The Recontextualization of Management: A Discourse‐based Approach to Analysing the Development of Management Thinking*

Abstract

Many analysts have sought to explain the development and growth of management ideas and discourse in recent years, using notions such as the diffusion and consumption of ideas, and analogies with the fashion industry. These frameworks have a number of weaknesses that inhibit their value. Conceptualizing management knowledge or ideas or thinking as a form of discourse leads us to alternative frameworks for examining developments in this field. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can be used to explore the social processes and structures from which discourse emanates and which discourse in turn underpins. Bernstein's concept of recontextualization can be employed to analyse the discursive relations between different social spheres or conjunctures within which human action takes place and how discourse is changed as it moves between conjunctures to meet the needs of different social agents. In this respect it can be used to analyse how management discourse unfolds as it is produced, distributed and acquired by agents within the academic, consultant and practitioner conjunctures. By doing so we can explore: the intertextual relations between the discourses; how the management discourse becomes technologized; and how hybrid forms of discourse, which mix genres and styles, emerge.

Struggling over subjectivity: A discursive analysis of strategic development in an engineering group

“…In critical organizational discourse analysis (e.g. Phillips & Hardy, 2002;Thomas, 2003;Mumby, 2004;Fairclough, 2005), the role given to the social context has varied. In our analysis, we want to emphasize that one cannot understand specific texts and discourses without considering the social context in question.…”

Stories from the Front Line

“…Story-telling is another form of analysing language: not individual phrases but complex, linked stories. Discourse analysis is a particular form of qualitative methodology that has strong academic credentials and is well established (see, for example, Alvesson and Karreman, 2000;Brown and Yule, 1983;Gee 1999;Grant et al, 2001;Thomas, 2003;Wetherell et al, 2001) and can be used, for instance, in understanding change in organizations (Grant et al, 2005). However, discourse analysis must also be considered critically, given its 'ontological, epistemological and theoretical weaknesses' (Reed, 2000).…”

Discourse in the study of organizations. A revision of literature

“…Por un lado, la mirada pragmática del discurso dada su relación con la práctica organizacional, pero además la idea de lo simbólico al reconocer que el discurso permite la construcción social de la realidad. Posibilita a su vez, la perspectiva crítica del discurso, al proponer que la estrategia en el discurso implica el mantenimiento de las desigualdades en la organización (Laine y Vaara 2007; Thomas 2003), es decir, la gestión empresarial puede apropiar y movilizar un tipo específico de discurso para tratar de obtener el control de la organización.…”

“…Gestión y tecnología ambiental (Maguire 2004;Prasad y Elmes 2005). Gestión del conocimiento (Xu 2000;Thomas 2003;Roper et al 2010). Gestión de recursos humanos (Harley y Hardy 2004, Zanoni y Janssens 2004.…”