Researching Organizational Discourse

In recent years, the body of theory on organizational discourse has grown significantly, helping to form a specific field of study and also contributing to broader organization and management theory. During this time, empirical work using discourse analysis has also increased, as organizational researchers have drawn on methods established in other domains of study to examine organizations. However, the study of organizational discourse is not without difficulties, especially for researchers wishing to conduct empirical studies. This article identifies four particular challenges for empirical researchers and then describes how an ongoing program of organizational research using discourse analysis has attempted to address them. It also highlights some of the important contributions that empirical studies of organizational discourse can offer toward the understanding of organizational processes.