Authorithy-in-Action: How voices are negotiated through idiomatic formulations during organizational downsizing

In response to the recent calls from strategy research to focus on the processual aspects of strategic actions in real life and based on a downsizing process in a large public organization, the chapter seeks to better understand the role of multi- and univocality in the pursuit to reach a strategic decision about downsizing. In specific, the chapter shows how managers during polyphonic communication processes where managerial authority, power, and differing interests are at stake balance multiple voices. Based on a micro-ethnographic approach, the study illustrates how discursive, micro-level practices like idiomatic formulations can play a decisive role in accomplishing a position of authority that in consequence allows the speaker to direct or re-direct the ongoing discussion about strategic decisions. Authority here is not a stable, pre-assigned position that can be employed strategically in the interaction. Instead, the study reveals that authority as a way to control future actions is accomplished by means of locally situated discursive practices in form of idiomatic formulations. Moreover, the chapter contributes methodologically to the growing research on micro-foundations of authority by demonstrating the usefulness of video-based micro-ethnography to advance our understanding of the relationship between the interactional establishment of authority, the reliance on idiomatic formulations, and the dynamics between multivocality and univocality.