The Role of Organization-wide Meetings in the Communicative Practice of Strategy

The overall purpose of this article is to raise our understanding of strategic communication defined as communication of strategic goals (Hallahan et al., 2007 Hallahan, K., Holtzhausen, D., van Ruler, B., Verčič, D. and Sriramesh, K. 2007. Defining strategic communication. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 1(1): 3–35. [Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar]). Applying a discourse analytical approach, we empirically investigated how employees interpret and relate to management information concerning strategic goals. Inspired by Lewis (2000 Lewis, M. 2000. Exploring paradox: Toward a more comprehensive guide. Academy of Management Review, 25(4): 760–776. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]), the empirical analysis focuses on the disparate discursive positions expressed in interviews with employees. In particular, the article discusses organization-wide meetings as a potential forum for disseminating the goals of an enterprise, fostering a mutual understanding of the external, strategic context, and generating commitment to these strategic goals. The interview findings reveal how the asymmetric type of organizational communication that is characteristic for such meetings seems to generate more tension than unity within the organization due to decontextualized or deficient communication of multiple strategic goals and change initiatives, inconsistencies between the speakers, and heterogeneity among the receiving employees with their misaligned interests and intra-institutional incompatibilities.