Organizational Discourse: Domains, Debates, and Directions

Interest in the analysis of organizational discourse has expanded rapidly over the last two decades. In this article, we reflect critically on organizational discourse analysis as an approach to the study of organizations and management, highlighting both its strengths and areas of challenge. We begin with an explanation of the nature of organizational discourse analysis and outline some of the more significant contributions made to date. We then discuss existing classifications of approaches to the study of organizational discourse and suggest that they fall into two main categories: classifications by level of analysis and classifications by type of method. We argue that both of these approaches are inherently problematic and present an alternative way to understand the varieties of approaches to the analysis of organizational discourse based on within domain and across domain characterizations. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges that remain in the development of organizational discourse as an area of study and point to some of the opportunities for important and unique contributions to our understanding of organizations and management that this family of methods brings. © 2012 Copyright Academy of Management

Recklessness, rescue and responsibility: Young men tell their stories of the transition to fatherhood

Young fatherhood has become a recent focus for concern in contemporary society. Arguably, following on from anxieties regarding teenage pregnancy and young parenting the focus on young fathers is a positive step. Within social work research young fathers' experiences are argued to be under-represented. This article draws on interviews with ten young fathers who, at the time of the interview, were users of social services in the South East of the UK. These ten young men form part of a larger group of 16 interviewed as part of a Doctoral thesis. Through the use of narrative interviews their stories of their transition to fatherhood were collected. One of the significant findings from the research was how all ten young men described a positive move in their self-identity following the birth of their child. Strategies they used in order to do this included drawing on old and new support networks as well as other forms of human and social capital, including professionals from voluntary and statutory agencies. This article, although based on interviews with a small number of young men, draws out wider implications for working with young fathers

'Tell me Your story applied': ethics in narrative research with young fathers

There has been a significant increase of interest in parents who are considered to be outside of normative discourses; specifically the 'moral panic' relating to an increase in the demography of teenage mothers in the UK (SEU, 1999, 2003; Swann et al., 2003). Recently research has turned to the experiences of parenting from the father's perspective (Daniel and Taylor, 1999, 2001) although there remains a significant gap focusing on the experiences of young fathers. It is argued by Swann et al. (2003) that young fathers are a difficult group to access and this has limited the amount and type of studies conducted with many studies on young parents looking at the role of the father through the eyes of the mother. This contribution focuses on the use of narrative interviews with a small group of young, vulnerable, socially excluded fathers who are users of the statutory social services in the UK. The article looks specifically at the ethics and practical challenges of working with this group and offers insights into the use of the narrative method and the ethical dilemmas resulting from it