Jonas Gabrielsen

Creating organizational cultures: Re‐conceptualizing the relations between rhetorical strategies and material practices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to re‐conceptualize the relations between rhetorical strategies and material practices in the processes whereby leaders create or change organizational cultures.Design/methodology/approach – The authors compare and contrast two broad perspectives on cultural change in organizations. The first perspective is informed by modern social science, and focuses primarily on material practices. The second perspective is rooted in classical rhetoric, and concentrates on discursive strategies.Findings – It is found that both perspectives hold pertinent but partial insights. The authors propose an integrated perspective in which material practices and rhetorical strategies are seen as two analytical sides of the same ontological coin. This enables a fuller and more detailed explanation of how organizational cultures are created or changed. A brief illustration is provided of the merits of this approach by revisiting the case of Enron.Originality/value – The paper constitutes an ...

Answering without answering: Shifting as an evasive rhetorical strategy

In the context of political press conferences, the authors explore a particular category of subtle evasions they term shifting. When shifting, the interviewee seemingly accepts to answer the journalist’s question. However, in providing the answer, the interviewee refocuses the question replacing its critical aspect with a more favorable one. Guided by classical rhetoric, the authors unfold the underlying logic of a shift. Analyzing 14 press conferences held by the Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, they identify three subcategories of shifting: shift in time, shift of agent, and shift of level. Ideally, knowledge of the different shifting strategies can enable journalists to detect a shift and promptly react when interviewees shift the focus of a question.