Constructing Explanations

Abstract

Organizations are systems designed to guarantee the regularity and continuity of collective actions through the standardization of patterns of action and the establishment of meaning. Artifacts direct theories of action and regulate the way in which the tasks are carried out. Organizations create stable and shared meanings through a process of social construction. But how concrete is such a process? In this chapter we will demonstrate how language, and in particular explanatory discourse, is a fundamental instrument both for the establishment of dominant systems, and for questioning and changing them.