Managing identities, agendas and expertise/knowledge in organizational settings.

In this project, we focus on organizational settings and zoom in on how individuals construct institutional structures as they interact with each other. In particular, we aim to investigate how interlocutors manage their identities in relation to the agenda at hand (the action dimension) and the negotiation of knowledge or expertise (the epistemic dimension). This will be investigated in a number of different organizational contexts (viz. patient advocacy groups, workplace settings, and the justice system). These data will be analyzed from two methodological perspectives, namely: (1) a micro-analytical research angle that will closely scrutinize local interactional practices by drawing on a conversation analytical approach as well as Membership Categorization Analysis; and (2) an ethnographically oriented strand of discourse analysis, which aims at linking the micro-analytical level to more general organizational processes at the macro level.