battle in the boardroom: a discursive perspective

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UKand 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

BATTLE IN THE BOARDROOM: A DISCURSIVE PERSPECTIVE

W N

Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge

C D C

School of Business and Economics, University of Exeter

This article examines the centrality of discourse in achieving managerially rele-vant outcomes, with a focus on the in-situ performance context of corporate sto-rytellers. The Ricœurian concept of speech act, capturing both the intentionalityof organizational discourse and the social context of its production and reception,implicitly guided our research effort. The article has at its core a story of howsenior organizational officers exploited the volatile circumstances of a publictakeover in Singapore. By looking at the social construction of narratives in theirmany fragments we come to see how a key protagonist carves out a powerful posi-tion. The efficacy of his performances can be seen to be dependent upon the effec-tive use of poetic tropes and the receptiveness of listeners to particular Chinesearchetypal relationship-driven themes. In crafting our story we use multiple textswhich were produced in and around two case organizations. As such we offer acarefully constructed collage, a mixture of production and reproduction, stickingclosely to forms of communication that key organizational actors used to plan,enact and interpret their actions and those of others. Whilst our story offersinsights to readers with an interest in organizational discourse, corporate gover-nance and Asian management practices, we refrain from imposing an authoritar-ian interpretation that insists on identifying with the intentions of the authors.

Valentine’s Day 1995 was a watershed in Singapore corporate history. On this day,Antony, one of Singapore’s oldest companies, launched a hostile takeover bid forCleo, a ‘home-grown success story’ which was one of Singapore’s best knowncompanies.[1] The hostility of Antony’s bid surprised the local market; analystscould not recall the last hostile takeover. The brazenness of Antony’s pursuit

Address for reprints: Christian De Cock, Department of Business and Management, School of Busi-ness and Economics, University of Exeter, Streatham Court, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4PU, UK([email protected]).

Journal of Management Studies 39:1 January 20020022-2380

caught public attention: Cleo’s balance sheet was over twice the size of Antony’sand she employed eight times the number of Antony’s staff.

To gain public support, Antony executed a meticulous public relations pro-gramme which centred on the appointment of a new chairman for Cleo. Antony’sboard of directors nominated a local Chinese entrepreneur with great public staturefor this role. Given his public standing, the chairman was supposed to strengthenmarket credibility for the takeover. At the same time, Antony’s directors expectedhim to cement control of Cleo on Antony’s behalf. They thought they could controlthe chairman because he had served Antony loyally for many years.

Initially the new chairman seemed to reward the faith invested in him as hebegan an ‘extensive program to review and restructure [Cleo’s] operations’ (CleoAnnouncement, 12 April 1995). But appearances deceived. Behind a facade ofcorporate unity, Cleo’s new chairman initiated a power struggle to seize control ofCleo. He eventually took exclusive, personal control of Cleo and left Antony, themajority shareholder, without an effective voice in running Cleo.

The public were never aware of any ‘battle in the boardroom’. Instead, publicstatements painted an official story of change as well organized and professionallymanaged with a successful outcome never in doubt. However, beneath this levelof public perception several other storylines gave conflicting accounts of howCleo’s restructuring was progressing. These various storylines form the crux of ourinvestigation as they point to the importance of discursive performances given bykey protagonists in carving out positions of power.

The basic technology of organization is . . . a technology of narrative, as wellas a technology of production. The contested terrain of organizations is seenas a terrain of meaning. (March 1996, p. 286)

Our study can be firmly located within the ‘narrative mode’ (Bruner, 1986, 1990)or ‘narrative paradigm’ (Fisher, 1985). We take a distinctive position which locatesus alongside a range of other writers who are interested in narrative as a way of expressing practical knowledge and understanding organizational processes(Barrett et al., 1995; Czarniawska, 1997; Keenoy et al., 1997; Rhodes, 2000;Watson and Harris, 1999). Whereas in the logico-scientific mode of knowing, anexplanation is achieved by recognizing an event as an instance of a general law,or as belonging to a certain category, narrative knowledge tells of human projectsand their consequences as they unfold over time, thus capturing the nuances ofevent, relationship and purpose that are often obscured in the traditional acade-mic abstraction process (Czarniawska, 1998). Attention to time, motives andhuman agency helps to preserve the situational particularity missing from propo-sitional statements favoured by the logico-scientific mode (Pentland, 1999;Riessman, 1993). From a narrative viewpoint the traditional research interest inorganizations as distinct entities gives way to a focus on organizations-embedded-in-practices (Tsoukas and Cummings, 1997). It allows for the centrality of humanbeings as creators and interpreters of meaning in an organization and for narra-tion and storytelling as valid and valued parts of organization studies (Wicks andFreeman, 1998).

24 . .

© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002

In this narrative turn the field of organization studies has mirrored develop-ments in philosophy and social theory. Scholars such as MacIntyre (1985), Rorty(1991) and Taylor (1985) have been instrumental in promoting narrative as thebasic and essential genre for the characterization of human actions. Althoughmore precise definitions have been suggested and debated, for our present pur-poses it is sufficient to think of narratives and stories as interchangeable terms,used here in the same sense that the terms are used in ordinary conversation[2]

(cf. Boyce, 1996; Rappaport, 1993). The terms ‘narrative’ and ‘story’ generallyrefer to thematic, sequenced accounts that convey meaning from implied per-former/author to implied audience/reader (Barry and Elmes, 1997). In success-fully identifying and understanding what organizational actors are doing, wealways move towards placing a particular episode in the context of a set of nar-rative histories, both in terms of the individuals concerned and of the settings inwhich they act (MacIntyre, 1985). Thus we can conceive of narratives and storiesas underpinning the never-ending construction of meaning in organizations.

Weick (1995) pointed out that researchers are often handicapped when they tryto make sense of organizational life, because their skills at using narratives for interpretation are not tapped by most traditional models of organization. Yet mostorganizational realities are based on narration.[3] Thus the adoption of a narra-tive approach to knowledge in, and about, organizations may increase the relevance of organizational knowledge produced by academics. As Pentland suggested: ‘[T]he significance of narrative data lies not just in their richness andnear universal availability, but in the fact that they are the same kind of data thatorganizational members use to plan, enact, interpret, and evaluate their ownactions and those of others . . . Thus when we analyze narrative, we are startingwith raw material that is central to the cognitive and cultural world of our subjects’ (Pentland, 1999, p. 716).

Many well-known studies from the 1980s conceived of organizational stories ornarratives as artifacts forever pertrified in the organizational reality ‘out there’waiting to be ‘collected’ (Boland and Tenkasi, 1995). In the 1990s the field movedon to question these rather synthetic accounts based in ‘stories-as-objects’ theory.The emphasis shifted to ‘stories-in-context’ research, with a focus on both the in-situ performance context of storytellers influencing one another, and the histori-cal context of local embeddedness of ‘micro’ stories in wider ‘macro’ stories (Boje,1998). Boje (1991), in his study of an office supply firm, challenged the stories-as-objects tradition in collecting tape recordings of stories told in-situ, and definedstories as partial, fragmented, and extended across multiple conversations involv-ing many actors. In partial tellings, the collective combines to tell the fuller story,but across time and in different spaces. The implication is that researchers needto track stories across settings and capture its invocation even where few story fea-tures are visible: to look at glosses, terse tellings, and shifts in the telling of eventsto construct different power alignments. In Boje’s (1995) study of the Disney cor-poration, plots, meanings and characterizations change over time, depending onwhose viewpoint (old and new management, workers, journalists, etc.) stories werebeing told as well as revised. Czarniawska (1997), in her various studies on thetransformation of organizations in the Swedish public sector, shows these organi-zations to be complex and dynamic webs of narratives. Just as in Boje’s work, nar-ratives are viewed as constitutive of particular organizational realities, rather thanmere measures of something else. Czarniawska makes the reader aware that

25


‘[A]lthough “narratives on organizations”, that is, organization studies, are usuallystylized in the “only true story” format, “narratives in organizations”, tales told inthe field, are manifold and often ironic’ (p. 26).

In the above studies the analysis of stories (Boje’s preferred term) and narra-tives (Czarniawska’s preferred term) is pursued as a means of revealing the inde-terminacy of organizational experiences (cf. Keenoy et al., 1997). By looking atthe social construction of narratives in their many fragments, with various per-formances telling multiple stories, these narratives are now seen to be fragmen-tary, intertextual (referring to narratives outside themselves), situated and strategicin nature (Pentland, 1999). Whilst earlier theorists tried to read into stories exist-ing ‘out there’, the focus in these studies is on the dynamics of situated and contextualized storytelling. They take as object of investigation the story and itsperformance, not simply the content to which language refers. If we were to studynarratives abstracted from their performance we would fail to see the connectionbetween language, power, and social structure (Burkitt, 1998). Czarniawska’s andBoje’s studies are also characterized by their attention to the ownership of orga-nizational stories. Understandings are seen to be quite disparate, negotiated, andhegemonic – hegemonic in the sense that some voices, interpretations, and storiesare more privileged than others in subtle ways. As Boje et al. (1999) suggest: ‘Sto-rytelling theory is all about who is in control of the story – who is shaping andinfluencing the story’ (p. 354). It is not about whose story is best, but who has thepower to make a story stick as one that others will choose to live by or in. Thepower dimension of storytelling is implicit in the term ‘discourse’, defined as a his-torically contingent body of regularized practices of language that are condonedby a particular community (Casey, 1995; Prior, 1997). Indeed ‘we are all “effects”of the power of discourse, we all move from one discursive network to another,always producing power relations’ (Calás and Smircich, 1999, pp. 657–8).

In crafting our research story we pick up on the themes of ‘performance’ and‘discourse’ in the operational concept of discursive performances. We see discur-sive performances as exercises in power, with power defined as the capacity toextend hegemonic reach by suppressing or overwhelming competing accounts such that one’s own interpretation dominates (Brown, 2000). The concept is thusmeant to capture both the hegemonic and performative aspects of linguisticactions. These actions are rooted in the sequences, patterns, and meanings thatstem from exchanging verbal and nonverbal messages (Putnam et al., 1996) andmay include orally transmitted narratives, the authoring of organizational texts,and even selective silences. Following Czarniawska, we will treat texts as actions(‘strictly speaking, material traces of such, but they both result from and provokefurther action’), and actions as texts: ‘Actions, especially institutionalized actions,produce texts; texts not only “fix” other actions – their production and interpre-tation assume actions’ (Czarniawska, 1999, p. 11). Even when fixed as text, orga-nizational discourse retains many of the properties associated with speech acts,remaining closely bound to its authorial context and relying for its meaning onattributions of instrumental intent (Heracleous and Hendry, 2000). Senior orga-nizational actors will be seen to use a range of storytelling performances in thesense of producing narratives with simple but resonant plots, involving skill, entail-ing risk, and aiming to entertain, persuade, and win over various listener-stakeholders (cf. Gabriel, 2000). We will look towards identifying conventionalized,patterned organizations of performances and will explore how performances are

26 . .


interpreted and evaluated by the performers’ intended audience (cf. Coffey andAtkinson, 1996).

Empirical Foundations

Researchers who want to use stories as a research instrument must be preparedto sacrifice at least temporarily some of the core values of their craft and adoptinstead a rather alien attitude towards their subjects and their texts. They mustrid themselves of the assumption that quality data must be objective, reliable,accurate, etc. and must be prepared to engage personally with the emotions andthe meanings that reside in the text . . . At the same time, researchers must notlose sight of the relation between stories and facts: facts are not dissolved bystories but re-created through them. (Gabriel, 2000, pp. 135–6)

Most narratives do not just lie around in organizational situations, nor do docu-ments wait to be related. They have to be ‘authentically crafted and configured’(Golden-Biddle and Locke, 1997, p. 19) from a variety of sources. In our researchstory we weave together direct field observation, interviews and systematic collec-tion of textual data to unravel the contextual import of organizational stories, andthe voices of these stories. As such we offer a collage – a mixture of productionand reproduction that every reading and writing necessarily entails (Czarniawska,1999) – with the authorship of different pieces distinctly attributed. This does notmean that we try to efface our role or claim innocence from the representa-tional force that we bring to this text. A good deal of selectivity stands behind anyauthor’s decisions about what details to include, what organizing concepts to use,what events to highlight, and so forth (Van Maanen, 1998). Understandings thatresearchers present must ultimately be construed as factive fictions crafted fromnumerous sources and methods, influenced by the availability and quality of dif-ferent materials, and designed to please both the researchers and the researchers’audiences (Barry, 1996; Watson, 2000).

In crafting our research story we have been particularly influenced by a growingbody of text based research (Brown, 2000; Brown and Jones, 2000; Gephart, 1978).Organizational texts can be seen as contrived rhetorical products that containimplicit power dimensions, and which stifle potentially competing or contradic-tory storylines, thus serving hegemonic and legitimation functions. The texts pro-duced in and around the two case companies that we collected and analysedcomprise: complete board minutes of Antony and Cleo covering an 18 monthperiod, inter-office memoranda, company announcements and prospectae, oneofficially released interview transcript, commentary from the Singapore press, andstockbroking analysts’ reports. These texts are complemented by texts we gener-ated ourselves: the transcripts of two personal interviews with senior executivesand a variety of retrospective fieldnotes.[4]

We concentrated on the viewpoints of senior managers because of the specificboardroom environment in which the related events took place, an environmentin which only certain company representatives, principally directors, were allowedaccess. In this context, board minutes are of particular importance in providing

27


structure and substance to our study because of their monopoly of meaning;aspects that are named and actions that are recognized in the minutes gain legit-imacy and importance (Oakes et al., 1998). What gets documented as well asignored can reveal ‘the most fundamental struggle for power and control’ (Phillipsand Hardy, 1997, p. 171). This is not to suggest that board minutes provide a ‘true’representation of the underlying organizational reality they are supposed to reflect.Rather, we see them as material instruments in a power construction process. Inforcing a particular closure on events and situations which are interpretively openended, power is constructed, sustained and reproduced. Board minutes are cer-tainly not self-explanatory. As outsiders, researchers often lack contextual experi-ence and are not therefore in a position to read insightfully into the apparentlyuncomplicated communicative intent of a formalized set of board minutes. Con-textual experience is provided here by the first author who was a Cleo Group executive director as well as a non-executive director on Antony’s main boardthroughout the restructuring process and beyond. As one of Cleo’s most seniorexecutive officers he participated in all board meetings and subcommittee meet-ings of the board covering the material period.

Analysis of the Textual DataWe approached our exploration of the textual sources in two distinct stages. Firstly,we scanned the textual sources for stories, including snippets of stories which mightbe embedded in ‘terse’ format (Boje, 1991, p. 115). We used the first author’sknowledge of depicted events to pick out snippets which, taken together, appearedto support a particular storyline, although extracts in themselves did not neces-sarily constitute an intelligible story. We accordingly filled in the blanks of terse,apparently incomplete stories by bridging snippets of stories across time (mainlyrepresented by different sets of board minutes) and across the two organizations.The second stage of our approach involved collating, reducing and coding iden-tified micro-stories. We first sketched a ‘start list’ of stories under narrative head-ings as we studied the texts and then developed the various storylines, building upadditional stories through subsequent re-readings. We highlighted interesting partsof texts with various codes, which in one reading did not fit any particular story-line, and returned to them after finishing reading the set of texts in its entirety.The codes reflected the level of stories which we identified from any one reading.From our narrative headings we built up various tables of narratives. For each nar-rative, we considered its relative ‘dominance’ by gauging how key stakeholders ofAntony and Cleo reacted to the respective stories.

Concentrating on narrative headings (rather than, for instance, grouping textsby dates or by identified actors) was our means of ‘bridging’ our textual data. Thiswas because we knew there was always a follow-on concerning an identified storyacross time periods (given that Cleo’s restructuring was a stop–start process overan extended period) and across the corporate operating space of both Antony andCleo (given that the two companies were closely related and that they thereforeshared common stakeholders). So a story developed in one company would invari-ably also appear in textual sources belonging to the other company. We decidednot to use text display/coding computer software because the language of ourmain sources was extremely terse and there was usually little or no explanation tothings or people referred to. The reason was that the private papers were written

28 . .


for an informed, internal staff audience and accordingly a suitably informed inter-preter was required to draw meaning out of extant texts.

In developing our research story we needed several annotated readings to breakthe surface level of the official texts which were carefully couched in ‘neutral’language. We read into the multiple versions of organizational reality in order to reduce the importance of phenomena named as ‘important’ in the officialstories, whilst reconstructing other aspects that were ignored as unimportant.Thus, for example, whilst we noticed the ‘official story’ of incremental, controlledchange during the early transition stage of Cleo’s restructuring, we paid less atten-tion to this storyline in our study of the texts. Instead, given our awareness of theimpending power struggle, we focused on seeking evidence of internal, unpubli-cized stories involving Cleo’s chairman, and on trying to make sense of theseunpublicized stories in relation to later restructuring stages when the chairman’snarrative became clearly prominent. We therefore took less notice of gauging the accuracy of texts as a faithful record of what was actually said than of showinghow the sources provided a consistent storytelling perspective which directorsmade sense of and on which basis they then developed appropriate action strategies.

Company HistoryAntony was originally a trading house which became publicly quoted on the Singapore Stock Exchange. The company’s core competence was in providingmechanical and electrical engineering expertise for building projects. Antony alsoharboured a fast-growing property development division which sought to reinvestits earnings in new property projects.

Antony had a payroll of a few hundred full-time employees. However, despiteits entrepreneurism, Antony lacked the breadth of skills required to expand in thebuilding industry; hence its interest in Cleo.

Cleo’s expertise complemented Antony’s. Since its founding Cleo had becomeone of the region’s largest civil engineering contractors, and it gained a public quotation. Cleo had a reputation for alternative engineering solutions and it wonnumerous awards with its ability to develop and apply innovative techniques. Bythe time of Antony’s bid, Cleo had developed a capability for turnkey design andbuild which was a prestigious and lucrative market niche. This capability boostedCleo’s value as a takeover target.

Cleo had a much larger payroll. Yet, despite possessing skills that were in greatdemand, Cleo had performed poorly for a number of years. What Cleo appearedto lack was operating efficiency to match its technical competence; hence its appar-ent suitability as Antony’s partner.

Synopsis of the TakeoverAntony had long held a significant shareholding interest in Cleo and had consis-tently shown that it wanted to play a bigger part in Cleo’s future. However, Cleo’sboard of directors spurned Antony’s advances. Antony became frustrated: it hadinvested hugely in Cleo but received only one board seat. Antony’s directors soon

29


hardened to the view that Antony had to take control of Cleo in order to protectits investment.

Antony’s takeover offer lasted three weeks over February and March 1995. AsAntony had already secured over 40 per cent of Cleo’s shares prior to announc-ing the takeover, the offer process was a formality. Immediately following closingof the offer, all of Cleo’s existing board members resigned and Antony nominateda fresh slate of directors, including the first author. The new board got down toreviewing Cleo’s operations and there followed a ‘stagnant’ period of about sixmonths. Suddenly in September 1995, Cleo’s chairman called a special boardmeeting at which he proposed the appointment of three senior board directors tohead up Cleo. He told Cleo’s board that he had handpicked all three executivesand that they had already started work in the company.

The appointment of the three new executives coincided with Cleo’s announce-ment of its first operating loss as a quoted company. This loss seemed to usher in aperiod of radical corporate restructuring which affected all operating areas in Cleo.The radical nature of restructuring was epitomized by a new corporate logo and anew mission statement. Above all, the new chairman took personal charge of Cleo,and external stakeholders, including Antony, no longer had access to any informa-tion about Cleo except through channels designated by Cleo’s chairman.

By mid-1996 Cleo had substantially completed its internal restructuring. Staffresignations declined and Cleo’s share price stabilized. However, the apparentcalm dissolved on 8 June 1996 when press articles reported the Cleo chairman’sproposed ‘Golden Parachute’. This so-called ‘Parachute’ was a contractual clausewhich formed an integral part of the chairman’s new service contract; the ‘Para-chute’ would open automatically if the chairman’s contract were prematurely ter-minate, in which event Cleo would be obliged to pay its chairman S$7,000,000(circa US$4,350,000 at exchange rates prevailing at the time). While initial press reports repeated the facts of the ‘Golden Parachute’ based on Cleo’s ownannouncements, one powerful press columnist published a scathing commentaryof the chairman’s motives for his ‘Golden Parachute’. Further adverse press com-mentary followed. Antony now faced severe pressure from its banks who threat-ened to cut their financial backing.

Antony scheduled a board meeting to discuss the looming crisis. Cleo’s chair-man was unable to attend, but the meeting took place nonetheless. At the meetingseveral of Antony’s directors voiced their unhappiness with Cleo’s chairman. Crit-ically, however, Antony’s board unanimously resolved to continue backing thechairman. Given the public perception that Antony had always acted in concertwith Cleo’s chairman, Antony’s directors were caught in an impasse: regardless ofwhether they now disapproved of the chairman, they were unable to disassociatethemselves publicly from his behaviour.

Principal Dramatis PersonaeAntony’s chairman, an Indonesian Chinese, was the single largest shareholder ofAntony. He had turned around Antony and built it up into a diversified operationwhich formed the cornerstone of his business empire. Antony’s chairman wasappointed Cleo’s deputy chairman following the takeover.

Cleo’s new chairman, a Singaporean Chinese, was a well known entrepreneur whohad received multiple honours from the Singapore government. He was a companydirector in a number of countries.

30 . .


Antony’s MD, a chartered accountant, was a close associate of Antony’s chair-man and had been Antony’s MD since its takeover in 1990.

Antony’s ED (executive director) was a Member of Parliament and a qualifiedaccountant. Although he headed up Antony’s finance and administration,Antony’s directors did not nominate him to the board of Cleo.

Antony’s audit committee chairman was an eminent lawyer who took over the chair-manship of the audit committee from the first author shortly after the takeover.He was originally nominated to Antony’s board of directors by Cleo’s new chairman.

The first author was appointed by Cleo’s board as ‘Group Executive Director’,heading up Treasury. He was also a non-executive director of Antony throughoutCleo’s restructuring. His is the main voice narrating the ‘Battle in the Boardroom’.

We present Cleo’s post-takeover restructuring in three sequential periods: a tran-sition period of about six months immediately following the takeover in March1995, when nothing significant changed; an implementation stage of about ninemonths from September 1995, when almost every part of the company’s businessand operations experienced some change; and the outcome of the reengineeringstage from mid-1996, when Cleo declared that ‘changes in organization, systems,and procedures have been successfully implemented’ (Cleo 1996 Annual Report,p. 5). This temporal organization is based on the ‘plot’ of the evolving power strug-gle which we used to assign meanings to various texts and related events. Follow-ing Bruner (1986, 1990) and Pentland (1999, pp. 712–16) we ensure that ourresearch story displays various distinct features of ‘good’ narratives. Above all, wehave structured our story sequentially. We identify each of our focal characters and tryto preserve the polyvocality of their stories (identifiable narrative voice). At the end ofour story we elaborate on the evaluative context in which various discursive perfor-mances take place.

The Post-Takeover Transition StageIn the post-takeover transition phase, we identify three distinct narratives from thetexts we reviewed. The most dominant narrative proved to be the official storywhich Cleo’s management put out through Cleo’s communications department.This narrative tells of an incremental change process controlled by Cleo’s man-agement. By ‘dominant’ we mean that this story seemed to be able to attract stake-holders both within and outside Cleo who took for granted its veracity and acted,spoke, and wrote on the basis of Cleo’s announcements and other public infor-mation. In contrast, Antony’s public story tried to present a confident public imageof Antony’s efforts to manage Cleo’s restructuring. We designated Antony’s dis-course as ‘weaker’ because it had far less discernible impact on its intended audi-ence. We can also discern at this stage an emerging internal discourse building upthe reputation of Cleo’s chairman. There were still other identifiable narrativesduring this stage, although they appear less structured. The existence of a multi-plicity of narratives before restructuring got under way seemed to reflect the socialdynamics of an organization-in-flux in which powerful corporate individualsjostled for position against one another.

31


32 . .


Table I. Competing narratives ‘transition’ stage

Narrative 1: Dominant Narrative 2: Emerging Narrative 3: Competingfor Dominance

CLEO’S OFFICIAL PUBLIC CLEO CHAIRMAN’S STORY ANTONY’S OFFICIALSTORY (INTERNAL) PUBLIC STORY

Incremental change process Building up Cleo chairman’s Antony controls its subsidiary andcontrolled by Cleo’s management reputation manages its restructuring

Stock Exchange releases convey Cleo chairman’s performances Antony’s public documentsimpression of an organized at board meetings develops his suggest that Antony ischange programme controlled own reputation as a corporate orchestrating Cleo’s by Cleo’s management: saviour without equal: restructuring process:‘The [Cleo] Group has ‘[Cleo chairman’s] experience ‘Upon completion of thesuccessfully undertaken an was that an engineering offer, Antony will undertake extensive program to review operation like Cleo was a detailed review of the and restructure its operations worthwhile because of the operations and business ofto be more competitive’ (Cleo quality of its staff ’ (Antony the Cleo group with theannouncement of 1996 results, board minutes, 13 April 1995) assistance of the current29 March 1997) management of Cleo’

(Antony takeover circular,9 March 1995)

Cleo’s public texts (reports, Cleo chairman’s experience Antony board minutescirculars) suggest slow but and reputation story: suggest Antony wanted tocontrolled progress: ‘As [Cleo Chairman] has all slow down the pace of‘1995 has proved a difficult the credentials for the job, change:year . . . but the [Cleo] Group Mr X said the least the ‘We should not commit has managed to make directors could do was to offer ourselves to something we substantial progress in its him the board’s full support’ cannot get out of later.reorganization efforts through (Antony board minutes, [Antony] chairman said weproper planning and staff 12 April 1995) must continue with the support’ (chairman’s original plan to move thestatement, Cleo 1995 Annual company forward. He wasReport, p. 5) against giving any card

blanch [sic] to run Cleo’(Antony board minutes,15 February 1995)

Cleo-sourced staff figures Cleo’s senior managers Professional treatment ofshowed generally low staff support deprecating rumours media:turnover throughout the about Antony’s chairman: ‘Antony’s chairman attendedrestructuring which supported ‘[Divisional Directors] made [an arranged meeting withthe ‘professionally-managed’ [computer] printouts and put analysts] and participated insuccess declared by Cleo’s this John Wayne cowboy the question and answermanagement picture of [Antony Chairman] session [on the restructuring]’

on the tables. I think they put (stockbrokers’ report, June[up] six or seven pictures on a 1996)stand and one lunchtime someof the boys took out a watergun and they all tried [inturn] to shoot down all thepictures in one go’ (Cleo FCinterview, 15 February 1999)

Building on his public reputation, Cleo’s chairman began a series of discursiveperformances in board meetings of both Antony and Cleo. The purpose of theperformances seemed to be to win over the support of directors, particularly onAntony’s board. The kind of support that Cleo’s chairman sought appeared to beintensely personal in that he probed for ways to develop a sense of personal loyaltyto himself. By developing a ‘taken for granted’ sense of power he aimed to assuagedoubts about his proposed actions.

One of the first such actions was to establish a general understanding amongAntony’s directors to ‘leave it to him’ to manage Cleo without interference fromAntony. In the following extract, the Cleo chairman’s fellow directors warmed tohis apparent sagacity and Antony’s audit committee chairman ended up endors-ing the Cleo chairman’s reputation:

[Audit committee chairman] said he supported [the Cleo chairman’s] view . . .[the Cleo chairman] was way beyond our experience in managing turnaroundsituations and if anything goes wrong it would be left to [Cleo’s chairman] topick up the pieces. As [Cleo’s chairman] has all the credentials for the job,[Antony’s ED] said the least the directors could do was to offer him the board’sfull support for a reasonable length of time . . . [audit chairman] supported thisview and said the directors should leave it to [Cleo’s chairman] and not discuss strategy atthis stage. (Antony board minutes, April 1995, emphasis added)

There seemed no better endorsement of the Cleo chairman’s reputation than astatement from the most senior independent director of Antony which brought tothe board’s attention its own inexperience in managing turnaround situations. Thecontinuing vote of confidence in Cleo’s chairman given by Antony’s audit com-mittee chief assuaged any doubts directors had about the chairman’s actions: forthe time being, Antony’s ED was prepared to give him the benefit of any doubtand ‘to offer the chairman [his] full support’. In retrospect, this bought vital timefor Cleo’s chairman to push through his own agenda; having secured the supportof Antony’s board, he could focus his attention on his chosen task without needingto divert his energies elsewhere.

In contrast, the performances of Antony’s chairman at board meetings wereunimpressive. As an Indonesian, he seemed socially disadvantaged in that someboard members held a preconceived view of Indonesians as ‘short-term traders’,while Cleo’s chairman was credited with a ‘long-term’ investment outlook. Thisprejudice was reflected in the way Antony’s chairman struggled for the attentionof his board colleagues:

[Antony] chairman said we must continue with the original plan to move Cleoforward. He was against giving any card blanch [sic] to run Cleo. He said thatas we invested millions we should . . . take out the fruits of our labor as soon aspossible . . . [Cleo’s chairman] said we must take a long-term view and proposedthat we first look at Cleo’s business and try and understand the business beforeacting. [Antony] chairman said this was just his point and said we should imme-diately start looking into Cleo from the inside as originally planned. (Antonyboard minutes, August 1995)

33


The Antony chairman’s position was further undermined by deprecating rumoursabout his amateurish (‘John Wayne’) style of management:

OK, now I remember after they heard the [Indonesian] chairman was takingover, [divisional directors] made [computer] printouts and they put this JohnWayne cowboy picture of [Antony’s chairman] on the tables. I think they put[up] six or seven pictures on a stand and one lunchtime some of the boys tookout a water gun and they all tried [in turn] to shoot down all the pictures in onego. Yeah it was all a prank [but] I didn’t see it I only heard about it . . . no no I can’tremember who spread this rumor. (Interview with Cleo’s finance controller, 15 Feb-ruary 1999)

Most damaging, however, to the Antony chairman’s reputation was the perfor-mance of Antony’s own directors who aired their support of Cleo’s chairmanrather than of their own. This support weakened the story put out by Antony’sboard that Antony’s managers, rather than Cleo’s, were directing the course ofrestructuring because it appeared that they did not believe in their own ability tocontrol the restructuring. As the two chairmen fought, Cleo’s line managersreceived cross signals about the restructuring. Predictably, they took a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude, and the restructuring process stalled.

Implementation StageThe first operating loss in Cleo’s public history reported in September 1995 sig-nalled a marked change in its re-engineering efforts. As this loss was recorded onsignificantly increased turnover, Cleo’s board of directors felt there was an urgentneed for significant internal changes. For the chairman the loss seemed to inspirea greater effort to gain exclusive, personal control of Cleo. This was evidenced invarious powerful, discursive performances at Cleo board meetings: at a speciallyconvened board meeting on 14 October 1995, Cleo’s chairman declared, in thepresence of Antony’s chairman, that he had ‘handpicked’ three new senior man-agers to run Cleo, and after a brief summary of each manager’s CV, he asked thenew directors immediately to join the same board meeting. In fact, the three newmanagers had already started work in Cleo several days previous to the boardmeeting: the board minutes revealed that organizational changes had been imple-mented already, apparently on the Cleo chairman’s personal authority, and hereported the fait accompli in a discursive tour de force:

[Cleo’s] chairman reported that [named CEO] and [named 2 Dy CEOs] hadbeen approached to fill respective vacancies. All 3 had accepted the offers madeto them and have been introduced to Heads [of departments] . . . chairman saidthat he would like to propose the names of the 3 executives as board Directors. . . chairman said that it was now necessary to bite the bullet with the internalrestructuring. There was no time to waste because we had already lost a lot of opportunities in the market. He said any restructuring should not take more than 3 or 4 months to complete and in all other companies he had been involvedwith the speed of restructuring was essential [to its success]. In company X [controlledby Cleo’s chairman], he had brought in a new MD well before the start ofrestructuring and the new chief had been very professional . . . chairman said

34 . .


that if only we had been allowed to do this the company would have saved a lot of time and we all know time is money. (Cleo board minutes, 14 October 1995,emphasis added)

After the chairman’s command performance, the minutes do not reflect substan-tial further discussion; board participants, including the participant author, werestunned into silence. By late 1995 Cleo’s chairman began dictating the pace andnature of change, and other directors and managers appeared to be trying to keepup with his restructuring plan. The chairman’s handpicked managers appeared tocontrol the input to various narratives on his behalf, and other managers andemployees were found to be jockeying for position within narratives traceable tothe chairman.

At the same time as he was conducting board-level performances to win overfellow directors, the Cleo chairman was also trying to win the support of thecompany’s line managers, and through them rank-and-file employees. This was animportant part of the Cleo chairman’s strategy, because by winning over line man-agers Antony could not exert any direct influence over the company’s operations.The Cleo management’s various staff offers can be interpreted as attempts(‘carrots’) to try and gain support from line manages. But there was also a hiddenagenda of continuing control of the same line managers which was evidenced bythe ‘stick’ of heightened expenditure policy and operating restrictions.

Table II shows three separate and contrasting narratives during the implemen-tation stage. As in the transition stage, these narratives competed for the attentionof Cleo’s most important stakeholders.

Cleo’s success in telling a good story which stuck in the minds of public stake-holders can be gauged by continuing favourable press reports.[5] Secondly, Cleo’schairman continued to enjoy the unanimous support of Cleo’s board of directors.Unlike Antony’s board minutes during this period, Cleo’s board minutes seemedto display a sense of urgency to complete Cleo’s restructuring. Antony’s board inresponse could only applaud Cleo’s actions: ‘The board supports Cleo’s restruc-turing efforts which should now be completed as soon as possible’ (Antony boardminutes, 29 September 1995). While still trying to maintain a public appearancethat they were in control of Cleo, Antony’s senior directors developed a sense ofhelplessness at their inability to influence Cleo. Antony’s loss of control was theCleo chairman’s gain, although his quest for power continued to be couched inlanguage which suggested that he was working primarily to benefit Cleo:

[Cleo’s chairman] told the board . . . [that] the new Cleo managers were loyalto the company . . . he had full confidence that they will carry out their dutiesin the best interest of the company. (Antony board minutes, 14 October 1995).

Outcome of Change StageCleo’s ‘spin doctors’ continued to impress the story of a successful restructuring:

The [Cleo] Group has been restructured to focus on five main business areas. . . [the consequence of which is that its] operating divisions have been able toserve customers with improved efficiency and quality . . . [the Group] won arecord number of projects [in 1996]. (Cleo 1997 Annual Report and Accounts,p. 14)

35


36 . .


Table II. Competing narratives ‘implementation’ stage

Narrative 1: Dominant Narrative 2: Strengthening Narrative 3: WeakeningCLEO’S OFFICIAL CLEO CHAIRMAN’S STORY ANTONY’S OFFICIALPUBLIC STORY (INTERNAL) PUBLIC STORY

Cleo’s management Cleo Chairman is taking Antony tries vainly to control Cleo’sorchestrates radical and personal control of Cleo managersauthoritative response topoor financial results

Cleo public announcements: Domineering performance by Antony public announcements‘The board announces an Cleo chairman: suggest ‘normal upgrading’ atoperating loss of S$4.238 ‘Chairman said that he would Cleo:million for the six months like to propose the names of 3 ‘Since Cleo was in a fast-movingended 30th June of 1995 executives as board directors industry . . . should it not follow. . . this represents a 353% with immediate effect and that that Antony should contributedecline from the previous he wished to introduce them whatever expertise it could toperiod. In response to [this [to the meeting]. help Cleo stay ahead of theunprecedented] loss, the Chairman said that it was game’ (Antony ED, Business company will undertake now necessary to bite the Times, 16 February 1996)immediate measures to bullet with the internal reverse the decline’ (Cleo restructuring’ (Cleo board announcement, minutes, 14 October 1995)30 September 1995)

Antony board support for Antony chairman’s poor Antony management attempts toCleo: discursive performances in control Cleo’s restructuring:‘The board supports Cleo’s Antony board meetings ‘[Antony chairman] believedrestructuring efforts which weakens his board support Cleo’s operating policies had toshould now be completed and strengthens that of Cleo’s be brought into line withas soon as possible’ chairman Antony’s . . . It was bad practice(Antony board minutes, to let subsidiaries dictate policy29 September 1995) to the Group’ (Antony board

minutes, 29 September 1995)

Tight internal Cleo Restricted information Antony management’s attemptsmanagement and policy channelled only through Cleo to make sense of Cleo’s radicalimplementation: management hierarchy: measures:‘stick’ of tightened ‘It was such a big deal to get ‘[Group Finance Director] wasexpenditure policy with anything from the company asked to investigate and reportincreased reporting and [Cleo]. I just didn’t how [Cleo’s] major competitorsexpenditure claims understand all these games accounted in their books forprocedure (Cleo board you people were playing’ work-in-progress [to explainminutes, 28 September (Antony MD interview, Cleo’s profit fluctuation]’1995) versus 22 December 1998) (Antony board minutes, 29‘carrot’ of extended ESOS September 1995)(employee share option scheme) predicated onprofits, long service and‘personal achievements’(Cleo Group Share OptionScheme, 3 May 1995)

By now the Cleo chairman had succeeded in gaining exclusive control of thecompany. This seemed clear from Cleo’s public actions: her operators started ten-dering for many projects in partnership with the chairman’s private organizationand without Antony’s involvement. This contradicted Antony’s publicized aim atthe time of takeover to facilitate a ‘synergy’ of activities between the two compa-nies (cf. Antony Takeover Circular, February 1995). Despite their frustration,Antony’s managers felt helpless to act. The anger expressed by Antony’s MD,years after the relationship had ended, gives an indication of the depth of this frustration.

We are supposed to be one group together synergizing remember? . . . I paidmillions for the company [Cleo] and I get chickenfeed from you. (Interview withAntony’s MD, 22 December 1998)

As market analysts forecasted Cleo’s return to profitability, the press ran an articlecharging that Cleo had ‘sweetened the service contract for [its] chairman with agenerous golden parachute of up to S$7,000,000’. It was ‘the first time such adevice has been used by a public listed company in Singapore’ (Straits Times, 8 June1996, p. 40). It appeared that Cleo’s chairman did not consult Antony’s directorsabout his new service contract – despite Antony having to pay for the chairman’sparachute if they were to fire him (cf. Antony board minutes, 17 June 1996).

By this stage the Cleo chairman’s story had fused with Cleo’s ‘public story’.Cleo’s chairman had successfully mobilized the active consent of Cleo’s stake-holders in developing a storyline which his audience took for granted as the dominant storyline. None of his opponents were able to dominate a particular discourse in the way Cleo’s chairman did.[6] By comparison, Antony’s chairmanproved to be an ineffective storyteller: his performances failed to persuade his lis-teners to back his story. The most important group of listeners were Antony’sbankers who started voicing their unhappiness that Antony had lost control of itslargest investment:

[Antony’s MD] brought to the board’s attention . . . Antony might be adverselyaffected and Antony might not be able to obtain refinancing facility to carry on. . . the scenario of receivers being called in cannot be ruled out. (Antony boardminutes, 17 June 1996)

Antony’s story because usurped by a public story about Antony’s inability to playa meaningful role in Cleo:

Who can stop [Cleo’s chairman]? . . . Antony can as the company’s biggestshareholder, and the fact that it hasn’t so far done so does not reflect well onany of those involved in this unsavory episode. (Straits Times, 8 June 1996)

Antony’s continuing dissatisfaction with being excluded from Cleo’s managementreached an extreme point when Antony’s directors, including those who had pre-viously supported Cleo’s chairman, summoned an emergency board meeting tocensure him. Antony’s board minutes of 17 June 1996 revealed that Antony hadbeen consistently denied management information about Cleo despite repeated

37


38 . .


Table III. Competing narratives ‘outcome’ stage

Narrative 1: Dominant Narrative 2: DisintegratingCLEO’S OFFICIAL PUBLIC STORY AND STORY MAINLY ABOUT ANTONYCHAIRMAN’S STORY HAVE MERGED

Cleo chairman takes total control of Antony totally loses control of Cleo and becomes aprofessionally-managed Singapore MNC laughing stock in the market

‘[Antony] bowed to inevitable’ by reaffirming Simmering Antony unhappiness about ‘little support for [Cleo] Chairman (Antony board influence or control over [Cleo]’ (Antony boardminutes, June 1996) minutes, 17 June 1996)

‘The [Antony] board fully supports [Cleo’s ‘[Antony’s MD] brought to the board’s attentionChairman] at this difficult period in the that if [discord with Cleo] continues, Antony company’s development’ (Antony might be adversely affected and Antony might announcement, 7 June 1996) not be able to obtain refinancing facility to carry

on . . . the scenario of receivers being called in ‘RESOLVED THAT the board [of Cleo] [to Antony] cannot be ruled out’ (Antony boardaccepts the appointment of [Cleo’s minutes, 17 June 1996)Chairman] as Executive Chairman of the company with immediate effect upon terms to ‘[I]n light of what has happened, we should be approved by the Remunerations hold an emergency board meeting to brief the Committee’ (Cleo Board Resolution, May directors on what transpired . . .’ (inter-office 1996 passed by circularization) memorandum to Antony’s Chairman, June 1996)

‘I have no idea what [Cleo’s chairman] is up to. . . we should take a stand and explore answersto shareholders at the forthcoming AGM (Antony chairman’s reply to inter-office memorandum)

Public announcements: Antony shareholders’ reaction:‘[Cleo] is pleased to announce that it has Various ‘poison pen’ letters received (stamped byexecuted a service contract with [Cleo’s Antony’s CF department dated 16 June 1996Chairman] to appoint him Executive and 18 June 1996) indicate shareholder Chairman of the Company under terms and unhappiness, inter alia, with inability of Antonyconditions which the company’s to control its subsidiary and Antony’s lack ofRemunerations Committee has reviewed and management involvement in Cleo despite approved . . .’ (Cleo SES Announcement, previous announcements to the contrary1 June 1996)

Cleo Public Reports and board minutes show Press reports:Cleo Chairman dominating discourse on Cleo ‘. . . so what have Antony’s directors got to say board and controlling its decision-making: about all this [the “Golden Parachute”‘The Board of Directors [of Cleo] believes compensation for Cleo’s Chairman]? They don’tthat the personal involvement of [Cleo’s appear to have given the green light to [Cleo’s Chairman] in the leadership of the company Chairman, to do what he wants], but if they would enable the company to secure large have, the deal might as well be sewn up’ (‘Hock projects in the region valued at several billion Lock Siew Column’, Business Times, 15 June 1996)dollars’ (Cleo announcement, 7 June 1996) ‘. . . we have checked with our investors who

have expressed their concern at [the golden ‘It was disclosed that the board of directors parachute idea]. We feel it may be difficult forand representative [sic] of Antony believe the company to launch a capital market issue atthat [Cleo Chairman’s] full commitment is this time (faxed memorandum from Bank toimperative for the Company’s success’ Cleo, 15 June 1996)(Business Times, 8 June 1996)

requests, and the blockage resulted in a scenario in which Cleo seemed to be dic-tating not only its own future but that of Antony as well:

Antony’s MD: You know you were there so why are you asking me all these things.It was such a big deal to get anything from you. I just didn’t understand all thesegames you people were playing. It was the real thing you know, no foolingaround. My banks went crazy and I looked to you for info [about the goldenparachute] and I kept asking you to get the info. You know my banks and every-body said stop. But you refused to stop. [long pause] I felt so helpless because Icouldn’t do anything and I remember I kept calling and calling [you] andremember what you said to me what (pause) you didn’t have it. So I thoughtwhy the **** am I keeping you there?

Interviewer: Look [Antony MD] you know I was an employee of the company[Cleo] and [Cleo chairman] was my chairman. Our clear understanding wasthat if you wanted me to do any secret stuff for you . . .

Antony’s MD: [interrupts] What secret stuff ? What was so secret about telling me[in advance] before the parachute thing blew up? (Interview with Antony’s MD,22 December 1998)

As a result of the ‘Golden Parachute’ incident, Antony’s directors tried, albeitbelatedly, to mount a rearguard action against Cleo’s chairman. Whereas previ-ously Cleo’s chairman had won over supporters in both Antony and Cleo, he alien-ated most of the Antony board with his handling of the ‘Golden Parachute’incident. Antony’s ED was particularly irked that he had not even been informedin advance of the story leaking in the press:

Dear [Antony chairman][Antony MD] and I discussed the Straits Times and Business Times newspaperarticle on the proposal to give [Cleo chairman] the golden parachute in hisservice contract . . . The article seems to imply that consent has been given byour board and that Antony is the concerted party with [Cleo chairman]. Today’sarticle in the Business Times confirms our initial fears. [Antony MD] said that hehas not given consent either as a director of Antony or Cleo. I am not awareof this except from the newspapers and I do not know if X is aware of this.(Memo to Antony’s chairman, 8 June 1996)

The board minutes of Antony and Cleo during this period suggest that Cleo’schairman paid no attention to Antony’s concerns. How can one read the relativelack of discursive performances by Cleo’s chairman? As Cleo’s chairman hadachieved his personal objective and had seized control of Cleo it appeared that hethereafter simply lost interest in performing publicly, a skill which he had carefullynurtured previously. Cleo’s board minutes during the outcome stage were writtenup in a new terse, matter-of-fact style which contrasted with minutes during thetransition stage which often gave a detailed, ‘blow-by-blow’ account of board dis-cussions. The change in writing style reflected the generally calmer tone of Cleo’sboard meetings once the chairman had taken absolute control. Consequently, in

39


the outcome stage, there were less discursive performances recorded, and theminutes became less interesting from a narrative perspective. Perhaps the mostnotable consequence of the new style of board minutes was that there appearedno record of board members putting up any opposing view to Cleo’s chairmanonce he had spoken and stated his views.

EpilogueUltimately, there was a price to pay for the Cleo chairman’s failure to keep up hisdiscursive performances as the discord between the chiefs at Antony and Cleo con-tinued to simmer. The Cleo chairman’s seemingly unassailable position wasundone in a matter of weeks after Antony sold its controlling stake in Cleo withoutprior consultation with Cleo’s chairman. While the sale might have been a pre-dictable outcome of his victory, Cleo’s chairman did not bargain for the uncer-tainty that resulted from Antony’s sale to a son of the then Indonesian PresidentSuharto. All of Antony’s representatives on Cleo’s board, including the first author,resigned following the sale. A few weeks later Cleo’s chairman himself sold out ofCleo. But he jumped without his parachute. Stalemate, or more precisely, doublecheckmate.

Story interpretation requires an answer to the deceptively simple question: ‘Whydid things turn out the way they did?’ In constructing our answer we will turn tothe effective use of poetic tropes by the Cleo chairman. Our sensemaking can befurther improved by exploring the deeper discursive and social structures in whichboth storyteller and audience were situated, and through which the very possibil-ity of intentional communication is both enabled and constrained (cf. Heracleousand Hendry, 2000). In doing so we establish a difference between text and context.Indeed, not everything can be reduced to discourse and narrative, and the efficacyof the chairman’s performances can be seen to depend on a clever exploitation ofthe interplay between discursive practice and social practice.

Poetic TropesIn our story we have shown how the turbulence of organizational change presentssituational opportunities for corporate actors to assert sectarian interests by tryingto impose their story as the one others should live by. The Cleo chairman suc-ceeded in moulding organizational events in a distinct and individual way throughthe use of poetic tropes, which were reinforced through distinctive performancesin the board room. Particular powerful tropes he employed were attribution of causalconnection (linking various incidents as cause and effect), attribution of responsibility(determines whether an individual will be cast in the role of villain, victim or hero),and attribution of fixed qualities ( juxtaposition of two people or situations whose qual-ities are meant to be exact opposites).[7] Poetic tropes were combined through story-work to generate complex narrative constructions out of simple events (viz. tablesI–III).

The tropes of attribution of blame and credit and attribution of responsibility are mostevident in the Cleo chairman’s astute development of his identity as corporate

40 . .


saviour without equal, even leaving it to others to contribute narrative fragmentsunderlining his experience and reputation (see table I, narrative 2). This greatexperience was then successfully juxtaposed with the inexperience of turnaroundsituations and the ‘short-term trader’ reputation of the Antony chairman (cf. dep-recating ‘John Wayne’ rumours). Through opposition qualities become both fixedand exaggerated, thus legitimizing or delegitimizing respectively any futureactions. The respective performances of the protagonists served to reinforce theeffect of the poetic tropes.

The Cleo chairman was also very successful in representing actions and eventsas necessary rather than accidental or conditional (attribution of causal connection).Establishing orderly sequences of causes and effect is a powerful means of orga-nizing and rationalizing remembered experiences (Gabriel, 2000). The simplechain of causes and effects which appeared seamlessly linked together lookedsomething like this: Cleo records its first ever operating loss; therefore we have totake drastic action/there is no time to waste; therefore I appoint three handpickedmanagers (who had started work before the board approved the appointment); itis now time to bite the bullet with internal restructuring (subtext: . . . so do notoppose my actions); if only we had been allowed to do this the company wouldhave saved a lot of money (post-hoc legitimation, see also table II, narrative 2). Allthe other directors could do once they had bought into the story was applaud theCleo chairman.

Discursive and Social StructuresBut why did the chairman’s discursive performances have such a powerful and per-manent grip over the Cleo and Antony board members? To refine our answerfurther we have to explore how particular storytelling performances draw fromdiscursive structures of communicational legitimacy or appropriateness in localcontexts. Individual narratives are always situated within specific social, cultural,and institutional discourses (Hardy and Phillips, 1999) and the efficacy of storiesis inseparable from culturally and historically shared conventions about languageand the hearing of stories (Atkinson and Coffey, 1997). Following the concept ofthe Ricœurian speech act, we treat the social context of production and receptionas a resource for the creation and manifestation of meaning, not simply as a struc-tural constraint on the possibility of meaning more structural approaches wouldsuggest (cf. Heracleous and Hendry, 2000).

The key contextual clue in our story is the ethnic Chinese make-up of Cleo’sdirectors. The efficacy of the chairman’s performances depended upon the recep-tiveness of listeners to particular archetypal relationship-driven themes, chieflypatriarchal role-playing and personal loyalty which, together with other relation-ship themes (e.g., filial piety), have served as an important overarching framework(‘life orientation’) for socio-cultural behaviour in Chinese societies (Tu, 1994,p. 15). The selective use of Chinese themes proved to be an extremely effectiverhetorical strategy that had strong legitimizing effects by representing sectionalinterests as universal and transmuting contradictions (cf. Wilkinson, 1996, p. 439).Board members and managers rallied around their chairman after he successfullyconvinced them that, given his unmatched business reputation and commandingperformances, he was best suited to play the role of Cleo’s patriarch. In appro-priating the traditional, institutionalized role of a dominant sage-patriarch, any

41


opposition or dissent could be construed as disloyal and hence morally unaccept-able. The Singaporean context in which the discursive performances took placewas fundamentally receptive to the appropriation of this authoritative organiza-tional role (Haley and Low, 1998). This archetypal theme was so powerful in estab-lishing a power base because it used actors’ most deeply ingrained preconsciousconceptions of the structuring of social processes, an observation not necessarilyunique to the Singaporean context. Sköldberg (1994), for example, found in aScandinavian context that ‘regardless of change problematic, organizations areliable rather to follow the dictates of narrative traditions than either “objective”structures of problems and power, or demands of shared symbolisms’ (p. 236). Inthis sense ‘the world of fiction leads us to the heart of the real world of action’(Ricœur, 1983, p. 296).

The formal, regulated setting of a board room setting imposes specific modesof discourse that senior organizational actors have to employ in order for theiropinions and argumentations to be seen as legitimate and worth attention. TheCleo chairman, in establishing a ‘right’ to the dominant discourse (through effec-tive use of poetic tropes and exploiting archetypal themes) could effectively framethe strategies of action of other board members. Once a dominant discoursebegan to emerge, board members tried to translate it for their own needs andsituate themselves within this discourse. In a sense, the chairman successfullycrafted for himself an avuncular role beyond his executive role. Even those whohad initially opposed him acknowledged that he was better suited to ‘save’ Cleo,even if saving the company meant that the chairman got what he wanted by effectively denying Antony any further management involvement in its largestinvestment.

The above should not lead us to see storytelling as automatically dissolving facts.We do well to heed Keenoy et al.’s (1997) observation that much research on orga-nizational discourse has been decidedly two-dimensional, in that it has tended toconsider text and discursive practice but has ignored social practice. In our casestudy, Cleo’s chairman used his hierarchical position to create an operating struc-ture where newly appointed managers were personally loyal to him and he appro-priated sole control of information flows, which ultimately allowed him to ‘havehis way’. This may seem nothing more than an application of ‘old fashioned’ legit-imate power. However, the chairman could only engage in these actions afterestablishing discursive legitimacy (cf. Hardy and Phillips, 1998) through the story-telling performances described above. Indeed, his formal power as a minorityshareholder was far less than that of Antony’s chairman as majority shareholderafter the takeover. Even during the ‘implementation’ stage the Cleo chairman’sactions could have been undone by board colleagues of equally distinctive posi-tional authority (e.g. key managerial appointments had to be approved by boarddirectors), but the chairman headed off his opponents by further legitimizing hisactions in carefully crafted discursive performances.

This article has at its core a story. Whilst there exist some historical examples ofacademic papers where a story is central (e.g. Jermier, 1985; Hines, 1988), recentlythere has been a surge in such approaches. Often the story is accompanied by

42 . .


interpretation (Mintzberg and Westley, 2000; Rhodes, 2000; Watson, 2000), butthis is not always the case (Akin, 2000; Van Iterson, 2000). These contributionsseem quite congruent with the sober and chastened approach to knowledge gen-eration that Alvesson and Deetz (2000) see as typical of critical research: ‘Theseknowledges are “accountable to an audience” rather than “provable within aformal system” . . . A conversation should not prevent evaluation, critique andchallenge, but be, generally speaking, open to the possibility that everything is less stable and clear-cut than it seems and is, therefore, open for discussion andreconsideration’ (p. 135). This approach chimes with Wittgenstein’s warningagainst the danger of wanting to make fine distinctions. What we have rather todo is accept the everyday language-game and, ‘What’s ragged should be leftragged’ (Wittgenstein, 1980 – a remark that was identified as from c. 1944).This could be construed as complacency or resignation, but it might also be con-strued that the ragged is sometimes to be preferred to the smooth (Flathman,2000). If this article is to act as inspiration for future research, we hope it does soin its adherence to the often rough but serviceable ground of day-to-day thinkingand acting, plotting and practicing. We did what we could to clarify the story,but we do not entertain the idea that the story’s raggedness could or should beeliminated.

Despite the professed emphasis of narrative approaches on organizations-embedded-in-practices and the unfolding of events over time (Czarniawska, 1997;Pentland, 1999; Tsoukas and Cummings, 1997), inadequate consideration ofcontext and temporality has been a persistent issue in organizational discourseanalysis (Heracleous and Hendry, 2000). Researchers often proceed to study thereified results of a construction process that is never revealed (Alvesson and Deetz,2000; Czarniawska, 1999). The process of construction has been very much acentral concern in this paper. In particular, using the experience and ongoinginvolvement of the principal author in board processes, we present an insider’sview of how managers linguistically structure the world. Because managers areused to telling and hearing stories as perhaps the prime sensemaking device formanaging people (Shaw et al., 1998; Weick, 1995, 1999), the narrative approachcan be a powerful tool for bridging the traditional researcher–practitioner gap. Yet,we have no intention to tell managers how to restructure an organization or howto behave in the boardroom. Neither is there a need to provide law-like theorieswith their attractive elegance and highly glossed accounts, the usefulness of whichremains very suspect (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996). We simply wanted to tella complex story of storytelling, with human actors busying themselves with plot-ting, performing, accounting for what they do, and thus producing reality as theyknow it. Our interpretation functions as a meta-account on the importance ofstorytelling and is meant to guide the sensemaking process of both managers–practitioners and academics–practitioners, but we certainly do not want to imposea ‘correct’ reading.

It is a difficult challenge for authors-cum-storytellers to not privilege their pointof view and be self-reflexive about the ways in which they select textual fragmentsand recontextualize their meaning in a write-up. Whilst we do recognize the needfor reflexivity, we are very reluctant to produce an ‘innovative’ account to deal withthis issue. The idea that reflexivity might come about as the result of some spe-cific combination of techniques drawn from a set of standardized reflexive devices(such as including ‘the authors’ in the text or establishing feedback loops with infor-

43


mants, e.g. see Boje et al., 1999) is unlikely to prove satisfactory because it payslittle attention to the concept of reader and it retains a naive belief in the possi-bility of writing truer texts (De Cock, 2000). Woolgar (1988) suggested we there-fore develop an understanding of a research text as an element in a reader-textcommunity.

If we accept Woolgar’s advice, it follows that this article is subject to the poten-tial for multiple readings.[8] Any given reading may not be ‘the best’, but it maybe better at achieving particular effects than would be achieved by other types ofreadings (Rhodes, 2000). For example, whilst we have focused on stories and dis-course in this article, readers with an interest in corporate governance may putdifferent emphases. In the context of a paucity of field-based studies examiningthe behaviour of, and relationships between, top managers and directors in orga-nizations (Golden-Biddle and Hayagreeva, 1997; McNulty and Pettigrew, 1999),our account of behavioural dynamics in the boardroom offers ‘close-up’ insightswhich these readers can reconstruct and connect differently to make them per-sonally useful. There exists also only a limited body of field research conducted incompanies located in the Pacific Rim (Kaghan et al., 1999), largely because of thedifficulty of extracting primary source material from Asian managers about theirorganizations (Kim, 1997). Readers with an interest in Asian management prac-tices, while not interested in narratives per se, may therefore find our story memo-rable and reconnect particular elements which they may find peculiar to the Asianenvironment (such as patriarchal role playing) in ways they find useful.

Finally, our story, whilst being contextually shaped by the Singapore environ-ment, is nonetheless not confined to this particular environment. The role of sto-rytelling as a powerful concept has been noted across cultural, temporal, and otherboundaries (Gabriel, 2000; Ghoshal et al., 1999). Taking a recent Europeanexample, during our revision of this paper a different boardroom story emergedwhen the Financial Times reported on its front page the ‘Vodafone chief ’s £10 mbonus’ (20 June 2000). Vodafone’s board of directors approved the award of a £10m bonus to Chris Gent, the chief executive, as reward for organizing thecompany’s £113 bn takeover of Mannesmann, only half of which would besubject to performance conditions.[9] In a further article, ‘A real sporting gent witha nice line, too, in storytelling’ (Financial Times, 20 June 2000, p. 30), Gent’s skillas ‘raconteur’ was singled out as ‘an important deciding factor’ in gaining controlof Mannesmann. Given our boardroom-centred approach in this paper, what isof additional interest is the way Vodafone’s chief executive might have deployedhis storytelling skills to persuade fellow directors (including members of the pow-erful remuneration committee) to go out of their way to make a vast payment tohim at a time when there seemed no apparent need to do so and then to have todefend their actions publicly. Whilst we are unlikely to learn how this happenedunless a board participant speaks out publicly, the report in the Financial Times ofGent’s storytelling skills emphasizes the importance of discursive performances inenabling senior corporate officers to ‘get their own way’.

[1] The Straits Times, 3 March 1995; fictitious names have been substituted for actualcompany names. In order to preserve the relative anonymity of the subject compa-

44 . .


nies we have also changed the original dates of publication of all texts while pre-serving the chronological order and time lapses between texts. For example, originaldocuments from 3 March 1985 and 1 January 1986 could be referred to as 3 June1995 and 1 April 1996 in our analysis. However, interview dates have remainedunchanged.

[2] For an alternative view, see Gabriel (1998, 2000) who suggested that by obliteratingdistinctions between stories and other types of texts and narratives, stories lose pre-cisely the power they are meant to possess, namely the power to generate and sustainmeanings: ‘Storytelling is an art of weaving, of constructing, the product of intimateknowledge. It is a delicate process, a process that can easily break down, failing to liveup to its promise, disintegrating into mere text’ (Gabriel, 2000, p. 1).

[3] As one 3M manager recently commented: ‘Stories are a habit of mind at 3M, and it’sthrough them – through the way they make us see ourselves and our business opera-tions in complex, multidimensional forms – that we’re able to discover opportunitiesfor strategic change’ (in Shaw et al., 1998, p. 42).

[4] Our approach in this paper was to deploy the privileged position of the first authoras a ‘guide’ in interpreting our data set consisting principally of a full set of boardminutes (including draft minutes) and internal company papers. It is important toemphasize the nature of this data set which had two principal distinguishing features.Firstly, board minutes in their very nature as a formal record of spoken words withina specific context provide a summary of the different ‘voices’ expressed during therecorded event, namely the board meeting. In a way therefore, board minutes repre-sent one attempt to portray a multisided record of the ‘reality’ of the depicted event(after all, the Company Secretary who records the minutes is formally ‘detached’ fromproceedings of the board and assumes the role of an ‘impartial’ recorder). Our over-riding purpose in the paper was to interpret this source and to develop an interesting,plausible story that bears interpretation as the first author’s work. To make our storyplausible does not obligate us to conduct numerous interviews with other actor-participants (cf. Gabriel’s quote at the start of our methodology section). The intention of conducting the two interviews was to provide an additional temporal andcontextual perspective – the question we asked ourselves was: what do key protago-nists in the story think about certain key events in Cleo many years later? We wantedto use this retrospective view to illuminate the continuing, long-term impact of eventsin Cleo rather than to provide a ‘polyphonic’ tableaux of interpretations from a largenumber of interviewees. This sort of representation would comprise another, differ-ent story, but not one that would necessarily provide a more ‘accurate’ representationof the boardroom battle. Indeed, indicating one has conducted, for example, 50 inter-views, and then proceeding to provide a selection of quotes that support one’s inter-pretation is a well accepted textual strategy, but one that is less ‘objective’ (meaninghaving a less strong relationship between ‘facts’ and research story), in the sense thatthe translation from the original data set is less obvious than in the approach we havefollowed.

[5] Cleo’s share price steadily appreciated through the ‘implementation’ stage of restruc-turing (where it had languished unimpressively during the ‘transition’ phase): from alow of S$1.30 in September 1995 (shortly after the start of the ‘implementation’ stage)it reached a high of S$1.88 on the eve of the ‘Golden Parachute’ incident in June1996, which was over 30 per cent above the previous financial year’s average shareprice. It appeared that Cleo’s shareholders were impressed with the company’s man-agement and particularly its chairman who featured regularly in Cleo’s press releasesand newspaper articles.

[6] A new narrative developed from within Cleo, but it proved unable to mobilize ade-quate support to become as dominant as the chairman’s story. This was despite thefact that the internal narrative was well planned and there seemed to be latent unhap-

45


piness, especially among Cleo’s longer serving staff, about the way Cleo had become‘bureaucratic’ and impersonal.

[7] Gabriel (2000, pp. 34–42) gives an excellent overview of poetic tropes.[8] Literary scholars have long accepted that readers always complete novels on their own

terms. Reader–response theory (Iser, 1989) criticizes earlier theories that argued thatthe meaning of the text lay solely in its author’s intentions or that meaning was to befound in the text alone. Readers place themselves in the text and then draw on a stockof knowledge about the world in order to complete the narrative, filling in details thatare necessary for understanding but not explicit in the text, thus becoming active con-structors of meaning (DeVault, 1990). Meaning is created in the interaction amongauthor, text, and reader.

[9] Shareholders were reported to be angry: ‘Some called it a “staggering” payment fora deal whose merits are yet unproven’ (Financial Times, 20 June 2000, p. 30). They wereunhappy that payment of half the £10m bonus in cash with no strings attachedseemed to reward deal-making as such rather than shareholder value creation.Vodafone’s board subsequently agreed to restructure payment of the cash element ofthe bonus to better reflect the payee’s future performance (Financial Times, 22–23 July2000). ‘Vodafone said: “We hope this gesture – whereby Chris will be seen to put thevast majority of his bonus cash into Vodafone shares – will be well received by share-holders” ’ (Financial Times, 25 July 2000, p. 25).

A, G. (2000). ‘Learning about work from Joe Cool’. Journal of Management Inquiry, 9,57–61.

A, M. and D, S. (2000). Doing Critical Management Research. London: Sage.A, P. and C, A. (1997). ‘Analysing documentary realities’. In Silverman, D.

(Ed.), Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. London: Sage, 45–62.B, F. J., T, G. F. and H, S. P. (1995). ‘The central role of discourse in

large-scale change: a social construction perspective’. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science,31, 352–72.

B, D. (1996). ‘Artful inquiry: a symbolic constructivist approach to social scienceresearch’. Qualitative Inquiry, 2, 411–38.

B, D. and E, M. (1997). ‘Strategy retold: toward a narrative view of strategic dis-course’. Academy of Management Review, 22, 429–52.

B, D. M. (1991). ‘The storytelling organization: a study of story performance in anoffice-supply firm’. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 106–26.

B, D. M. (1995). ‘Stories of the storytelling organization: a postmodern analysis ofDisney as “Tamara-Land” ’. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 997–1035.

B, D. M. (1998). ‘The postmodern turn from stories-as-objects to stories-in-contextmethods’. 1998 Research Methods Forum No. 3, 1–4 (http://www.aom.pace.edu/rmd/1998_forum_postmodern_stories.html).

B, D. M., L, J. T. and B, D. E. (1999). ‘Hegemonic stories and encountersbetween storytelling organizations’. Journal of Management Inquiry, 8, 340–60.

B, R. J. and T, R. V. (1995). ‘Perspective making and perspective taking incommunities of knowing’. Organization Science, 6, 350–72.

B, M. E. (1996). ‘Organizational story and storytelling: a critical review’. Journal ofOrganizational Change Management, 9, 5, 5–26.

B, A. D. (2000). ‘Making sense of inquiry sensemaking’. Journal of Management Studies,37, 45–75.

B, A. D. and J, M. (2000). ‘Honourable members and dishonourable deeds:

46 . .


sensemaking, impression management and legitimation in the “Arms to Iraq Affair” ’.Human Relations, 53, 655–89.

B, J. (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.B, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University.B, I. (1998). ‘Bodies of knowledge: beyond Cartesian views of persons, selves and

mind’. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 28, 63–82.C, M. B. and S, L. (1999). ‘Past postmodernism? Reflections and tentative

directions’. Academy of Management Review, 24, 649–71.C, C. (1995). Work, Self and Society After Industrialism. London: Routledge.C, A. and A, P. (1996). Making Sense of Qualitative Data: Complementary Research

Strategies. London: Sage.C, B. (1997). Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.C, B. (1998). A Narrative Approach to Organization Studies. London: Sage.C, B. (1999). Writing Management: Organization Theory as a Literary Genre. Oxford:

Oxford University.C, B. and J, B. (1996). ‘Travels of ideas’. In Czarniawska, B. and Sevón,

G. (Eds), Translating Organizational Change. Berlin: de Gruyter, 13–48.D C, C. (2000). ‘Reflections on fiction, representation and organization studies: an

essay with special reference to the work of Jorge Luis Borges’. Organization Studies, 21,589–609.

DV, M. L. (1990). ‘Novel readings: the social organization of interpretation’. Ameri-can Journal of Sociology, 95, 887–921.

F, W. R. (1985). ‘The narrative paradigm: an elaboration’. Communication Monographs,52, 347–67.

F, R. E. (2000). ‘Wittgenstein and the social sciences: critical reflections concern-ing Peter Winch’s interpretations and appropriations of Wittgenstein’s thought’. Historyof the Human Sciences, 13, 2, 1–15.

G, Y. (1998). ‘Same old story or changing stories? Folkloric, modern and postmod-ern mutations’. In Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Oswick C. (Eds), Discourse and Organization.London: Sage, 84–103.

G, Y. (2000). Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies. London: Sage.G, R. P. (1978). ‘Status degradation and organizational succession: an ethno-

methodological approach’. Administrative Science Quarterly, 23, 553–81.G, R. P. (1993). ‘The textual approach: risk and blame in disaster sensemaking’.

Academy of Management Journal, 36, 1465–1514.G, S., B, C. A. and M, P. (1999). ‘A new manifesto for management’.

Sloan Management Review, Spring, 9–20.G-B, K. and H, R. (1997). ‘Breaches in the boardroom: organiza-

tional identity and conflicts of commitment in a nonprofit organization’. OrganizationScience, 8, 593–611.

G-B, K. and L, K. (1997). Composing Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks:Sage.

H, U. C. V. and L, L. (1998). ‘Crafted culture: governmental sculpting of modernSingapore and effects on business environments’. Journal of Organizational Change Man-agement, 11, 530–53.

H, C. and C, S. R. (1996). ‘Some dare call it power’. In Clegg, S. R., Hardy, C.and Nord, W. R. (Eds), Handbook of Organization Studies. London: Sage, 622–41.

H, C. and P, N. (1998). ‘Strategies of engagement: lessons from the criticalexamination of collaboration and conflict in an interorganizational domain’. Organiza-tion Science, 9, 217–30.

H, C. and P, N. (1999). ‘No joking matter: discursive struggle in the Canadianrefugee system’. Organization Studies, 20, 1–24.

47


H, L. and H, J. (2000). ‘Discourse and the study of organization: towarda structurational perspective’. Human Relations, 53, 1251–86.

H, R. (1988). ‘Financial accounting: in communicating reality, we construct reality’.Accounting, Organizations and Society, 13, 251–61.

I, W. (1989). Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology. Baltimore: JohnsHopkins.

J, J. (1985). ‘ “When the sleeper wakes”: a short story extending themes in radicalorganization theory’. Journal of Management, 11, 67–80.

K, W. N., S, A. L., B, S. R., B, M. Y. and T, R. J. (1999).‘The practice and uses of field research in the 21st century organization’. Journal ofManagement Inquiry, 8, 1, 67–81.

K, T., O, C. and G, D. (1997). ‘Organizational discourses: text andcontext’. Organization, 4, 147–58.

K, L. S. (1997). Imitation to Innovation: The Dynamics of Korea’s Technological Learning. Boston,MA: Harvard Business School.

MI, A. (1985). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edition. London:Duckworth.

M, J. G. (1996). ‘Continuity and change in theories of organizational action’. Admin-istrative Science Quarterly, 41, 278–87.

MN, T. and P, A. (1999). ‘Strategists on the board’. Organization Studies, 20,47–74.

M, H. and W, F. (2000). ‘Sustaining the institutional environment’. Orga-nization Studies, 21, 71–94.

O, L. A., T, B. and C, D. J. (1998). ‘Business planning as pedagogy: lan-guage and control in a changing institutional field’. Administrative Science Quarterly, 43,257–92.

P, B. T. (1999). ‘Building process theory with narrative: from description to expla-nation’. Academy of Management Review, 24, 711–24.

P, N. and H, C. (1997). ‘Managing multiple identities: discourse, legitimacyand resources in the UK refugee system’. Organization, 4, 159–85.

P, L. (1997). ‘Following in Foucault’s footsteps: text and context in qualitative research’.In Silverman, D. (Ed.), Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. London: Sage,63–79.

P, L. L., P, N. and C, P. (1996). ‘Communication in organizations’.In Clegg, S. R., Hardy, C. and Nord, W. N. (Eds), Handbook of Organization Studies.London: Sage, 375–408.

R, J. (1993). ‘Narrative studies, personal stories, and identity transformation inthe mutual help context’. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 29, 239–56.

R, C. (2000). ‘Reading and writing organizational lives’. Organization, 7, 7–29.R, P. (1983). ‘The narrative function’. In Thompson, J. B. (Ed.), Paul Ricoeur,

Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 274–96.

R, C. K. (1993). Narrative Analysis. London: Sage.R, R. (1991). Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers Volume 2. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.S, G., B, R. and B, P. (1998). ‘Strategic stories: how 3M is rewriting busi-

ness planning’. Harvard Business Review, 50, May–June, 41–50.S, K. (1994). ‘Tales of change: public administration reform and narrative

mode’. Organization Science, 5, 2, 219–38.T, C. (1985/1995). Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.T, H. and C, S. (1997). ‘Marginalization and recovery: the emergence of

Aristotelian themes in organization studies’. Organization Studies, 18, 655–83.

48 . .


T, W. M. (1994). The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today. Stanford:Stanford University Press.

V I, A. (2000). ‘Organizational doom and resurrection’. Organization Studies, 21,95–102.

V M, J. (1998). ‘Different strokes: qualitative research in the Administrative ScienceQuarterly from 1956 to 1996’. In Van Maanen, J. (Ed.), Qualitative Studies of Organizations.London: Sage, ix–xxxii.

W, T. J. (2000). ‘Ethnographic fiction science: making sense of managerial work andorganizational research processes with Caroline and Terry’. Organization, 7, 489–510.

W, T. J. and H, P. (1999). The Emergent Manager. London: Sage.W, K. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. London: Sage.W, K. E. (1999). ‘That’s moving: theories that matter’. Journal of Management Inquiry,

8, 134–42.W, A. C. and F, E. R. (1998). ‘Organization studies and the new pragmatism:

positivism, anti-positivism, and the search for ethics’. Organization Science, 9, 123–40.W, B. (1996). ‘Culture, institutions and business in East Asia’. Organization Studies,

17, 421–47.W, L. (1980). Culture and Value. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.W, S. (1988). ‘Reflexivity is the ethnographer of the text’. In Woolgar S. (Ed.),

Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Sage, 14–36.

49


battle in the boardroom: a discursive perspective

Documents