Irony and the social construction of contradiction in the humor of a management team
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Hatch, MJ
刊物名称：
ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
ISSN/ISSBN：
1047-7039
DOI：
10.1287/orsc.8.3.275
发表日期：
1997
页码：
275-288
关键词：
摘要：
The thesis I explore in this essay is that organizational members use humorous remarks to discursively construct and organize their cognitive and emotional experiences in and of their organizations. My assumptions are that: (1) organizations are socially constructed through discourse about them (especially managerial discourse), (2) humorous discourse provides a contradiction-centered construction of organizations that operates in the domains of both cognition and emotion, and (3) interpretation of the text of ironic remarks will suggest the processes by which contradictions and their cultural and emotional contexts are socially constructed through discourse. In this essay I use a form of analysis that I developed in relation to humor theory (Mulkay 1988), theories of irony (Brown 1977, Weick and Browning 1986) and Rorty's (1989) concept of the ironic disposition to interpret spontaneous humorous exchanges observed during the regular meetings of a group of middle managers. My interpretations of ironically humorous remarks indicate that the managers in my study constructed at least some of their cognitive and emotional experiences in contradictory ways including: possible/impossible, great/horrible, comic/serious, and upto-date/unprepared, The interpretations also suggest how, in constructing contradiction, the managers reflexively constructed themselves in relation to their organization. The analysis points to a paradoxical understanding of organizational stability and change and informs a contradiction-centered view of organizations.