Jännitteet, vuorovaikutukselliset karikot ja diskursiiviset muutokset työyhteisöiden konsultoinnissa

In this dissertation, I studied tensions, communicational obstacles to consulting goals, and discursive change in the context of multi-party organizational consultation conversations. Discourse analytical methods and positioning theory were used to gain insight into these phenomena. The study data consisted of audio recordings of real consultation situations and their written transcripts. The empirical part of the dissertation comprises three published articles. The first article discusses discursive struggles in the context of a participative organizational intervention. The second article focuses on how responsibility and agency were negotiated in a consultation meeting. The third article examines how a moral dilemma was created and handled in a consultation meeting. The results of this research suggest that the tensions emerging in consultation conversations can be understood as discursive struggles. They may stem from contradictory ways of meaning-making concerning work goals and ways of working. Discursive struggles may also be generated when the social and moral orders of the organization are constructed in conflicting ways. The study showed that these tensions and their negotiation can produce obstacles to communication that can make it difficult for the consultant to promote conversation in line with the ideals of participative and dialogic consultation. The data analysis showed that even short consultation conversations can promote discursive changes. In the consultation conversations, new ways of talking about the organization’s conflicted issues were sought. The discursive changes related to ways of conducting the conversation and the emergence of new meanings. During the consultation meeting, conflicted discourses were reworked in ways that made them less demanding and extreme. Moreover, the moral order of the consultation conversation was renegotiated. This made it possible for the interlocutors to position themselves more favourably and to overcome communicational obstacles. According to the ...