Power of Words: Strategic Change Constituted in a Managerial Narrative

Abstract

This paper introduces a study on an authorized strategy text that is played out in the managerial strategy narrative and aimed at enacting a strategic change. The paper examines especially how it is done by using micro processes and functions of the language. It aims to answer the following broad research question: How does the managerial strategy narrative construct the strategic change? Previous research has demonstrated the importance of the managerial strategy narrative for strategizing in organizations (Mantere, 2008) and therefore this paper examines the company president’s strategy narrative. The managerial strategy narrative refers to the strategy story as told by the president in his letters to all employees during a strategic change of five years. Since the president possesses power and authority in his organizational position, his strategy narrative is the authorized strategy narrative. There is also reason to assume that his narrative of strategy is aimed at constructing the strategic change for the employees; managers have the power to influence others and arrange meanings for others (Cornelissen et al., 2011; Jameson, 2001). However, little of the previous research has demonstrated how meanings are organized on the level of language with the micro processes and devices available in the language. The communicative constitution of the strategic change was elaborated on the discourse and text surface level with a discourse analysis of 35 letters by the company president to the employees during the five-year strategic change. The study proposes a theoretical, cyclical, and dynamic model of strategic change communication; it underlines the importance of the need to communicate simultaneously about the ways of working and mindsets that need to change and to provide new models for acting and thinking.