Introduction: Struggles with Organizational Discourse

This special issue of Organization Studies was conceived with two ideas in mind: to show how studies of organizational discourse provide important insights into processes of organizing, and to take advantage of an opportunity to reflect on research practice at a time when discourse analysis is becoming increasingly influential within organizational studies. The following six articles play an important role with regard to the first objective. They are all empirical studies, and show how the application of discourse analytical methods can be used to study processes of organizing. In so doing, they highlight the ways in which dominant meanings emerge from the power-laden nature of organizational contexts, as well as indicating some of the discursive practices and rhetorical devices that are deployed in these struggles around meaning. In this regard, they contribute to the development of alternative ways of describing, analysing, and theorizing the processes and practices that constitute the ‘organization’ — something that has preoccupied those organizational scholars who have become disillusioned with mainstream theories and methodologies. With regard to the second objective of reflecting on research practice, we wish, in this introductory article, to pay attention to certain theoretical struggles that face researchers as they attempt to develop our understanding of organizational discourse. We also attempt to reflect more deeply in examining how the special issue represents an arena in which meaning is being negotiated around what constitutes organizational discourse. We suggest that these negotiations are indicative of a larger struggle facing particularly those who study organizational discourse from an empirical standpoint: that as interest in applying discourse analysis grows, one of its most important contributions (its propensity to encourage reflexivity on the part of the researcher) is at risk of being sidelined. In the remainder of this introduction, we define organizational discourse in terms of the struggles for meaning that occur in organizations. We then Organization Studies 25(1): 5–13 Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA & New Delhi) 5 Authors name