boland and Tenkasi's (1995) work on the 'fragmented organization' has also underlined the organization as a site of multiple communities that each make meaning. Typically no single construction of reality is universally accepted throughout an organization, and meaning is constantly constructed through the juxtaposition of competing and perhaps paradoxical views (Hopkinson, 2003(Hopkinson, , p. 1944). …”

Boundary work and identity construction in market exchanges

“…Her findings add to the burgeoning number of studies of market(ing) participants that draw upon discursive approaches (e.g. Ellis and Ybema, 2010;Hopkinson, 2003) by helping us to understand how discourses and identities are thoroughly embedded in the marketplace. The main contributions of this paper are in showing how the sharing and circulation of discourses is key to boundary work; and, moreover, to relate this work to the notion of the market intermediary rather than the more widely understood idea of the cultural intermediary.…”

Informing a new business‐to‐business relationship:

“…Respondents were asked to tell stories about events relating to the emergent business relationship and to address the different artefacts that influenced their interpretations and evaluation of the other firm. The guide was refined after the first round of interviews (Hopkinson, 2003). Håkansson andSnehota, 1995 Beech andHuxham 2003 Our key informants were the people responsible for initiating and developing the relationship.…”