Language that Matters: The Organizational Boundary of the MOST
Author
Abstract
This paper draws on the communicative constitution of organizations and framing perspectives to explore how organizational boundaries are defined, constructed, and legitimated through a strategically linguistic process. Empirically, using data from Taiwan’s legislative system, we employed topic modeling to examine how the Ministry of Science and Technology was strategically and linguistically framed by its leaders to define the new mission and activities and thus gain the power for agency. We identified the topics of industry-academia linkage, technological innovation, cross-ministry integration, and humanities and social sciences as strategic frames critical to structuring and empowering the newly created institute. We also show that defining new boundaries through framing is a gradual, continuous dynamic process.
Key Words
organizational boundary, communicative constitution of organization (CCO), framing, topic modeling, Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST)
