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Despite the rapid growth of research on organizational sensemaking and an acknowledgment of the critical role of language in the sensemaking process, the literature on sensemaking and language is fragmented. In particular, there is no systematic review that explains the roles and functions of different linguistic elements in meaning construction. The purpose of this review paper is to develop an integrative theoretical framework that organizes existing research in a way that allows us to better understand how different linguistic processes shape the construction of meaning in sensemaking. First, we explain how a cognitive linguistic perspective elucidates how language provides the cognitive associations, schema, and frames used in sensemaking. Second, we discuss how a focus on the social practices of language use, as in rhetorical, narrative, or interactionist approaches, illuminates the patterns of meaning-making among organizational members in social interaction. Third, we explain how a focus on discourse helps us to understand how discursive structures enable or constrain sensemaking and thereby reproduce or transform systems of thought. This leads us to turn to the differences in these perspectives and suggest how they can be brought together in an integrative theoretical framework. Finally, we discuss the contributions of our framework and propose an agenda for future research focusing on the multifaceted role of language in sensemaking, intertextual and multimodal links in the language of sensemaking, the agentic and structural role of language in sensemaking, episodic and latent aspects of language use in sensemaking, and the role of power in discursive sensemaking.

Previous research on knowledge work has started to explore how organizational actors deal with pragmatic boundaries that arise from their different interests, priorities, and viewpoints. Material objects, such as visual artifacts, can be used to shape and manipulate pragmatic boundaries, but our understanding of these dynamics is only partial. In this paper, we maintain that focusing on the uses of visual artifacts offers an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the political aspects of knowledge work. To this end, we conducted a practice-based study of an architectural project in which the building design became contested. Our empirical analysis reveals four practices in which visual artifacts are used to deal with pragmatic boundaries: surfacing, bridging, preventing, and minimizing. Through these practices, organizational actors can make boundaries more or less visible with important implications on their power relations and the project at hand. The main contribution of our study is to advance understanding of the political dynamics in knowledge work by revealing how visual artifacts can be used to manipulate pragmatic boundaries. By so doing, our analysis also helps to move the conversation on visual artifacts beyond their role as epistemic objects that sustain (or hinder) knowledge work.

This Element presents and discusses the main trajectories in the evolution of the concept of ambiguity and the most relevant theoretical contributions developed around it. It specifically elaborates on both the intrinsic perspectives on ambiguity as an inherent part of organizational decision-making processes and the more recent strategic perspectives on discursively constructed strategic ambiguity. It helps illuminate the path ahead of organizational scholars and offers new avenues for future research. This is important given the ever more pervasive presence of ambiguity in and around organizations and societies.

Despite a growing interest in power in sensemaking, our understanding of how power is linked with language is still theoretically underdeveloped. To this end, we develop a critical discursive perspective on sensemaking comprised of a three-part theoretical framework that elucidates the discursive underpinnings of power in organisational sensemaking. We first explain how discursive practices are used to turn cues into meaning. We then conceptualize how power operates within three layers of discursive practices: discursive strategies, genres, and discourses. This leads us to explain how the resulting sense can be conceptualized as common sense, new sense, or non-sense. The main contribution of this paper is to help us understand how discursive practices underpin the operation of power in organisational sensemaking, thus adding a missing piece to sensemaking research. Our discursive analysis also advances understanding of the role of language in sensemaking more generally, has methodological implications for sensemaking research, and helps to move critical discourse studies forward in organisational contexts.

Research Summary The purpose of this introduction to the SMS collection is to take stock of advances in language-based analyses of strategic processes and practices with an eye on the theoretical and methodological insights and opportunities. After a review of the articles included, we develop a framework that identifies four perspectives ranging from the more micro to the macro: (a) microlevel conceptual basis of strategy discourse, (b) use of language in strategy work processes in their socio-material and multimodal contexts, (c) use of language and especially narratives in long-term processes of strategic change, and (d) the rhetorical and discursive reconstruction of organizational strategies in their historical contexts. We then move on to offer a set of research opportunities and questions to form an agenda for future research. Managerial Summary This article takes stock of recent research on the role of language and communication in strategic decision-making and strategy work. The key argument is that we should not treat language merely as a window into other aspects of strategic phenomena but as a central means through which strategies are shaped and made sense of. The paper underscores that language use is a crucial part of strategy work and strategic change—to be taken seriously in its own right in research as well as practice. Another key point is that we need to develop better understanding of the new communication technologies and media that play a key role in contemporary organizations. The new theoretical ideas and methods may also inspire practitioners to develop their communication practices.

While in the past, perspectives that focus on language and communication have perhaps not received the attention they deserve in the mainstream literature in strategy and organization, interest in this area has been growing in recent years. The present essay serves to introduce a collection of insightful papers (independently submitted and reviewed, but brought together in this themed issue) that offer an opportunity to reflect on the contributions of a rich variety of research perspectives on communication to research in strategic organization. Building on the seven contributions featured in this issue, we show how communicative perspectives speak to questions of the who, how, what, and what then, of strategy. We then discuss dualisms that underpin research on strategic organization adopting a communicative lens and propose directions for future work that might bridge these divides.

Despite a proliferation of research on legitimacy, the ‘grey area’ that lies between legitimacy and illegitimacy remains undertheorized. Responding to calls for further research, we clarify the construct of legitimacy and extend legitimacy theory by providing a conceptual framework for analyzing the legitimacy-illegitimacy continuum. First, we propose three novel legitimacy states between legitimacy and illegitimacy – conditional legitimacy, unknown legitimacy, and conditional illegitimacy – and elaborate on the distinct qualitative characteristics of the five legitimacy states. Second, we offer a model of the dynamics of legitimacy state change and the (in)stability of the issue-specific reference framework that is used to judge them. Third, we explain how our legitimacy states bridge the research streams on legitimacy judgment formation and legitimation strategies. By doing so, we integrate these research streams and enumerate discursive strategies for each state. Our article contributes to a more robust understanding of both how legitimacy states can be conceptualized and analyzed in future research and how they can be dealt with in managerial practice.

Strategy-as-practice (SAP) has become one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary strategy research in the past two decades. As the field has grown significantly, we have witnessed an emergence of distinct streams of research within the SAP research community. Thus, it is time to take stock of this body of work to better understand the structure of the field and provide a refreshed agenda for future research. Our review is based on bibliometric analysis and a systematic review of 340 articles. As a result, we identify the following six clusters of research: praxis, sensemaking, discourse, sociomateriality, institutional and process. Co-citation analysis shows significant disconnects between some of these clusters. Building on our review, we identify various ‘crossing strategies’ for connecting across four disconnects: (i) micro and macro; (ii) sociomaterial and discourse; (iii) critical and more mainstream; and (iv) practice and process perspectives. By harnessing diversity, these crossing strategies suggest rich agendas for future SAP research, ranging from digitalization to gender inequality.

Successful post-acquisition integration hinges on combining hard and soft integration, but insights into how this can be done are scarce. We develop a dynamic model of post-acquisition integration through an in-depth inductive study of a cross-border acquisition. Our model illustrates that the combination of hard and soft integration decisions sets in motion intergroup interaction processes that influence both the realization of synergies and collaborative intentions. Our study advances the M&A literature by elucidating how hard and soft integration dynamically interact in their effects on post-acquisition integration outcomes. In doing so, we respond to the call for more research on the temporal nature of integration processes. Finally, we reveal that a singular or monolithic approach to post-acquisition integration is unlikely given that different units are likely to have different integration needs depending on their degrees of interdependence and autonomy.

The Covid‐19 crisis makes the study of languages in management even more relevant and timely than before the crisis. This “black and brown epidemic,” as Joseph Betancourt from Massachusetts General Hospital called it, brings to the fore social divisions and hardship, accelerating and magnifying processes and practices of linguistic inequality with fatal consequences (Goldberg, 2020).

This study examines how pluralistic organizations confronting fundamental differences in values can proceed with strategic change. By drawing on a longitudinal case analysis of strategic change in a Nordic city organization, we show how the proponents and challengers play a “rhetorical game” in which they simultaneously promote their own value-based interests and ideas and seek ways to enable change. In particular, we identify a pattern in which the discussion moved from initial contestation through gradual convergence to increasing agreement. In addition, we elaborate on four rhetorical practices used in this rhetorical game: voicing own arguments, appropriation of others’ arguments, consensus argumentation, and collective we argumentation. By so doing, our study contributes to research on strategic change in pluralistic organizations by offering a nuanced account of the use of rhetoric when moving from contestation to convergence and partial agreement. Furthermore, by detailing specific types of rhetorical practices that play a crucial role in strategy making, our study advances research on the role of rhetoric in strategy process and practice research more generally.

There is a paucity of knowledge of one key aspect of diversity in and around international organizations: national identity. This is especially the case with research on multinational corporations (MNC) that has focused on cultural differences instead of processes of national identification or national identity construction. Drawing on a critical discursive approach, this paper offers four perspectives that can help to advance this area of research. First, MNCs can be viewed as sites of identity politics, within which one can study ‘us vs. them’ constructions and the reproduction of inequalities. Second, MNCs can be seen as actors engaged in identity building and legitimation, and the analysis of the discursive dynamics involved illuminates important aspects of identity politics between the organization and its environment. Third, MNCs can be viewed as part of international relations between nations and nationalities, and analysis of discursive dynamics in the media can elucidate key aspects of the international struggles encountered. Fourth, MNCs can be seen as agents of broader issues and changes, which enables us to comprehend how MNCs advance neocolonialism or promote positive change in society.

Entrepreneurship research has long been interested in the emergence of new business activities in various geographical and institutional contexts. However, these studies have largely focused on market and transition economies at the expense of planned economies. To address this limitation, our study focuses on an extreme case: how people envision their entrepreneurial engagement in North Korea. Drawing on prospective entrepreneurial narratives by North Korean university students, our empirical analysis identifies and elaborates four types of narratives envisioning entrepreneurial engagement: economic patriotism, industrious collectivism, individualistic heroism, and personal dreamwork. We show how types of prospective entrepreneurial engagement reflect different motivations and development goals, and how they align with, or deviate from, the dominant institutional discourse in a rigidly planned economy. In conclusion, we advance entrepreneurship research by introducing new ways of studying and theorising prospective entrepreneurial engagement under extreme institutional constraints.

https://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12452 A growing interest in the study of discourses has spread in management research, but so far, it has mostly relied on in-depth qualitative analyses of textual material. With the increasing availability of large textual data, several challenges arise. This paper offers a mixed-methods approach to integrate critical discourse analysis with structural topic modeling to turn these challenges into valuable opportunities. We argue that combining both approaches overcomes their limitations and provides great potential for exploring phenomena that matter in our mediatized society. Based on an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we develop a stepwise model that provides practical and theoretical guidance to conduct a critical analysis of large textual data. Our illustrative example focuses on the discursive legitimation struggles around the tobacco industry. We demonstrate how an integrated mixed-methods approach allows capturing the breadth and depth of discourses used by different actors in the tobacco debates.

Strategy process research has yielded a richer understanding of the emergence of strategies from throughout the organization and over extended periods of time; strategy-as-practice research has helped us understand the range of actors involved in strategy and the tools they draw on in their strategy work. The purpose of this chapter is to encourage research that combines insights from these two traditions. First, the chapter offers brief overviews of process and practice research. Then, the chapter reviews the most recent work from 2018 onward. Most of the text, however, goes to discussing future research that combines process and practice perspectives and that focuses on four themes: temporality and spatiality, actors and agency, cognition and emotionality, and language and meaning. These themes are woven together by two “red threads”—strategy digitalization and strategy inclusion—that we expect will have significant impact on strategy formation.

Few topics have received as much recent attention from researchers across disciplines, practitioners, policymakers, and popular media as “big data”. Yet, from our experiences on the Academy of Management Journal editorial team, we believe a great deal of ambiguity and even confusion still prevails around key questions such as: What does big data encompass? Does big data mean the end of theory? In what ways does big data research differ from conventional scientific methods of inquiry in management research? What does it take to publish a big data study in management journals?

Strategy process and practice research has illuminated the internal dynamics of strategy work – at the cost of backgrounding processes and practices that relate to engagement with external actors. In this conceptual paper, we argue for an extension of this body of work by shifting the locus of research from internal practices and processes towards externally oriented practices of engagement. We do so by critically building on the military strategy literature and develop the concept of strategy as engagement. This concept suggests understanding the role of strategy as bridge between policy and tactics; the importance of grand strategy as the making of policy; and the need to focus attention on tactics as distributed and collective action. The aim of the paper is to rejuvenate strategy process and practice research through 1) extending its repertoire to practices of engagement and 2) broadening its epistemic foundation through a critical reading of military strategy.

By focusing on individual settlements rather than viewing them as part of a trajectory of change, prior research on institutional settlements has not fully captured the dynamics of longer-term institutional change. This is especially useful to better understand progressive legitimation dynamics; in other words, how successive settlements may increase legitimacy in a long-term trajectory of change. We argue this is a crucial issue for peripheral actors lacking the resources, status, or power of more central ones. Our historical analysis focuses on the long-term struggle of the Cree First Nation in Canada and explains how they succeeded in increasing their dispositional legitimacy in and through the settlements. This required work in three interrelated processes: expansive argumentation including problematizing of the state of affairs and creating discursive resonance with the prevailing discourses and values, building momentum by generating attention and exerting pressure in networks of actors, and seizing opportunities to negotiate with the other side. We challenge previous research on settlements by elucidating how they should not be merely seen as endpoints but rather as stepping-stones in a trajectory of institutional change. More specifically, we develop a process model explaining how progressive legitimation unfolds in a series of settlements.\ud \ud

Irony and humor play an important role in both organizing and organizations, because they both help to collide and contrast ideas as well as mitigate and moderate criticism. Our empirical observations of a senior management team suggest participants frequently use verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor through 'ironic personae' - a cast of characters, real or imaginary - as a vehicle for pragmatically making sense of complicated topics. We show how ironic personae perform three functions: (i) testing new positions on topics in a non-committal way; (ii) stretching the frame of comparison of a group; and (iii) aligning shared understanding and commitment. Thus, our analysis sheds light on an underexplored and undertheorised aspect of irony that serves as a pragmatic vehicle for the expression of humorous verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor.

International audience; This paper marks a departure from the focus on external stakeholders in much research on legitimacy and multinational corporations, adopting a social psychological approach to study how MNCs build internal legitimacy for controversial decisions with their subsidiaries. We explore this through a longitudinal, real-time qualitative case study of a regional office relocation, since office relocations represent rare yet significant strategic decisions. We analyze the interplay between the legitimation strategies of senior managers and subsidiary legitimacy judgments, based in instrumental, relational, and moral considerations, and how the relationship between the two develops over time. From this analysis, we derive inductively a process model that reveals the dynamics of building internal legitimacy with subsidiaries, and how an MNC moves on even in the absence of full legitimacy, when dealing with controversial MNC decisions. The model highlights two important dynamics. The first is a dynamic between legitimation strategies and legitimacy judgments and how this is influenced by local subsidiary contexts. The second is a temporal dynamic in how both the legitimation strategies and legitimacy judgments evolve over time. Our model contributes to research on legitimacy in MNCs, what we know about tensions that characterize MNC–subunit relationships, and research on headquarters relocation.

The paper advances our understanding of managerial identity work in the context of HQ–subsidiary relations. We argue that a key part of this identity work is related to cultural stereotypes. On the basis of an analysis of two Finland-based MNCs operating in Russia, the paper elucidates three forms of stereotype-based identity work with enabling or constraining power implications. The first form, stereotypical talk, refers to identity work whereby managers enact their stereotypical conceptions of ‘the other’ to bolster their self-image and ‘inferiorize’ ‘the other’. The second form, reactive talk, is identity work that emerges as a reaction to stereotypical talk whereby managers aim at renegotiating the proposed social arrangement for their own benefit. Finally, the third form, self-reflexive talk, refers to identity work whereby managers attempt to go beyond the social arrangement produced through stereotypical and reactive talk by distancing themselves in a self-reflexive manner from essentialist cultural conceptions. Overall, the paper offers an initial attempt to elucidate how stereotype-based identity work is used to justify or resist existing power structures and power asymmetries in HQ–subsidiary relations within the MNC.

Irony is an effective means of dealing with controversy in organizations, but there is a paucity of knowledge of the various ways in which irony helps managers to do so without necessarily ‘solving’ those issues. By drawing on discursive incongruity theory, we examine the use of irony when managers are confronted with controversial issues in a multinational company. As a result, we identify and elaborate on four distinctively different pathways of how irony helps participants to move on: ‘acquiescing’ (framing understanding as having no alternative because of environmental constraints), ‘empowering’ (synthesizing a view through broad inputs from different individuals), ‘channelling’ (subsuming other interpretations under a single and often dominant view) and ‘dismissing’ (rejecting alternative interpretations and often reinforcing the status quo). On this basis, we develop a theoretical model that elucidates the process dynamics in dealing with and moving on with controversial issues and elaborates the specific characteristics of each of these four pathways. Our analysis also leads to a fuller understanding of the discursive underpinnings and intersubjective dynamics in irony use in organizations.

In spite of an increasing interest in ambiguity, our knowledge of how organizations maintain strategic ambiguity to protect themselves from public scrutiny is still in its infancy. Through an in-depth historical study of the Sicilian Mafia between 1963 and 2018, we develop a model of strategic ambiguity maintenance. We focus on three struggles between the Mafia and state representatives and show how they centered on different types of ambiguity: ambiguity as opacity, equivocality and absurdity. We elaborate on the strategies enacted by the Mafia and the responses by state representatives and their implications for ambiguity over time. The main contribution of our paper is that it advances understanding of the maintenance of strategic ambiguity by organizations that need to protect themselves from public scrutiny. More specifically, it enriches understanding of the key process dynamics, the type of struggles, and the discursive and non-discursive strategies employed in the process. Our analysis also extends research on clandestine organizations and illuminates the relationship between (strategic) ambiguity and secrecy.

doi: 10.1111/joms.12561 We argue that in order to overcome the reductionism and essentialism in institutional theory there is a need to acknowledge that institutions and social actors are co-constitutive and co-constructed in processes of communication. We elaborate this argument by drawing on the phenomenological foundation of institutional theory and point to promising areas of future research: the multimodal nature of institutions, the mediated and mediatized character of modern communication, and the contestedness of all social orders and their legitimation.

This paper elucidates the political dynamics of organizational identity breach and reconstruc-tion. Drawing on the revealing case of UNICEF Germany, we develop a process model of four phases of identity breach and reconstruction: build-up of identity tensions, revelation of identi-ty breach, identity reconstruction, and enactment of the reconstructed identity. Our analysis explains how each phase was characterized by specific political strategies employed by the managerialist and idealist organizational members, the effects of these strategies on the power balance and consensus/conflict over organizational identity, and how particular triggers explain shifts from one phase to another. By so doing, our analysis advances our understanding of or-ganizational identity breach and reconstruction as political processes and paves the way for new studies of political identity dynamics in other contexts.

This chapter focuses on national identity in and around multinational corporations (MNCs). The authors offer three conceptualizations of national identity and demonstrate how it may be studied in MNCs. First, they argue that organizational actors (re)construct their national identities via references to, and associations with, particular ideologies and worldviews. These are rigid constructions, which are deeply rooted in actors’ place in and fundamental views about the world. Second, national identity is (re)constructed through group-level relations vis-à-vis relevant ‘others’ in the specific organizational context. Such constructions are relatively stable but they are relational in the sense that they are rooted in actors’ identification with their cultural group. Finally, national identities are (re)constructed by organizational actors through mundane everyday relations and interaction. These are fluid and temporary constructions contingent on the immediate interests of those involved and the social dynamics of specific interactions. Based on their conceptualization, the authors outline avenues for future research to understand better the changing roles and implications of national identity in modern organizations.

Research Summary: The purpose of this article is to illuminate the role of concepts in strategic sensemaking. Based on a longitudinal real-time study of a city organization, we demonstrate how the concept of “self-responsibility” played a crucial role in strategic sensemaking. We develop a theoretical model that elucidates how strategic concepts are used in meaning-making, and how such concepts may be mobilized for the legitimation of strategic change. Our main contribution is to offer strategic concepts as a missing micro-level component of the language-based view of strategic processes and practices. By so doing, our analysis also adds to studies on strategic ambiguity and advances research on vocabularies. Managerial Summary: Our analysis helps to understand the role of strategic concepts, that is, specific words or phrases with established and at least partly shared meanings, in an organization's strategy process. We show how adopting the concept “self-responsibility” helped managers in a city organization to make sense of environmental challenges and to promote change. Our analysis highlights how such concepts involve ambiguity that can help managers to establish common ground, but can also hinder implementation of specific decisions and actions if it grows over time. We suggest that under environmental changes, development of new strategic concepts may be crucial in helping managers to collectively deal with environmental changes and to articulate a new strategic direction for the organization. © 2018 The Authors. Strategic Management Journal published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Our understanding of hybridity in organization theory stems mainly from observations of social enterprises. However, what is less studied is hybridity in community settings where it can be high-sta...

In this paper, we argue that temporal reflexivity is a key, but as of yet poorly understood, part of strategic actorhood and agency. We propose a view of strategic actorhood that acknowledges the k...

Despite research on legitimacy, fairness, and justice, there is a paucity of knowledge of how moral legitimacy becomes institutionally constructed in relation to and between stakeholders – both evaluators and those evaluated, human or non-human, in time and space. To understand the microfoundations of these processes, the authors examine transcripts from Alberta oil sands regulatory review hearings and associated media coverage from the 1960s to present day. The authors find six framings of fairness that respond to broader challenges to the moral legitimacy of this industry, while also dynamically evolving its regulatory framework.