The use of framing devices to sequester organizational narratives: Hegemony and harassment

TLDR

Sexual harassment research within organizational communication has traditionally used critical‑interpretive frameworks to examine how dominant interests shape narratives. This study investigates how framing devices sequester stories that could challenge organizational dominance. The authors proposed six framing devices linked to hegemony, sampled a quota of U.S. working women via the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and analyzed interview accounts according to the devices employed.

Abstract

This empirical study of sexual harassment extends the current critical‐interpretive approaches to organizational communication by exploring and examining the role that framing devices play in sequestering stories that might otherwise challenge the dominant interests of organizations. Six framing devices are proposed and reviewed in terms of their relation to hegemony. A quota sample based on figures garnered from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was selected. Working women were interviewed about their experiences with sexual harassment and their accounts were interpreted according to their reliance on the proposed framing techniques. The findings suggest that the most prominently employed framing devices by the subjugated group are trivialization, denotative hesitancy, and invoking the private domain or private expression. Furthermore, mutual negation, minimalization, self‐defacing, and self‐effacing/erasing emerged as framing techniques. The implication of these findings is that the subjugated group actively participates in the production and reproduction of the dominant organizational ideology.