Mining the Discourse: Strategizing During BHP Billiton's Attempted Acquisition of Rio Tinto (original) (raw)
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The Merger Storm Recognises No Borders-An Analysis of Media Rhetoric On a Business Manouver
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Despite the central role of the media in contemporary society, studies examining the rhetorical practices of journalists are rare in organization and management research. We know little of the textual micro strategies and techniques through which journalists convey specific messages to their readers. Partially to fill the gap, this paper outlines a methodological framework that combines three perspectives of text analysis and interpretation: critical discourse analysis, systemic functional grammar and rhetorical structure theory. Using this framework, we engage in a close reading of a single media text (a press article) on a recent case of industrial restructuring in the financial services. In our empirical analysis, we focus on key arguments put forward by the journalists' rhetorical constructions. We maintain that these arguments-which are not frame-breaking but rather tend to confirm existing presuppositions held by the audience-are an essential part of the legitimization and naturalization of specific management ideas and ideologies.
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This exploratory study extends the analysis of narrative disclosures from routine reporting contexts such as annual reports and press releases to non-routine takeover documents where the financial consequences of narrative disclosures can be substantial. Rhetoric and argument in the form of impression management techniques in narrative disclosures are examined. Prior thematic content analysis methods for analysing good and bad news disclosures are adapted to the attacking and defensive themes in the defence documents of target companies subject to hostile takeover bids. The paper examines the incidence, extent and implications of impression management in ten hostile takeover defence documents issued by target companies listed on the London Stock Exchange between 1 January 2006 and 30 June 2008. Three impression management strategies – thematic, visual and rhetorical manipulation – are investigated using content analysis methodologies. The findings of the research indicate that thematic, visual and rhetorical manipulation is evident in hostile takeover defence documents. Attacking and defensive sentences were found to comprise the majority of the defence documents analysed. Such sentences exhibited varying degrees of visual and rhetorical emphasis, which served to award greater or lesser degrees of prominence to the information conveyed by target company management.
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The paper aims at analyzing the discourse of financial and economic crisis. Focusing on the latest scandals that have affected the automobile industry, the paper illustrates the results of research that investigates the discourse strategies used by corporations to manage events of crisis and meltdown. In particular, it delves into the discursive practices used in the ‘Letters to the Shareholders’ by CEOs and/or Chairmen, which are representative of governance genres (Fairclough 2003; Zanola 2010). The methodology adopted in the study is principally based on contributions from pragmatics and crisis communication, as well as critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. In particular, it draws upon Searle’s (1976) direction of fit and Hearit’s (2006) Theory of Apologia. An accurate analysis of the illocutionary force conveyed by speech acts and speech act sets demonstrates that the ultimate strategy of corporations to repair their image is not so much apologizing for their wrong...
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Discourse Analysis: An Emerging Trend in Corporate Narrative Research
These days, corporate narrative is gaining immense attention from accounting researchers. Corporate narratives are found in different communication media such as annual reports, web sites, sustainability reports and integrated reports. Over the years, both qualitative and quantitative content analyses have remained the most popular research methods for analysing corporate narratives. However, recently, another method, discourse analysis, is gaining the attention of researchers. It is said that in many ways, this method facilitates a more in-depth analysis of the corporate narratives. This paper gives an overview of this method and highlights how this method can be applied in corporate narratives research.
Ruth Breeze’s Corporate Discourse is a useful text in many aspects. Firstly, it covers the issue of corporate discourse from a range of theoretical backgrounds and their respective methodologies, plausibly showing how corporate ‘discourses’ both merge and differ from one another. Secondly, all the genres dealt with in the book are exemplified with authentic data, which lends validity to the author’s findings. Thirdly, although Breeze never loses sight of the two staple ideas of the company’s communicative intent – promoting a good image and legitimising corporate activities – she underscores the need for a critical evaluation of both company’s internal and external communicative and discursive practices.
Socio-cognitive approaches to corporate discourse
Comunicação Política e Económica: Dimensoes cognitivas e discursivas (Political and Economic Communication: Cognitive and discursive dimensions), 2013
In this paper, I discuss some central concepts from social cognitive research, most notably socio-cognitive representations and, more specifically, social identity and categorisation, intergroup differentiation, and self-enhancement and in-group bias. I then show how these can be applied to the critical study of corporate discourse. Of particular interest is the way that these notions can enrich a pivotal research question in critical discourse studies, namely how discourse participants use language in, and processes around, texts to construct in- and out-groups as well as the relations between them. Moving on to discourse theoretical considerations, I differentiate between discourse strategies, e.g. self-enhancement, discourse functions such as evaluation, and linguistic (and, in some genres, conversational) features, e.g. attribution. Also, I elaborate on how in-group and self-construction in texts can be reflected in discursive processes of their production, distribution, reception and adaptation. This part of the paper further demonstrates the interface between discourse and social cognition.
The organization of organizational discourse
2007
'Discourse', as Norman Fairclough and his co-editors noted in the introduction to their new journal, Critical Discourse Studies, (2004), is now well established as category in social sciences. And yet, as they also note, there are significant differences as to what 'discourse' and 'discourse analysis' refers. These differences are, they argue, due to different theoretical, academic and cultural traditions and how they 'push discourse in different directions' (2004:4). In this review essay I sketch out the key direction that 'discourse' has been pushed or pulled in organization studies (see also Alvesson and Karreman, 2000; Chia, 2000; Grant et al, 2004; Fairhurst and Putnam, 2004; Prichard et al, 2004). To set the scene for this I review two books that seek to advance our understanding of discourse and language analysis in organization studies. Each has its strengths but both are relatively disengaged from the journal literature in the same field. In response to this weakness I will present a brief citation-based analysis of 'discourse analysis' in the management and organization studies field. This analysis brings to light eight different streams of work that are underway. Various forms of language analysis do feature among these. But the most prominent form is concerned with the analysis of knowledge and practice (particularly the distribution and character of various forms of management knowledge). I conclude by arguing that this, rather than forms of language analysis, is the distinctive form of discourse analysis in organization studies. In other words, and following on from the point by Fairclough and his colleagues, the dominant approach to 'discourse' in organization studies takes a distinctive form. There are many examples of this kind of work (see for example Westwood and Clegg, 2003), and among the most cited (see table 2) are those that provide critical analysis of management discourse (Du Gay,1994; Townley, 1993; Kerfoot and Knights, 1998). The approach has some distinctive features including ambivalence over the particular 'media' in which (by which) it is articulated, performed or 'No, you don't, Vic.' 'I've been in love with you for weeks'. 'There's no such thing', she says. 'It's 'a rhetorical device' and a 'bourgeoisie fantasy'. 'Haven't you ever been in love, then?' 'When I was younger,' she says, 'I allowed myself to be constructed by the discourse of romantic love for a while yes.' 'What the hell does that mean?' 'We aren't essences, Vic. We aren't unique individual essences existing prior to language. There is only language'. 'What about this?' he says, sliding his hand between her legs. 'Language and biology', she says, opening her legs wider. 'Of course we have bodies, physical needs and appetites. My muscles contract when you touch me there-feel?' 'I feel, 'he says.