Rhetorical Institutionalism: Language, Agency, and Structure in Institutional Theory since Alvesson 1993

In 1993, Mats Alvesson published ‘Organizations as Rhetoric’. In his paper, Alvesson proposed that knowledge was ambiguous and that rhetoric was therefore critical to the construction and operation of institutions and organizations. Moreover, he argued that in such an ambiguous and thus rhetorical world, knowledge operated as an institutionalized myth and rationality surrogate. Alvesson's insights helped inspire and initiate one of the most promising and growing areas of institutional research: rhetorical institutionalism. Rhetorical institutionalism is the deployment of linguistic approaches in general and rhetorical insights in particular to explain how institutions both constrain and enable agency. In this paper, we trace these original insights and discuss the benefits of continuing the integration of rhetorical ideas in institutional research. In addition, we propose and develop a rhetorical model of institutionalism that can spearhead research and conclude with some direct suggestions for future research.