| Abstract: | Tension-centered analyses are increasingly popular in organizational communication studies. Hence, how tensions emerge and are dealt with by organizational members in their work activities are key issues of debate in our field. The purpose of this article is to develop a ventriloqual approach for investigating how organizational tensions (whether expressed in the form of contradictions, dilemmas, paradoxes, or situational ironies) are communicatively constituted through the mobilization of figures that contradict or clash with each other. To demonstrate the theoretical and empirical value of this approach, we use it to analyze two fieldwork cases from a seven-year ethnographic study of Médecins sans Frontières, and thus show how tensions shape organizational members' realities by being felt and sensed in interactions. |
