Risto Puutio

Inviting Participation in Organizational Change Through Ownership Talk

This article takes the practitioner’s view toward and focuses on participation through talk within multiparty settings of one process consulting case. From the perspective of discursive psychology, the authors ask what happens in interaction when the consultant is working to put into practice the ideal of active client participation in organizational change. They argue that participation is established when psychological ownership of the process is displayed through talk in interaction. This happens when what the authors call “ownership talk” is used: A person is sharing his or her views, interests, and experiences related to the change process.The authors provide detailed observations and interpretations about how local rules of displaying ownership talk are provided by the consultant and how they are negotiated, tested, and followed by the participants. The value of the ownership talk concept in developing theory and practices within the fields of organizational change, organizational development, and process consulting work is discussed.

Inviting interactional change through “tricky situations” in consulting

Purpose – Consulting work aims to bring about changes in organizational performance. In OD‐consulting practices, changes are to be sought through conversational settings created for these purposes. The purpose of this paper is to take a discursive approach to change work and ask how interactional change is constructed and managed during multi‐party consulting conversations.Design/methodology/approach – A case episode from an authentic consultation event is presented. By combining ideas from discursive psychology and conversational analysis, it is shown that a consulting conversation may be socially sensitive and face‐threatening for all concerned.Findings – The paper shows how such a “tricky situation” is not to be avoided but to be actively constructed for facilitating change. The use of different discursive strategies for managing criticism and blame is demonstrated.Practical implications – Tricky situations involving criticism and blame can be used in facilitating interactional change. The consultants...

Calling in a witness: Negotiating and factualizing preferred outcomes in management consultation

Abstract This article examines how preferred outcomes are negotiated and factualized during organization development consulting conversations. Paradoxically, organizational performance in itself cannot actually be improved during the consultation conversations. Whatever changes there are to be made, they are to be sought within the conversational situation of consultation. Even the outcomes have to be negotiated and made visible for all participants. Using discursive psychology and conversational analysis, we show how interactional and discursive strategies can be used to achieve this in one consultation process. The consultant constructed what we call the position of a witness for some participants who were invited to talk about change. Such a position was constructed by defining the participant as someone who has knowledge about the issue under consideration, and as someone who can be seen as an independent observer whose words are not restricted in any way in advance. This position of a witness and the role of an audience were discursively utilized in factualizing preferred outcomes of the consulting process as convincing. To our knowledge, this kind of factualizing of preferred outcomes in consultation has not been studied earlier.

The process and content of advice giving in support of reflective practice in management consulting

Although consulting has been defined as an ‘advice‐giving activity’ there has not been much research on advice practices in management consulting. In particular, there is a lack of evidence on how advice might assist in supporting another central issue in management work, namely reflective practice. This article approaches consulting from a discursive perspective and views reflective practice at the level of language use. The authors use data on naturally occurring talk during a single Organization Development (OD) consulting process and discursive methodology to examine these conversations, and offer empirical evidence on how advising can support reflective managerial practice. Examples of conversational practices that provided reflections on the managerial position, day‐to‐day responses and actions are given. They illustrate varieties of both the content and the process of advice which were utilized when building the reflective stance. The authors discuss the tension between advising and promoting reflective practice in OD consulting settings.

Sensitivity in topic development and meaning making in a process consultation contract meeting

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the discursive practices used when the agenda for a consultation process was negotiated in a contract meeting. The paper illustrates the role of sensitivity in meaning making practices, that is, how displays of sensitivity were intertwined with topic development.Design/methodology/approach – The paper offers an in‐depth analysis of naturally occurring conversation in a meeting between a consultant and two client managers. The audio‐recorded data is analyzed by utilizing methodology introduced and developed in the traditions of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (CA).Findings – The authors show how both the consultant and the clients displayed markers of sensitivity when introducing various meaning potentials relevant to the topics under discussion, and how they eventually ‘negotiated’ meanings through formulations and reformulations of the topics.Practical implications – The findings suggest that indirect and complex discursive practices were funct...