The production of normative social roles by texts : an inquiry into an investment procedure

This paper addresses investment procedures as a mediating instrument (Miller & O’Leary, 2007). We bring to light how normative social roles are created by procedures, focusing on their very form (Goody, 1977; 1986; 2000; Norman, 1991; 1993; Phillips & Hardy, 2002; Phillips, Lawrence & Hardy, 2004). Using a content analysis of an investment procedure conducted in 2004 in a European pharmaceutical multinational, this paper shows how this specific form takes effect during the institutionalisation of investment ideals (e.g. competitiveness, value creation) into normative roles. We show that the texts of investment procedures as well as the cognitive artefacts (formulae, drop down lists, typologies, etc.) that make them up shape each phase of the institutionalisation process: objectivation, stabilisation and subjectivation (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000). Objectivation and stabilisation construct the context for the development of normative social roles (subjectivation) around investment by laying out the paths a given investment project will have to pass through and by setting the performance principles it will have to fulfil. This paper’s contribution is three-fold. First, using the concept of normative social roles, studying the investment procedure enables us to illustrate how a discursive text is already a practice in and of itself. Next, it brings to light the complexity of a procedure through an intertextuality made up of different texts but also of technologies of the intellect, and thus contributes to bolstering the interest of discourse analysis in understanding the mechanisms of institutionalisation. Finally, this paper contributes to neo-institutional sociology (NIS) by focusing on the micro-social level and especially by analysing the material vehicles enabling social roles to be constructed.ou