Talking Structure. The Shaping of Organizational Reality in Consulting Conversations

In organization theory, bridging the gap between "micro" and "macro" has be-come one of the major theoretical endeavours since the late 1980s. Conversation analysis, sociopragmatics and related approaches in linguistics claim to make con-tributions to the explanation of social order right from their beginning by investi-gating how social (e.g. organizational) structure is (re-)established through the members' everyday activities. But since interaction is either conceptualized as autonomous systems (machinery, apparatus) or as human action (members' meth-ods) there is a terminological shortcoming due to the unsolved problem of action and structure as well. – As we will argue in this paper, based on empirical data from a study on systemic consultation, a combination of recent developments in organization theory, namely refering to the works of Anthony Giddens, with suit-able linguistic approaches provides a basis for linking aspects of "micro" and "macro" analysis in organization studies.