Using Verbal Irony to Move on with Controversial Issues

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kwon, Winston; Clarke, Ian; Vaara, Eero; Mackay, Rowan; Wodak, Ruth
• 署名单位: University of Edinburgh; University of Oxford; Lancaster University
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2019.1333
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 865-886
• 关键词: DISCOURSE; INTERPRETATION; SENSEMAKING; managerial and organizational cognition; group processes and performance; Organizational behavior; practice; QUALITATIVE RESEARCH; research design and methods; affect (emotion; mood)

摘要

Irony is an effective means of dealing with controversy in organizations, but there is a paucity of knowledge of the various ways in which irony helps managers to do so without necessarily 'solving' those issues. By drawing on discursive incongruity theory, we examine the use of irony when managers are confronted with controversial issues in a multinational company. As a result, we identify and elaborate on four distinctively different pathways of how irony helps participants to move on: 'acquiescing' (framing understanding as having no alternative because of environmental constraints), 'empowering' (synthesizing a view through broad inputs from different individuals), 'channelling' (subsuming other interpretations under a single and often dominant view) and 'dismissing' (rejecting alternative interpretations and often reinforcing the status quo). On this basis, we develop a theoretical model that elucidates the process dynamics in dealing with and moving on with controversial issues and elaborates the specific characteristics of each of these four pathways. Our analysis also leads to a fuller understanding of the discursive underpinnings and intersubjective dynamics in irony use in organizations.