– The purpose of this paper is to explore power-resistance plays, or organisational change (OC) politics, from a discourse theory perspective to deepen our understanding of the political and emotional dimensions of these phenomena.
– The paper deploys Laclauian concepts of hegemony, fantasmatic narrative and empty signifiers alongside a recently-developed logics of critical explanation approach in the case study of an English local authority formulating a project of integrated commissioning in response to austerity.
– The paper demonstrates how OC politics are played out in multiple ways, from social and political negotiations over the meaning of commissioning to the refuelling of the authority’s fantasmatic narrative.
– The paper’s key value is to illustrate how and why discourse theory can contribute, alongside other discursive frameworks, to the in-depth qualitative and political study of organisational issues such as change.
