Grant Michelson

Guest editorial: discourse and organizational change

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the contribution that discourse analysis can make to understanding organizational change.Design/methodology/approach – It identifies five key contributions. Discourse analytic approaches: reveal the important role of discourse in the social construction of organizational change; demonstrate how the meaning attached to organizational change initiatives comes about as a result of a discursive process of negotiation among key actors; show that the discourses of change should be regarded as intertextual; provide a valuable multi‐disciplinary perspective on change; and exhibit a capacity, to generate fresh insights into a wide variety of organizational change related issues.Findings – To illustrate these contributions the paper examines the five empirical studies included in this special issue. It discusses the potential for future discursive studies of organizational change phenomena and the implications of this for the field of organizational change more generally.Origina...

Looking forwards: discursive directions in organizational change

Purpose – This paper aims to review the discursive formation of organizational change and to consider the possible directions that change management initiatives may take in the future.Design/methodology/approach – This closing piece identifies a traditional change discourse and an emerging change discourse. This is achieved through a review of the extant literature and the contributions to the special issue.Findings – The paper highlights a shift of emphases in organizational change due to environmental imperatives. In particular, it reveals a move from problem‐centred, discrete interventions to a focus on continuous improvements. It also draws attention to the emerging significance of discourse‐based approaches concerned with image, identity, organizational learning and knowledge management.Originality/value – Provides a framework for classifying different forms of organizational change activity and posits directions for future development.

Discourse and Resistance: Targets, Practices, and Consequences

This article highlights the contributions that discourse analysis can make to the study of organizational resistance. Specifically, it demonstrates how using a discursive lens can provide insights into the targets, practices, and consequences of resistance. First, discourse analytic approaches can reveal how acts of resistance target multiple organizational audiences simultaneously, often developed through diverse texts directed to internal and external stakeholders. Second, discourse analysis enables researchers to examine the complex, dynamic, and interconnected nature of resistance practices and to avoid constructing simple dichotomies between such features as covert and overt forms of resistance or individual and collective resistance. Third, discourse analysis highlights the intended and unintended consequences of resistance by examining how organizational members engage with, adapt to, and transform organizational practices. Future directions are proposed for research on discourse analysis and organizational resistance.

Gossip in Organizations: Contexts, Consequences, and Controversies:

This article examines the key themes surrounding gossip including its contexts, the various outcomes (positive and negative) of gossip, as well as a selection of challenges and controversies. The challenges that are highlighted revolve around definitional issues, methodological approaches, and ethical considerations. The authors’ analysis suggests that the characteristics and features of gossip lend itself to a process-oriented approach whereby the beginning and, particularly, end points of gossip are not always easily identified. Gossip about a subject or person can temporarily disappear only for it to resurface at some later stage. In addition, questions pertaining to the effects of gossip and ethical-based arguments depend on the nature of the relationships within the gossip triad (gossiper, listener/respondent, and target).

‘You Didn't Hear it From Us But…’: Towards an Understanding of Rumour and Gossip in Organisations

This paper investigates an important topic in organisational behaviour that hitherto, has not received enough attention—informal communications, including grapevine activity, rumour and gossip. We show how this topic can illuminate potential new insights in a range of related areas in organisational behaviour. We further outline an agenda for research on rumour and gossip in organisations, paying careful attention to a number of individual-level and organisational-level variables. Finally, methodological issues and ways of collecting data are considered; we suggest that many research techniques can be usefully employed in the study of rumour and gossip.

Rumour and gossip in organisations: a conceptual study

Explores the issue of rumour and gossip in organisations. Given that rumour and gossip can break the harmony of the workplace unless well managed, it is rather surprising that they have not been sufficiently examined in management and organisational studies. In addition to providing an analysis of the role played by rumour and gossip within organisations, including, but not limited to, its origin, hidden reasons and its management, the role of gender is examined. Our research reveals that despite the commonly‐held and entrenched view that women are largely responsible for instigating and perpetuating organisational rumour and gossip, a review of the evidence fails to support this claim.

A Strategic Choice–resource Dependence Analysis of Union Mergers in the British and Australian Broadcasting and Film Industries

Since the late 1980s there has been a marked increase in the rate of union restructuring and merger in both Britain and Australia. This has been particularly prevalent in the film and broadcasting industries in both countries. This organizational change has largely been triggered by environmental turbulence which has altered the availability and control of resources required for organizational survival. Accepting the concept from strategic choice theory that trade unions are able to exercise a degree of choice over the way in which they manage and adapt to changes in their external and internal environments, the paper demonstrates how an integration of strategic choice and resource dependence perspectives can explain why organizations behave in different ways and, in particular, why trade union mergers in the film and broadcasting industries have occurred. Further, the perspective also explains why some trade unions chose not to merge. An integration of resource dependence theory with strategic choice theory explains why trade unions make particular strategic decisions. Conversely, strategic choice explains how organizations acquire resources and manage dependencies. The paper concludes by making the case for an integration of the two perspectives for future studies of organizational behaviour and change.

The State of HRM in Australia: Progress and Prospects

During the last 20 years organisations in Australia have been managing their people in a more competitive, global and deregulated environment. Although practitioners support the development and implementation of a human resource management approach, research indicates that the use of practices that are integrated with corporate strategy is uneven. Large organisations, particularly multinationals, are more likely to adopt this approach than are small and medium size firms. One of the rationales for adopting human resource management practices is that they improve organisational performance. However, it appears that HR practitioners are still regarded as operational managers, rather than as business partners. It is also difficult to generalise about the work done by HR specialists, with particular practices being emphasised in the public sector, and different ones in the private sector. The future of these specialists will be influenced by the way work, organisational structure and contractual relationships change.

Do loose lips sink ships? The meaning, antecedents and consequences of rumour and gossip in organisations

This paper examines an important, albeit neglected aspect of communication in the workplace, namely, rumour and gossip in organisations. Drawing on literature from multiple disciplines the paper provides an analysis of the role played by rumour and gossip within organisations, including, but not limited to, its meaning, hidden reasons and its management. The paper discusses both antecedent and outcome variables that are associated with organisational rumour and gossip. It is contended that the different types of rumour and gossip serve different purposes which, in turn, result in a range of outcomes. Moreover, and in spite of the tendency to ascribe rumour and gossip as morally reprehensible, not all of these outcomes are shown to be harmful within organisations. The authors use this finding to argue that scholars and managers alike should avoid making negative judgements about rumour and gossip in all such cases.

Trade Union Mergers in British and Australian Television Broadcasting

AbstractA complex set of forces facing trade union organizations has meant that unionrestructuring vis-a`-vis merger activity has been a prominent feature of manyWestern labour movements in the 1980s and 1990s. This paper is located inthese structural developments, and its main contribution lies in the insightsprovided by an in-depth examination of recent union merger activity incommercial television in the UK and Australia. In contrast to the work ofUndy et al. (1981), the results suggest that union mergers are influenced bymore than changes in membership patterns, and that the delineationofmergercategories may be far more complex than what has previously been identifiedby their model. It is argued, too, that the nature of the forces and the processesthat led to the broadcasting union mergers in the UK and Australia weresignificantly influenced by the different institutional contexts of both coun-tries. Finally, and related to this, it would appear that union merger outcomes(at least in the short term) are linked to the preceding processes by whichmerger is brought about. One policy implication of this is that anything otherthan a case-by-case evaluation of union mergers may be misleading.1. IntroductionFrom time to time trade union organizations are subject to and shaped by anumber of different structural events, including formations, mergers,breakaways and dissolutions. These events all have the potential to impactsignificantly upon union form. Turning specifically to one of these structuraldevelopments, mergers can affect external union structures by changingunion jurisdictions or territories (Abrahamsson 1993). A review of theliterature suggests that there are a number of key distinguishing features ofunion mergers: there is a combinationof twoor more separate entities; thereis a legal combination; there is oftena resultant loss of autonomyandcontrolfor at least one of the unions involved (even if this loss is only minor); andreduced autonomy and control will occur either at the point of combination