Proceedings: Conference on Corporate Communication 2012 Page 1

Communicating Change in Public Organizations
The Discursive Construction of Managerial Legitimization
Helle Kryger Aggerholm, Birte Asmuβ, Christa Thomsen
Department of Business Communication
School of Business and Social Sciences
Aarhus University, Denmark
hag@asb.dk, bas@asb.dk, ct@asb.dk
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a further understanding of how
explanations given to employees in the case of strategic change involving extensive restructuring,
workforce reduction, new routines, etc. are discursively produced at various interrelated
management meetings. In particular, the paper examines the legitimacy on which the
explanations are based and discusses how this legitimacy may challenge corporate
communication.
Approach: With the help of a single case study and using observation notes together with videorecordings
of four management meetings, the paper empirically investigates management
communication of strategic goals and actions through the prism of legitimization and corporate
communication theory.
Findings: The analysis shows that various legitimization strategies are used, the dominant one
being to disclaim all responsibility and/or invoke political responsibility.
Research implications: The analysis queries the role of corporate communication in public
organizations.
Practical implications: Managers in public organizations need to navigate between the
heterogeneous discourses expressed within the organization and the discourses expressed at the
political level.
Key words: Corporate change communication, Management communication, Managerial
legitimization, Discursive practices, Public organizations.
Paper type: Research.
Abstracts of <strong>Conference</strong> <strong>Proceedings</strong>: <strong>Conference</strong> on Corporate Communication 2012
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