The Linguistic Spaces within the Organization:How the Ideal of an Organization Affects the Words in a Strategy Document

Based on translation theory, this paper shows how the linguistic spaces in anorganization are created and which results it can have, when a big part of theorganization doesn’t fit into the space that the strategy creates. The notion oflinguistic spaces is established when an organization is not only defined as a hierarchy or social entities but also a coherent network created by different languages and practices. Based on a case study in a public organization, the paper identifies three views on the ideal organization. These ideals result in certain languages but only one of the ideals is found in the strategy document. This had a huge impact on the organization, since the two other groups couldn’t recognize their organization in the strategy, which meant that one of the other groups left the organization. This had an impact since the organization no longer took the responsibility that the disappeared ideal said it should take. It resulted in heavy critique from the public, the politicians and the National Audit.