ABSTRACT
In response to the recent calls from strategy research to focus on the processual aspects of strategic actions in real life and based on a downsizing process in a large public organization, the chapter seeks to better understand the role of multi- and univocality in the pursuit to reach a strategic decision about downsizing. In specific, the chapter shows how managers during polyphonic communication processes where managerial authority, power, and differing interests are at stake balance multiple voices. Based on a micro-ethnographic approach, the study illustrates how discursive, micro-level practices like idiomatic formulations can play a decisive role in accomplishing a position of authority that in consequence allows the speaker to direct or re-direct the ongoing discussion about strategic decisions. Authority here is not a stable, pre-assigned position that can be employed strategically in the interaction. Instead, the study reveals that authority as a way to control future actions is accomplished by means of locally situated discursive practices in form of idiomatic formulations. Moreover, the chapter contributes methodologically to the growing research on micro-foundations of authority by demonstrating the usefulness of video-based micro-ethnography to advance our understanding of the relationship between the interactional establishment of authority, the reliance on idiomatic formulations, and the dynamics between multivocality and univocality.
