Abstract
This chapter explores how an institution (and by extension its institutional power) is enacted and negotiated through interactions in situ by conducting an interactional analysis of decision-making meeting talk in the context of a multinational company. By drawing on an ethnographic case study of a British subsidiary of a Korean multinational firm, I focus on instances in which participants mobilise institutional knowledge in the meeting to construct a decision. I adopt an interactional sociolinguistic approach to examine interpretive processes in and through which social meanings are constructed. I pay special attention to the way participants construct contextual ground for situated interpretation, making their institutional knowledge relevant to the situated event. The results show that an institution manifests itself in the interactional process as accountable patterns of meanings and actions and, in the same process, institutional power is enacted. I close the paper by discussing institutionality and institutional power in light of the findings, as well as interactional sociolinguistics as a useful framework to bridge the micro- and macro-level approaches to institutional discourse.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
All company and participant names are pseudonyms.
- 2.
Transcription conventions are provided at the end of the chapter.
References
Angouri, J., and L. Mondada. 2017. “Meetings.” In Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics, edited by R. Wodak and B. Forchtner, 468–484. Oxon: Routledge.
Antaki, C., and A. Horowitz. 2000. “Using Identity Ascription to Disqualify a Rival Version of Events as ‘Interested.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 33 (2): 155–177.
Brookes, M. 2013. “Varieties of Power in Transnational Labor Alliances: An Analysis of Workers’ Structural, Institutional, and Coalitional Power in the Global Economy.” Labor Studies Journal 38 (3): 181–200.
Cameron, D. 2008. “Talk from the top down.” Language and Communication 28 (2): 143–155.
Cicourel, A.V. 2007. “A Personal, Retrospective view of ecological validity.” Text and Talk 27 (5/6): 735–752.
Clegg, S., D. Courpasson, and N. Phillips. 2006. Power and Organizations. London: Sage.
Dall, T., and S. Sarangi. 2018. “Ways of ‘Appealing to the Institution’ in Interprofessional Rehabilitation Team Decision-Making.” Journal of Pragmatics 129: 102–119.
Drew, P., and J. Heritage. 1992. “Analyzing Talk at Work: An Introduction.” In Talk at Work. Interaction in Institutional Settings, edited by P. Drew, and J. Heritage, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, P., and M.-L. Sorjonen. 2011. “Dialogue in Institutional Interactions.” In Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, edited by T.A. van Dijk, 191–216. London: Sage.
Duranti, A., and C. Goodwin. 1992. “Rethinking Context: An Introduction.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, edited by A. Duranti and C. Goodwin, 1–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, NY: Vintage.
Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, edited by C. Gordon. New York, NY: Pantheon.
Foucault, M. 1984. “Truth and Power.” In The Foucault Reader, edited by P. Rabinow, 51–75. New York, NY: Pantheon.
Fraser, N. 1981. “Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights and Normative Confusions.” Praxis International 1 (3): 272–287.
Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Malden, MA: Prentice-Hall.
Gumperz, J. 2015. “Interactional Sociolinguistics: A Personal Perspective.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, edited by D. Tannen, H. Hamilton, and D. Schiffrin, 309–323. Chichester: Wiley.
Hitzler, S., and H. Messmer. 2010. “Group Decision-Making in Child Welfare and the Pursuit of Participation.” Qualitative Social Work 9 (2): 205–226.
Hodgson, G.M. 2006. “What Are Institutions?” Journal of Economic Issues 40 (1): 1–25.
Housley, W., and R. Fitzgerald. 2009. “Membership Categorization, Culture and Norms in Action.” Discourse and Society 20 (3): 345–362.
Huisman, M. 2001. “Decision-Making in Meetings as Talk-in-Interaction.” International Studies of Management and Organization 31 (3): 69–90.
Hutchby, I., and R. Wooffitt. 1998. Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications. Cambridge: Polity.
Kim, K., and J. Angouri. 2019. “‘We Don’t Need to Abide by That!’ Negotiating Professional Roles in Problem-Solving Talk at Work.” Discourse and Communication 13 (2): 172–191.
Knights, D., and G. Morgan. 1991. “Corporate Strategy, Organizations, and Subjectivity: A Critique.” Organization Studies 12 (2): 251–273.
Kwon, W., I. Clarke, and R. Wodak. 2009. “Organizational Decision-Making, Discourse, and Power: Integrating across Contexts and Scales.” Discourse and Communication 3 (3): 273–302.
Mayr, A. 2015. “Institutional Discourse.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, edited by D. Tannen, H.E. Hamilton, and D. Schiffrin, 755–774. Chichester: Wiley.
Mumby, D.K., and R.P. Clair. 1997. “Organizational Discourse.” In Discourse as Social Interaction, edited by T.A. van Dijk, 181–205. London: Sage.
Nielsen, M.F., S. Beck Nielsen, G. Gravengaard, and Brian L. Due. 2012. “Interactional Functions of Invoking Procedure in Institutional Settings.” Journal of Pragmatics 44 (11): 1457–1473.
Ochs, E. 1996. “Linguistic Resources for Socializing Humanity.” In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity J.J. Gumperz, and S.C. Levinson, 407–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ruggie, J.G. 2018. “Multinationals as Global Institution: Power, Authority and Relative Autonomy.” Regulation and Governance 12 (3): 317–333.
Sacks, H., E.A. Schegloff, and G. Jefferson. 1978. “A Simplest Systematics for the Oganization of Turn Taking for Conversation.” In Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, edited by J. Schenkein, 7–55. London: Academic Press.
Sarangi, S., and C. Roberts. 1999. “Introduction.” In Talk, Work and Institutional Order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings, edited by S. Sarangi and C. Roberts, 1–60. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Sarangi, S., and C. Roberts. 2003. “Discoursal (Mis)Alignments in Professional Gatekeeping Encounters.” In Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological Perspectives, edited by C. Kramsch, 197–227. London: Continuum.
Schegloff, E.A. 1996. “Issues of Relevance for Discourse Analysis: Contingency in Action, Interaction and Co-Participant Context.” In Computational and Conversational Discourse: Burning Issues - An Interdisciplinary Account, edited by E.H. Hovy and D.R. Scott, 3–38. Heidelberg: Springer.
Schildt, H., S. Mantere, and J. Cornelissen. 2020. “Power in Sensemaking Processes.” Organization Studies 41 (2): 241–265.
Scott, W. R. 2017. “Institutional Theory: Onward and Upward.” In The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, edited by R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, T.B. Lawrence, and R.E. Meyer, 853–871. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Stendahl, E., S. Schriber, and E. Tippmann. 2020. “Control Changes in Multinational Corporations: Adjusting Control Approaches in Practice.” Journal of International Business Studies 52: 409–431.
Stokoe, E. 2006. “On Ethnomethodology, Feminism, and the Analysis of Categorial Reference to Gender in Talk-in-Interaction.” The Sociological Review 54 (3): 467–494.
Van Maanen, J. 1979. “The Fact of Fiction in Organizational Ethnography.” Administrative Science Quarterly 24 (4): 539–550.
Mäkitalo, Å., and R. Säljö. 2017. Talk in Institutional Context and Institutional Context in Talk: Categories as Situated Practice. In Introduction to Vygotsky, edited by Harry Daniels, 166–189. London: Routledge.
Whittle, A., F. Mueller, A. Gilchrist, and P. Lenney. 2016. “Sensemaking, Sense-Censoring and Strategic Inaction: The Discursive Enactment of Power and Politics in a Multinational Corporation.” Organization Studies 37 (9): 1323–1351.
Zilber, T.B. 2002. “Institutionalization as an Interplay between Actions, Meanings, and Actors: The Case of a Rape Crisis Center in Israel.” Academy of Management Journal 45 (1): 234–254.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kim, K. (2022). ‘We Are in the Hands of the Head Office (.)’: Managing a Multinational Institution in Decision-Making Meeting Talk. In: Porsché, Y., Scholz, R., Singh, J.N. (eds) Institutionality. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96969-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96969-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-96968-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-96969-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)