Eleanor T. Lewis
Rockefeller Center Postdoctoral Fellow
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~etlewis/
6104 Silsby Hall,
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
Tel: 603-646-9041
Education and Employment:
Post-doctoral fellow, 2002-2004
Organization Science and Sociology, Ph.D., December 2002
Organization Science, M.S., 1998
Sociology of Language (individually designed major), B.A., 1996
Advisor:
Kathleen M. Carley, ISRI
Thesis Topic:
This thesis is a detailed examination of a ubiquitous part of organizational life: the texts and documents that are “organizational language.” Organizations constantly produce and consume organizational language and it is a primary way that they interact with other organizations and institutions, but language is often taken for granted in organizational research. However, as tools that organizations use to manage their environment they should reflect the demands and expectations of their audiences. Specifically, research finds that organizations have a general tendency to respond to the audiences in their environment with isomorphism, or similarity. By extension, isomorphism should occur in organizational language. The predictions in this thesis link the extent of isomorphism in a set of texts to a key aspect of the organization’s context (its proximity to the public sphere), a central rhetorical aspect of the text (the nature of its speaker and audiences), and authors’ dual motivations for composing texts (asserting identity and displaying responsiveness). After analyzing nearly 300 texts in 10 different datasets and from two different types of organizations (universities and corporations), I clearly establish how organizations translate pressures from their environment into organizational language. More susceptible organizations (universities) display a lower extent of isomorphism in their texts and greater responsiveness to their audiences. Texts that speak for the organization display greater isomorphism, but focus more on asserting a distinct identity. In addition to developing novel measures of isomorphism in texts, this thesis breaks up isomorphism into a more multifaceted concept, incorporating organizational context and authorial motivations, and pointing to the key role that a text’s implicit audiences have in encouraging isomorphism.
Working Papers and Publications:
“Displaying Responsiveness or Asserting Identity in Organizational Language: How Concept Networks Capture Rhetorical Strategies” (First author, with Kathleen M. Carley and Jana Diesner). Currently under review at American Sociological Review.
“Using Network Analysis to Extract and Analyze Self-Presentation Strategies in Texts.” (Second author, with Jana Diesner and Kathleen M. Carley). Working paper, to be submitted October 2003 to Sociological Methodology.
“Influences on Isomorphism in the Rhetoric of Organizational Language.” 2002. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA.
“Continuity and variation in the discourse of university sexual harassment policies.” Currently revise and resubmit status at Sociological Focus.
“Tech Support Engineers’ Communication in a Chat Tool.” CHI Extended Abstracts. Association of Computing Machinery, New York, NY: 2000. Pp. 103-104. (Presented at Computer Human Interaction Conference, Den Haag Netherlands, 2000.)
Teaching Information:
Research interests:
For a full vita and list of working papers visit: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~etlewis/