Policing language in the world of new work: the commodification of workplace communication in organizational consulting

Abstract

This paper examines how the shift to knowledge and innovation economy has created new sites for the commodification of language and communication in the context of organizational consulting. The data come from a consultant-led development and training program of the management teams of a Finnish educational organization. In the study, the year-long training was videotaped (45 h) and followed ethnographically. By using rhetorical discourse analysis as a method, we examine how the consultant-led training activities present the role of language and communication in changing working life. The results show how the activities factualize the transformation of work and the centrality of language in this transformation. They conceptualize language and communication as key elements of professional competence and resources for organizational improvement. Moreover, they construct causal relations between organizational success and the ability to assess and modify one’s own communicative behavior. With its focus on language awareness and contextual variation the training differs from settings examined in previous studies where the mechanisms of commodification are based on standardization practices. In conclusion, we reflect the training programs both as indicators and vehicles for social change and discuss how they act as spaces where the new worlds of work are discursively construed.

Producing the disciplined English-speaking subjects: Language policing, development ideology, and English medium of instruction policy

“…The critique of language policy as a top-down, monocentric, and state-based phenomenon has shifted our attention to how different actors and institutions can create and implement their own policies (Blommaert, Kelly-Holmes, Lane, Leppänen, Moriarty, Pietikäinen, & Piirainen-Marsh 2009; Nissi & Hirsto 2021). This shift has highlighted ‘policing’ as a framework to explore and understand various tools, practices, and mechanisms that institutions create and enforce to maintain normative orders of language by disciplining their subjects.…”

Perceiving the organisation through a coding scheme

“…consultant delivering the training is not familiar with the client organisation or their specific field, resulting in the negotiation of knowledge between different professions and the relevance of that knowledge. As noted in prior research, organisational consulting is typically based on the prevailing management theories (Czarniawska and Massa 2013) which are renewed and disseminated in the training, the primary site of consulting (Nissi & Hirsto 2021). However, throughout its history, consulting has also faced criticism and challenges regarding its legitimacy (Von Platen 2018).…”

“…However, throughout its history, consulting has also faced criticism and challenges regarding its legitimacy (Von Platen 2018). This is particularly the case in contemporary organisations where the consulting practice emphasises the client's own agency and focuses less on providing solutions to the clients' problems than assisting the clients in their own professional reflection (Nissi & Hirsto 2021). Secondly, although all the steering groups include a headmaster who has a formal managerial position in the organisation, the groups operate on the principle of distributed leadership and all the group members take part in organisational sense-and decision making, resulting in the negotiation of their mutual knowledge concerning the organisation.…”

Digital Documenting Practices: Collaborative Writing in Workplace Training

“…Throughout its history, organizational consulting has closely followed the prevalent management theories, and paradigm shifts in academia have resulted in changes in professional practice. In recent decades, in particular, the field has moved from rationalist and positivist models focusing on improving productivity through standardization toward a relational understanding of leadership, which, in turn, emphasizes the importance of networks and relations and views reflexivity, self-expression, and mutual learning as sources of value (Nissi & Hirsto, 2021; Uhl-Bien, 2006). From this viewpoint, collaborative writing accomplished through digital writing technologies can be seen as a means for the implementation of new management ideas, values, and practices as it allows cross-sectoral communication and collaborative, iterative action where ideas are jointly negotiated and cultivated through shared text production.…”

“…In this article, we examine the use of digital technologies for writing in one specific context, organizational consulting and training, that as a professional domain reflects these recent changes. Organizational consulting is an influential field that started to become a stabilized-yet also widely debatedindustry in the 1980s and 1990s as it expanded from business to public administration in various countries (Nissi & Hirsto, 2021;Von Platen, 2018). Throughout its history, organizational consulting has closely followed the prevalent management theories, and paradigm shifts in academia have resulted in changes in professional practice.…”