This paper seeks to apply a critical realist lens to the analysis of discourse. Our central argument is that the most fruitful way to make sense of discourse is to treat it as an empirical object of inquiry alongside extra-discursive phenomena. In making this argument, we consider two recent discourses, the ‘knowledge-based economy’ (KBE) and ‘shareholder value’ (SV) and demonstrate that, while the KBE discourse gained much more attention, SV discourse had much more significant material outcomes. We suggest that research on the potential causal powers of discourse should move away from an exclusive focus on the discursive and pay attention to actors and institutions and to extra-discursive conditions and constraints.
BellD. (1973). The coming of post-industrial society: a venture in social forecasting. New York: Basic Books.
2.
BlackburnR. (2006). Finance and the fourth dimension. New Left Review, 39, 39–70.
3.
BlacklerF. (1995). Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: An overview and interpretation. Organization Studies, 16, 1021–1046.
4.
BoltanskiL.ChiapelloE. (1999). Le novel spirit du capitalism. Paris: Guillard.
5.
BudgeonS. (2000). A new spirit of capitalism?New Left Review, 1, 149–156.
6.
CastellsM. (1996). The rise of the network society: the information age – economy. Oxford: Blackwell.
7.
ClarkI. (2009). Owners and managers: disconnecting managerial capitalism? Understanding the private-equity business model. Work, Employment and Society, 23, 775–786.
8.
CrabtreeJ. (2002). The Cult of Castells. Prospect Magazine, 50–54.
9.
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2005). Skills: getting on in business, getting on in work. Norwich: HMSO.
10.
DoreR. (2008). Financialization of the global economy. Industrial and Corporate Change, 17, 1097–1112.
11.
DoyleP. (2000). Value-based marketing: marketing strategies for corporate growth and shareholder value. London: Wiley.
12.
DruckerP. (1969). The age of discontinuity. New York: Harper & Row.
Department of Trade and Industry (1998). Our competitive future. London: HMSO.
15.
EngelenE.KoningsM. (2010). Financial capitalism resurgent: Comparative institutionalism and the challenges of financialization. In MorganG.CampbellJ.CrouchC.PedersonO. K.WhitleyR. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of comparative institutional analysis (pp. 601–624). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
16.
ErturkI.FroudJ.JohalS.WilliamsK. (2004). Corporate governance and disappointment. Review of International Political Economy, 11, 677–713.
17.
FaircloughN. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
18.
FaircloughN. (2000). New Labour, new language. London: Routledge.
19.
FaircloughN. (2005). Discourse analysis in organization studies: The case for critical realism. Organization Studies, 26, 915–939.
FaustM. (2009). The shareholder value concept of the corporation and co-determination in Germany: Unresolved contradictions or reconciliation of institutional logics?July2009. Paper to EGOS Colloquium, Barcelona.
22.
FengH. Y.FroudJ.JohalS.HaslamC.WilliamsK. (2001). A new business model? The capital market and the new economy. Economy and Society30, 467–503.
FleetwoodS. (2005). Ontology in organisation and management studies: A critical realist perspective. Organization, 12, 197–222.
25.
FlemingP.HarleyB.SewellG. (2004). A little knowledge is a dangerous thing: Getting below the surface of the growth of ‘knowledge work’ in Australia. Work, Employment & Society, 18, 725–747.
26.
FrankT. (2000). One market under God: extreme capitalism, market populism and the end of economic democracy. New York: Secker & Warburg.
27.
FroudJ.HaslamC.JohalS.WilliamsK. (2000). Restructuring for shareholder value and its implications for labour. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 24, 771–797.
28.
FroudJ.LeaverA.JohalS.WilliamsK. (2006). Financialization and strategy: narrative and numbers. London: Routledge.
29.
GrantD.HardyC.OswickC.PutnamL. (Eds.) (2004). The Sage handbook of organisational discourse. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
30.
GreenS.BabbM.AlpaslanC. (2008). Institutional field dynamics and the competition of institutional logics: The role of rhetoric in the evolving control of the modern corporation. Management Communication Quarterly, 22, 40–73.
31.
GreenF.ZhouY. (2008). Overqualification, job satisfaction and increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education. Economics Discussion Paper KDPE 0803. Canterbury: University of Kent, Department of Economics.
32.
HallS. (2009). Financialized elites and the changing nature of finance capitalism: Investment bankers in London’s financial district. Competition and Change, 13, 173–189.
33.
HenwoodD. (2003). After the new economy. New York: The New Press.
34.
HM Treasury (2002). Developing workforce skills: piloting a new approach. London: HM Treasury.
35.
HM Treasury (2004). Skills in the global economy. Norwich: HMSO.
36.
HuttonW. (1995). The state we’re in. London: Random House.
37.
IcahnC. (1988). Icahn on Icahn. Fortune, 117, 54–56.
38.
JensenM. C. (1986). Agency costs of free cash flow, corporate finance, and takeovers. American Economic Review, 76, 323–329.
39.
JensenM. C.MecklingW. (1976). Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs, and ownership structure. Journal of Financial Economics, 3, 305–360.
40.
JessopB. (1992). Fordism and post-fordism: A critical reformulation. In StorperM. J.ScottA. J. (Eds.) Pathways to regionalism and industrial development. London: Routledge.
41.
JessopB. (2004). Critical semiotic analysis and cultural political economy. Critical Discourse Studies, 1, 159–174.
42.
JonesP. E. (2004). Discourse and the materialist conception of history: Critical comments on critical discourse analysis. Historical Materialism, 12, 97–125.
43.
KeepE.MayhewK.PayneJ. (2006). From skills revolution to productivity miracle: Not as easy as it sounds?Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 22, 539–559.
44.
KeepE.MayhewK. (2010). Moving beyond skills as a social and economic panacea?Work, Employment & Society, 24, 565–577.
45.
KellyK. (1999). New rules for the new economy. London: Fourth Estate.
46.
KhuranaR. (2007). From higher aims to hired hands: the social transformation of American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession. Princeton, NJ: University Press.
47.
KundaG.Ailon-SoudayG. (2005). Managers, markets and ideologies: Design and devotion revisited. In AckroydS.BattR.ThompsonP.TolbertP. S. (Eds.) The Oxford handbook of work and organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
48.
LapavitsasC. (2011). Financialized and capitalist accumulation: Structural accounts of the crisis of 2007–9. Work, Employment & Society, 25, 611–626.
LazonickW.O’SullivanM. (2000). Maximising shareholder value: A new ideology for corporate governance. Economy and Society, 29, 13–35.
53.
LeadbetterC. (1999). Living on thin air. London: Viking.
54.
Leitch Review of Skills (2005). Skills in the UK: the long term challenge. London: HM Treasury.
55.
MacKenzieD. (2006). An engine not a camera: how financial models shape the markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
56.
MacKenzieD. (2009). Beneath all the toxic acronyms lies a basic cultural issue. Financial Times, 26November, p. 12.
57.
MacKenzieD. (2010). Unlocking the language of structured securities. Financial Times, 19August, p. 10.
58.
MarazziC. (2008). Capital and language: from the new economy to the war economy. New York: Semiotext(e).
59.
McKeenJ. D.StaplesD. S. (2003). Knowledge managers: Who they are and what they do. In HolsappleC. W. (Ed.) Handbook on knowledge management. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
60.
McKinlayA. (2005). Knowledge management. In AckroydS.BattR.ThompsonP.TolbertP. S. (Eds.) The Oxford handbook of work and organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
61.
McSweeneyB. (2008). Maximising shareholder value: A panacea for economic growth or a recipe for economic and social disintegration?Critical Perspectives on International Business, 51–74.
62.
MontgomerieJ.WilliamsK. (2009). Financialized capitalism: After the crisis and beyond neoliberalism. Competition and Change, 13, 99–107.
NeefD. (Ed.) (1999). The knowledge economy. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
65.
NonakaI. (1991). The knowledge-creating company. Harvard Business Review, 69, 96–104.
66.
O’SullivanM. (2000). Contests for corporate control: corporate governance and economic performance in the US and Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
67.
OECD (1996). The knowledge-based economy. Paris: OECD.
68.
PearceF.WoodiwissT. (2001). Reading Foucault as a realist. In LopezJ.PotterG. (Eds.) After postmodernism: an introduction to critical realism. London: Athlone Press.
69.
PetersM. (2001). National education policy constructions of the ‘knowledge economy’: Towards a critique. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 2, 1–22.
70.
PhillipsN.HardyC. (2002). Discourse analysis: investigating processes of social construction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
71.
ReedM. (2000). The limits of discourse analysis in organisational analysis. Organization, 7, 524–530.
72.
ReichR. (1991). The work of nations. London: Simon & Schuster.
73.
RobertsP. (2004). Neo-liberalism, knowledge and inclusiveness. Policy Futures in Education, 2, 350–364.
74.
RugglesR. (1998). The state of the notion: Knowledge management in practice. California Management Review, 40, 80–89.
75.
ScarbroughH.SwanJ. (2001). Explaining the diffusion of knowledge management: The role of fashion. British Journal of Management, 12, 3–12.
76.
Scottish Enterprise Network (1999). The network strategy. Glasgow: Scottish Enterprise.
ThompsonN. (2002). Left in the wilderness: the political economy of British democratic socialism since 1979. Chesham, UK: Acumen Publishing.
81.
ThompsonP. (2003). Disconnected capitalism: Or why employers can’t keep their side of the bargain. Work, Employment & Society, 17, 359–378.
82.
ThompsonP. (2004). Brands, boundaries and bandwagons: A critical reflection on critical management studies. In FleetwoodS.AckroydS. (Eds.) Critical realism in action in organisation and management studies (pp. 54–70). London: Routledge.
83.
ThompsonP.VincentS. (2010). Labour process theory and critical realism. In ThompsonP.SmithC. (Eds.) Working life: renewing labour process analysis (pp. 47–69). London: Palgrave.
84.
ThompsonP.WarhurstC.CallaghanG. (2001). Ignorant theory and knowledgeable workers: Interrogating the connections between knowledge, skills and services. Journal of Management Studies, 38, 923–942.
85.
WarhurstC.ThompsonP. (2006). Mapping knowledge in work: Proxies or practices?Work, Employment & Society, 20, 787–800.
86.
WebsterF. (2002). Theories of the information society (2nd edn.). London: Routledge.
87.
WilliamsK. (2000). From shareholder value to present-day capitalism. Economy and Society, 29, 1–12.
88.
WillmottH. (2010). Creating ‘value’ beyond the point of production: Branding, financialization and market capitalization. Organization, 17, 517–542.
89.
World Bank (2002). Building knowledge economies: opportunities and challenges for EU accession countries. Paris: World Bank.
