ABSTRACT
The analysis we present in this chapter is predicated on the assumption that management is accomplished as an ongoing conversation. It is, however, a conversation of a special kind, because the people who participate in it are corporate spokespersons, each of whom is the voice, in management councils, for the many absent conversations that compose the organization as a whole (Boden, 1994), and where its actual work gets done. We term this domain of managerial talk a metaconversation, because it is a conversation (that of management) that generates accounts about other conversations (those of the multiple communities of practice that make up the organization), all now being given a voice (however authentic the translation is) by their representatives in the managerial metaconversation. The ultimate corporate spokesperson, namely the individual who is authorized to speak for the entire organizational community as a single entity, is the president, or chief executive officer. Mr. Sam is the one individual in the filmed discussion at Palomino Lodge who is authorized to speak as the official voice of the organization as a whole. He thus stands in a special relationship with all the other conversations, including that of management, because he is the titular head of the company. He is thus the person who is entitled to speak for the organization in conversations extending beyond its boundaries, with banks, governments and the like.
