ABSTRACT
The study of discourse as it occurs in organizational settings has become a central feature of the study of organizations. The interest is of little surprise. As Mumby and Clair (1997) demonstrate, “organizations only exist in so far as their members create them through discourse. This is not to claim that organizations are ‘nothing but’ discourse, but rather that discourse is the principle means by which organizational members create a coherent social reality that frames their sense of who they are” (p. 181). This volume at best only displays a small portion of the rapidly growing body of literature on organizational discourse with a multitude of different methods and objectives (see. e.g., Grant, Hardy, Oswick, & Putnam, 2004). We approach this task from the general orientation of critical scholarship in organization studies focusing on talk, and the Mr. Sam text specifically, with regard to the normative communication practice and the political nature of texts in organizational life (see Alvesson & Deetz, 2000; Broadfoot, Deetz, & Anderson, 2004; Mumby, 2004).
