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Discourse
Discourse phronesis in phronesis in
organizational change: organizational
change
a narrative analysis
Noora Jansson 769
University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how discursive practices are involved in
organizational change.
Design/methodology/approach – This research scrutinizes organizational change by combining
discourse and practice approaches. A case study at a public university hospital is conducted with
a narrative analysis method.
Findings – The key finding of this research is that discursive practices are involved in organizational
change through discourse phronesis. Discourse phronesis is a socially and contextually developed
phenomenon, and hence discursive practices are particular within context. The case study revealed
four particular discursive practices as examples of discourse phronesis: field practices, mandate
practices, priority practices and word practices.
Practical implications – The results of this research advance awareness of the concealed power
within discursive practices and, more importantly, invite practitioners to pursue the intellectual virtue
of discourse phronesis while implementing organizational change. Discourse phronesis may be
utilized as a gateway to advance change goals and to translate various discourses and actions that
otherwise might remain unexplained.
Originality/value – Although extensively studied, organizational change has not previously been
directly approached through discourse phronesis, and by doing so this empirical research provides
novelty value to both organizational change research and discourse analysis. By introducing the
concept of discourse phronesis, this research offers scholars an alternative lens, the intellectual
practicality lens, through which to approach organizational change and perhaps to develop new
understandings of the great challenges that organizational change complexities usually generate.
Keywords Practice, Phronesis, Organizational change, Discourse, Narrative
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The purpose of this empirical research is to explain how discursive practices are
involved in organizational change. The key argument is that while the discourse
approach has proved to be very useful as a mechanism through which meaning
is created and change realized (Bisel and Barge, 2011; Thomas et al., 2011), it would
benefit greatly from a complementary approach that analyses organizations’ societal
practices and values their context dependence (Crawshaw and Bunton, 2009; Grant and
Marshak, 2011; Thomas et al., 2011). Because practice theory has the capability to
analyze simultaneously organizational actors and sociological theories of practice
(Vaara and Whittington, 2012), it is a suitable choice of theory when scrutinizing
discourse as practice in the context of change.
This paper begins by introducing the theoretical framework of the research. The
overview of previous research illustrates that discourse analysis does generate Journal of Organizational Change
profound understanding of organizational change; it highlights the current tendency to Management
Vol. 27 No. 5, 2014
adopt a constructivist approach to discourse, while also inviting new approaches pp. 769-779
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
and empirical studies to further explore the phenomenon of organizational change 0953-4814
through discourse analysis. Practice theory sets the scene for explaining organizational DOI 10.1108/JOCM-09-2014-0173
JOCM change through societal practices. Then, building on the theoretical framework, the
27,5 research methods are introduced and the data analysis approach is demonstrated.
Focussing on a case study is a fruitful approach to practice research (Baxter and
Chua, 2008; Ford, 2006) and discursive studies (Thomas and Hewitt, 2011). In order to
identify societal practices linked with discourse, the paper uses as its case study
an organization with a relatively long history (well-established societal practices)
770 and field-based discursive characteristics (e.g. previously established professional
language and norms) in the field of specialized healthcare. The case analysis
and the key findings of the narrative analysis are discussed, and finally, conclusions
are presented.

2. The discourse approach and the practice approach

Since Kurt Lewin (1947) first defined a successful change project in an organization,
two intertwined phenomena have remained characteristic of an organization’s change
process: alk (Bathurst and Monin, 2010; Jian, 2007; Moon, 2009; Schwarz et al., 2011;
Sonenshein, 2010) and action (Battilana et al., 2010; Cinite et al., 2009; Clark and
Soulsby, 2007; Fields, 2007; Greve and Mitsuhashi, 2007; Ndofor et al., 2009; Zhang
and Rajagopalan, 2010). Hence, the combination of discourse and societal practices
provides organizational scholars a suitable platform for deeper scrutinizing of change.
Next, these two important and complementary approaches are introduced.

2.1 The discourse approach

Most of the literature on discourse and organizational change is relatively new, since
academic interest in organizational discourse emerged in the early 2000s following
interest in linguistic elements in social sciences (Oswick et al., 2010). Change can be
viewed as a social construction of talk that takes different forms, such as discursive
manifestations, struggles or recontextualizations (Engeström and Sannino, 2011;
Wolfram Cox and Hassard, 2010). Discourse is thus the key site in which change
happens, because change is not fixed but rather constructed in the various discourses
(Grant and Marshak, 2011; Whittle et al., 2010).
The key mechanism that drives the construction of meaning through discourse is
contradiction (Erkama, 2010; Jian, 2011; Thomas et al., 2011). For example, within the
dialectical theory school perspective, an organization is a scenario in which competing
events, forces and values have a simultaneous influence and in which change occurs
in the confrontation of these opposing elements (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995).
Contradiction in organizational change is often explained through dualities of two
coexisting, opposing forces (Farjoun, 2010; Graetz and Smith, 2008). The growing
interest in contradictions has generated several important studies that contribute to
organizational change research through, for example, paradox theory (Aram, 1989;
Lüscher and Lewis, 2008; Smith and Lewis, 2011).
Organizational change discourse may involve stories, myths, narratives or even
silence (Bathurst and Monin, 2010; Buchanan and Dawson, 2007; Perlow and Repenning,
2009; Vaara and Tienari, 2011), together with the notion of power (Erkama, 2010; Ford
and Ford, 2009; Foucault, 1977; Grant and Marshak, 2011; Schatzki, 2002). Intentional
selection of discursive practices, such as opposing stories or alternative discourses,
brings forward the societal nature of organizational discourse and its context
dependence (Grant and Marshak, 2011). For example, Rouleau and Balogun (2011) have
developed a framework of two discursive activities, “performing the conversation” and
“setting the scene,” as central to middle managers’ sensemaking of organizational change.
Performing the conversation refers to selecting the right words, myths, metaphors or Discourse
symbols in order to influence the audience in desired way. Setting the scene is about phronesis in
creating the right networks and alliances, i.e. positioning discourse leaders around
the change initiative in such a way that productive conversations can actualize. organizational
Thus, in their analysis, Rouleau and Balogun (2011) combine sensemaking and change
the ability to act politically, highlighting the need to socialize within the context
of action to understand sociocultural systems, because “the strategic and relational 771
are embedded in the normative contextual knowledge” (Rouleau and Balogun,
2011, p. 976).
To summarize, scholars have offered important insights on organizational change
through discourse analysis. However, their conclusions indicate that there are still
several avenues to be explored. Proposals for further research include, for example,
adopting more contextual perspectives (Buchanan and Dawson, 2007; Grant and
Marshak, 2011; Vaara and Tienari, 2011) and considering power specifics (Erkama,
2010; Grant and Marshak, 2011; Thomas et al., 2011). There have also been suggestions
to work more on organizations’ communicative practices by looking into actors’
actions in constructing reality (Thomas et al., 2011). Grant and Marshak (2011, p. 221)
state that it is “important to consider questions such as how, precisely, do discourses
construct social reality, especially regarding organizational change,” inviting
researchers to give greater attention to analyzing the ways in which discourses are
born, generated and changed, rather than investigating the already established
discourses and their impacts. In conclusion, a dialogical view on organizational change
is regarded as useful among scholars, but it would benefit from further refinement
(Oswick et al., 2010; Schwarz et al., 2011; Vaara and Tienari, 2011). Thus, the practice
approach, introduced next, has been selected in pursuing further refinement because
of its ability to analyze action within practice (Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011).

2.2 The practice approach

The practice approach embeds human action within social structures (Vaara and
Whittington, 2012) and hence offers a powerful approach to explain action. Practice has
many definitions. To Schatzki (2001, p. 2), practice is “embodied, materially mediated
arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical understanding.”
Vaara and Whittington (2012, p. 287), in a review of practice theory-based studies on
strategy, define the concept of practice as “accepted ways of doing things, embodied
and materially mediated, that are shared between actors and routinized over time.”
Orlikowski (2007, p. 1444) proposes that “all practices are always and everywhere
sociomaterial, and that this sociomateriality is constitutive, shaping the contours
and possibilities of everyday organizing.” In sum, practice is a dimension of activity
within a socially constructed context.
The practice approach offers an interesting lens to study organizational change and the
related discourses due to its ability to acknowledge context, human interaction and tacit
knowledge. In fact, from the practice perspective, organizational change is a manifestation
of particularity, because human actors in change are provoked by power and conflict
( Jansson, 2013). A widely recognized concept to explain particularity in practice is
phronesis (Flyvjberg, 2001; Gunder, 2010; Schatzki, 2002), the key concept of this research.
Phronesis is one of the three famous virtues of Aristotle (phronesis, episteme,
techne) and was defined by him as follows: “Phronesis is a virtue of practical intellect
rather than of theoretical, and its closest analog is therefore not wisdom but craft”
(Moss, 2011, p. 38). Schatzki (2002) explains that phronesis for Aristotle is the
JOCM intellectual feature of praxis, human action. Phronesis can be viewed as an appropriate
27,5 paradigmatic platform for the social sciences, widely referred to as “practical wisdom”
(Flyvjberg, 2001; Gunder, 2010; Johannisson, 2011). For example, Flyvjberg (2001,
p. 167) proposes a model of phronetic social science that contributes “to society’s
practical rationality in elucidating where we are, where we want to go, and what is
desirable according to diverse sets of values and interests.”
772 Phronesis, as defined above, is powerful because it provides insight into particular
social actions and hence contributes to the resolution of particular issues and
generates understanding of “non-particular” particularity (Gunder, 2010). Furthermore,
as phronesis develops over time only through experience and as such cannot be learned
without personal involvement (Gunder, 2010), it should be a very interesting issue for
organizational management.

3. The case study: a public university hospital

A public university hospital offers a revealing case study to examine how discursive
practices are involved in organizational change. Qualitative methods, such as case
studies of single organizations, are a popular methodology among organizational
scholars analyzing practice, because case studies are helpful in studying particularities.
Case studies offer a way to find answers to “how” questions, they cover context conditions,
and they are flexible and rigorous (Baxter and Jack, 2008; Vaara and Whittington, 2012;
Yin, 2003).
Research shows that organizations that are public or political or that involve highly
specialized professional employees tend to be especially challenged in implementing
planned change initiatives (Kan and Parry, 2004; Ramanujam and Rousseau, 2006).
Discourse within conjunctures of social practice is identifiable in the environment
of medical practitioners and professional autonomy (Thomas and Hewitt, 2011).
University hospital organizations are environments where personnel demonstrate high
dedication to science and care and where professional cultures, “deep structures,” are
strong (Choi et al., 2011) and thus most likely identifiable. Hence, a university hospital
organization, Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS), offers a suitable research
site and context to study discursive practices’ involvement in organizational change.
A case is “a phenomenon of some sort occurring in a bounded context. The case is,
in effect, your unit of analysis” (Miles and Huberman, 1994, p. 25). As the research
question of this study is :

RQ1. How are discursive practices involved in organizational change?

the case is then “the discursive practices in organizational change” bounded by

place and time (Baxter and Jack, 2008), i.e. a university hospital organization in Finland
in 2000-2011. This analysis is based on 30 interviews with HUS central administration
and care unit management representatives. The interviewees were chosen so that each
person selected had been involved in at least one of the predefined organizational
changes at HUS, and so that the interviewees were distributed among different
professions and positions in the management, such as board chairmen, CEOs, chief
medical officers, administrative chief nurses, and people from the central administration,
legal department, communications, hospital area management and care units.
The data analysis approach in this research is narrative (Gubrium and Holstein,
2008), because this permits focussing on identifiable themes or “repertoires” of
behavior (Bourdieu, 1990). Key themes were explored through a narrative analysis
of the interview data, led by the research question “How are discursive practices Discourse
involved in organizational change? ” The overall conclusion of the narrative analysis is phronesis in
that discursive practices are involved in organizational change through phronesis.
In other words, the narratives exposed certain specific internal codes of discursive organizational
behavior that had an effect on organizational change in some way. The specific change
examples which illustrate discourse phronesis are presented below.
773
4. Descriptive findings
The analysis suggests that discourse is phronetic, and therefore discursive practices
are particular within context. The conclusion is based on identifying socially
constructed discursive practices which, based on the narrative analysis, are central to
the meaning creation process during organizational change. This finding is highly
important, as it suggests that even though discourse matters in organizational change,
the particular discursive practices are equally important. In other words, discourse
should be regarded as socially constructed practice. In this study, this phenomenon
is called discourse phronesis. Phronesis, as described earlier, can be viewed as “the
intellectual feature of praxis” (Schatzki, 2002), ultimately referring to the practical
wisdom of a practice (Gunder, 2010), such as discourse.
As practice theory suggests, practices are constructed over time in particular social
contexts. Hence, the discursive practices which were identified in the analysis of this
particular study are not necessarily applicable to other social constructs, although they
could be. The research question “How are discursive practices involved in organizational
change?” can then be answered on two levels: the level of principle and the particular
level. First, in principle, discursive practices are involved in organizational change
through discourse phronesis, which is the key to open the hidden and unspoken
locks of shared meaning creation. Second, in this particular case study, it was
possible to identify four discursive practices which apply to a specific organization
undergoing organizational change, HUS. These particular discursive practices and
their involvement in organizational change are presented next in order to demonstrate
some examples of socially constructed discursive practices. The following examples
also demonstrate that discourse phronesis does exist and that is does have an influence
on organizational change.

4.1 Field practices

Organizational change concerns all of an organization’s various fields, the social
contexts of the actors; in turn, the fields have an impact on change through discourse
across fields. HUS, for example, encompasses the academic field (Helsinki University),
the political field (owner municipalities and their representatives) and the hospital field
(care personnel). My analysis indicates that the different fields within the organization
not only have their own particular discursive practices, but also expect actors in
other fields to recognize and respect these field-specific practices. For example,
organizational change planners need to take into account that critical thinking in
science has influenced the organizational culture of discourse inside the academic field
of a university hospital. In other words, critical comments may not always signal
opposition; they may simply be a way to talk. One interviewee described the
importance of approaching discourse with a critical attitude in the following way:
The academic identity creates a certain atmosphere of searching for new things, doing
research and being critical. Leaders in a university hospital need to be able to participate in
critical discussions, because it is part of the academic culture in the organization.
JOCM In sum, organizational fields have particular discursive practices due to historical
27,5 and contextual reasons. When an organizational change is planned and executed,
it concerns all fields within the organization, as change happens at the intersection of
multiple fields’ discursive practices. If these fields’ actors do not understand the
discursive practices of other fields, translation of the messages may be biased and
influence the change process.
774
4.2 Mandate practices
Another discursive practice concerns actors’ mandate to lead and participate in
discourse. Discursive mandate at HUS is achieved through professional authority and
academic merit. An interviewee explained the importance of professional authority in
leading change as follows:
Especially at high levels, management is challenging because you need a constructive and
respected position of authority. I don’t mean that it needs to be worshipped, but you need to
gain the respect of your subordinates. And in a specialist organization people are so
heterogeneous, and respect comes only by understanding the substance of what these
specialists do, and in most cases it has been necessary that you are yourself an active
clinician, when respect comes from the fact that you can do it yourself. That is the easiest
way. If that is not an option, then you need to be very broad-minded and understand the
essential aspects of what others do so that you really understand the substance and can
appreciate the right things and can invest in the right things.
Over decades, discursive practices in the hospital have developed so that in order to
participate in a serious discourse in a hospital, the participants must have gained the
authority to negotiate and to decide. These practices have spread also to concerns other
than direct patient care, such as planning and implementing organizational changes.
An interviewee who is himself a docent described the actor’s mandate to participate in
important discourse thus:
Before you are a PhD, you have no authority to speak, and only by becoming a docent
you gain the true authority to speak. Yes, this world is like that, in the world of physicians,
exactly like that.
To conclude, the narrative analysis indicates that a certain behavioral code exists
regarding the mandate to talk, and it requires “practical wisdom” to act upon this
practice. For organizational change leaders, understanding discursive practices
related to mandate is crucial, because these determine the hidden hierarchies
of discourse.

4.3 Priority practices

The third particular discursive practice emerging from the analysis concerns priorities.
Prioritizing is about making selections, putting something ahead of something else.
When organizational change is justified through priorities, it means that someone will
experience a threat of loss. This is why discourse practices become of importance when
justifying change to the personnel. An interviewee explained the need for the right
kind of justification, which at the first glance seems trivial but, according to several
interviewees, was very difficult in practice:
If you want to change something you need to be able to explain and justify the change.
You need a justification that starts from the primary reasons for why we are here. What do we
want to add to it that is better? You should spend more time in justifying why some changes
are done.
Talking about organizational priorities is sensitive to phronesis. The organizational Discourse
change process is emotional for the actors concerned, and it provokes fundamental phronesis in
questions, such as what will happen to me, am I still important, is my work valued?
These types of questions are connected to the uncertainty regarding the future goals of organizational
the organization, whether the change affects existing priorities and what are its change
consequences at the personal and organizational levels. If the organizational change
discourse about prioritizing new organizational goals is translated as prioritizing new 775
values, the change process will be seriously damaged because of the emotionality
and attachment related to values.

4.4 Word practices

The narratives shed light also on practices pertaining to words. The analysis indicates
that the wording in communicating organizational change should be as familiar as
possible, because usage of foreign words may cause suspicions and rejection by the
community. An interviewee commented on the importance of choosing the right
words for discussing organizational change or, more importantly, the importance of
avoiding the “wrong” words as follows:
A central mistake was the word “resource manager,” talk about the order-producer model,
and that the word “physician” was changed in all talk to “specialist.”
Another interviewee explained further:
It didn’t require much talking past one another [to create] probably a lot of totally
unnecessary misunderstandings about others’ motives. Strategy in a hospital environment
had never been a successful term, that’s where the management’s messages did not succeed
[in communicating] that we want the patient to be well cared for. The whole strategy was
technically exceptionally well led, but the use of unsuccessful nuances and words led to
misunderstandings.
Organizational change discourse is, after all, about selecting and using certain words.
The research results indicate that using particular words in discourse is subject to
phronesis, because usage of words that do not belong to the particular social
community causes misunderstandings, fear and change resistance. Thus, selecting the
right words in organizational change discourse is a matter of great importance.

5. Conclusions
How are discursive practices involved in organizational change? The narratives
suggest that discursive practices are involved in organizational change through
discourse phronesis. This paper has introduced some examples of particular discursive
practices related to field, mandate, priorities and words. The analysis suggests that the
involvement of these practices in organizational change can be explained and further
analyzed through discourse phronesis, the practical and context-dependent wisdom of
talk (Grant and Marshak, 2011). Hence, discourse phronesis is a useful concept for
studying organizations and practice.
Although extensively studied over decades, organizational change has not
previously been directly approached through discourse phronesis (Oswick et al., 2010),
and by doing so this research provides novelty value to both organizational change
research and discourse analysis, especially since an empirical approach is used.
This research has important theoretical implications for organizational change theory,
discourse analysis and practice theory and for research at the junction of these
theories. First, although the number organizational change studies with a discourse
JOCM approach is increasing (Thomas and Hewitt, 2011; Thomas et al., 2011), discursive
27,5 practices as such have not gained much attention from scholars thus far. By introducing
the concept of discourse phronesis, this paper offers scholars an alternative lens, the
intellectual practicality lens, through which to approach organizational change and
perhaps to develop new understandings of the great challenges that organizational
change complexities usually generate. Second, the concept of discourse phronesis holds
776 new value for the existing discourse analysis approaches, providing a poststructuralist
option within the dominant linguistic perspectives (Vaara and Whittington, 2012).
Third, approaching organizations as “repertoires” of practices makes it possible to
achieve deeper understanding of organizational realities by scrutinizing human action
within social context and structures (Bourdieu, 1990).
As practice theory highly values local context, the danger of missing the larger
picture exists (Vaara and Whittington, 2012). However, research shows that exploring
social practices may contribute to understanding both of particularity and of the
universality of particularity (Gunder, 2010). That is why this research has analyzed
particularities within their context, while also proposing that the generic concept of
discourse phronesis is worth further examination.
The practical implications of this research are prominent. The recognition of
discourse phronesis simultaneously opens up great opportunities for change leaders
and unveils the complexity of the complexities inherent in pursuing change through
established human practices. Discourse phronesis may be utilized as a gateway to
advance change goals and to translate various discourses and actions that otherwise
might remain unexplained (Rouleau and Balogun, 2011). The key challenges for
practitioners are to acknowledge the concealed power within discourse phronesis and,
more importantly, to pursue this intellectual virtue in their daily practices.
While this research has outlined the usefulness of discourse phronesis to further
explain organizational change, it should be followed by future research in other
empirical contexts and perhaps in organizational circumstances other than change.
It would be interesting to examine whether discourse phronesis is particular to certain
types of organizations or a universal organizational reality, and what kinds of
universal particularities it might hold. For the further development of practice theory it
would be important to examine the concept of “practice phronesis” in general, from
both theoretical and empirical groundings.

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About the author

Noora Jansson has an MBA in Marketing from the Oulu University, and la Maı̂trise de Sciences
de Gestion from the Université Paris XII Val de Marne. Currently she is doing her PhD in
Management at Oulu University. The author has more than ten years of experience
in organizational leadership and development in both private and public sectors. Noora Jansson
can be contacted at: noora.jansson@gmail.com

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