Strategic Discourse across Organizational Meetings:Towards a Systems Perspective.

Martin Duffy, Dublin Institute of Technology
Brendan K. O'Rourke, Dublin Institute of Technology

Document Type Conference Paper

Duffy, M. F., & O'Rourke, B. K. (2012a). Strategic Discourse across Organizational Meetings:Towards a Systems Perspective. Paper presented at PROS: Fourth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies: Language and Communication @ Work: Discourse, Narrativity and Organizing, Kos, Greece. www.process-symposium.com

Abstract

Strategic Discourse across Organizational meetings: Towards a Systems Perspective Abstract This paper presents a tentative theoretical conception of how organizational meetings may be viewed as a system rather than as individual events. Perspectives from process metaphysics(Langley and Tsoukas, 2010), meso-discourse analysis (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000, 2011) and systems thinking (von Bertalanffy, 1969) are adopted, to explore and expand the theoretical resources available to conceptualise a ‘system of meetings’. The primary data draws from 130+ hours of recorded meeting proceedings, spanning 58 meeting events, from multiple sub-groups within a medium sized company.