TY - CHAP
T1 - Meeting Generalized Others
T2 - Social Structure and Materiality in a Recently Merged Organization
AU - Strøbæk, Pernille Solveig
AU - Willert, Søren
PY - 2014/4/1
Y1 - 2014/4/1
N2 - Following George Herbert Mead, we contend that work-related organizational behavior requires continued negotiation of meaning - using linguistic, behavioral, and social tools. The meaning structures of the Generalized Other(s) of a particular employing organization provide the regulatory framework for such negotiations. It is these organizational patterns of meaning that provide the basic 'stuff' from which employees' identity-supporting narratives, at an individual and social levels, are shaped. In addition, they are the 'stuff' that may add 'social life', that is to say, a language-based, shared mentality, to materialized aspects of human group life. Such meaning structures may be challenged in the event of organizational mergers. Drawing upon existing focus group interview data from an ongoing research project examining a major organizational merger, our chapter presents an explorative study of materialized aspects of Generalized Others across groups with different pre-merger backgrounds. Our findings suggest that analyzing dominant material discourse themes may throw light on the way work teams define and regulate their social practice and, moreover, that such analyses may be useful tools for studying the social dynamics of materiality and agency in organizational mergers and related situations.
AB - Following George Herbert Mead, we contend that work-related organizational behavior requires continued negotiation of meaning - using linguistic, behavioral, and social tools. The meaning structures of the Generalized Other(s) of a particular employing organization provide the regulatory framework for such negotiations. It is these organizational patterns of meaning that provide the basic 'stuff' from which employees' identity-supporting narratives, at an individual and social levels, are shaped. In addition, they are the 'stuff' that may add 'social life', that is to say, a language-based, shared mentality, to materialized aspects of human group life. Such meaning structures may be challenged in the event of organizational mergers. Drawing upon existing focus group interview data from an ongoing research project examining a major organizational merger, our chapter presents an explorative study of materialized aspects of Generalized Others across groups with different pre-merger backgrounds. Our findings suggest that analyzing dominant material discourse themes may throw light on the way work teams define and regulate their social practice and, moreover, that such analyses may be useful tools for studying the social dynamics of materiality and agency in organizational mergers and related situations.
M3 - Book chapter
SN - 978-1-63117-557-2
T3 - Contemporary Cultural Studies
SP - 105
EP - 124
BT - Critical Narrative Inquiry
A2 - Mølbjerg Jørgensen,, Kenneth
A2 - Largarcha-Martinez, Carlos
PB - Nova Science Publishers
CY - New York
ER -