Modernizing Authority: Management Studies and the Grammaticalization of Controlling Interests

Noting that recent research in workplace writing tends toward description of contexts for writing, this study turns its attention to text itself, focusing on the nominal expressions in the discourse on management. Analysis shows that these nominals recursively delete not only agent roles but also those of experiencer, object, and goal, and at the same time conflate the interests of researchers and managers. Calling on pragmatic theories of politeness, Giddens' characterization of bureaucracy as reflexive system, and Foucault's concept of “governmentality,” this study suggests that management nominals are a particularly intense expression of modernity itself.