Standardising Fatherhood across Cultures
A Linguistic Approach to Studying the Communication of a New Global Company Policy in Multinational Corporations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.vi62.129703Keywords:
diversity management; gender equality; diversity, equity and inclusion; parental leave; paternity leave; strategic ambiguity; discourse analysis; corporate communicationAbstract
A current trend in multinational corporations (MNCs) is a strong focus on diversity management in order to attract and
retain talent. The present study investigates the linguistic manifestation and justification of a very recent company policy
intended to facilitate this trend, viz., global paternity leave. The study aims to contribute to the linguistic turn in
organisational studies. As a theoretical point of departure, Corporate Communication, and specifically links between
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Diversity Management communication are discussed. Concepts and tools from
text linguistics are then applied to investigate the communication strategies employed when introducing the new family
leave policy in four MNCs headquartered in the UK and Norway, respectively. The material consists of a set of texts on
global parental leave produced by the four companies. The linguistic analysis identifies similarities as well as differences
between the British and Norwegian companies in how the new global leave policy is presented. The findings also
demonstrate a tension between focussing on the CSR efforts gender equality and inclusion in the justification of the new
measure intended to support the MNCs’ diversity management efforts.
References
Aarseth, Helene 2013: De nye barneorienterte fedrene {The new child-oriented fathers}. In Brandth, Berit/Kvande, Elin (eds.), Fedrekvoten og den farsvennlige velferdsstaten. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 238-250.
Alvesson, Mats/Karreman, Dan 2000: Varieties of discourse: On the study of organizations through discourse analysis. Human Relations 53, 1125-49.
Anthony, Laurence 2005: AntConc: design and development of a freeware corpus analysis toolkit for the technical writing classroom. In 2005 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC). Limerick: IEEE, 729-37.
Brandl, Julia/Keegan, Anne /Kozica, Arjan 2021: When less is more: HRM implementation, legitimacy and decoupling. Human Resource Management Journal. 1-14.
Brandth, Berit/Kvande, Elin 2019: Workplace support of fathers’ parental leave use in Norway. Community, Work & Family 22, 43-57.
Brannen, Julia/Nilsen, Ann 2006: From fatherhood to fathering: Transmission and change among British fathers in four-generation families. Sociology 40, 335-52.
Brown, Penelope/Levinson, Stephen C. 1987: Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bütikofer, Aline/Jensen, Sissel/Salvanes, Kjell G. 2018: The role of parenthood on the gender gap among top earners. European Economic Review 109, 103-23.
Christensen, Lars Thøger/Morsing, Mette/Thyssen, Ole 2021: Talk–Action Dynamics: Modalities of aspirational talk. Organization Studies 42, 407-27.
Dahl, Trine 2015: Contested science in the media: Linguistic traces of news writers’ framing activity. Written Communication 32, 39-65.
Darics, Erika/Koller, Veronika 2018: Language in Business, Language at Work. London: Palgrave.
Darics, Erika/Koller, Veronika 2019: Social actors “to go”: An analytical toolkit to explore agency in business discourse and communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly 82, 214-38.
Dulek, Ronald E./Campbell, Kim Sydow 2015: On the dark side of strategic communication. International Journal of Business Communication 52, 122-42.
Eisenberg, Eric M. 1984: Ambiguity as strategy in organizational communication. Communication Monographs 51, 227-42.
Esping-Andersen, Gøsta 1990: 4 the three political economies of the welfare state. International Journal of Sociology 20, 92-123.
Halliday, Michael 1994: An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Hobson, Barbara/Fahlén, Susanne 2009: Competing scenarios for European fathers: Applying Sen's capabilities and agency framework to work—family balance. The annals of the American academy of political and social science 624, 214-33.
Holter, Øystein Gullvåg 2007: Men's work and family reconciliation in Europe. Men and Masculinities 9, 425-56.
Jaworska, Sylvia/Nanda, Anupam 2018: Doing well by talking good: A topic modelling-assisted discourse study of corporate social responsibility. Applied Linguistics 39, 373-99.
Johansson, Catrin/Nord, Lars 2018: The simple truth: Ambiguity works. Discursive strategies by Swedish public authorities during the 2008 financial crisis. International Journal of Business Communication 55, 220-36.
Johansson, T./Klinth, Roger 2008: Caring fathers: The ideology of gender equality and masculine positions. Men and Masculinities 11, 42-62.
Kangas, Emilia/Lämsä, Anna‐Maija/Jyrkinen, Marjut 2019: Is fatherhood allowed? Media discourses of fatherhood in organizational life. Gender, Work & Organization 26, 1433-50.
Kaufman, Gayle 2018: Barriers to equality: why British fathers do not use parental leave. Community, Work & Family 21, 310-25.
Kaufman, Gayle/Almqvist, Anna-Lena 2017: The role of partners and workplaces in British and Swedish men’s parental leave decisions. Men and Masculinities 20, 533-51.
Kilian, T./Hennigs, N. 2012: Communicating Environmental and Ethical Performance: A Longitudinal Analysis of Annual Reports from 1998–2009. HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 25(49), 19–33.
Koller, Veronika 2012: How to Analyse Collective Identity in Discourse-Textual and Contextual Parameters. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 5, 19-38.
Korpi, Walter 2000: Faces of inequality: Gender, class, and patterns of inequalities in different types of welfare states. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 7, 127-91.
Korpi, Walter 2010: Class and gender inequalities in different types of welfare states: The Social Citizenship Indicator Program (SCIP). International Journal of Social Welfare 19, S14-S24.
Kvande, Elin/Brandth, Berit 2017: Individualized, non-transferable parental leave for European fathers: Migrant perspectives. Community, Work & Family 20, 19-34.
Martin, James R./White, Peter R. 2005: The Language of Evaluation. Basingstoke: Springer.
Miller, Tina 2012: Balancing caring and paid work in the UK: narrating ‘choices’ as first-time parents. International Review of Sociology 22, 39-52.
Molander, S./Kleppe, I. A./Ostberg, J. 2019: Hero shots: involved fathers conquering new discursive territory in consumer culture. Consumption Markets and Culture 22, 430-53.
Nielsen, A. E./Thomsen, C. 2012): CSR Communication – An Emerging Field. The Editors’ Preface. HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 25(49), 7–8.
Pan, Zhongdang/Kosicki, Gerald M. 1993: Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political Communication 10, 55-75.
Pascale, Richard Tanner/Athos, Anthony G. 1981: The art of Japanese management. Business Horizons 24, 83-85.
Sunderland, Jane 2004: Gendered Discourses. Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thomas, David C./Peterson, Mark F. 2018: Cross-Cultural Management: Essential Concepts. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Trittin, Hannah/Schoeneborn, Dennis 2017: Diversity as polyphony: Reconceptualizing diversity management from a communication-centered perspective. Journal of Business Ethics 144, 305-22.
Van Leeuwen, Theo 1996: The representation of social actors. In Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard/Coulthard, Malcolm (eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis. London: Routledge, 32-70.
Van Leeuwen, Theo 2008: Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wall, Glenda/Arnold, Stephanie 2007: How involved is involved fathering? An exploration of the contemporary culture of fatherhood. Gender & Society 21, 508-27.
Welch, Mary/Jackson, Paul R. 2007: Rethinking internal communication: a stakeholder approach. Corporate Communications: An international Journal 12, 177-98.
Wiß, Tobias/Greve, Bent 2019: A Comparison of the Interplay of Public and Occupational Work‒Family Policies in Austria, Denmark, Italy and the United Kingdom. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Research and Practice 22, 1-18.
Żadkowska, Magdalena/Kosakowska-Berezecka, Natasza/Ryndyk, Oleksandr 2018: Two worlds of fatherhood—comparing the use of parental leave among Polish fathers in Poland and in Norway. In Slany, Krystyna/Slusarczyk, Magdalena/Pustulka, Paula /Guribye, Eugene (eds.), Transnational Polish Families in Norway: Social Capital, Integration and Care. Berlin: Peter Lang, 173-197.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Agnes Marie Bamford
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
