The different institutional partners of ICRODSC have been involved in a range of collaborations involving members from different institutions. Some of these collaborations are described below.

Linkage International Grant

This grant from the Australian Research Council helped to set up ICRODSC. It was entitled Collaboration for Research on Organizational Discourse and chief investigators were David Grant, Grant Michelson and Nick Wailes (Sydney), Cynthia Hardy, Bill Harley and Graham Sewell (Melbourne), Steve Maguire and Nelson Phillips (McGill) and Tom Keenoy and Cliff Oswick (then at Kings College, University of London, which was a founding member of ICRODSC). This grant helped fund a series of ten workshops on issues that ranged from knowledge management, to resistance, to discourse methods and brought a number of leading international discourse academics to Melbourne and Sydney. Many of these workshops resulted in the publication of special issues of leading journals on discourse (see below).

The Impact of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems on Australian Organizations

In 2003, this project was awarded a Discovery grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) to study ERP systems, which are computer-based technologies designed to increase efficiency and achieve major cost savings across the entire organization. ERP implementation is one of the most pervasive sources of technological change in contemporary Australian enterprises. It has significant implications for the structure, nature and management of organizations. Chief investigators were David Grant, Richard Hall, Nick Wailes and Chris Wright (Sydney), and Cynthia Hardy and Bill Harley (Melbourne). The project has produced special issues of New Technology Work and Employment, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and Strategic Change, as well as articles in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, New Technology Work and Employment, Management Communication Quarterly and Strategic Change. In 2008, David Grant, Kristine Dery, Richard Hall and Nick Wailes (Sydney) secured an ARC Linkage grant to build on the initial project by exploring the impact of ERP on HR functions in collaboration with five large Australian organizations.

The Handbook of Organizational Discourse

The Handbook of Organizational Discourse, published by Sage in 2004, was co-edited by David Grant (Sydney), Cynthia Hardy (Melbourne), Cliff Oswick (then at Leicester) and Linda Putnam (then at Texas A&M). A number of other ICRODSC members were contributors including Susan Ainsworth (Sydney), Nelson Phillips (then at McGill), Tom Keenoy (then at King’s College) and Mats Alvesson (Lund). The Handbook is an important overview of the state of the field of organizational discourse and in 2005 won the Outstanding Book Award from the Organizational Communication Division of the USA’s National Communication Association.

The International Conference on Organizational Discourse

ICRODSC has been a participant in this series of conferences since 2002. The 2002 conference was titled “From Micro-utterances to Macro-inferences” and was held at King’s College. In 2004 and 2006, the conference was held at the Vrije University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. These conferences focused on “Artefacts, Archetypes and Architexts” and “Identity, Ideology and Idiosyncrasy”. In 2008, the conference was held at Queen Mary, University of London on the theme of “Translations, Transformations and Transgressions.”

The Study of Institutional Entrepreneurship

This collaboration involves Cynthia Hardy (Melbourne) and Steve Maguire (McGill) and has earned three competitive research grants – two from the Canadian Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada and one from the ARC – totaling over $300,000. Steve Maguire was awarded an Edward Clarence Dyason Universitas 21 Fellowship from the University of Melbourne to work on this project. A number of publications have resulted, including papers in the Academy of Management Journal and Organization Studies; a special issue of Organization Studies on institutional entrepreneurship; and a chapter on institutional entrepreneurship in the Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism (eds.) R. Greenwood, C. Oliver, K. Sahlin-Andersson & R. Suddaby.

Discourse at EGOS

A number of different sub-themes on discourse have been organized by ICRODSC members at annual conferences of EGOS (the European Group on Organization Studies). In 2002, David Grant (Sydney) and Cynthia Hardy (Melbourne) organized a sub-theme on Discourse Analysis Applied to Management at the 18th EGOS Colloquium in Barcelona, Spain. The following year a sub-theme was organized on Talk and Text in Context: Broadening the Scope of Discourse Analysis in Organization and Management Theory at the 19th EGOS Colloquium in Copenhagen, Denmark by David Grant (Sydney), Cynthia Hardy (Melbourne), Tom Keenoy and Cliff Oswick (Kings College). In 2006, Susan Ainsworth (Sydney), Cynthia Hardy (Melbourne), Leisa Sargent (Melbourne), Stefan Sveningsson (Lund) and Robyn Thomas (Cardiff) co-convened a sub-theme on Dis/Organizing Identities at the 22nd EGOS Colloquium in Bergen, Norway. In 2008, a sub-theme on Identity Work and Organization was convened at the 24th EGOS Colloquium in Amsterdam, The Netherlands by Cynthia Hardy (Melbourne), Steve Maguire (McGill), Leisa Sargent (Melbourne) and Robyn Thomas (Cardiff).

The Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM)

Cynthia Hardy (Melbourne) and Steve Maguire (McGill) were sponsored as International Visiting Fellowships of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) by AIM Fellows Robyn Thomas and Rick Delbridge (Cardiff). As part of this initiative Cynthia Hardy and Steve Maguire traveled to Cardiff in November 2006 to conduct two workshops: on Organizational Discourse: Why it Matters to Managers; and on Organizational Discourse Methods. Robyn Thomas also traveled to Australia twice in connection with her Fellowship to participate in seminars on identity and resistance at Melbourne and Sydney Universities.

Discourse and the Older Worker

This work started with Susan Ainsworth’s (Sydney) doctoral work, supervised by Cynthia Hardy and Bill Harley. The ongoing collaboration between Susan Ainsworth and Cynthia Hardy has since produced a book chapter on identity in “Discourse and Identities” in the Handbook of Organizational Discourse, as well as three refereed journal articles: “Critical Discourse Analysis and Identity: Why Bother?” in Critical Discourse Studies (2004); “The Construction of the Older Worker: Privilege, Paradox and Policy” in Discourse & Communication (2007) and “The Enterprising Self: An Unsuitable Job for an Older Worker” in Organization (2008).

Reflexivity

A collaboration involving Cynthia Hardy and Bill Harley (Melbourne) and Mats Alvesson (Lund) produced a conference presentation entitled “Reflecting on Reflexivity” at the annual meetings of the Academy of Management in New Orleans, USA, 2004. This paper was published in the Conference Proceedings, and won Best Paper Award in the Critical Management Studies Interest Group). A longer paper has been published in the Journal of Management Studies in 2008.

Special Issue Series

ICRODSC members have contributed to a series of special issues of leading international journals. Nelson Phillips (Imperial) has collaborated with Graham Sewell (Melbourne) on a Special Issue on Technology and Organization: Essays in Honour of Joan Woodward in Research in the Sociology of Organizations. In 2005 Linda Putnam (then at Texas A&M) worked with David Grant, Grant Michelson and Leanne Cutcher (University of Sydney) on a special issue of Management Communication Quarterly on resistance in organizations. The same year, David Grant, Grant Michelson and Nick Wailes (Sydney) joined forces with Cliff Oswick (then at Leicester University) on a two part special issue of the Journal of Organizational Change Management in 2005 on discourse and change. In 2004, David Grant (Sydney), Cynthia Hardy (Melbourne), Tom Keenoy (King’s College), Cliff Oswick (Leicester) and Nelson Phillips (Imperial College, University of London) co-edited a special issue of Organization Studies on Organizational Discourse. In 2001, David Grant (Sydney), Tom Keenoy and Cliff Oswick (both then at King’s College) published a special issue of International Studies of Management and Organization on organizational discourse methods and a special issue of Journal of Organizational Change Management on dramaturgy and organizational change.