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date: 08 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Organization theory has many excellent stylists, probably due to its much lamented plurality. This article quotes several exemplars of style-as-theory or perhaps style-as-method, to show that there is a vast repertoire to choose from and to expand. This article adds that this is a posteriori judgment: there are no ‘styles that persuade’, only ‘styles that have persuaded’ — some readers, at a certain place, at a certain time. This article focuses on native English writers, not because they are the only ones to develop a style, but because a rhetorical analysis performed in English on a text written in another language borders on absurdity, and the same analysis applied to a translation from another language raises a host of doubts as to whose style is under description. All analyses are language bound, but a rhetorical one even more so.

Keywords: organization theory, stylists, style-as-theory, style-as-method, rhetorical analysis

Barbara Czarniawska

Barbara Czarniawska is Professor of Management Studies at Gothenburg Research Institute, the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She studies connections between popular culture and practice of management, and techniques of managing overflow in affluent societies—exploring techniques of fieldwork and the applications of narratology in social sciences. Recent books in English are Cyberfactories: How News Agencies Produce News (2011) and Managing Overflow in Affluent Societies (edited with Orvar Löfgren, 2012).

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