“You Don’t Say Employee; You Say Colleague!”: How Strategic Vocabulary Becomes Authoritative Over Time

Background: When understanding strategy as communicatively constituted, it matters who or what is authorized to strategize. Purpose: This article foregrounds vocabulary as an authorizing actor. Research Design: Drawing on a case study of strategic change, it examines how strategic vocabulary—words representing an aspirational strategic direction—becomes authoritative in the sense of allowing communicative acts to participate in strategizing. Analysis: In the organization serving as a case study, a strategy team aiming to flatten hierarchies introduced less hierarchically connoted words. Taking one word as an example, I identify aspirational coupling , normative grounding, and substantial linkage as phases through which strategic vocabulary acquires authority. Results: This three-phase model illustrates how vocabulary transforms into an authorizing actor and how the vocabulary’s authority interacts with other aspects of communication such as voice and genre. Conclusions: The study provides a vocabulary perspective on authorization in strategizing and highlights how efforts to flatten hierarchies by switching vocabulary can intensify contradictions between various authorities.