Introducing Strategic Discourse

This chapter marks a shift in our analysis of change towards the dynamics of organizations operating within and simultaneously shaping the contexts which we have described earlier. At a broad level, our approach is to examine how organizations and fields link together through the development of particular discourses and practices. As we described in Chapter 1, discourses constitute ways of understanding situations and thereby relate to modes of acting upon and controlling contexts. As discourses emerge from a set of material and social conditions, they give the social world a new form and meaning and may become embedded in distinctive managerial practices. Thus, the discourse establishes the ‘truth’ of its presuppositions through constructing a world in its own image. This ‘truth’ defines and works upon the subjectivity of actors as well as the material practices in which the actors are embedded. Such a process does not necessarily imply acceptance and internalization on the part of the actors. These latter states are only one of a range of, often fragile, responses to managerial discourses – others may include rejection, resistance, adaptation or ambivalence. Furthermore, there are multiple, competing and sometimes contradictory discourses which exist in modern societies, and therefore it is crucial to identify which discourses become particularly dominant and influential in particular contexts, why and what their consequences are. This defines our interest in discourses within financial services. Our previous analysis of growing uncertainties within the sector has led us to the view that in response to these changes, discourses began to emerge to reestablish a sense of stability and control. These discourses were elaborated and carried into the financial services sector by many different actors. In what follows we seek to describe this process and how it impacted on the various actors analysed in the previous chapters.