voice and isomorphism in organizational discourse

[Barbara Johnstone]

A student in sociology here with whom I'm working is developing a
dissertation project in which she will be using discourse analysis to
explore the idea that organizations are under pressure from their
environments to make their practices (discursive and otherwise) increasingly
similar to those of other organizations.  Her  general framework is
Institutional Theory.  She has run into difficulties with a faculty member
in her department who mistrusts interpretive, non-quantitative work of this
sort and is looking for evidence that other people are doing this sort of
thing.  I hope people on this list might be able to help.  Here is how
Eleanor puts the issue:
>
> One of the things he [the other faculty member] really wants me to do is
better support my argument that
> texts written in the voice of the organization should display more
> responsiveness to institutional pressures (be more isomorphic or similar)
> than those that use the voice of the individual.
>
> So I'm looking for any research on the difference between texts that speak
> for an organization and texts that speak for an individual (although
created
> by multiple people in an organization). Do you know of anyone who has
> actually compared these types of texts or made this distinction? It's a
> little different than research on the effect of multiple authorship.

Please respond directly to Eleanor (lewis at andrew.cmu.edu) and/or me
(bj4 at andrew.cmu.edu).  If there's anything to report, we'll post a summary
to the list -- once Eleanor's proposal has passed!

Thanks very much.

Barbara



____________________________

Barbara Johnstone
Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA  15213-3890
bj4 at andrew.cmu.edu
+1 412 268 6447