Talking Up Failure: How Discourse Can Signal Failure to Change

Abstract

This article explores the predictive properties of talk as an indicator of failure to change. As part of the exploration of organizational change, researchers regularly focus on how discourse is used and applied to achieve certain processes and outcomes. This position presents change as a function of particular types of communication and its interpretation. Using longitudinal data of an organization’s technology change, we propose that the way employees talk about planned organizational change, as a group, signals and can be used to recognize eventual failure to change. Extending current trends in discursive analyses, we establish talk as a reflective device, in the context of tracking failure while it occurs, by combining social identity theory (SIT) with a language and social psychology (LASP) approach. In doing so, the discourse of failure can be viewed as part of an intergroup phenomenon experienced and interpreted through organizational memberships.

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