Dear Colleagues,
It's my honor and pleasure to inform you that the first issue of M@n@gement
is now available on-line.
It features an article on organizational change and discourse, by Christian
De Cock (see the abstract below).
To download the full text of the article, just point your browser at:
<http://www.dmsp.dauphine.fr/management/>
To read the article, you'll need Acrobat Reader, which is available for
free from Adobe at <http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html>
Please let me know if you face any difficulty.
Enjoy the article!
Cordially,
Bernard Forgues, Editor
De Cock, Christian 1998
Organisational Change and Discourse: Hegemony, Resistance and Reconstitution,
M@n@gement, 1, 1, 1-24.
Abstract
The article considers the discourse surrounding culture change programmes
in two British manufacturing organisations. The analysis of organisational
discourse is pursued as a means of revealing the indeterminacy of
organisational experiences and the problems inherent to the introduction
of generic change approaches such as TQM (Total Quality Management) and
BPR (Business Process Reengineering). An examination of the discourse used
in the case companies will show an intricate set of structural, cultural,
economic, and personal pressures passing through the TQM/BPR concepts.
Organisational actors from all hierarchical levels are shown to be
"disciplined" by the change discourse to various degrees. Three discursive
movements are examined: the imposition/ introduction of a hegemonic
discourse, the resistance to this discourse, and the appropriation of the
discourse by line managers to reconstitute their actions and those of
senior management. The outcome of these movements is a contested set of
stories, full of contradiction and ambiguity. If the change discourse is
to be embodied in local practices it cannot remain purely monologic, but
has to engage in a dialogic relationship with existing and emerging
concepts and meanings.
M@n@gement An International Electronic
Scholarly Journal
DMSP Research Center
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