How Speech Acting and the Struggle of Narratives Generate Organization

The book investigates the relation between knowledge and politics, between describing the world and changing it, between cognitive - sensing - and volitional - wilful - processes and goes on to describe how speech-acting organizes, reorganizes - and destroys organizations.

Thorvald Gran is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Part 1: Questions and Approach 1. Questions and Approach. Some Hypotheses. Some Already Suggested Answers 2. A Realistic Paradigm 3. Problem, Materials and Methods of Analysis 4. Questions of Speech-Acts, Narrative Struggles and the Organization of Norwegian Fisheries Part 2: How Speech-Acting in Context Organizes 5. The Language Institution 6. Speech-Acting, Narratives and Organization 7. How Institutions and Institutional Dynamics Affect Reasoning in the Gap Part 3: Struggles Over Organizing 8. Competing Narratives of the Firm in a Capital Producing Market Economy 9. The Speech Act Theory of Innovativeness and Innovations 10. Discourse Mode Changes in Organizations and Societies Part 4: Political and Private Organization. Narratives, Identities and Power in Norwegian Fisheries 11. From Private to Public and Political Power 12. The Speech Act Theory of Organization and New Technology in Norwegian Fisheries Part 5: The Pressure for Democracy 13. The Narrativity of Leadership and Management in Organizations 14. How Competing Ideas of Society Permeate Organizations, Daily Life and Personalities in Norwegian Fisheries Conclusion