Situating Organizations in Politics

Abstract

Organization scholars have long been interested in both collective action and the complexities revealed through dialectical analysis. A diachronic view provides one means of intertwining these concerns by exploring the way durable, systemic changes emerge temporally from ongoing contestation among stakeholders. The author explores this diachronic view through a decade-long multistakeholder conflict concerning the Grand Staircase— Escalante National Monument in the U.S. state of Utah. The case makes evident the historic unfolding of power dynamics: A successful resistance movement becomes a regime of control in an ongoing struggle among groups. The author concludes by discussing the capacity of diachronic analysis to illuminate (a) politics among organizations, (b) transformative potential of dialectics, (c) interplay of symbolic and material spheres, and (d) mutual yet distinct roles of dialectical and paradoxical tensions.

Dichotomies, dialectics and dilemmas: New directions for critical leadership studies?

“…Yet, as Storey and Salaman (2009) argue, with the rise of management science in the twentieth century, many earlier insights about dilemmas, ambiguities, paradoxes, tensions, and contradictions were lost as new perspectives focused increasingly on creating analytical order and tidiness. However, a growing interest in dialectical analysis can now be discerned in theories of society (Giddens, 1984;Bhaskar, 1993;Latour, 1993) 8 , organization (Bartunek, 2006;Norton, 2009;Putnam, 2003), communication (e.g. Barge et al, 2008;Tracy, 2004;Trethewey, 1999), and leadership (Collinson, 2005a(Collinson, , 2011Fairhurst, 2001).…”

Mapping Injustice: The World is Witness, Place-Framing, and the Politics of Viewing on Google Earth

“…Notes 1 In viewing these cartographies as ''organizational rhetorics,'' I am working within a growing body of literature that broadens the conceptualization of what counts as an organization-moving the study of organizational communication practices beyond the workplace-to include the study of organizations participating in the promotion of social resistance (e.g., Cloud, 2005;Ganesh, Zoller, & Cheney, 2005;Norton, 2009;Papa, Singhal, & Papa, 2006). In addition, in calling these cartographies ''organizational rhetorics,'' I am working within a body of literature that recognizes individual rhetors are often speaking on behalf of an organization, working within the constraints of that organization (Cheney & McMillen, 1990).…”