Talk–Action Dynamics: Modalities of aspirational talk
研究了组织中关于复杂抱负的谈话与行动之间的动态关系，以企业社会责任为例，区分了探索、制定、实施和评估四种谈话模式，并分析了每种模式中谈话与行动的不稳定关系。
This paper investigates talk–action dynamics in the context of organizations, focusing in particular on situations where the talk concerns complex organizational aspirations, that is, situations where the implied action takes considerable effort to unfold and therefore extends into an unknown future. Using corporate social responsibility (CSR) as recurrent exemplar, we address talk–action dynamics in four different modalities of aspirational CSR talk: exploration, formulation, implementation and evaluation. By conceptualizing the precarious relationship between talk and action in each of these modalities, the paper disentangles talk and action, all the while acknowledging that the two are mutually intertwined. Hereby, the paper extends theories of communicative performativity, recovering the perlocutionary dimension and focusing on uptake beyond the moment in which the speech act is uttered.