Organizational Rhetoric Research Articles

Native advertising in Vale’s reparation process after the dam collapse in Brumadinho

On 25th January 2019, the mining company Vale’s B1 tailings dam collapsed in the city of Brumadinho (Minas Gerais), becoming Brazil’s largest labour accident in terms of number of fatalities, as well as a socio-environmental disaster that affected 26 municipalities along the Paraopeba river basin. Its consequences are still felt by the communities, three victims are missing and there are transnational litigations against the involved corporate companies. This research aims to understand how Vale’s institutional communication occurs in the reparation process of the damages caused by the dam collapse, with a focus on the discourse of renewal adopted by the company in five native advertising pieces published on Estado de Minas newspaper’s portal between 2020 and 2022. Through a qualitative content analysis, it was possible to observe its strategy when using brand journalism to communicate with its audiences. It was not possible to see an ethical communication nor an effective organisational rhetoric. Future research could question Vale’s communication officers the option for native ads instead of traditional advertising or press office work, as well as ask Estado de Minas’ editors about the risks and opportunities of producing and/or publishing this type of sponsored content.

Violent Enactments and Erasures: A Western Capitalist Ontology of Labor in Organizational Rhetoric About Resettled Syrian Refugees

With more than half of Syria’s population forced to flee their homes over nearly a decade, the narrative of Syrian refugees has evolved to reflect the realities of their displacement. The purpose of this article is to critique how the rhetoric of organizations meant to serve resettled Syrian refugees can also perpetuate dominant neoliberal and capitalist ideologies that result in harmful discursive practices. More specifically, this essay uses a thematic narrative analysis to examine the manifestation of a Western capitalist ontology of labor in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “Stories” of Syrian refugees. The narratives perpetuated the entrepreneurial ideal, individualized systemic labor challenges, and privileged the organization’s intervention and voice. The analysis subsequently juxtaposes how an organization meant to protect and advocate for refugees can be discursively violent through the enactment of Western, colonizing representations and erasures.

Granted Utility, a Proposal for the Rhetoric of Nonprofit Wrongdoing

This article explores the discourse of nonprofit wrongdoing through a thematic analysis of over 450 texts, including media coverage and organizational responses, surrounding four cases of nonprofit wrongdoing. These cases include theft, mismanagement of funds, lying about 9/11, and administering unintentional yet lethal doses of medication. The findings extend prior work on organizational rhetoric and propose the notion of granted utility – an assumed foundational view of the usefulness and underlying benefit of nonprofit organizations – as key for understanding nonprofit rhetoric. The findings suggest that recognizing granted utility allows organizations to focus on answering responsibility-focused questions of organizational legitimacy while maintaining utility-focused messages that reinforce granted utility when wrongdoing occurs.

Composing Beethoven: Not All Organizational Rhetoric is Equal

While there is a growing body of research on the benefits of rhetorical history, we know considerably less about the degree to which a firm’s chosen rhetorical history strategy successfully produces a firm benefit, especially when history may be retold using a variety of mnemonic tools for the storage and retrieval of historical content and organizational memories. Through the qualitative investigation of the most historically elite peer group of U.S. orchestras coined the “Big Five,” rhetorical history strategies emerge in the form of four distinct mnemonic practices – articulation, action, attribution, and artifactualization. The insights from this study have both theoretical and managerial implications for how these practices help mythologize personal histories, while further preserving collective beliefs and traditions.

A Discourse of Renewal: Higher Education Leadership and Crisis Communication during Black Lives Matter

This case study examines ethical leadership responses and crisis communications at a public institution of higher education in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, which occur concurrently with the COVID-19 pandemic and institutional financial crises. The Discourse of Renewal framework requires a focus on what is best for the entirety of the community, rather than simply being a strategic response that only benefits a few. The framework provides a structure for conceptualizing and considering an optimistic discourse in response to crises. A rhetorical analysis of leadership discourse examined four renewal characteristics: overall organizational learning, ethical communication, prospective visioning, and effective organizational rhetoric. Surveys and subsequent analyses of faculty, students, and staff responses provide a feedback mechanism from institutional stakeholders. Subsequent discussions explore issues of navigating stacked crises and how an ethical leadership response can help build beyond crises for the future of the organization.

The Impact of Organizational Rhetoric on Achieving the Competitive Advantage of Entrepreneurs

The Impact of Organizational Rhetoric on Achieving the Competitive Advantage of Entrepreneurs

Industrial Pioneerism in the Beehive State: Rio Tinto and the Corporate Persona

Contributing to organizational rhetoric, environmental communication, and persona criticism, this paper offers the corporate persona as a heuristic for mapping the rhetorical forces of corporate rhetors in a networked era of rhetoric and subjectivity. Giving the rhetor presence where there is absence, the corporate persona is a single image of a multiple subject implied by discursive and extra-discursive networks. I show how mining giant Rio Tinto Kennecott (RTK), which owns the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine outside of Salt Lake City, uses places, spaces, and objects—including a visitor’s center, a suburban community, a soccer stadium, and a natural history museum—to create a pioneer persona that is tied to cultural memories of the Utah Deseret. RTK’s persona is illustrative of how corporations are networked subjects that can adapt their very selfhoods to meet different exigencies while evading singular responsibilities.

Organizational Rhetoric as Subjectification

Given arguments that organizational rhetoric is disconnected from contemporary and useful trends in rhetorical theory writ-large, we build a case for rethinking organizational rhetoric’s founding concept of identification through recent innovations in rhetorical theory. Drawing from theories of psychoanalysis, racialization, and coloniality, we argue for an alternative understanding of organizational rhetoric premised on subjectification, where subjectification is the process through which a subject is brought into being on the basis of shifting contexts, relations, and imbrication in forces of power. We highlight three facets of organizational subjectification that can contribute to innovative organizational rhetorical research: differential relations, dependence on Otherness, and uneven mutuality. These facets, we argue, highlight how processes of coloniality and racialization are fundamental to our very being and becoming, providing a means of understanding organizational rhetoric as inherently political.

The European Investment Bank’s ‘Quantum Leap’ to Become the World’s First International Climate Bank

In November 2019, the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced its ‘metamorphosis’ into a ‘Climate Bank.’ Associated with the EU’s Green Deal, presented a month later, the EIB claimed to be the first international climate bank and a front runner in the EU’s priority climate agenda. The EIB is mandated through the treaties to support EU policymakers. However, with its ‘makeover,’ the EIB also announced the launch of a new climate strategy and energy lending policy, ending fossil fuel financing after 2021. It is thus valuable to examine the question of whether the EIB has developed into a policymaker, and if so, how this can be best understood. In exploring this question, this article follows a principal-agent approach, attempting to discern the rational interests behind organisational rhetoric and posits that the EIB’s claimed transformation hints at a type of policymaking activism, exploiting a policy window to serve the EIB’s rational interests in a strained political and market contest. This represents a paradigm shift in the EIB’s institutional behaviour and rhetoric within the EU governance constellation and is, in fact, in this sense a ‘quantum leap’ as suggested by the EIB. However, it remains to be seen if the bank’s metrics will prove a bold departure from their current activity or simply another adaptation to a policy field of intense interest to the EU, as has occurred on several occasions in the past.

Critical considerations of workplace flexibility “for all” and gendered outcomes: Men being flexible about their flexibility

AbstractFlexible working arrangements (FWA) “for all, from the CEO down”, have begun to be promoted in Australia, heralded as a means to finally achieve gender equity in the workplace. However, workplaces are gendered spaces in which masculine traits and unconstrained availability are usually highly valued, as encapsulated in the notion of the ideal worker, and women are seen as lacking or “other”. We undertook a study to examine how upper level managers in large, male‐dominated organizations endorsing FWA for all perceived and reflected on the use of FWA within their organizations and by themselves. Interviews were undertaken with 12 upper level managers (9 men). Applying a social constructionist perspective and critical theoretical lens informed by theories of Acker and Ahmed, qualitative analysis suggested that, despite being “for all” in organizational rhetoric, FWA remains viewed as “for women”, and appropriate to lower level, routinized roles. Upper level managers described themselves and other men as able to be “flexible about their flexibility” thus maintaining their standing as ideal workers. This framing of flexibility has implications for men, women and society. It enabled ongoing positioning of women as other in workplace settings, rendering invisible structural inequality. Thus, FWA for all does not necessarily transform workplace gender equity.

Bringing the problem home: The anti-slavery and anti-trafficking rhetoric of UK non-government organisations

Rhetoric is a way to explain policy problem framing by recognising the practical necessity to persuade audiences in contextual situations. Modern slavery and human trafficking is a complex and emotive problem, simplified through rhetorical demands to motivate an audience of supporters. This article analyses rhetoric by 212 UK anti-trafficking and anti-slavery non-government organisations (NGOs) to uncover rhetorical practices and their effects on policy framing, supplemented by archival research to compare past and present anti-slavery oratory. Our data show NGOs use rhetoric to motivate supporters and promote a humanitarian problem frame, in opposition to a state-driven security frame. Findings confirm other research in identifying an emphasis on female victims and on sexual over labour exploitation. Past and present rhetoric are equivalent in terms of liberal, Christian values (ethos) and appeals to pathos through sympathy for victims. Historical rhetoric is distinctive in arguing for the equal human status of slaves, whereas contemporary activists argue victims are denied agency. Contemporary rhetoric represses the question of migration, whereas past rhetoric is more deliberative. Rhetoric varies with the requirements of persuasion related to contextual distance, between unlike humans in the past, but in regard to geographical distance today.

Bringing the problem home: The anti-slavery and anti-trafficking rhetoric of UK non-government organisations

Rhetoric is a way to explain policy problem framing by recognising the practical necessity to persuade audiences in contextual situations. Modern slavery and human trafficking is a complex and emot...

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.

Cultivating an ‘earthly paradise’: nature, informal education, and the contested politics of youth citizenship, 1910s–1940s

ABSTRACT This article discusses contested discourses of youth citizenship in Birmingham, UK, in the early twentieth century. It explores how socially committed Quakers and labour and co-operative activists in the city drew on transnational social and political critiques of the urban, and a powerful discourse of nature as facilitator of a morally and physically healthier citizen, to adopt pedagogic responses aimed at securing a more peaceful and egalitarian world. Taking the British Camp Fire Girls and a local fellowship of the Woodcraft Folk as case studies, the article considers the role of the natural world in the pedagogy of youth citizenship, and how organisational rhetoric at a national level was translated into practice locally. It analyses the political and religious motivations of the adults who developed these initiatives, and argues that suburban south Birmingham provided a very particular pedagogic landscape in which alternative conceptualisations of youth citizenship were possible.

Host Society and Migrants / Searching for the Languages of Mutual Description

The article provides a selection of studies on the problem of developing languages for the mutual description of migrants and the host society. The authors consider the problem, on the one hand, through the prism of heterogeneity of the language for describing migrants in the host society, and on the other, through the absence of legitimate representatives of migrants representing them in the dialogue with the Russian society. It offers a point of view on the reasons for the dominance of ethnic discourse in the description of migrants and the migration situation, and wide pluralism in the use of ethnic categories in describing migration. It is shown that migrants do not participate in the development of rhetoric of organisations recognised by the authorities as their legitimate representatives. The article raises the question about the formation of new representatives of migrant groups, whose legitimacy is based not on powers delegated by the authorities, but on recognition by horizontal communities. It is assumed that, on the basis of the network representations, a mechanism is being formed for the humanisation of the image of migrants through the return of subjectivity in communication with the host society

Narrative conventions: What contribute to competitive prime time television News Discussions?

Television News has been a resorted platform for Indian viewers over the past decades. A majority of Indian viewers are known to trust this platform for its highly expected one-stop, credible, professionally opinionated sense of reporting. News channels have become platforms for celebrity journalists and anchors to exercise their authority. News organisations have become backbones of information and public opinion and journalists and their organisational agenda have taken this forward. With bold and competitive strategies used to enable news presentations, it is essential to examine and recognize existing Television news narrative conventions and practices that have gained momentum in recent years. Through a qualitative analytical approach taken for this research study, it is clear that narrative conventions exist and modify, thus producing fashionable and modernized forms of presentation techniques during prime time. With a clear organisational norm and genre of discourse shared by Indian English television channels today, the paper highlights persisting organisational norms, unconventional discourses, rhetoric (audio and visual) and music – a contributing element as existing contributors of narrative conventions.

Ethical grounds for public relations as organizational rhetoric

Organizational rhetoric is critically questioned for ethics of its strategic processes and aspirational goal of persuasive, inescapably self-interested influence. Such critique pits strategic engagement needed for self-governance against self-interested framing (spin) and other dysfunctions. This theoretical essay takes stock of research literature to evaluate the ethics of organizational rhetoric, as rationale for public relations, and justify shifting from a strategic functional to an ontological, agonistic view of public relations. Relevant literature justifies the ethics of fairness (which features regard for others’ interests) to guide rhetorical processes and prefer outcomes as societally responsible. From classical Greece to postmodern theory of agonism, analysis of rhetoric centers on self-governance: achieved by stakeholders addressing rhetorical problems in rhetorical situations to deliberate strategic legitimatization. The discursive role of public relations intersects ethics of fairness and rhetorical citizenship, advocacy and dialogue, discourse and engagement at individual and societal levels. Public relations should be linked to an ontological ethics regarding strategic means of rhetorical influence toward ends accomplished collectively by agonistic pursuit.

Extending Discourse of Renewal to Preparedness: Construct and Scale Development of Readiness for Renewal

This study developed the construct of readiness for renewal in organizations and evaluated its underlying psychometric properties. We drew on Discourse of Renewal theory to develop, pilot, and refine a scale through three studies with full-time employees whose organizations recently experienced crises. Study 1 established a two-factor structure that included ethical communication and effective organizational rhetoric. Using confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2, we replicated the two-factor solution. Because of a high correlation between factors, we modified the model to include a higher order factor predicting the two lower order factors. Study 3 translated the questionnaire and replicated findings from Study 2 with full-time employees in Mexico. The resulting 15-item instrument in English and Spanish can be used by researchers and practitioners interested in assessing precrisis readiness through the Discourse of Renewal.

Constructing the Ideal Worker Identity: The Rhetorical Construction of Discursive Resources in Undercover Boss

Scholars theorize that organizations influence individuals’ work identity management, yet scholars have studied individuals’ efforts more than organizations’ identity regulation processes. Recent attention to popular culture’s role in organizing invites study of how organization-focused reality programming regulates work identity discourses. Thus, this project asks how organizations rhetorically construct norms that can regulate identities in Undercover Boss. The show offers tension-filled hero narratives that (re)construct and regulate an ideal worker discourse in organizationally beneficial ways. The findings demonstrate how reality programming functions as organizational rhetoric that interacts at both macro-level and micro-levels to discursively manage workplace identities.

The ‘Floating’Ummahin the Fall of ‘Ahok’ in Indonesia

AbstractThe article examines the idea of a ‘floating’ummahin Indonesia today that affects the workings of Indonesian Islamic politics and democracy itself. It is asserted that theummah, or community of believers, are more disconnected from the large mainstream Islamic organisational vehicles in Indonesia than is often claimed. A considerable cross-section of this community has become increasingly disaffected with the status quo, as social inequalities sharpen and educated youths who face uncertain futures find appeal in the tough rhetoric of fringe Islamic organisations. This rhetoric emphasises absolute standards of morality as a solution to social and economic predicaments, thereby resulting in the mainstreaming of rigid religious attitudes. Consequently, organisations seen as guardians of ‘religious moderation’ have also picked up on them in an attempt to remain relevant to their increasingly socially heterogeneous constituencies. The overall result is an Islamic politics that has become more intolerant, especially when identity politics gets absorbed into conflicts between different oligarchic factions. This was seen in the dramatic fall of the ethnic-Chinese and Christian former governor of Jakarta known as ‘Ahok’ in 2017.