Articulating circumstance, identity and practice: toward a discursive framework of organizational changing

Abstract

The literature on organizational change abounds with models that map the trajectory of change with ordered stages or episodes. However, limited progress has been made in understanding the dynamic process of changing or becoming from one stage or episode to another. To enhance our knowledge of changing, this study intends to offer a discursive framework grounded in a process-oriented perspective of organization. The framework highlights key discursive dynamics of changing by integrating recent developments in several streams of research. It conceptualizes changing as discursive struggles over articulating multiple layers of meaning. These layers comprise the articulation of organizational circumstance, organizational and individual identities and organizational practice.To illustrate the utility of this framework, the author undertook a discourse analysis of real-time communication among members in a large US insurance corporation. The interpretation was grounded in data from a four-month ethnographic study. The analysis effectively demonstrates how organizational changing takes place in interrelated layers of discursive action. It also offers critique on potential discursive effects of stage models when applied by practitioners in managing organizational change programs.

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