Why organizations?

Why would a watch manufacturer like Wyler want to tout its status as a carbon neutral company? What motivates a luxury resort chain like the Banyan Tree to announce its commitment to community development and the protection of indigenous wildlife? How is it that a pharmaceutical chain like Walgreens can describe its history as one of “innovation, growth and industry leadership” without coming across as unduly immodest? How does a charity like Singapore’s National Kidney Foundation try to regain public trust after a scandal over the misuse of funds? And what does a small Indian restaurant in Malaysia hope to gain (at least according to McDonald’s) by naming itself “McCurry”? To answer these and other related questions, it is necessary to pay attention to how organizations constitute themselves, the identities they aim to project, the relationships they attempt to cultivate, and the semiotic resources they marshal towards such ends.

But while the study of organizations is well established in sociology and business studies, the same cannot be said about sociolinguistics. Yet, as I show in this book, a sociolinguistic approach has much to offer by way of providing interesting and insightful answers to questions such as those posed above. And it is important to try and answer these questions, not least because organizations are a key defining feature of modern society, with their activities responsible for shaping much of contemporary social life (Adler Reference Adler2009).

The aim of this book, then, is twofold: to articulate an analytical framework that recognizes the organization as an entity of sociolinguistic interest and significance, and to also demonstrate the empirical viability of this framework via a number of case studies. The current chapter lays the foundation for this framework, which is then developed in the next chapter. The case studies are discussed in the chapters that follow.

There are clearly many different things that could be studied about organizations. But in order to answer questions such as those presented above, the current chapter draws on studies in sociology, anthropology, political economy and cultural geography to highlight a number of relatively robust factors that merit specific consideration. These include the institutional environment within which organizations struggle for survival and legitimacy; the hegemonic status of neoliberalism and enterprise culture in shaping organizational activity and identity; and the identity economy, where there is increased emphasis placed by organizations on the competitive cultivation of semiotic resources in response to the commodification of identity. Towards the close of the chapter, a case will be made that our understanding of these factors can be usefully developed from a style-theoretic perspective (Coupland Reference Coupland2007; Eckert and Rickford Reference Eckert and Rickford2001; Rampton Reference Rampton1999). This style-theoretic perspective on organizations is then described in detail in chapter 2.

The ubiquity of organizations

Albrow (Reference Albrow1997: 29) defines organizations “as social units where individuals are conscious of their membership and legitimize their cooperative activities by reference to the attainment of impersonal goals rather than to moral standards.”¹ As entities that have been created or established in order to serve particular goals (Blau and Scott Reference Blau and Scott1963: 1; Parsons Reference Parsons and Parsons1960: 17), organizations have access to more resources than (unorganized) individuals, and they can arguably therefore exert greater influence in achieving those goals.

Moreover, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that organizations of various sorts are proliferating. Activist groups, social movements, charities, oversight or regulatory agencies, multinational corporations and their subsidiaries, social enterprises, small startups – these represent just some of the many types of organizations that are already populating the social landscape. But it is not just the types of organizations that are on the increase. Tokens of these types, too, are on the upswing. For example, widespread concern about the effects of climate change has led to the creation of organizations such as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, the Climate Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and the Earth Lab Foundation, to name just a few. Societal demand for greater access to education also has led to the establishment of more schools and universities. The small city-state of Singapore, for example, used to have just two major universities, the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University. As of 2012, however, there are also the Singapore Management University, SIM University, the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and the Singapore Institute of Technology. This list does not even include the many overseas universities that have decided to set up campuses in Singapore. And of course, the success of a global coffee chain like Starbucks has encouraged many entrepreneurs to start their own cafés, or at least attempt to model their cafés along the lines of Starbucks in the hopes of emulating its success. In this regard, the Taiwanese chain Ecoffee has been accused by Starbucks of infringing on its trademark (see chapter 7 for details). And depending on whether one counts the individual members of a chain or the individual franchisees of a franchise as separate organizations, the argument that organizations are on the increase can become even more compelling.

As organizations proliferate (in types as well as tokens), they become harder to ignore because of the goods or services they provide to us as consumers, because it is an inescapable fact that many of us work for organizations, because we are answerable in one way or another to government agencies, and because we do find ourselves encountering organizational representatives who are either raising money for particular charities or attempting to collect signatures in order to lobby for social changes. Given their ubiquity, it is ironic to observe that organizations have, however, not often constituted the direct objects of sociolinguistic investigation (chapter 2). Organizations have instead mainly been of interest insofar as they form the contextual backdrop against which the sociolinguistic practices of individuals or communities are impeded or enabled. Nevertheless, once we start thinking of the organization as a sociolinguistic research object in its own right, we need to ask how such an entity might be approached. But before situating the study of organizations in relation to sociolinguistic conceptualization, it is useful to look at what scholars in adjacent disciplines have had to say.

The institutional environment

Though it should probably not come as a surprise, it is still worth making the point that early studies of organizations tended to be predicated on the assumption that organizational structures and activities are influenced mainly by considerations of efficiency (Scott and Meyer Reference Scott, Meyer, Meyer and Scott1983). The institutional theory of organizations (Scott Reference Scott2001, Reference Scott and Ritzer2004), in contrast, argues that “organizations are influenced by normative pressures, sometimes arising from external sources such as the state, other times arising from within the organization itself” (Zucker Reference Zucker1987: 443). This response to normative pressure is a survival mechanism to gain legitimacy and, in attempting to do so, organizations often adopt practices and structures that may even have a negative impact on efficiency. That is, the institutional theory argues that the formal structures of organizations “dramatically reflect the myths of their institutional environments instead of the demands of their work activities” (Meyer and Rowan Reference Meyer, Rowan, Powell and DiMaggio1991: 41). According to Meyer and Rowan (Reference Meyer, Rowan, Powell and DiMaggio1991: 44):

Here is an example: the series of “We agree” advertisements from the oil company Chevron. According to Chevron, the goal of this advertising campaign is to highlight:

Available from the company’s website, this consists of a number of posters with statements such as “Oil companies should support the communities they’re a part of,” “Oil companies should support small business,” “Protecting the planet is everyone’s job” and “It’s time oil companies get behind the development of renewable energy.” Each of these statements is accompanied by the phrase “I agree” as well as a link entitled “What Chevron is doing.” Clicking on the “What Chevron is doing” link brings the reader to a page where Chevron provides relevant descriptions of its efforts in relation to the associated statement. For example, the link on the poster “Oil companies should support the communities they’re a part of” brings the reader to a page that contains, among others, messages from Chevron’s Executive Vice President (Policy and Planning) and the Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. These messages give details of collaborative efforts between these two organizations as they try to improve the health of communities around the world.

It is clear that what Chevron is trying to do via these advertisements is to demonstrate to the general public that, in addition to its goal of producing and selling oil, the company is also engaged in supporting small businesses and local communities, protecting the environment, and investing in clean renewable energy. Moreover, Chevron wants to convey that there is no conflict between these activities, that is, it has no problems being equally committed to these different goals. Stances of commitment and sincerity therefore become of analytical interest in the study of organizations. Finally, Chevron presumes (rightly) that environmental sustainability and community development represent institutional myths that are already widely supported by the general public (hence, “We agree”) rather than being values that might be controversial or, worse, that would draw public condemnation.

The influence of “institutional myths” on organizational structure can lead to a point where organizations might even become isomorphic with their institutional environments. This is perhaps one reason why organizations are sometimes also described as institutions. It is useful to maintain a distinction between the two, though. Institutions are social norms that are entrenched to varying degrees. Marriage, religion, education, the family, and language are all institutions. An organization is then isomorphic with its institutional environment to the extent that it represents specific institutions. One interesting implication of this isomorphism is that organizations operating within the same institutional environments, and hence, responding to the same set of institutional myths, will tend to be similar (DiMaggio and Powell Reference DiMaggio and Powell1983; see also Lewin, Weigelt and Emery Reference Lewin, Weigelt, Emery and Poole2004: 134). The proliferation of organizations concerned with climate change (mentioned above) is one such example of isomorphism (between organizations and the institutional environment) and similarity (across organizations).

This implication is certainly interesting although we need to be aware that the institutional environment is not itself homogeneous. This is because “institutional myths” are normalized to different degrees in different societies, and organizations have different degrees of freedom in deciding whether to abide by these myths. Some organizations may challenge or even reject some of the myths. For example, the Slow Food movement is a rejection of what its founders saw as an undesirable lifestyle; the movement describes itself as “a global, grassroots organization…founded in 1989 to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”³ Other organizations are expected to embrace certain other myths because of the cities they happen to be part of. Thus, because gay rights are treated as a key value embraced by the city of San Francisco, businesses like the Body Shop and Macy’s, as well as local government organizations, all proudly declare their support for homosexual lifestyles. In contrast, because Singapore sees itself as a more conservative Asian city, the consequence is that the Body Shop outlets in Singapore do not make the same public declaration as their San Francisco counterparts. But in Singapore, multiculturalism and respect for ethnic diversity are key values and while businesses are not expected to publicly declare their commitment to these values, they are certainly expected to respect them. This relatively “passive” stance towards multiculturalism and ethnic diversity contrasts with the responsibility of a government organization like the People’s Association, which is expected to actively champion such values.

The foregoing considerations make it more useful to think of organizations in the default as “actors” rather than “agents”, though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. But as Archer (Reference Archer1995: 280) suggests, while it is of course possible for the same entity to be both actor and agent, it is “analytically invaluable” to distinguish between the two. Actors are “role incumbents” and are typically constrained by the associated “rule requirements” whereas agents may choose to inhabit and conform to their assigned roles or challenge them (Archer Reference Archer1995: 278–80). In this regard, characterizing organizations as actors brings into relief the fact that they are first and foremost created to pursue specific goals and their continued legitimacy often depends on them conforming to various regulatory requirements and institutional myths. Thus, even though the Slow Food movement was created as a counter to what the founders saw as a fast food lifestyle, the key fact here is that its creation was a reflection of a shared desire amongst a particular group of individuals to promote a different kind of lifestyle. This alternative lifestyle represents its own institutional myth, albeit one that is perhaps less hegemonic than that which it seeks to counter. But having been so created, the movement is now expected to behave in ways that conform to a lifestyle where local produce and traditions are privileged.

At the same time, I want to stress that this characterization of the organization as actor is not meant to exclude the possibility of organizations, qua agents, challenging or departing from their assigned roles and responsibilities. Organizations are certainly not just passive actors that simply respond to institutional constraints.⁴ Thus, we noted earlier that the Slow Food movement was created specifically to counter what its founders saw as an undesirable move towards a fast-paced lifestyle. The key point to bear in mind is that for such an “activist” or “countering” organization to emerge, there must be a group of individuals who are prepared to mobilize and work together in pursuit of a shared goal (Albrow Reference Albrow1997: 29; see above). In such cases, the notion of institutional myths still applies, albeit to myths of lesser hegemonic status. The organization that is subsequently created still needs to be understood as an actor occupying a particular role or institutional configuration in society. Any departure from this role will often lead to questions – either from members of the organization, the general public or higher level regulatory agencies – about the organization’s legitimacy and whether it should be allowed to continue existing (see the discussion of accountability in chapter 2).

Organizations can also sometimes be transformative by changing the status of institutional myths, making it a “cool” lifestyle issue, for example, for consumers to be interested in topics such as the eradication of poverty or disease. Thus, Richey and Ponte (Reference Richey and Ponte2011) discuss the phenomenon of “compassionate consumption,” where consumers are enjoined to purchase goods from Converse, the Gap or Armani on the grounds that a percentage of the profits will go towards a global fund for fighting AIDS or malaria. But Richey and Ponte (Reference Richey and Ponte2011: xiii–xiv, italics added) also point out that the participating organizations do so in order to “raise their CSR [corporate social responsibility] profile without substantially changing their normal business practices while consumers engage in low-cost heroism without meaningfully increasing their awareness of global production-consumption relations or the struggles of living with HIV/AIDS.” Even here, therefore, we must appreciate that, one, the participating organizations are still staying true to their primary purpose of profit generation and, two, this is with the cooperation of consumers, for whom “low-cost heroism” is appealing since they are then able to help others while still engaged in their preferred activity of shopping. What this suggests is that any transformative potential of an organization is often mitigated by the organization’s need or obligation to remain true to the purpose which it was originally set up to pursue, and by the cooperation and collaboration of the clientele that it purports to serve.

As we now see, it is actually useful to think of organizations as not just actors, but corporate actors, given that organizations of all sorts are being modeled along the lines of the corporation.⁵

Neoliberalism and enterprise culture

Neoliberalism asserts that organizations and individuals perform their best within the demands of the free market economy. As Harvey (Reference Harvey2005: 3, citing Treanor, no date given) puts it:

As a consequence, one notable offshoot of neoliberal ideology has been the emergence of enterprise culture, in which qualities such as autonomy, innovation, creativity, strategy and the ability to respond quickly to competition are highly valued. These qualities are regarded as “human virtues and promoted as such” (du Gay Reference du Gay1996: 56). Du Gay (Reference du Gay1996: 181, italics in original) even suggests that the “character of the entrepreneur can no longer be seen as just one among a plurality of ethical personalities, but must rather be seen as assuming an ontological priority.” The pervasiveness and highly normative effects of enterprise culture have led Cohen and Musson (Reference Cohen and Musson2000: 31) to suggest that:

Thus, du Gay (Reference du Gay2000: 165), speaking of developments in the United Kingdom under the Thatcher and Major administrations, observes that:⁶

Enterprise culture has been acknowledged to have significant implications for the identity construction and communication practices of both individuals and organizations (du Gay Reference du Gay1996; Gee, Hull and Lankshear Reference Gee, Hull and Lankshear1996; Holborow Reference Holborow, Block, Gray and Holborow2012: 50; Keat and Abercrombie Reference Keat, Keat and Abercrombie1991; Scheuer Reference Scheuer2001; Wee Reference Wee2011b; Wee and Brooks Reference Wee and Brooks2012, see chapter 3). Even ethnic cultural identity has been reconfigured to highlight the “ethnic entrepreneur” (DeHart Reference DeHart2010), where ethnic membership itself is seen as conferring values and knowledge that might contribute positively to the development of the ethnic community. As a result of the hegemonic status of neoliberalism and enterprise culture (Harvey Reference Harvey2005; Keat and Abercrombie Reference Keat, Keat and Abercrombie1991; Ong Reference Ong2006), individuals, groups, as well as organizations are all increasingly expected to demonstrate enterprising qualities or, at the very least, show that they are attempting to cultivate these qualities. The absence of such qualities would constitute social transgressions (du Gay Reference du Gay1996: 60). In this sense, enterprise culture represents a powerful institutional myth that organizations (as well as individuals and groups) are compelled to embrace in order to legitimize their existence and activities.

In the specific case of organizations, organizational activities then might well be legitimized or justified in terms of how well these serve to respond to the market, that is, how innovative these activities are, especially as ways of successfully dealing with competition from other organizations or in satisfying consumer demand. Even linguistic and cultural differences among employees, under the rubric of diversity management, has become treated as a resource that should be utilized to better help organizations achieve their goals (Park Reference Park2013). For organizations, this means becoming more like corporations, and this observation has led Comaroff and Comaroff (Reference Comaroff and Comaroff2009: 120, and quoting Silbey Reference Silbey2007) to point out that:

Thus, even organizations that are not, strictly speaking, corporations, see themselves as “virtual” persons, as entities with specific and distinct identities that need to be cultivated, managed and protected. And the kind of organizational identity that needs to be cultivated is increasingly one that makes a claim to the possession of enterprising qualities (chapter 3).

The identity economy

While enterprise culture is indeed a powerful institutional myth that organizations are expected to embrace, it is of course not necessarily the case that all organizations will do so. And even where they do, different organizations will have to do so in different ways given the constraints imposed by the various goals that organizations pursue. A university will have to present its enterprising credentials in ways that are consistent with its focus on education and research, whereas a restaurant may do so in ways that are more traditionally oriented towards financial gains.

At this point, an organization’s agency (as distinct from its actorhood) becomes more salient because each organization has to decide just what set of institutional myths it is prepared to select as relevant to its goals and identity. The notion of an ethical regime is appropriate in characterizing those specific institutional myths that the organization decides are worth taking on board. According to Ong (Reference Ong2006: 22):

Enterprise culture clearly constitutes an ethical regime in Ong’s (Reference Ong2006) sense of the term. As we have noted, it promotes particular attributes as worth cultivating and, indeed, lauding. We will see in the later chapters that other institutional myths, such as support for local communities and “green” initiatives, are also widely embraced ethical regimes, that is, myths that many organizations want to be seen as actively endorsing. The notion of an ethical regime is therefore useful because it allows us to give cognizance to the fact the institutional environment is not necessarily homogeneous. And even in an environment where some institutional myths are highly hegemonic, individuals sharing the same counter-hegemonic perspectives may band together to form an organization precisely in order to promote other contrarian ethical regimes, as in the case of the Slow Food movement (above).

All of which leads us to the identity economy. Comaroff and Comaroff (Reference Comaroff and Comaroff2009: 136–7) suggest that the commodification of identity in late modernity, or “Identity, Inc.,” is “metamorphosing and migrating to places it has not been before,” citing as examples the tendency by, among others, religious and national organizations to claim as copyrightable cultural properties the various social practices associated with faith and ethnic heritage. In other words, as part of their attempts at protecting and enhancing their religious or ethnic identities, the claimant organizations are aiming to exercise greater control over who gets to engage in the relevant practices, as well as what might count as the appropriate ways of engaging in such practices. In the identity economy, image and identity are commodities that the organization jealously safeguards because they are the key strategic resources by which an organization can distinguish itself from competing organizations. Harvey (Reference Harvey2012: 92) points out that the more easily marketable goods and services are, the “less unique and special they appear” and the more susceptible to “replication by forgeries, fakes, imitations, or simulacra.” Consequently, there is greater reliance on “the power of collective symbolic capital, of special marks of distinction” (Harvey Reference Harvey2012: 103). Harvey (Reference Harvey2012: 103) also suggests that “Bourdieu, to whom we owe the general usage of these terms, unfortunately restricts them to individuals…when it seems to me that the collective forms…might be of even greater interest.”

Harvey is certainly right. There is no reason why the notion of collective symbolic capital should be restricted to individuals when it applies just as well to organizations, since the pressure from market competition also requires organizations to “raise their quotient of symbolic capital and to increase their marks of distinction” (Harvey Reference Harvey2012: 103). The challenge for organizations is to do so while still being able to pursue the goals that motivated and justified their establishment, and maintaining legitimacy by demonstrating commitment to specific ethical regimes. There are then potential tensions that need to be managed by organizations between the pursuit of distinction, on the one hand, and the need to be faithful to goals and ethical regimes.

Furthermore, symbolic capital is fundamentally discursive in nature, where discourse is understood here as a “general mode of semiosis” (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2005a: 2). This is because “claims to uniqueness, authenticity, particularity, and specialty…are as much an outcome of discursive constructions and struggles as they are grounded in material fact” (Harvey Reference Harvey2012: 103). The power of symbolic capital ultimately rests on how successfully an organization is able to deploy the linguistic and non-linguistic resources at its disposal in order to project the desired identity. We will see in the chapters that follow that claims about industry leadership, innovativeness, and a sincere commitment to environmental sustainability, among others, involve the use of mini-genres such as vision and mission statements, larger historical narratives of organizational growth and expansion, as well as “small stories” (Bamberg Reference Bamberg2006). We will also see that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) represent a further set of resources that organizations are increasingly obligated to draw on if they are to sustain their symbolic capital so that, unlike individuals, who might have the option of not being “always on” (Baron Reference Baron2008), organizations have no such option. As “virtual persons” who never tire or never sleep, organizations also cannot lay claim to having personal lives that are separable from their professional ones.⁷

Discourse and organizations

This focus on discourse allows the arguments in this book to intersect with developments in the sociological and business study of organizations, which have moved from a largely positivist orientation towards one that is more discursive in nature (Albrow Reference Albrow1997: 17ff). Such a move is significant not only because it foregrounds the importance of organizational discourse. It also treats such discourse as an outcome of the activities of an independently existing entity (“the organization”), and appreciates that the discourse contributes to the very construction of the organization itself. I present below selected extracts, worth quoting despite their length, in order to demonstrate this important convergence between the focus on discourse in organizational studies, on the one hand, and the sociolinguistic emphasis on discourse, on the other.

Consider, for example, the points cogently articulated by Chia (Reference Chia2000: 513–14, italics in original; see also Cohen and Musson Reference Cohen and Musson2000: 33–4), who stresses the constitutive influence of discourse on how we understand organizations:

In a similar vein to Chia (Reference Chia2000), Brummans, Cooren, and Chaput (Reference Brummans, Cooren, Chaput and Bargiela-Chiappini2009: 57) highlight the importance of attending to what they call “organizational presentification”:

The unity behind these views coheres with and is well captured by Blommaert’s comments about discourse from a sociolinguistic perspective (Reference Blommaert2005a: 3):

What is needed, then, for the sociolinguistic study of organizations is an approach that recognizes the linguistic as well as non-linguistic nature of resources; that acknowledges the constitutive power of such resources in identity construction while also noting that any use of these resources is not completely free but, rather, that decisions about their deployment can carry significant socio-political consequences; and that can also accommodate the fact that such resources can be used in ways that speak to the existence of deeply entrenched routines as well as strongly conscious and deliberate strategies. This is where the notion of style comes in.

However, organizations are ontologically distinct from persons. Even if they are created by persons and even if they are often considered “virtual” persons, organizations have properties that we will see carry significantly different implications for how they are expected to deploy the semiotic resources at their disposal, not least because they are constrained by institutional myths in ways that persons are not. What this means is that insights from the study of style – which have thus far been gleaned by focusing mainly on the styling practices of persons – cannot be directly transplanted into the study of organizational activities. Rather, adjustments and adaptations will have to be made in the light of an organization’s ontology.

The organization of the book

The sociolinguistic concept of style – as the active mobilization of linguistic and non-linguistic resources by actors in their attempts at identity construction and relationship management – provides a particularly valuable perspective on discourse. It is one that is entirely consonant with Blommaert’s remarks about discourse above, and as a consequence, allows us to analyze and understand organizational activity in relation to the institutional environment, including the specific constraints imposed by the identity economy. This notion of style, however, was and still remains highly wedded to the study of persons rather than organizations, and therefore some adjustments need to be introduced if we are to “leverage” on style’s analytical potential. This is the focus of chapter 2, which adapts earlier works on style, in particular Coupland (Reference Coupland2007), in order to develop a framework for dealing with organizations.

Chapter 3 deals with the normative expectations of enterprise culture. I show how enterprise culture acts as a “master ethical regime” in the sense that organizational commitments to other ethical regimes tend to be refracted through the ideological lenses of enterprise culture. The discussion brings to the fore the influence of enterprise culture on organizational styling, and the related issue of how techniques of governmentality (Foucault Reference Foucault and Faubion2000) are being used to (re-)make organizations as bearers of enterprising qualities. In the case of organizations, the impact of enterprise culture means that rational-legal authority (Weber Reference Weber and Gerth1958) exists in some tension with what we might call the authority of the market. I make my argument by attending to the prevalence of communicative genres such as the ranked list, vision and mission statements, the use of small stories to convey narratives of entrepreneurship, and digital media (Twitter, Facebook, particular kinds of widgets). A key point pursued in this chapter (and also chapter 7) is how organizations attempt to manage the tension between marketability and uniqueness. In this regard, Irvine’s (Reference Irvine, Eckert and Rickford2001) work on the relationship between style and ideologies of differentiation proves relevant.

Chapter 4 further studies the impact of enterprise culture on organizational styling by comparing the activities of a small business with those of a much bigger one. The comparison between small and big business is motivated by the ideologically robust tendency to assume that the former contribute more than the latter to the health and vitality of a community. The claim is that small businesses are more sensitive to the needs of the local customers; they also supposedly contribute to the authentic identity of the community, which big businesses apparently do not (Brown-Saracino Reference Brown-Saracino2009). The discussion here draws on fieldwork that compares a small new laundromat, Aquatic Living Laundry, with a well-established pharmaceutical chain, Walgreens. This serves to bring out the semiotics of big and small business identities, and how this semiotic differential (with its concomitant implication of differential access to resources) constrains the ways in which organizations respond to the normative expectations of enterprise culture. Both Aquatic Living Laundry and Walgreens make use of small stories (Georgakopoulou Reference Georgakopoulou2006) to present their respective organizations as possessing the qualities associated with enterprise culture, such as risk-taking, innovativeness, competitive spirit and customer-orientation (du Gay Reference du Gay1996; Ong Reference Ong2006). But there are also differences arising from their relative sizes that allow for further refinement of the styling properties described in chapter 2. I show that small businesses are more likely to be semiotically porous, in that the boundaries of their identities are less likely to be tightly regulated. In contrast, because of their size and richer resources, big businesses are both more able to and feel the need to regulate their identities, thus making them less semiotically porous. The implication from this observation concerning semiotic porosity is that big businesses are more likely to make serious efforts at masking the bricolage nature of styling (cf. Hebdige Reference Hebdige1979). Small businesses are also more likely to invoke a relationship of reciprocity with their local communities, whereas big businesses are more likely to invoke a relationship of support, often supporting many communities from a distance. In the course of the discussion, this chapter will also demonstrate clearly that scale is a sociolinguistic property that significantly distinguishes the styling of persons from that of organizations.

Sociolinguistic scales can serve as styling resources to index the local, situated and personal, on the one hand, or the translocal, widespread and decontextualized, on the other (Blommaert Reference Blommaert2006: 5). But it is also the case that organizations find it more difficult than persons to vary the scales that they choose to index. The indexicalities of scales represent for organizations a greater degree of fixedness than they do for persons. For example, an organization may have started out on the local scale (e.g. a neighborhood store) but should it expand into a chain, this “scale-jumping” (Uitermark Reference Uitermark2002: 750) means that it forgoes any claim to local/neighborhood status. Accordingly, there are styling consequences that result from the ideologically prominent distinction between “big business” and “small business,” as indicated in Chevron’s (itself a “big business”) desire to support small businesses.

The topic of chapter 5 is how an organization’s styling impacts on the individuals associated with it. Organizational styling is increasingly concerned with displaying commitments to various ethical regimes, and a significant part of such displays involves requiring organizational employees to behave in ways consistent with such commitments. To the extent that an employee displays values or attitudes that are incompatible with those endorsed by the organization, s/he will not be able to rise beyond a certain level and may even be asked to leave the organization. I describe this as the Dirty Harry Syndrome (DHS), a reference to Clint Eastwood’s iconic movie detective, who is professionally competent as a police officer but politically unacceptable to his superiors. In making this argument, I contrast the DHS with Cameron’s (Reference Cameron2000a) work on scripting. I show that the DHS is more likely to affect senior members of an organization, for whom scripting is less of an issue. I also contrast the DHS with the Peter Principle (Peter and Hull Reference Peter and Hull1969), which claims that “employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.” While largely satirical in intent, the Peter Principle has been widely discussed in organizational sociology and sometimes dismissed (in an equally satirical spirit) on the grounds that higher organizational levels do not necessarily require higher levels of competence (Dolson Reference Dolson2007).

In fact, the Peter Principle is arguably less of an issue as more organizations encourage workers to undergo in-house courses for skills upgrading. In contrast, the DHS is likely to become even more relevant, as the desire for organizations to have workers embody values that are consistent with the organizational image spreads outwards “laterally” to recruit individuals to represent the organization in a quasi-working relationship. One indication of this comes from the recruitment of “ambassadors” and “champions,” who are supposed to be enthusiastic advocates for the organization and its values. In the US, for example, the yoga apparel chain, lululemon, has an “ambassador program” for “unique individuals in our store communities who embody the lululemon lifestyle and live our culture.”⁸

Chapter 6 examines the phenomenon of organizational restyling, where an organization attempts to correct or remedy aspects of how it is perceived. The chapter focuses on two case studies, both from Singapore: the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) and the People’s Action Party (PAP). The NKF is a charity that provides dialysis, financial support and other related services for patients suffering from kidney related illnesses. In 2006, a new board was appointed following a scandal in which the previous CEO was accused of mismanagement of funds and charged with corruption. Calling itself the “new NKF,” this new board has since been working actively to regain public trust, by demonstrating transparency in its use of funds and aiming to be more “patient-centric.” The PAP is a political party that has ruled Singapore since the country’s independence in 1965. While the PAP must undoubtedly be credited with having brought Singapore from Third World to First World status, its style of government has generally been seen as authoritarian (Mauzy and Milne Reference Mauzy and Milne2002). In the 2011 General Elections, despite being returned to power, the PAP suffered major electoral setbacks as a result of perceptions that the party was too focused on economic growth to the point where it ignored public discontent over issues such as immigration, housing and transportation policies. The party subsequently acknowledged that it sometimes “got things wrong” and pledged to be more consultative and responsive.

The NKF is attempting to recover from a highly damaging scandal while the problems for the PAP are less severe by comparison. This is because the electorate is still generally happy to have the PAP as the ruling party, though it wants the party to be more responsive to its concerns. This difference motivates different strategies of restyling, with different stances of positioning the relationship between the “old” organizational identity and the “new” one. For the NKF, the scandal is framed as an aberration with the “new NKF” presenting itself as trying to return the organization to its “original values.” In contrast, for the PAP, there is no need to invoke a dramatic rupture with the past. Rather, the focus is on continued commitment to governing the country effectively but acknowledging the need to put more effort into gathering feedback and listening to multiple viewpoints. Further developing the arguments made in Chapter 3, this chapter also shows how both organizations make significant use of digital media to demonstrate, via highly reflexive performances, their sincerity and willingness to be accountable to the public.

The NKF and PAP case studies thus provide important insights into the dynamics of organizational restyling, particularly because these are rich in examples of meta-stylistic statements, where the respective organizations explain how they are now different (“better”) when compared with their previous incarnations. These meta-stylistic statements are highly reflexive, not only because of their public nature but also because they require the organization to adopt stances (Jaffe Reference Jaffe2009) of dissociation and reform.

Chapter 7 begins by briefly reviewing works on styling the other, which, like the study of styling in general, have been largely concerned with the activities of persons (e.g. the papers in Rampton Reference Rampton1999). It then argues that cases of styling the organizational other – unlike the examples of organizational styling discussed in the preceding chapters – involve potential contestations about proper ownership of the semiotic resources used. This can sometimes lead to accusations of trademark infringement from the organizational other whose style has apparently been drawn upon by the “offending” organization. The issue is not whether the latter organization has intentionally copied (elements of) the style of the organizational other, since this would be difficult to ascertain. Rather, the chapter examines (i) the conditions under which a styling organization is likely to be accused of trademark infringement, (ii) the responses that the accused organization might make to defend itself from such a charge, and (iii) the motivation an organization might have for styling an organizational other, given the potential for lawsuits. Points (i) and (ii) have been addressed in some detail, mainly by legal scholars concerned about the pros and cons of copyrights and trademarks, including their impacts on cultural creativity and the development of a healthy and engaged public sphere (Boyle Reference Boyle2008; Netanel Reference Netanel2008). While these arguments will be taken into account, the focus in this chapter is more sociolinguistic than legalistic, and its main concern revolves around (iii).

The chapter suggests that an understanding of (iii) lies in a variant of the BIRGing (basking in reflected glory) phenomenon (Boen, Vanbeselaere, Pandelaere, Dewitte, Duriez, Snauwaert, and Van Avermaet Reference Boen, Vanbeselaere, Pandelaere, Dewitte, Duriez, Snauwaert and Van Avermaet2002; Dijkstra, Cillessen, Lindenberg, and Veenstra Reference Dijkstra, Cillessen, Lindenberg and Veenstra2010). BIRGing is a socio-psychological phenomenon of impression management where individuals associate themselves with highly regarded others (e.g. a championship football team, a celebrity, a son/daughter who does well in school) in order to boost their self-esteem or social acceptance. The organizational variant of BIRGing, I argue, arises from two factors. First, because unlike individuals, who are born with gender, racial or other social attributes that they have little or no control over, organizations are created and are therefore presumed to have greater control and responsibility over their styling. Consequently, any attempt at styling an organization other can and should be avoided. Second, when individuals engage in BIRGing, there is no competitive relationship between the individuals and the entity (football team, progeny, celebrity) whose glory they are basking in. In fact, football teams and celebrities clearly benefit from having strong supporters and fans. However, when styling of an organizational other occurs among organizations, there is usually already a competitive relationship in place, and the organizational other will zealously guard the semiotic resources it has used in building up its identity. In this regard, while this chapter will discuss a number of examples, two in particular will be examined in detail: McDonald’s trademark fight against McCurry, a Malaysian restaurant that serves Indian dishes, and Starbucks’ lawsuit against the Taiwanese coffee chain, Ecoffee, which Starbucks claims misleads customers because the latter’s logo is too similar to its own.

Chapter 8 closes the book by considering the implications of organizational styling for an ongoing controversy in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics about how to conceptualize the freedom speakers might have in manipulating language structures, especially in late modernity. Examples attesting to varying degrees of “fixed” versus “fluid” language use (Blommaert and Backus Reference Blommaert and Backus2011: 8) have raised questions about the ontological nature of language: To what extent is the category “language” or specific language names in need of “disinventing” (Pennycook Reference Pennycook, Makoni and Pennycook2007; Seargeant Reference Seargeant2010)? This controversy ultimately boils down to the question of how we should theorize the structural stability of language as a semiotic resource. Combining Archer’s (Reference Archer1995, Reference Archer2003) work on analytical dualism with arguments about social practice and performance (Bauman and Briggs Reference Bauman and Briggs1990; Pennycook Reference Pennycook2010; Schatzki, Knorr Cetina and von Savigny Reference Schatzki, Karin and von Savigny2001), I suggest that organizational styling needs to be accounted for by a social theory that analytically separates individual and organizational agency, treating the two as operating on different temporal scales. These two, in turn, have to be distinguished from more macro-institutional structures such as “language” or “English.” Organizations therefore need to be construed as occupying a “meso-level” scale, one that is intermediate between the individual and macro-social structural scales identified by Archer. This concluding chapter, then, suggests a conceptual resolution to the relationship between language structure and speaker agency, one where we don’t have to choose between a free-flowing unfettered metrolingualism and an essentialist stance that commits us to “statist language ideologies” (Otsuji and Pennycook Reference Pennycook2010: 243).