TY - CHAP

T1 - Meeting Generalized Others

T2 - Social Structure and Materiality in a Recently Merged Organization

AU - Strøbæk, Pernille Solveig

AU - Willert, Søren

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - Following George Herbert Mead, we contend that work-related organizational behavior requires continued negotiation of meaning – using linguistic, behavioral, and social tools. The meaning structures of the Generalized Other(s) of a particular employing organization provide the regulatory framework for such negotiations. These organizational patterns of meaning are the basic ‘stuff’ from which employees’ identity-supporting narratives, at individual and social levels, are shaped. Also, they are the ‘stuff’ that may add ‘social life’, i.e. a language-based, shared mentality, to materialized aspects of human group life. Such meaning structures may be challenged in the event of organizational mergers. Drawing upon existing focus group interview data from an ongoing research project on a major organizational merger we present an explorative study on materialized aspects of Generalized Others across groups with different pre-merger backgrounds. Our findings suggest that analyzing dominant material discourse themes may throw light on the way work teams define and regulate their social practice, and, hence, that such analyses may be useful tools for studying the social dynamics of materiality and agency in organizational mergers and related situations.

AB - Following George Herbert Mead, we contend that work-related organizational behavior requires continued negotiation of meaning – using linguistic, behavioral, and social tools. The meaning structures of the Generalized Other(s) of a particular employing organization provide the regulatory framework for such negotiations. These organizational patterns of meaning are the basic ‘stuff’ from which employees’ identity-supporting narratives, at individual and social levels, are shaped. Also, they are the ‘stuff’ that may add ‘social life’, i.e. a language-based, shared mentality, to materialized aspects of human group life. Such meaning structures may be challenged in the event of organizational mergers. Drawing upon existing focus group interview data from an ongoing research project on a major organizational merger we present an explorative study on materialized aspects of Generalized Others across groups with different pre-merger backgrounds. Our findings suggest that analyzing dominant material discourse themes may throw light on the way work teams define and regulate their social practice, and, hence, that such analyses may be useful tools for studying the social dynamics of materiality and agency in organizational mergers and related situations.

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-1-63117-557-2

T3 - Contemporary Cultural Studies

SP - 105

EP - 124

BT - Critical Narrative Inquiry

A2 - Mølbjerg Jørgensen,, Kenneth

A2 - Largarcha-Martinez, Carlos

PB - Nova Science Publishers

CY - New York

ER -