Despite increasing interest in the discursive aspects of strategy, few studies have examined strategy texts and their power effects. We draw from Critical Discourse Analysis to better understand the power of strategic plans as a directive genre. In our empirical analysis, we examined the creation of the official strategic plan of the City of Lahti in Finland. As a result of our inductive analysis, we identified five central discursive features of this plan: self-authorization, special terminology, discursive innovation, forced consensus and deonticity. We argue that these features can, with due caution, be generalized and conceived as distinctive features of the strategy genre. We maintain that these discursive features are not trivial characteristics; they have important implications for the textual agency of strategic plans, their performative effects, impact on power relations and ideological implications.
Bernstein, Basil ( 1990) Class, Codes and Control, Volume 4: The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. London: Routledge .
2.
Bourdieu, Pierre ( 1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge : Polity Press.
3.
Carter, Chris, Clegg, Stuart and Kornberger, Martin ( 2008a) ‘Strategy as Practice?’, Strategic Organization6(1): 83-99.
4.
Carter, Chris, Clegg, Stuart and Kornberger, Martin ( 2008b) ‘S-A-P Zapping the Field’, Strategic Organization6(1): 107-12.
5.
Chouliaraki, Lilie and Fairclough, Norman ( 1999) Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
6.
Clegg, Stewart and Courpasson, David ( 2004) ‘Political Hybrids: Tocquevillean Views on Project Organizations’, Journal of Management Studies41(4): 525-47.
7.
Clegg, Stewart, Courpasson, David and Phillips, Nelson ( 2006) Power and Organizations. London: Sage.
8.
Cooren, Francois ( 2004) ‘Textual Agency: How Texts Do Things in Organizational Settings’, Organization11(3): 373-93.
9.
Cooren, Francois ( 2006) ‘The Organizational World as a Plenum of Agencies’ , in F. Cooren, J. R. Taylor, E. J. Van Every (eds) Communication as Organizing: Empirical and Theoretical Explorations in the Dynamic of Text and Conversation, pp. 81-100. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
10.
Cooren, Francois, Matte, Frédéric, Taylor, James R. and Vasquez, Consuelo ( 2007) ‘A Humanitarian Organization in Action: Organizational Discourse as an Immutable Mobile’, Discourse and Communication1: 153-90.
11.
du Gay, Paul ( 2000) In Praise of Bureaucracy: Weber, Organization and Ethics . London: Sage.
12.
du Gay, Paul (2003) ‘The Tyranny of the Epochal: Change, Epochalism and Organizational Reform’ , Organization10(4): 663-84.
13.
Eriksson, Päivi and Lehtimäki, Hanna ( 1998) ‘Strategic Management of the Local Information Society. A Constructionist Perspective on the Production and Evaluation of Strategy Documents’, Administrative Studies4: 290-301.
14.
Ezzamel, Mahmud and Willmott, Hugh ( 2008) ‘Strategy as Discourse in a Global Retailer: A Supplement to Rationalist and Interpretive Accounts’, Organization Studies29(2): 191-217.
15.
Fairclough, Norman ( 1989) Language and Power. London: Longman.
16.
Fairclough, Norman ( 1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge : Polity Press.
17.
Fairclough, Norman ( 1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language . London: Longman.
18.
Fairclough, Norman ( 2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research . London: Routledge.
19.
Fairclough, Norman ( 2005) ‘Discourse Analysis in Organization Studies: The Case for Critical Realism’, Organization Studies26(6): 915-39.
20.
Fairclough, Norman and Wodak, Ruth ( 1997) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’ in T. van Dijk (ed.) Discourse as Social Interaction , pp. 258-84. London: Sage.
21.
Ferlie, Evan, Ashburner, Lynn, Fitzgerald, Louise and Pettigrew, Andrew ( 1996) New Public Management in Action. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
22.
Forester, John ( 1989) Planning in the Face of Power. Berkeley : CA: University of California Press.
23.
Grandy, Gina and Mills, Albert J. ( 2004) ‘Strategy as Simulacra? A Radical Reflexive Look at the Discipline and Practice of Strategy’, Journal of Management Studies41(7): 1153-70.
24.
Halliday, M.A.K. ( 1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edn. London: Arnold.
25.
Hardy, Cynthia, Palmer, Ian and Phillips, Nelson ( 2000) ‘Discourse as a Strategic Resource’, Human Relations53(9): 1227-48.
26.
Hardy, Cynthia and Phillips, Nelson ( 2004) ‘Discourse and Power’ in D. Grant, C. Hardy , C. Oswick and L. Putnam (eds) The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse , pp. 299-316. London: Sage.
27.
Hodge, Bob and Coronado, Gabriela ( 2006) ‘Mexico Inc.? Discourse Analysis and the Triumph of Managerialism’, Organization13(4): 529-47.
28.
Hood, Christopher ( 1991) ‘A Public Management for All Seasons’, Public Administration69(1): 3-19.
29.
Iedema, Rick ( 1999) ‘Formalising Organizational Meaning’, Discourse and Society10(1): 49-65.
30.
Jarzabkowski, Paula ( 2005) Strategy as Practice: An Activity Based Approach. London: Sage.
31.
Jarzabkowski, Paula and Whittington, Richard ( 2008) ‘A Strategy-as-Practice Approach to Strategy Research and Education’, Journal Of Management Inquiry17(4): 282-86.
32.
Knights, David and Morgan, Glenn ( 1991) ‘Strategic Discourse and Subjectivity: Towards a Critical Analysis of Corporate Strategy in Organizations’, Organization Studies12(2): 251-73.
33.
Laine, Pikka-Maaria and Vaara, Eero ( 2007) ‘Struggling Over Subjectivity: A Discursive Analysis of Strategic Development in an Engineering Group’, Human Relations60(1): 29-58.
34.
Levy, David L., Alvesson, Mats and Willmott, Hugh ( 2003) ‘Critical Approaches to Strategic Management’ , in M. Alvesson and H. Willmott (eds) Studying Management Critically , pp. 92-110. London: Sage.
35.
Lilley, Simon ( 2001) ‘The Language of Strategy’, in R. Westwood and S. Linstead (eds) The Language of Organization, pp. 66-88. London : Sage.
36.
Luke, Allan ( 2002) ‘Beyond Science and Ideology Critique: Developments in Critical Discourse Analysis’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics22: 96-110.
37.
Lyons, John ( 1977) Semantics 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
38.
Mantere, Saku and Vaara, Eero ( 2008) ‘On the Problem of Participation in Strategy: A Critical Discursive Perspective’, Organization Science19(2): 341-61.
39.
McCabe, Darren ( 2010) ‘Strategy-as-Power: Ambiguity, Contradiction and the Exercise of Power in a UK Building Society’, Organization , in press.
40.
Norton, Todd and Sadler, Chris ( 2006) ‘Dialectical Hegemony and the Enactment of Contradictory Definitions in a Rural Community Planning Process’, Southern Communication Journal71(4): 363-82.
41.
Oakes, Leslie S., Townley, Barbara and Cooper, David J. ( 1998) ‘Business Planning as Pedagogy: Language and Control in a Changing Institutional Field’, Administrative Science Quarterly43(2): 257-92.
42.
Phillips, Nelson, Sewell, Graham and Jaynes, Steve ( 2008) ‘Applying Critical Discourse Analysis in Strategic Management Research’, Organizational Research Methods11(4): 770-89.
43.
Rakow, Lana F., Belter, Becky, Dyrstad, Heidi, Hallsten, Jodi, Johnson, Jay and Indvik, Keri ( 2003) ‘The Talk of Movers and Shakers: Class Conflict in the Making of a Community Disaster’, Southern Communication Journal69(1): 37-50.
44.
Robichaud, Daniel ( 2006) ‘Steps Toward a Relational View of Agency’ , in F. Cooren, J. R. Taylor, E. J. Van Every (eds) Communication as Organizing: Empirical and Theoretical Explorations in the Dynamic of Text and Conversation, pp. 101-14. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
45.
Rouillard, Christian and Giroux, Dalie ( 2005) ‘Public Administration and the Managerial Fervour for Values and Ethics: Of Collective Confusion in Control Societies’ , Administrative Theory and Praxis27(2): 330-57.
46.
Samra-Fredericks, Dalvir ( 2003) ‘Strategizing as Lived Experience and Strategists’ Everyday Efforts to Shape Strategic Direction’, Journal of Management Studies40(1): 141-74.
47.
Samra-Fredericks, Dalvir ( 2004) ‘Managerial Elites Making Rhetorical and Linguistic "Moves" for a Moving (Emotional) Display’, Human Relations57(9): 1103-44.
48.
Samra-Fredericks, Dalvir ( 2005) ‘Strategic Practice, "Discourse" and the Everyday International Constitution of "Power Effects’’’, Organization12(6): 803-41.
49.
Seidl, David ( 2007) ‘General Strategy Concepts and the Ecology of Strategy Discourses: A Systemic-Discursive Perspective’, Organization Studies28(2): 197-218.
50.
Swales, John M. ( 1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
51.
Thomas, Pete ( 2003) ‘The Recontextualization of Management: A Discourse-Based Approach to Analyzing the Development of Management Thinking’, Journal of Management Studies40(4): 775-801.
52.
Thomas, Robyn and Davies, Anette ( 2005) ‘Theorizing the Micro-Politics of Resistance: New Public Management and Managerial Identities in the UK Public Services’ , Organization Studies26(5): 683-706.
53.
Vaara, Eero, Kleymann, Birgit and Seristö, Hannu ( 2004) ‘Strategies as Discursive Constructions: The Case of Airline Alliances’, Journal of Management Studies41(1): 1-35.
54.
van Dijk, Teun A. ( 1998) Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage.
55.
van Dijk, Teun A. ( 2001) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, in D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. Hamilton (eds) Handbook of Discourse Analysis , pp. 352-71. Oxford: Blackwell.
56.
Whittington, Richard ( 2006) ‘Completing the Practice Turn in Strategy Research’ , Organization Studies27(5): 613-34.
57.
Wodak, Ruth ( 2004) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, in C. Seale, G. Gobo , J. F. Gubrium and D. Silverman (eds) Qualitative Research Practice , pp. 197-213. London, Sage.
