How Institutions Communicate Change: Casuistry and Loosely Coupled Change in China's Market Transformation

Li, Yuan and Suddaby, Roy ORCID: 0000-0002-9167-9180 (2022) How Institutions Communicate Change: Casuistry and Loosely Coupled Change in China's Market Transformation. MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY, 37 (3). pp. 629-658.

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Abstract

<jats:p>How do institutions think about change? Building on Mary Douglas’s famous contention that institutions think by means of analogy, we suggest that institutions think about change by means of irony. Irony is pronounced during times of profound change when the rhetoric and the reality of change can be inconsistent. We show that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has enacted what we term loosely coupled change—change in which symbolic meanings and material practices are only weakly connected and retain their independence. The CCP employed the rhetorical form of irony, known as casuistry, to legitimize a change to market systems as being incremental while in practice radically adopting market systems and dismantling socialist practices. We contribute to research on institutional messaging by examining the hermeneutic depth of casuistry. We also contribute to research on organizational change by explicating how casuistry reconciles contradictory ideologies and facilitates loosely coupled change.</jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	institutional change, loosely coupled change, rhetorical strategies, casuistry, legitimacy, China's market reform, chinese communist party
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Management
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	06 Nov 2023 08:34
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2023 03:45
DOI:	10.1177/08933189221144995
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3176633