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Although we have seen a growing interest in participatory strategy-making, there is a paucity of knowledge about the role of polyphony and how it may be orchestrated. Our longitudinal analysis of a revealing case shows how narrative strategy-making unfolded in four temporally overlapping phases: First, a top-down effort to lead participatory strategy-making resulted in polyphony, which was nevertheless largely controlled from the top. Second, it was followed by autonomous narrative strategy-making in units, leading to polyphony that was less but still partly controlled from the top. Third, all this triggered an emergence of counternarratives offering alternatives to the overall narrative, thus generating 'genuine' polyphony not controlled from the top. Fourth, partly as a response, top decision-makers launched an update, again seizing more control in polyphony. Thus, our study advances prior research by elucidating how orchestration of participatory strategy-making both generates and reduces polyphony. By so doing, our analysis helps us to move from a dichotomous view of participation and openness towards a more nuanced appreciation of alternative voices and how they may or may not emerge or be controlled in strategy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a complete analysis of the various rhetorical struggles, legitimate strategies and dynamics that are adopted by an organization during different negotiations. The significance of rhetoric in legitimation is highlighted.

The process of reorganization and restructuring in industrial organizations and their legalization is examined by focusing pulp and paper industry.

Abstract This article concentrates on the discursive construction of success and failure in narratives of post-merger integration. Drawing on extensive interview material from eight Finnish-Swedish mergers and acquisitions, the empirical [...]

While studies on international management have focused on cultural differences and examined institutional specificities in various national business systems, conceptions of international relations have been left relatively underexplored. We argue that representations of international relations are relevant to international M&As and contend that intertextuality offers a novel approach to examine these relational features of international management. Our analysis focuses on Sino–US relations in the context of the acquisition of American IBM’s Personal Computer Division (PCD) by the Chinese company, Lenovo. We demonstrate the ways in which facets of international relations are produced in media accounts of this acquisition, and analyse the intertextual dynamics entwined with their production. The analysis consists of three sections: constitutive intertextuality, manifest intertextuality and intertextual ideological undercurrents. These illustrate the variation in producing international relations through discursive themes (threat to security/peaceful rise), emotion rhetoric (fear/cheer) and ideology (cold war/globalism). In summary, the paper elucidates the ways in which international M&As are immersed in a seascape of intertextual international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]