When planned change is cancelled, managers may be tempted to reverse their organization's strategy. Our longitudinal case study documents a cancelled merger effort and a failed attempt to return to the organization's widely accepted pre-merger strategy. We trace the failure to contradictions in symbolic change management. The phenomenon of change reversal draws attention to the historical continuity of sensemaking and raises caution about the popular view that managers need to destroy organizational meaning in order to facilitate the realization of strategic change. 1 We are indebted to Professor Michael Pratt and three anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive contributions to the development of the paper. This paper is a tribute to their passionate and insightful guidance.

This paper addresses the paradox that despite all organizational change towards flatter and postmodern organizations, hierarchical order is quite persistent. We develop a differentiated understanding of hierarchy as either formal or informal and apply this analytical framework to several types of organization. The analysis reveals that hierarchy is much more widespread than thought; in particular, postmodern, representative democratic and network organizations are much less 'alternative' and 'hierarchy-free' than their labels and common understanding may suggest. The main argument is that the persistence of hierarchy in different types of organization can be explained by different dynamic relationships between formal and informal hierarchy.

This article recognizes a major dichotomy in the study of legitimacy construction at the organizational level. Scholars have either focused on agent-centred explanations of organizational legitimation, which favour its evaluative dimension, or on structural explanations, which highlight the isomorphic pressures imposed on individual organizations in order to become and remain intelligible to stakeholders. By applying a discursive methodology, we propose a new approach for the study of organizational legitimacy construction that incorporates both its evaluative and cognitive dimensions. Drawing on a structurational model of narrative recursivity, inspired by Greimas (1987), we argue that the construction of organizational legitimacy is dependent on both the persuasiveness of organizational storytelling and on the realization of a taken-for-granted narrative structure. We explicate the processes by which legitimacy is narratively constructed through empirical data associated with the founding of an HIV/AIDS organization.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Abstract. This paper extends existing understandings of how actors" constructions of ambiguity shape the emergent process of strategic action. We theoretically elaborate the role of rhetoric in exploiting strategic ambiguity, based on analysis of a longitudinal case study of an internationalization strategy within a business school. Our data shows that actors use rhetoric to construct three types of strategic ambiguity: protective ambiguity that appeals to common values in order to protect particular interests; invitational ambiguity that appeals to common values in order to invite participation in particular actions, and adaptive ambiguity that enables the temporary adoption of specific values in order to appeal to a particular audience at one point in time. These rhetorical constructions of ambiguity follow a processual pattern that shapes the emergent process of strategic action. Our findings show that 1) the strategic actions that emerge are shaped by the way actors construct and exploit ambiguity; 2) the ambiguity intrinsic to the action is analytically distinct from ambiguity that is constructed and exploited by actors; and 3) ambiguity construction shifts over time to accommodate the emerging pattern of actions. Permanent repository linkKeywords. Strategic action, ambiguity, strategic ambiguity, rhetoric 3 Ambiguity exists in an organization when there is a "state of having many ways of thinking about the same circumstances or phenomena" (Feldman, 1989: 5). Although much literature on ambiguity indicates that it constrains collective strategic action (Cohen & March, 1974;Denis et al, 1996Denis et al, , 2001Middleton-Stone & Brush, 1996;Sillince & Mueller, 2007) this paper argues that actors use rhetoric to construct ambiguity in ways that enable action. The view of ambiguity as a barrier to action is part of the common Western assumption that business is and should be discussed and communicated in a direct and clear way (Scollon & Scollon, 2001). Such an assumption implies that choosing what products to offer and where and how to make and sell them are clear strategies.Contrary to this assumption our starting point is that these strategic actions are fundamentally rhetorical and ambiguous. Consistent with other scholars, we consider action strategic when it is perceived as consequential by those actors that hold responsibility for the prospective and overarching directions, survival and competitive position of the organization (e.g. Hendry, 2000; Jarzabkowski, Balogun and Seidl, 2007; Johnson, Melin and Whittington, 2003). For such actors, strategy involves persuasion of various audiences that particular actions have a significant and long term impact on the organization. We argue that strategic action involves the rhetorical construction of ambiguity in order to persuade relevant audiences that different potential courses of action are aligned to their interests and the interests of the ...

Abstract. The literature on ambiguity reflects contradictory views on its value as a resource or a problem for organizational action. In this longitudinal empirical study of ambiguity about a strategic goal, we examined how strategic ambiguity is used as a discursive resource by different organizational constituents and how that is associated with collective action around the strategic goal. We found four rhetorical positions, each of which drew upon strategic ambiguity to construct the strategic goal differently according to whether the various constituents were asserting their own interests or accommodating wider organizational interests. However, we also found that the different constituents maintained these four rhetorical positions simultaneously over time, enabling them to shift between their own and other"s interests rather than converging upon a common interest. These findings are used to develop a conceptual framework that explains how strategic ambiguity may serve as a resource for different organizational constituents to assert their own interests whilst also enabling collective organizational action, at least of a temporary nature.Keywords: rhetoric; context; strategic ambiguity; collective action Jarzabkowski, P., J. Sillince & D. Shaw. 2010. 'Strategic ambiguity as a rhetorical resource for enabling multiple strategic goals '. Human Relations,. 1A contextual feature of knowledge-intensive, professional organizations that presents particular problems for their management, leadership and strategy processes is the ambiguity that often attaches to professional and knowledge work. However, strategically, ambiguity may also be considered a resource that lends itself to the political nature of collective action. We apply rhetorical theory as a way of marrying these different views of ambiguity for two reasons. First, as ambiguity involves contested interpretations, in which different groups must be persuaded to act collectively, rhetoric provides a means of managing ambiguity. Second, evidence of the political purpose of ambiguity in managing collective action suggests that strategic ambiguity is an example of a rhetorical device. Our application of rhetorical theory in an empirical study of a business school contributes to our understanding of both ambiguity and also of rhetorical variation in enabling collective action despite multiple interests.Ambiguous goals have multiple, indistinct, incoherent or fragmented meanings, in which no single meaning is the "best" or most coherent interpretation ( an autonomous professional workforce that is antithetical to managerial values (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003; Denis, Langley, Cazale, 1996); diffuse power that constrains the exercise of senior management power (Cohen and March, 1986; Denis et al, 1996;2001) and lack of direct control over resources (Middleton-Stone and Brush, 1996). These features of ambiguity are typically found in public sector, professional and knowledge-intensive organizations, such as hospitals (Denis, Lamothe, Langley, 2001), cultural i...