This review highlights the relevance of argumentation and narration for organizational communication, which is the exchange of information among organizational participants from which meaning is inferred. The links between argument and organizational rationality and between the narrative paradigm and organizational storytelling are discussed. Organizational and communication variables are viewed as mutually relevant. As the mixtures of argumentation and narration change, interaction changes, and different organizational structures are created. These processes have implications for both scholars and practicing managers.
Scholars have yet to explore narrative repetition-when a story is recalled and retold from another narrative-for its rich conceptual depth. To build a case for this area, we analyze stories from scholarly research to identify the functions of narrative repetition. We distinguish three dualities produced through repetition, which are grounded in cultural issues of sameness and difference. These dualities-control/resistance, differentiation/integration, and stability/change-bring a more sophisticated understanding of the inherent complexity of narrative as a mode of interpretation and offer a transformative view of narrative that describes how the meaning of stories shifts over time. When people repeat stories, some individuals may interpret a narrative of stability, whereas others may hear a hint of change. Furthermore, we offer narrative repetition as a new methodology for organizational research with the recommendation that scholars use the recurrence of a story as a starting point for inquiry into the cultural life of organizations.
Recent management research imports rhetorical scholarship into the study of organizations. Although this cross-disciplinarity is heuristically promising, it presents significant challenges. This article interrogates management's use of rhetoric, contrasting it with communication studies. Five themes from management research identify how rhetoric is used as an organizational hermeneutic: The article demonstrates that management research conceptualizes rhetoric as a theory and as an action; as the substance that maintains and/or challenges organizational order; as being constitutive of individual and organizational identity; as a managerial strategy for persuading followers; and as a framework for narrative and rational organizational discourses. The authors argue that organizational researchers who study rhetoric characterize persuasive strategies as managers' most important actions.
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