The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster demonstrates the thoughtless mode, which allows issue ignorance to escalate into argument, then conflict, and ultimately crisis. Issues spiral into arguments when public deliberation and advocacy concerning a particular problem/opportunity has not yet reached a satisfactory solution. Heath (1997) argues that corporate accountability, and the standards associated with enacting and promoting social responsibility, is the “product of advocacy,” which is a “debate” over the standards by which organizations are judged. He defines corporate advocacy as “management of issues” in a variety of institutional industries and sectors, including the marketplace (1980, p. 370). Organizations “influence opinions” and affect the surrounding community (Heath 1994, p. 27). Persuasion and advocacy between and among stakeholders includes expanding arenas of deliberation as technology options increase. The role of argument in offering solutions to particular disputes over problems and issues reveals the need for conceptual and practical clarity of reason within corporate communication. Argument clarity is a vital component, providing interpretive shape to the interests of both internal and external stakeholders. This chapter examines argument clarity through three key considerations:
1. Performative Content: Argument Definition;
2. Theory and Strategy: Argument Discernment; and
3. Leadership: Argument Responsiveness.
Argument clarity in corporate contexts enables effective strategic communication, with stakeholders engaged with identified, clearly defined problems and issues. Sellnow (1993) contends that argumentation and evidence are crucial components in preventative maintenance of issues and the de-escalation of crisis. Clarifying the nature of argument and role of evidence in the creation of these disputes, according to Sellnow, must transpire long before the stage of crisis. Argument clarity is a conceptual communicative component that requires reasoned public evidence that resonates with stakeholder concerns. Argument clarity is performative; it requires discerning and responsive leadership practices.
Performative Content: Argument Definition
Argument definition and clarity arise in the performative relationship between internal and external stakeholders. Organizational actors and their constituencies are responsible for the identification, clarification, and discussion of various arguments in the public sphere. Heath (2006) argues that organizations are major influencers in the creation of ideas that shape a “sense of social reality,” both “individual” and “collective.” Heath (1980) understands organizations as collective entities tied to the tradition of “speech communication: the search for truth and understanding” (p. 371). Argument definition and clarity necessitate collective responses to emerging problems/opportunities that are reflective of stakeholder interests. Argument clarity is a performative communicative relationship between and among stakeholders.
This section elucidates the performative nature of emerging arguments between and among stakeholders, centering its discussion on the following considerations: (1) public commitment, (2) consistency, and (3) structure. These metaphors converge, revealing organizational identity in the public performance of argument definition and clarity.
Argument Clarity: Public Commitment
Argument clarity commences with a public commitment to emerging problems/opportunities in the marketplace, counteracting issue ignorance and thoughtless disengagement with salient stakeholder interests. Arguments become advocacy practices that employ persuasive evidence in response to perceptions of the circumstances. Putnam and Fairhurst (2001) contend that argument employs logic, reason, and identification of evidence with a common purpose in order to persuade others of a given position. A public commitment to evidence and logic characterizes argument responsive to rules of evidence and reasoning principles.
Putnam and Fairhurst introduced discourse analysis into the field of organizational communication in the 2001 premier volume of the SAGE Handbook of Organizational Communication. In a subsequent volume published in 2014, Putnam and Fairhurst recognized language as a “constitutive” practice that announces meaning in the production of communication. Through the authors’ explication of discourse analysis, they argued that rhetoric is a primary mode of constructing meaning through persuasive appeals to audiences. The rhetorical tradition is persuasive and evidence based. Language, reflective of an argumentative stance, enacts a commitment to public reasoning grounded in evidence that is attentive to internal and external stakeholders. Argument negotiates meaning implications, seeking clarity through consistency.
Argument Clarity: Consistency
Arguments are dynamic, temporal, grounded in evidence, and significant enough to generate deliberation within the public sphere. In matters of risk, or the “presence of uncertainty,” particularly in corporate communication, clarity requires understanding and sorting through competing arguments (Herovic, Sellnow, and Anthony 2014). Emina Herovic, Timothy Sellnow, and Kathryn Anthony conceptualize argument as interactive, and they see it as the fundamental basis for understanding risk communication. The authors note that competing, interacting, and neglected assessments of evidence can further escalate problematic issues. Competing arguments, according to Herovic, Sellnow, and Anthony, become significant “largely [through] the interests of organizations and government agencies” (p. 75). Furthermore, differing arguments on a given issue, when handled without proper consistency, confuse both internal and external audiences. Argument escalation emerges when unproductive assessments render argument clarity obscure and render evidence obsolete (Slovic 2000).
Herovic, Sellnow, and Anthony (2014) argue that corporate communication strives for consistent messages through the use of reflective communication, criticism, and clearly articulated arguments understandable to all stakeholders. They argue that the current communicative environment is “replete with many messages,” making consistency in arguments crucial. The authors adopt an approach to argument that specifies and clarifies stakeholder perspectives. They suggest consistency in the structure of argument in order to clarify, identify, and discern implications of problems/opportunities that beset a given organization.
Argument Clarity: Structure
Argument clarity emerges in a structure provided through communicative practices that embrace public evidence and rationally detail the development of positions and insights. Sellnow and Brand (2001) bring Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s (1969) theory into the field of corporate, crisis, and risk communication in their 2001 article, “Establishing the Structure of Reality for an Industry: Model and Anti-Model Arguments as Advocacy in Nike’s Crisis Communication.” Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca structure argument through concepts called “model arguments” and “anti-model arguments,” contending that argument structures reality. Stakeholders, according to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, are capable of observing convergence between and among arguments; audiences seek sources and supporting evidence in order to evaluate the strength of an argument. An organization acknowledges stakeholder arguments, constructs responses, and relies on evidence attentive to relevant problems/opportunities. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca contend that arguments interact on multiple planes such as communicative interactions, environmental circumstances, and discourse between and among constituencies (see Figure 4.1).
Organizations can choose to emulate a given model and shun others, setting standards for responsiveness to emergent problems/opportunities in arguments. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca contend that a model is a prestigious and value-laden framework that directs behaviors and communicative exchanges. For the authors, arguments are formulated from a “rule of justice” or model that is worthy of being imitated. An anti-model, according to the authors, may perhaps offer a more “powerful influence” in its attempts to foil accepted standards of behavior apparent within a model. The anti-model is argumentatively responsible for presenting a “minimum below which it is improper to go” (p. 368). According to Sellnow and Brand (2001), if an organization allows an issue to “peak,” demonstrating resistance to dialogue, issues evolve into arguments through either model or anti-model commitments. Irrespective of position, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s contribution suggests that argumentation structures realities and norms for responsiveness in the public sphere. Models and anti-models structure argument, with the former directing responsiveness with a clear framework and the latter displaying that which should go un-imitated in formulating arguments in the public sphere.
Figure 4.1 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s model of argument interaction
Summary
Putnam and Fairhurst, along with Herovic, Sellnow, and Anthony, and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, frame the importance of creative participation of both internal and external stakeholders in response to emerging arguments in the public sphere. They offer a public commitment to evidence, consistency in response, and the structure of communicative interaction. This section has centered upon three main metaphors:
1. Public Commitment—ideally, internal and external stakeholders publicly commit to reasoned argument in the marketplace;
2. Consistency—arguments and evidence must offer coherence for internal and external stakeholders; and
3. Structure—arguments assemble organizational reality and invite recognition through pursuing clarity of the frameworks that matter to constituencies.
Argument clarity is performative and relational, calling internal and external stakeholders into a public commitment to evidence and reasoned responses. Theories of argumentation enacted in corporate communication provide a foundation for discernment, which can diffuse problems and enhance opportunities.
Theory and Strategy: Argument Discernment
Argument discernment pursues clarity through key disputes between and among internal and external stakeholders. Palenchar and Heath (2007) advocate information transparency to assist “interested parties” in active participatory action—“acquiring, distributing, and creating knowledge” (p. 124). Transparency de-escalates argument, lending insight into what is to be protected and promoted. Internal and external stakeholders offer arguments on prevalent issues, arguments that compete, conflict, and, often, converge. Transparency offers publicly vetted evidence and rationality that permits both sides of an argument to discern supportive claims and various points of contention. Argument discernment facilitates clarity in the identification of problems/opportunities requiring evidence-based response. Constituencies respond to common sets of evidence that create communicative interconnections between and among internal and external stakeholders, allowing meaning to emerge in response to crucial organizational relationships.
This section examines three important considerations: (1) development, (2) norms, and (3) interpretation. These metaphors illustrate the communicative processes of building arguments, identifying value, and interpreting meaning in the marketplace.
Argument Discernment: Development
Arguments find credibility in evidence-based appeals to audiences. Argument discernment is a textured process of accounting for the development of organizational priorities and actions. Toulmin1 (1969) conceptualized argument as multifaceted, moving from the initial stage of identification into points of active argument. Toulmin’s conceptualization of argumentation includes six vital components: (1) claim, (2) data, (3) warrant, (4) qualifiers, (5) backing, and (6) rebuttals.
Toulmin argued that an argument depends upon assertions backed by claims. Arguments “support” a claim that asserts a given “standard.” Data provides an evidence-based “foundation” for a claim. Warrants expand upon the data that undergirds a claim with further supportive force. Data “strengthen[s]” a claim; a warrant functions as a meta-signifier of the importance of the claim. Warrants become “canons of argument,” a standard from which one makes a case. Warrants are implicit in the structure of an argument. Qualifiers reveal the “degree of force” particular data has in its support of a claim. Backing is an expression about “categorical statements of fact” that provide “direct support” for conclusions or claims. Conversely, a rebuttal deconstructs another’s argument and counters an opposing warrant’s “general authority.” Toulmin’s argumentative coordinates persistently suggest that effective arguments live or die in accordance with publicly vetted evidence. Argument development begins with the discernment of internal and external stakeholder positions, and it proceeds by calling forth public evidence and support in response.
Argument Discernment: Norms
Norms reveal values embedded in organizational structure, background, and narrative. To be discerning, an argument must respond to corporately identified norms protected and promoted by both internal and external stakeholders. Heath (2011) contends that an external organizational rhetoric is responsive to internal and external norms, which are concerned with identifying and discerning prevalent stakeholder arguments. External organizational rhetoric, for Heath, aligns corporate norms with stakeholder interests, developing “infrastructures” that allow internal and external stakeholders to develop and manifest arguments over particular issues in the public sphere. He contends that rhetoric provides “rationale and strategic options” to form relationships between and among internal and external stakeholders. Evidence, for Heath, is crucial, permitting rational arguments to strengthen and maintain “infrastructures” between organizations and their constituencies.
Heath further argues that internal and external stakeholders discursively identify, negotiate, and interpret norms that emerge through human discourse. They “shape and enact their social arrangements as contracts in which interests” align and, often, “compete” (p. 418). He argues that rhetoric, as a vehicle for argumentation, provides a necessary “‘lens’” for interpreting the world. Heath argues that rhetoric and argumentation persuasively “enlighten” choices and interactions with stakeholders. The argumentative “paradigm” for Heath follows that of the ancient Greeks, where “multiple voices engaged in battles over social arrangements” (p. 421). This classical model suggests the necessity of negotiating norms between and among stakeholders. The result of such negotiation enables stakeholders to discern arguments, interpret events, clarify circumstances, and illuminate proper courses of action and standards in situational decision making within the public sphere.
Argument Discernment: Interpretation
Organizational norms, stakeholder interests, and arguments are subject to human interpretation. Persuit (2011) offers an interpretive lens for Toulmin’s theory of argument that introduces interpretation as the basis from which evidence-based argument can be understood. Persuit contends that Toulmin did not advocate “universal standards” related to argumentation. Rather, Toulmin encouraged a “return to the focus on the particular, the local, the oral, and the temporal” (p. 61). Interpretation depends upon a particular human bias, historical moment, and petit narrative. Persuit reads Toulmin through particularities of argumentation tied to circumstances, marketplace, and constituencies. Heath turns to Plato’s Gorgias in a manner that reinforces the interplay of the work of Persuit and Toulmin. In the Gorgias, according to Heath, the philosopher king decided upon issues—fact, value, or policy—in avoiding those with “lesser intellect” or those skilled in the rhetorical arts. This reflects criticism of public relations. However, a rhetorical approach to public relations offers places for arguments for or against those that offer statements on behalf of the organization in addition to debates over particular facets of organizational life.
Persuit contends that “effective rhetoric situates the argument in the realm of the audience at a particular moment” (p. 61). Organizations must engage in effective organizational rhetoric (persuasion) to respond to arguments privileged by both internal and external stakeholders. Arguments are ineffective when their advocates are hindered from responding to context and audience adaption. Persuit explicates Toulmin’s concepts of warrant and backing tied to context, particularities, and interpretation. She understands arguments as “field-dependent,” understood through competing interpretive lenses of differently vested parties. Organizational rhetoric adapts and responds to arguments in context and in response to particular circumstances.
Summary
Toulmin, Heath, and Persuit frame argument discernment through particularities and evidence-based reason, identified and interpreted via stakeholder norms and values. This section focused on three main considerations:
1. Development—argument discernment depends upon the elaboration of coherent, consistent messages;
2. Norms—corporate and stakeholder patterns and standards manifest themselves in ongoing arguments between and among stakeholders; and
3. Interpretation—audiences decode messages and arguments in response to particular historical moments, narrative structures, contexts, and relationships.
Argument discernment includes development, norms, and interpretations. Discernment is a product of responsiveness to particular arguments that matter, which can prevent undue escalation of problems/opportunities.
Leadership: Argument Responsiveness
Argument clarity emerges through defining and discerning relevant arguments and conversations that manifest in particular situations, circumstances, and institutional frameworks. Leadership should respond to arguments that emerge between and among various constituencies. Shin, Heath, and Lee (2011) argue that successful organizational leadership develops “skilled, contingent, strategic, and reflective” communicative styles and behaviors that assist institutions in making “society more fully functional.” Their scholarship suggests that good leadership is responsive to the particular, necessitating flexibility of responsiveness to emergent arguments that continually shift, often redefined, and (mis)interpreted by various internal and external constituencies. Leadership must respond to arguments in the public sphere, identifying problems/opportunities as influential factors in organizational existence. Acknowledging various perspectives and arguments allows for organizations to respond to particular historical moments that call for adaptable communicative strategies that maintain and foster effective stakeholder relationships.
This section examines three major considerations: (1) practices, (2) message convergence, and (3) perception. These three metaphors reveal the necessity of leadership responsiveness when emergent arguments transpire between and among internal and external stakeholders.
Leadership and Argument Responsiveness: Practices
Corporate practices reveal communicative behaviors grounded in an organization’s narrative, mission statement, and values. These practices act as guides for behaviors and for the communication of both internal and external constituencies. Fairhurst and Sarr (1996) argue that leadership is a matter of framing responses that are enacted in everyday conversation, in a manner responsive to context and resonant with the communicative situation. Fairhurst and Sarr’s concept of framing demonstrates the necessity of argument clarity and responsiveness in corporate communication and crisis communication. Leadership requires argument discernment to effectively engage the particular communicative response necessary in a specific circumstance. Leaders must possess the capacity to frame appropriate messages for unique situations with the objective of forging organizational clarity and identity, while maintaining stakeholder relationships.
Fairhurst and Sarr argue that framing requires forethought to capture what matters. Leaders attend to human interaction while pursuing an interpretive frame to escalate or de-escalate a given argument. The practical framing characteristic of leadership is developed through practicing communicative encounters that illuminate argument clarity for all constituencies (Arnett, Bell McManus, and McKendree 2013). Leaders practice framing and audiences practice response. While a leader is responsible for framing practices, theories of argumentation remind us that audiences interpret and respond. Corporate practices guide communicative interaction, setting standards for responsiveness that provide a foundation for replying to messages between and among stakeholders.
Leadership and Argument Responsiveness: Message Convergence
Arguments from internal and external stakeholders interact with one another as both sides develop arguments responsive to prevalent issues. Herovic, Sellnow, and Anthony (2014) introduce Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Message Convergence Framework as implicative of significant developments for argument clarity in crisis and risk communication. The Message Convergence Framework is a “message-centered approach to risk communication” that analyzes the “process” through which internal and external stakeholders interpret meaning within “multiple and competing arguments,” ultimately leading to argument escalation (p. 74). Competing arguments merge to allow stakeholders to “assess” the discourse and to arrive at a single conclusion. Interactive and competing arguments battle in the public sphere for stakeholder attention. This framework permits a multidimensional conversation, allowing emerging arguments, grounded in evidence-based reason, to compete for stakeholder support and recognition.
In the field of risk communication, argument clarity is often unidirectional, failing to consider “multiple stakeholders” and competing arguments from internal and external constituencies (Herovic, Sellnow, and Anthony 2014, p. 75). The Message Convergence Framework acknowledges the multifaceted influences on audiences in organizational communication by the very nature of the fragmented marketplace. There are many messages and public spaces where sources of conflict can emerge from internal and external stakeholders. Leadership requires attentiveness to the communicative environment and the arguments by engaging in continual environmental scanning being presented there. Convergence alone does not convince stakeholders of the strength of a given argument. Audiences must perceive an issue as relevant, timely, and significant in order to understand and respond to presented information. Internal and external stakeholder perception is a key component to argument in the public sphere.
Leadership and Argument Responsiveness: Perception
Perception of organizational and stakeholder arguments molds interpretive meaning between and among communicative interlocutors in the marketplace. In R. Edward Freeman’s 1991 edited volume Business Ethics: The State of the Art, Kenneth E. Goodpaster2 argues that leadership must be responsive to “qualities of the heart” as well as of the head, balancing morals and careers within the public sphere. Goodpaster references Hannah Arendt’s notion of thoughtlessness, advocated by this work’s turn to ethics in action, to argue that business ethics and corporate leadership must incorporate thoughtfulness in responsiveness to internal and external stakeholders.
Argument discernment is grounded in the actions and communication enacted between and among internal and external stakeholders. Goodpaster argues that leadership must be responsive to espoused corporate values communicated in an easily discernible and understood manner. He argues that leadership actions must be both “wide[ly]” visible and “clear[ly] ethical” so that stakeholders may appropriately perceive corporate standards (p. 102). The “institutionalization” of “ethical values” depends upon leadership responsiveness to manifested arguments that permit common evidence to surface. In a subsequent essay published in Freeman’s 1991 edited volume, Daniel R. Gilbert Jr.3 responds to Goodpaster’s claims and argues that the “modern corporation” must take seriously “individual searches for meaning” (p. 117). He further articulates the role of “bargaining processes” through which individuals perceive connections with espoused corporate values. Argument discernment rests upon this contribution to management theory, which recognizes the role of individual and collective values that shape perception of role as well as the interconnection between and among internal and external stakeholders. Leadership responsiveness to emerging arguments recognizes the need to frame perception of meaning and interpretation publicly.
Summary
The scholarly insights of Fairhurst, Starr, Persuit, Perelman, Olbrechts-Tyteca, Goodpaster, and Gilbert reveal the role of leadership in a level of argument responsiveness that discerns and clarifies problems/opportunities in the marketplace. This section has illuminated the communicative role of leadership to elucidate and identify arguments through three major considerations:
1. Practices—communicative encounters, narratives, and values reveal corporate practices that provide a framework for argument clarification by leadership and by stakeholders;
2. Message Convergence—arguments interact with one another to reveal publicly agreed upon evidence, information, and interpretation that shape a common communicative ground; and
3. Perception—stakeholders perceive and interpret espoused corporate values through common arguments grounded in reasoned evidence.
Argument clarity is an integrated communicative event that defines, identifies, and responds to prevalent stakeholder concerns and demands in an increasingly interactive marketplace. Ulmer and Sellnow (2000) contend that organizations depend upon the ability to “satisfy” the varied and often competing interests of a diversity of stakeholders with “distinct interests,” perceptions, and interpretations of arguments. Resolving crisis, conflict, and argument is dependent upon organizational recognition that stakeholder interpretation is a central element to communicating and clarifying emergent arguments in the public sphere. The next chapter examines the role of internal and external stakeholders in discerning arguments that are meaningful for a large portion of constituencies that are affected by organizational responsiveness to emergent problems/opportunities.
Leaders must understand the coordinates of what constitutes a good argument. Understanding the process of argument unites theory and strategy in performance. Chapter 5, “Argument and Stakeholder Influence,” places the notion of argument within the context of stakeholders. Arguments commence when that which we attempt to protect and promote is challenged by the other. Argument necessitates knowing what is important to one’s self and finding out what is important to the other.
1 Stephen E. Toulmin was a distinguished philosopher and professor. His work is utilized in the field of rhetoric for his ground-breaking Model of Argumentation, which we utilize in this chapter. Toulmin explicates his argumentation theory in this particular order. We follow Toulmin’s guidelines to articulate how evidence-based argument works within organizational communication. The gathering of evidence, and the stating of it, is posited as a different entity than the contentious response to it, which brings forth the notion of rebuttal as a discrete step of the argument.
2 Kenneth E. Goodpaster is professor emeritus at University of St. Thomas. His research and publications focus upon business ethics, uniting philosophy and ethics in business education. In 2014, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics by Ethisphere Magazine.
3 Daniel R. Gilbert Jr. has published extensively in business, management, and ethics.