What is the role of contradiction in organizational rhetoric? This article argues that existing research tends to focus on contradiction at an institutional level and then develop a distinct but complementary perspective that views contradictory rhetoric at an interactional level and as a practical concern, especially when routine is disrupted and repair tactics are required. Drawing on data from a study of a quality improvement initiative in the United Kingdom, the authors examine the contradictions that were constructed when a “change champion” attempted to deal with resistance to change. They conclude by depicting how contradiction can emerge when actors reflexively shift their identifications to portray themselves and their actions in a contextually appropriate manner.
Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (2002). Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39(5), 619-644.
2.
Amit, V. (2000). Introduction: Constructing the field. In V. Amit (Ed.), Constructing the field: Ethnographic fieldwork in the contemporary world (pp. 1-18). London : Routledge.
3.
Austin, J.L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
4.
Barley, S.R., & Tolbert, P.S. (1997). Institutionalization and structuration: Studying the links between action and institution. Organization Studies , 18(1), 93-117.
5.
Bergström, O., & Knights, D. (2006). Organizational discourse and subjectivity: Subjectification during processes of recruitment. Human Relations, 59(3), 351-377.
6.
Billig, M. (1996). Arguing and thinking: A rhetorical approach to social psychology (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
7.
Boden, D. (1994). The business of talk. Cambridge , UK: Polity Press.
8.
Bourdieu, P. (1992). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
9.
Brimeyer, T.M., Eaker, A.V., Clair, R.P. (2004). Rhetorical strategies in union organizing: A case of labor versus management. Management Communication Quarterly , 18, 45-75.
10.
Bryman, A. (1988). Quantity and quality in social research. London: Routledge.
11.
Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley : University of California Press.
12.
Carter, C., & Mueller, F. (2002). The "long march" of the management modernisers: Ritual, rhetoric and rationality. Human Relations, 55(11), 1325-1354.
13.
Case, P. (1999). Remember re-engineering? The rhetorical appeal of a managerial salvation device. Journal of Management Studies , 36(4), 419-441.
14.
Castor, T.R. (2005). Constructing social reality in organizational decision making: Account vocabularies in a diversity discussion. Management Communication Quarterly, 18, 479-508.
15.
Cheney, G. (1983). The rhetoric of identification and the study of organizational communication. Quarterly Journal of Speech , 69, 143-158.
16.
Cheney, G. (2000). Thinking differently about organizational communication: Why, how, and where?Management Communication Quarterly, 14, 132-141.
17.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
18.
Elsbach, K.D. (2002). Intraorganizational institutions. In J. A. C. Baum (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to organizations (pp. 37-57). Oxford, UK: Blackwell .
19.
Faber, B. (2003). Creating rhetorical stability in corporate university discourse. Written Communication, 20(4), 391-425.
20.
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
21.
Fairhurst, G.T. (1993). Echoes of the vision: When the rest of the organization talks total quality. Management Communication Quarterly, 6, 331-371.
22.
Fairhurst, G.T., Cooren, F., & Cahill, D.J. (2002). Discursiveness, contradiction, and unintended consequences in successive downsizings. Management Communication Quarterly, 15, 501-540.
23.
Fairhurst, G.T., & Wendt, R.F. (1993). The gap in total quality: A commentary. Management Communication Quarterly, 6, 441-451.
24.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
25.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
26.
Gilbert, G.N., & Mulkay, M. (1984). Opening Pandora's box: A sociological analysis of scientists discourse. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
27.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
28.
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York: Basic Books.
29.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper .
30.
Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (1995). Ethnography: Principles in practice (2nd ed.). London: Routledge .
31.
Hatch, M.J. (1997). Irony and the social construction of contradiction in the humor of a management team. Organization Science, 8(3), 275-288.
32.
Heracleous, L., & Barrett, M. (2001). Organizational change as discourse: Communicative actions and deep structures in the context of information technology implementation . Academy of Management Journal, 44, 755-779.
33.
Hewitt, J.P., & Stokes, R. (1975). Disclaimers. American Sociological Review, 40(1), 1-11.
34.
Holt, R. (2006). Rhetoric and the moral character of managers. Human Relations, 59(12), 1-22.
35.
Hyland, K. (1996). Writing without conviction? Hedging in science research articles. Applied Linguistics, 17(4), 433-454.
36.
Katz, S.M. (1998). A newcomer gains power: An analysis of the role of rhetorical expertise. Journal of Business Communication , 35(4), 419-442.
37.
Keenoy, T., Oswick, C., & Grant, D. (2003). The edge of metaphor. Academy of Management Review, 28(2), 191-192.
38.
Knights, D., & McCabe, D. (1997). "How would you measure something like that?": Quality in a retail bank. Journal of Management Studies, 34, 371-388.
39.
Knights, D., & Morgan, G. (1991). Corporate strategy, organizations, and subjectivity: A critique. Organization Studies, 12(2), 251-273.
40.
Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Chichester, UK: Princeton University Press.
41.
Martin, D.M. (2004). Humor in middle management: Women negotiating the paradoxes of organizational life. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 32(2), 119-146.
42.
McGuire, T., Dougherty, D., & Atkinson, J. (2006). "Paradoxing the dialectic": The impact of patients' sexual harassment in the discursive construction of nurses' caregiving roles . Management Communication Quarterly, 19, 416-450.
43.
Meyer, P.G. (1997). Hedging strategies in written academic discourse: Strengthening the argument by weakening the claim. In R. Markkanen & H. Schroder (Eds.), Hedging and discourse (pp. 21-42). New York: de Gruyter.
44.
Misztal, B.A. (2001). Normality and trust in Goffman's theory of interaction order. Sociological Theory, 19(3), 312-324.
45.
Mueller, F., & Carter, C. (2005). The scripting of total quality management within its organizational biography. Organization Studies, 26(2), 219-245.
46.
Nelsen, B.J., & Barley, S.R. (1997). For love or money? Commodification and the construction of an occupational mandate. Administrative Science Quarterly , 42(4), 619-653.
47.
Orlikowski, W. (2000). Using technology and constituting structures: A practice lens for studying technology in organizations. Organization Science, 11(4), 404-428.
48.
Oswick, C., Keenoy, T., & Grant, D. (2002). Metaphors and analogical reasoning in organization theory: Beyond orthodoxy. Academy of Management Review, 27(2), 294-303.
49.
Phillips, N., Lawrence, T.B., & Hardy, C. (2004). Discourse and institutions. Academy of Management Review, 29(4), 635-652.
50.
Potter, J. (1996). Representing reality: Discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London: Sage .
51.
Potter, J. (2003). Discursive psychology: Between method and paradigm . Discourse & Society, 14, 783-794
52.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London: Sage.
53.
Potter, J., Wetherell, M., Gill, R., & Edwards, D. (1990). Discourse: Noun, verb or social practice? Philosophical Psychology, 3(2), 205-217.
54.
Pratt, M.G. (2000). The good, the bad, and the ambivalent: Managing identification among Amway distributors. Administrative Science Quarterly, 45(3), 456-493.
55.
Putnam, L. (2004). Dialectic tensions and rhetorical tropes in organizations . Organization Studies, 25(1), 35-53.
56.
Putnam, L.L., Grant, D., Michelson, G., & Cutcher, L. (2005). Discourse and resistance: Targets, practices, and consequences. Management Communication Quarterly, 19, 5-18.
57.
Samra-Fredericks, D. (2003). Strategizing as lived experience and strategists' everyday efforts to shape strategic direction. Journal of Management Studies, 40(1), 141-174.
58.
Scott, M., & Lyman, S. (1968). Accounts. American Sociological Review, 33(1), 46-62.
59.
Searle, J.R. (1979). Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
60.
Shotter, J. (1993). Conversational realities: Constructing life through language. London: Sage.
61.
Shotter, J. (2005). "Inside the moment of managing": Wittgenstein and the everyday dynamics of our expressive-responsive activities. Organization Studies, 26(1), 113-135.
62.
Sillince, J.A.A. (2006). Resources and organizational identities: The role of rhetoric in the creation of competitive advantage. Management Communication Quarterly, 20, 186-212.
63.
Sillince, J., & Mueller, F. (2007). Switching strategic perspective: The reframing of accounts of responsibility. Organization Studies, 28(2), 155-176
64.
Silverman, D. (1993). Interpreting qualitative data. London: Sage.
65.
Smith, F.L., & Keyton, J. (2001). Organizational storytelling: Metaphors for relational power and identity struggles. Management Communication Quarterly , 15, 149-182.
66.
Stohl, C., & Cheney, G. (2001). Participatory processes/paradoxical practices: Communication and the dilemmas of organizational democracy. Management Communication Quarterly, 14, 349-407.
67.
Suddaby, R., & Greenwood, R. (2005). Rhetorical strategies of legitimacy. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50(1), 35-67.
68.
Tracy, S.J. (2004). Dialectic, contradiction, or double bind? Analyzing and theorizing employee reactions to organizational tension. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 32(2), 119-146.
69.
Trethewey, A., & Ashcraft, K.L. (2004). Practicing disorganization: The development of applied perspectives on living with tension. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 32, 81-88.
70.
Trowler, P. (2001). Captured by the discourse? The socially constitutive power of new higher education discourse in the UK. Organization , 8(2), 183-201.
71.
Tsoukas, H. (2004). Complex knowledge: Studies in organizational epistemology . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
72.
Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
73.
Watson, T. (1995). Rhetoric, discourse and argument in organizational sense making: A reflexive tale. Organization Studies, 16(5), 805-821.
74.
Westenholz, A. (1993). Paradoxical thinking and change in the frames of reference. Organization Studies, 14, 37-58
75.
Wetherell, M., Stiven, H., & Potter, J. (1987). Unequal egalitarianism: A preliminary study of discourses concerning gender and employment opportunities. British Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 59-71.
76.
Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
77.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969). Philosophical grammar. Oxford , UK: Basil Blackwell.
78.
Zanoni, P., & Janssens, M. (2003). Deconstructing difference: The rhetoric of human resource managers' diversity discourses. Organization Studies , 25, 55-74.
79.
Zbaracki, M.J. (1998). The rhetoric and reality of total quality management . Administrative Science Quarterly, 43(3), 602-636.
