Scaling up and bearing down in discourse analysis: Questions regarding textual agencies and their context

Abstract

This paper assesses the contributions that discourse analysis and organizational discourse theory can make to our understanding of organization and organizing. By clarifying the theoretical assumptions that underpin this work, especially its social constructivist credentials, it is possible to show the potential of this methodology. A discursive approach can help answer a series of questions that interest organizational theorists: the constitution question of how local interactions develop organizing properties; the scaling-up question concerning the identification of characteristics that imbue certain texts and their authors with agency; as well as how grand discourses bear down on organizational life and how practices of consumption relate to acts of resistance.