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Not every speech act can be a lie. A good definition of lying should be able to draw the right distinctions between speech acts (like promises, assertions, and oaths) that can be lies and speech acts (like commands, suggestions, or assumptions) that under no circumstances are lies. This paper shows that no extant account of lying is able to draw the required distinctions. It argues that a definition of lying based on the notion of ‘assertoric commitment’ can succeed where other accounts have failed. Assertoric commitment is analysed in terms of two normative components: ‘accountability’ and ‘discursive responsibility’. The resulting definition of lying draws all the desired distinctions, providing an intensionally adequate analysis of the concept of lying.

The theory of speech acts, formulated by Austin and developed by Searle, is widely applied to analyse and classify various speech acts. In this paper it is assumed that legal texts, especially normative acts i.e. constitutions and statutes, are direct speech acts. Normative acts (statutory instruments) are linguistic entities and they do not exist outside the language, thus the theory of speech acts may be applied to examine them. They are also considered to be performative utterances according to Austin’s classification. In this paper the intention is to compare Cypriot, Greek and Polish normative acts on the basis of the so-called classical theory of speech acts and typology of performativity exponents. The author will compare various methods of expressing performativity in reference to the meaning conveyed by them. Furthermore, other exponents of performativity occurring in the analysed texts (the so-called extra textual methods of expressing performativity) shall also be compared. The results obtained while performing the analysis and comparison may be significant for scholars, lawyers and translators

Organizational theorists built their knowledge of decision making through a progressive critique of rational choice theory. Their positioning towards rationality, however, is at odds with the observation of rationality persistence in organizational life. This paper addresses this paradox. It proposes a new perspective on rationality that allows the theorizing of the production of rational decisions by organizations. To account for rationality's éternel retour , we approach rational decision making as performative praxis-a set of activities that contributes to turning rational choice theory into social reality. We develop a performative praxis framework that explains how theory, actors, and tools together produce rationality within organizations through three mechanisms: rationality conventionalization, rationality engineering, and rationality commodification. This framework offers new avenues of research on rational decision making and points to the factors that underlie the manufacture of rationality in organizations.

This paper contributes to the study of explicit performative utterances in the following ways. First, it presents arguments that support Austin's view that these utterances are not assertions. In doing so, it offers an original explanation of why they cannot be true or false. Second, it puts forward a new analysis of explicit performatives as cases of showing which act one is performing, rather than of instances of asserting or declaring that one is performing a particular act. Finally, it develops a new account of the role of the performative prefix in signalling performative intentions that shows how the prefix can play a special role in the interpretation of performative utterances.

An important new stream of organizational research has emerged in recent years that draws on the notion of mindfulness. At the same time, there is a long-standing body of work in the organizations literature that emphasizes the role of routine-driven, or less-mindful, behavior. We attempt to connect these two seemingly disparate literatures arguing that, at a performative level, important elements of less-mindful processes are necessary elements underlying mindfulness. In particular, we note the role of established action repertories that facilitate the response to novel stimuli and how routines and established role structures enable mindfulness to be sustained across time and the span of the organization. Similarly, we note important elements of mindfulness that underlie less-mindful behavior, highlighting in particular the role of mindfulness in interpreting one's context so as to identify what constitutes appropriate action in a given circumstance and in interpreting outcomes that form the basis for processes of reinforcement learning. Although we emphasize the complementarity between the two perspectives, we also note points of tension regarding the opportunity costs of mindfulness and the theories' implied normative claims.

While various theories have been proposed to explain how technology leads to organizational change, in general they have focused either on the technology and ignored the influence of human agency, or on social interaction and ignored the technology. In this paper, we propose a new theory of technology-mediated organizational change that bridges these two extremes. Using grounded theory methodology, we conducted a three-year study of an enterprise system implementation. From the data collected, we identified embeddedness as central to the process of change. When embedded in technology, organizational elements such as routines and roles acquire a material aspect, in addition to the ostensive and performative aspects identified by Feldman and Pentland (2003). Our new theory employs the lens of critical realism because in our view, common constructivist perspectives such as structuration theory or actor network theory have limited our understanding of technology as a mediator of organizational change. Using a critical realist perspective, our theory explains the process of change as a three-stage cycle in which the ostensive, performative, and material aspects of organizational elements interact differently in each stage.

Despite decades of research on strategy, we still know little about what the concept of strategy means to actual strategists and how they use it in practice. Working at the intersections of institutional and practice theories, we use exploratory interviews with strategy directors and a longitudinal case study to uncover four dimensions of first-order strategy discourse: functional, contextual, identity, and metaphorical. We also reveal three phases in the interrelation between first-order strategy discourse and institutional work: shaping, settling, and selling and a differential emphasis (selective focusing) on dimensions of the first-order strategy discourse during the institutional adoption process. We contribute to a deeper understanding of the concept of strategy in practice, the process of institutional adoption, and of the role of discourse in this process.

This article introduces performativity and processes of place-making into discussions about middle-class residents' place attachments. It draws on interviews with middle-class residents in two different London neighbourhoods, Peckham (inner urban, socially mixed) and West Horsley and Effingham (commuter belt villages), to argue that (1) the practice of place is key to understanding middle-class claims to belonging; and (2) ways of 'doing' neighbourhood must be understood within the context of other circulating representations. While respondents in Peckham work with or against prevailing discourses about their neighbourhood as they perform place, in the commuter belt, residents strive to uphold the image of their village as the rural idyll, a classed and racialised vision. The contrast between the inner city and commuter belt reveals the different performative registers through which place is practised; while in Peckham middle-class residents invest in processes of place-making, respondents in the commuter belt engage instead in active processes of place maintenance.

In this paper, we challenge the traditional understanding of organizational routines as creating inertia in organizations. We adapt Latour's distinction between ostensive and performative to build a theory that explains why routines are a source of change as well as stability. The ostensive aspect of a routine embodies what we typically think of as the structure. The performative aspect embodies the specific actions, by specific people, at specific times and places, that bring the routine to life. We argue that the ostensive aspect enables people to guide, account for, and refer to specific performances of a routine, and the performative aspect creates, maintains, and modifies the ostensive aspect of the routine. We argue that the relationship between ostensive and performative aspects of routines creates an on-going opportunity for variation, selection, and retention of new practices and patterns of action within routines and allows routines to generate a wide range of outcomes, from apparent stability to considerable change. This revised ontology of organizational routines provides a better explanation of empirical findings than existing theories of routines and has implications for a wide range of organizational theories.

“Data use” and “data-based decision making” are increasingly popular mantras in public policy discourses and texts. Policy makers place tremendous faith in the power of data to transform practice, but the fate of policy makers’ efforts will depend in great measure on the very practice they hope to move. In most conversations about data use, however, relations between data and practice have been underconceptualized. In this essay, I identify and discuss some conceptual and analytical tools for studying data in practice by drawing on work from various theoretical traditions. I explore some ways in which we might frame a research agenda in order to investigate data in everyday practice in schools. My account is centered on schoolhouse work practice, but the research apparatus I consider can be applied to practice in other organizations in the education sector and indeed to interorganizational practice, a critical consideration in the education sector.