19 Organizational Rhetoric

(Cloud 2005)

• Speaking loudly with little real material efforts significantly diminishes worker’s power in negotiating with organization.

• Symbolic actions tend to lead to symbolic changes, not material ones.

• Staley locked out their workers without much explanation

• Workers shifts from warriors, to moral shamers, to victims and martyrs (growing material powerlessness)

(Meisenbach et al. 2008)

• Using Kenneth Burke’s pentadic analysis (Burkean analysis) in the context of maternity leave in the United States

• analyze not formal text (e.g., those from the companies)

• Burkean analysis

  • an act

  • an agent

  • a scene

  • some agency

  • a purpose

• This study focuses on three ratios:

  • scene-agency

  • scene-agent

  • agency-agent

• The bureaucratic process controls how leaves are arranged

• Deferral of agents: doctors’ note can serve as agency