The Civilized Organization: Norbert Elias and the Future of Organization Studies (Advances in Organization Studies, 10)

This book brings a major new resource to organization studies: the work of Norbert Elias. By applying his ideas in a critical but sympathetic way, the authors provide a new perspective on the never-ending stream of management fads and fashions. Standing back and taking a more detached perspective, inspired by the work of Norbert Elias (1897-1990), it becomes clear that many 'new' types of organizations are often variations on an old theme. Elias gives us considerable purchase on current debates through his emphasis on long-term historical perspectives, his highlighting of issues of power, emotion and subjectivity, his interweaving of analysis at the level of the state, the organization, groups, and individuals, his alternative 'take' on issues of agency and structure, and his relevance to a wide range of current organization theories. The contributions show the current relevance of Elias's work in numerous fields of organizational analysis such as the sociology of finance and markets, the comparative and cross-cultural study of organization, comparative management development, organizational meetings, organizational boundaries, gossip and privacy in organizations, emotion in organizations, and the significance of humiliation within organizations. It is, indeed, "time for Elias"! There are few aspects of language which are more problematic than its discourse particles. The present study of discourse particles draws upon data from the London-Lund Corpus to show how the methods and tools of corpora can sharpen their description. The first part of the book provides a picture of the state of the art in discourse particle studies and introduces the theory and methodology for the analysis in the second part of the book. Discourse particles are analysed as elements which have been grammaticalised and as a result have certain properties and uses. The importance of linguistic and contextual cues such as text type, position in the discourse, prosody and collocation for analysing discourse particles is illustrated.
The following chapters deal with specific discourse particles (now, oh, just, sort of, and that sort of thing, actually) on the basis of their empirical analysis in the London-Lund Corpus. Examples and extended extracts from many different text types are provided to illustrate what discourse particles are doing in discourse.
Topics Covered In This Title Include: Organizing Discourse; Negotiating Boundaries; Crossing Cultures; And Theorizing Practice.