| This qualitative study examines how corporate employees make sense of their workplaces using the exemplar company Enron. The Research Question is: "What were the recursive practices of discourse and power that defined Enron as 'a good place to work'?" In pursuing this question, this study explores how employees perceived Enron, how they felt about their involvement there, and the influence Enron's espoused and enacted values had on their perceptions of working there.; The lens of Giddens' Structuration Theory is used to examine the interactions between Enron's structural properties and the actions of its employees. Structural properties were analyzed through reviews of the literature, archives, and interviews conducted with Enron executives. Action processes were determined by data gathered from interviews of 25 ex-employees of Enron, as well as quotes from text such as magazine and newspaper articles. Thematic analysis was performed to determine recursive patterns between the structural properties of Enron and action processes. An institutional analysis examines verbal, action, and material symbols of discourse and power, attending to the "duality of structure" (i.e., signification, legitimation, domination).; The study results indicate processes of power and discourse catalyzed patterns around Enron's vision, strategy, values, culture, rewards, and sanctions. Additional conclusions are that traditional mainstream strategic management interventions are based on the economic model of human behavior, causality, and structuralist theory, and tend to interfere with natural organizational discourse. These interventions lend themselves to disrupting the flow of self-organizing patterns of power. Conclusions recommend that managers of corporations pay particular attention to how practice is embedded in the ways their employees enact their organizations, rather than completely in the organizational structure exclusively. |
