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IBM Case
Emmanuel Monod, Paris Dauphine University and Georgia State University
Duane Truex, Florida International University
Richard Baskerville, Georgia State University
This case have been published in the International Federation for Information
Processing working group 8.2 Conference in Barcelona (Monod, Truex and Baskerville,
2002)

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The Discourse of Organizational Transformation 2 28/09/2015
Abstract: Stakeholder Agency Theory helps to identify six forms of discourse in a case
of organizational transformation. These discourses arise in the relationship between
actors and six other organizational dimensions: stakeholders, management systems,
performance management, IS development methods and organizational transformation
methods. An analysis of the executive discourse in this case exposes the process by
which voices from other discourses are heard during organizational transformation.
1. INTRODUCTION
Organizational change and the related role of Information Technology (IT) as
provocateur of this change are prominent subjects in the information systems (IS)
discipline. Practicing managers have sought to transform organizational structure in
order to move “beyond bureaucracy” (Bennis, 1993) and towards “lateral and flexible
organizations” (Galbraith, 1994). The target structure of that transformation could be an
“adhocracy” (Toffler 1977) or an “innovative structure” (Mintzberg 1979). These
normative descriptions provide little help in understanding the essential discourse that
drives such transformations.
For example, in 1991-1993 IBM was hemorrhaging cash. For the first time in its history
it had slipped from a position of absolute market dominance and profitability and had lost
more than $11 billion US despite having cut more than a third of its global workforce.
The board of directors responded by replacing the current CEO with an outsider to IBM
who promptly declared that he was the advocate of the shareholders and that things
would change. The urgent requirement that IBM return to profitability justified a
reduction in force of almost 150,000 people worldwide, the sale of assets and plants and a
substantial restructuring of the organization from the top down. What followed was a
discourse of required radical transformation at IBM.
A discourse may be considered as an intention of a subject to communicate with an
intended audience. This first view is called the “psychological interpretation” of
discourse as introduced by Schleiermacher in his General Hermeneutics (1810) in which
he analyzes Aristotle’s De Interpretatio. This definition is consonant with a classical
analysis of literature in which the text is considered to be the result of the intention of the
author to communicate with a reader. This is true also of traditional management in
which an executive presents a discourse about strategy or corporate results through plans,
reports and other explicit statements of management intention (Ansoff, 1965). In IS
development the functional view of a requirement may be considered a discourse in
which a user (subject) communicates intentions to the developer (agent) (Sommerville,
1996; Davis, 1982).
There is another way to consider discourse in which the authorship of the text is less
important than the influence of language and civilization. This is called “grammatical
interpretation” Again this approach is from Schleiermacher (1810) and his references to
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. This second view describes a sociology of language in which

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IBM Case Emmanuel Monod, Paris Dauphine University and Georgia State University Duane Truex, Florida International University Richard Baskerville, Georgia State University This case have been published in the International Federation for Information Processing working group 8.2 Conference in Barcelona (Monod, Truex and Baskerville, 2002) Abstract: Stakeholder Agency Theory helps to identify six forms of discourse in a case of organizational transformation. These discourses arise in the relationship between actors and six other organizational dimensions: stakeholders, management systems, performance management, IS development methods and organizational transformation methods. An analysis of the executive discourse in this case exposes the process by which voices from other discourses are heard during organizational transformation. 1. INTRODUCTION Organizational change and the related role of Information Technology (IT) as provocateur of this change are prominent subjects in the information systems (IS) discipline. Practicing managers have sought to transform organizational structure in order to move "beyond bureaucracy" (Bennis, 1993) and towards "lateral and flexible organizations" (Galbraith, 1994). The target structure of that transformation could be an "adhocracy" (Toffler 1977) or an "innovative structure" (Mintzberg 1979). These normative descriptions provide little help in understanding the essential discourse that drives such transformations. For example, i ...
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