A Context-sensitive Approach to Analysing Talk in Strategy Meetings

Clarke, Ian and Kwon, Winston and Wodak, Ruth (2011) A Context-sensitive Approach to Analysing Talk in Strategy Meetings. British Journal of Management, 23 (4). pp. 455-473. ISSN 1045-3172

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Abstract

The talk of managers in meetings is central to organizational life and crucial to research in strategic management, as well as managerial and organizational cognition, sensemaking and decision-making. To achieve full understanding, both the text and the context of discussion require systematic analysis, but most approaches treat context as everything that is known and observed beyond the immediate text. This obscures different readings of the text of meetings. To resolve this problem, the discourse historical approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis is outlined as a framework within which researchers can analyse the text and context of talk in meetings. The primary contribution of this paper is to isolate four ‘levels of context’ as a heuristic framework within which discursive practices, strategies and texts can be located. By making explicit the levels of contextual analysis that are implicit in other methods, and illustrating the DHA using an episode of strategic discussion from a multinational company, this paper shows how researchers can use the approach to analyse the naturally occurring talk of senior managers in meetings, which is arguably the most important but yet under-explored venue for strategizing.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
British Journal of Management
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1400
Subjects:
?? business, management and accounting(all)strategy and managementmanagement of technology and innovation ??
ID Code:
50369
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
13 Oct 2011 09:05
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
10 Dec 2023 01:35