Embodied positioning/discourse analysis of a research based leadership development forum: Showing identity work as an in situ accomplishment

The present article engages a discourse analysis of identity work as it is accomplished in a research and dialogue based leadership development forum in a university setting. It displays how different interactional setups in a positioning exercise prompt diverse spaces of possibilities that shape the identity work in situ. Through a micro-generic positioning analysis of the participants’ small story efforts (M. Bamberg, 2006; M. Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008) combined with an analysis of dialogicality and other-orientation (Bakhtin, 1986; Linell, 2009) it is shown how counter and complicit discourses co-emerge in interaction giving space for certain lines of subjectification (Deleuze, 1992). The research contributes to a dawning field of scholars that study organizational (dialogical) practices up close and it questions the taken for granted assumptions of, for instance, staged dialogue as a natural positive phenomenon with attached emancipating consequences. It aspires to emphasize both the boarder (D) and the local (d) dimensions of discourse, which is increasingly pursued and recommended within the field of interaction, dialogue and discourse studies. (Bager, 2013; Bager et al., forthcoming; Iedema, 2003; Linell, 2009; Phillips, 2011)