Guest editorial: discourse and organizational change

Purpose This paper aims to examine the contribution that discourse analysis can make to understanding organizational change. Design/methodology/approach It identifies five key contributions. Discourse analytic approaches: reveal the important role of discourse in the social construction of organizational change; demonstrate how the meaning attached to organizational change initiatives comes about as a result of a discursive process of negotiation among key actors; show that the discourses of change should be regarded as intertextual; provide a valuable multi‐disciplinary perspective on change; and exhibit a capacity, to generate fresh insights into a wide variety of organizational change related issues. Findings To illustrate these contributions the paper examines the five empirical studies included in this special issue. It discusses the potential for future discursive studies of organizational change phenomena and the implications of this for the field of organizational change more generally. Originality/value Provides an introduction to the special issue on discourse and organizational change.