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https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488416687054
International Journal of
Business Communication
2017, Vol. 54(2) 161 –181
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/2329488416687054
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Article
Discourse of Leadership:
The Power of Questions
in Organizational Decision
Making
Jolanta Aritz1, Robyn Walker1,
Peter Cardon1, and Zhang Li2
Abstract
This study aims to more fully understand leadership when it is understood as primarily
discursive in nature and coconstructed by those involved in interactions in which
influence emerges. More specifically, it explores the performative role of questions as
speech acts. In this case, we look at how questions are employed as a key discourse
type to enable professionals to construct their authority and establish leadership
roles. The data consist of transcripts of decision-making meetings. A scheme for
coding the question-response sequence in conversation was used to identify the
form, social function, and conversational sequence of question use. The questions
then were analyzed by speaker and his or her role as leader versus nonleader. While
questions can result in or encourage group collaboration by opening the discussion
and inviting contributions, they can also be used to direct team members, seize the
floor, and influence decision making. The study contributes to the study of leadership
and team decision making by looking at how questions operate as a multifunctional
discourse type, and how they are used to establish influence in decision-making
meetings.
Keywords
discourse analysis, leadership, discursive leadership, team decision making, workplace
interaction, questions, business meetings
1USC Marshall School of Business, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China
Corresponding Author:
Jolanta Aritz, USC Marshall School of Business, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0808, USA.
Email: aritz@marshall.usc.edu
687054JOBXXX10.1177/2329488416687054International Journal of Business CommunicationAritz et al.
research-article2017
162 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
Introduction
More and more researchers are treating discourse analysis as a methodological
approach and a window into organizational reality (Grant, Keenoy, & Oswick, 1998;
Robichaud & Cooren, 2013). A discursive focus is also enabling scholars to reveal
more nuanced details about how such issues as leadership are interactionally achieved
in organizational settings (Fairhurst, 2007). An increasing body of research is studying
leadership by looking at language and approaching the phenomenon as an act of social
constructionism (Alversson & Karreman, 2000; Fairhurst, 2007, 2009). From this per-
spective, leadership is viewed in the context of what leaders do and is thus discursive
in nature. According to Fairhurst (2008), this perspective enables us to understand
leadership as a process of influence and meaning management that advances a task or
goal, an attribution made by followers or observers, and a process, one in which influ-
ence may shift and distribute itself among several organizational members.
The emergence of discursive approaches seeks to complement concepts of leader-
ship derived from psychology, management research, and other social sciences, and to
identify the discursive resources by which the management of meaning is achieved
(Fairhurst, 2007, 2008, 2009; Nielsen, 2009). According to Alversson and Karreman
(2000), the emergence of a discursive approach to leadership is partially due to the
increasing interest in the linguistic turn in organizational research. Rather language is
performative and it is used to discursively construct what counts as reality to the par-
ticipants. The linguistic turn considers that language is not used to make accurate
representations of prediscursive internal (cognitive) or external worlds (Clifton, 2012).
This study is an attempt to more fully understand leadership when it is understood
as primarily discursive in nature and coconstructed by those involved in interactions
in which influence emerges. More specifically, this study explores the performative
role of question as speech acts that inevitably carry an action component (Austin,
1962) in decision-making meetings. Whereas studies have extensively examined and
documented the use of questions and the social actions they perform in everyday U.S.
English conversations (Stivers, 2010; Stivers & Enfield, 2010), the functions of ques-
tions in the organizational setting among groups of professionals remain largely unex-
plored. While a few studies on the function of questions in meeting talk in general can
be found, these lack a specific focus on leadership and decision making. Holmes and
Chiles (2010) study questions as control devices used by those in positions of power,1
enabling managers to maintain control of the agenda and the direction of the discus-
sion as well as constructing authority and a leadership role. Taking a different approach,
Ford (2010) considers questions as actions that gain the questioner entry into partici-
pation and that open up a participation space for others.
Our study looks at how participants use questions in team decision-making meet-
ings to establish social roles and to construct leadership. The article addresses five
research questions:
Research Question 1: What is the range of leaders’ use of questions?
Research Question 2: How do professionals construct authority using questions?
Aritz et al. 163
Research Question 3: How are questions used to establish leadership roles in
groups?
Research Question 4: How does gender affect question use?
Research Question 5: How do questions function as a discursive resource for deci-
sion making?
Leadership as Discourse
Research in the area of leadership has shown it to be a complex process having multiple
dimensions. In fact, in the past 60 years, as many as 65 different classification systems
have been developed to define dimensions of leadership (Fleishman et al., 1991). For
example, Bass (1990) proposes that some of these perspectives define leadership as the
focus of group processes. Other definitions of leadership interpret it as a personality
trait, an act or behavior, a transformational process, a set of skills, or in terms of power
relations (Northouse, 2007). Obviously, this article cannot do justice to all of the work
done thus far on leadership, but most approaches agree that several components are
central to the phenomenon called leadership: (1) it is a process, (2) it involves influence,
(3) it occurs in a group context, and (4) it involves goal attainment (Northouse, 2007).
As such, leadership might be defined as “process whereby an individual influences a
group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse, 2007, p. 3). Leadership
conceived as a process implies that it is not a trait that resides in an individual but a
temporal event that occurs in interaction among the leader and his or her followers.
Use of Questions to Establish Leadership
As noted earlier, this conception of leadership as a process that emerges in interaction
has been taken up by discursive leadership studies. Research in the area of leadership
and the use of questions has shown that in asymmetrical discourse situations, such as
those between doctor and patient (Todd, 1983; West, 1984) or teacher and student (D.
Barnes, Britton, & Rosen, 1971; Stubbs, 1983), questions are used by influential par-
ticipants and are used to oblige the addressee to produce an answer that is conversa-
tionally relevant and to control what the next speaker is able to say (Harris, 1984).
Our previous research looked at leadership through a discursive lens, focusing on a
variety of conversational elements, including the use of questions, to identify four
discursive leadership styles that emerged in small group decision-making meetings:
directive, cooperative, assertive, and collaborative (Walker & Aritz, 2015). This
research found that a directive leader used questions to direct agreement among inter-
action participants, a cooperative leader used questions to solicit information or par-
ticipation from others, and an assertive leader as well as those using a collaborative
leadership style used questions to frame the interaction and to check for agreement
among members (Aritz & Walker, 2014; Walker & Aritz, 2015). (Collaborative leader-
ship, also known as distributed leadership, is defined as a property that emerges in
team situations in which influence is distributed across multiple team members
[Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007].)
164 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
This study will look at three questions related to the use of questions as a discursive
resource for establishing leadership:
Research Question 1: What is the range of leaders’ use of questions?
Research Question 2: How do professionals construct authority using questions?
Research Question 3: How are questions used to establish leadership roles in
groups?
Gendered Use of Questions
Use of questions by gender also has not been significantly studied. In conversations,
Coates (1996) found that women use questions primarily as an interactive function
rather than for seeking information. For example, “the question, ‘there are limits aren’t
there?’, checks for a shared perspective and does not expect an answer except for per-
haps ‘yeah’ or ‘mhm.’” Men, on the other hand, tend to use questions to seek informa-
tion from each other, taking turns to play the expert (Coates, 1996).
In addition, research has found that women used more tag questions than men and
their use was associated with tentativeness and a lesser degree of assertion (Lakoff,
1975; Siegler & Siegler, 1976). Later research (Cameron, McAlinden, & O’Leary,
1988) looked at the use of tag questions based on their social function, including the
modal function coded as a “challenging tag,” indicating the speaker’s certainty about
the proposition expressed, and the affective function that expresses the speaker’s atti-
tude to the addressee. Such affective tags can be facilitative, supporting the addressee,
or softening that reduce the force of negatively affective speech acts. Holmes and
Chiles’s (2010) analysis of regular conversation revealed that women used more affec-
tive tag questions that were facilitative, whereas men used primarily modal tag
questions.
Based on the fact that some studies indicate that women use questions differently
than men, a fourth research concern addressed by this study is whether gender differ-
ences exist in the use of questions and if so, what kind?
Discourse of Decision Making
Decision making has been at the heart of organizational analysis for half a century and
is no less important today as organizations increasingly move toward the use of teams
characterized by cross-functional and cross-cultural interactions. According to
Robbins (2001), “decision making is defined as the selection of a preferred course of
action from two or more alternatives” (p. 45). In an organizational setting, decision
making typically involves identifying goals, gathering information, and using that
information to determine the best course of action to achieve the designated goals.
Because of the complexity of many organizations, decision making is often not the
task of a particular individual alone but may involve a team of experts whose knowl-
edge, skill, and abilities contribute the information needed to reach effective decisions.
But expertise and informational resources alone may not be only determining factors
Aritz et al. 165
in decision making; the influence individual team members have on others may shape
the definition of goals as well as the selection of solutions. For managers, decision
making is a key role responsibility and for those involved in group decision making,
the ability to influence others can affect the quality of the process as well as the quality
of the decision. Thus, decision-making skills are often considered a key function of
leaders and managers by many management scholars.
Social science approaches have described organizational decision making compre-
hensively from Simon’s (1957) early concept of bounded rationality to issues of power
and politics (Cyert & March, 1963), ambiguity and contradiction (March & Olsen,
1976), and sequential processes (Mintzberg, Raisinghani, & Théorêt, 1976). However,
Boden (1994) has argued that a persistent focus on cognitive elements of decision-
making processes ignores the spatial, temporal, sequential, and interactional elements
that dominate organizational life. To solve this problem, Huisman (2001) calls for
studies of real-world organizational talk in decision-making situations. Analysis of the
discourse strategies that people use provide evidence of the situated nature of decision
making and how team members draw upon different discourse strategies to create
organizational realities.
Discourse studies have made significant contributions to our understanding of team
decision making through the analysis of local workplace interaction (Atkinson, 1995;
Boden, 1994; Cicourel, 1968; Sarangi & Roberts, 1999; Silverman, 1987). Discourse
studies of team decision include management team meetings (Clifton, 2009; Huisman,
2001; Kwon, Clarke, & Wodak, 2009; Sanders, 2007) and department meetings
focused on resource allocation (Menz, 1999), and also meetings in the medical and
educational domains (R. Barnes, 2007; Cicourel, 1990; Graham, 2009; Hjorne, 2005;
Hughes & Griffiths, 1997; Nikander, 2003; Quinn, Mehan, Levin, & Black, 1983).
Use of Questions in Institutional Settings
While a few studies on the function of questions in meeting talk in general have been
undertaken, these studies have not focused on leadership and decision making. For
example, Holmes and Chiles (2010) study questions as control devices for those in
positions of power, enabling managers to maintain control of the agenda and the direc-
tion of the discussion as well as constructing authority and a leadership role. Taking a
different approach, Ford (2010) considers questions as actions that gain the questioner
entry into participation and that open up a participation space for others.
When defining a question one should take into consideration both functional and
sequential aspects. Freed and Ehrlich (2010) define questions as utterances that (1)
solicit (and/or are treated by the recipient as soliciting) information, confirmation, or
action and (2) create an opportunity for the recipient to produce a responsive turn.
Recurring themes in the study of questions have focused on the differential speaking
rights afforded by questions, and the interactional asymmetry that emerges. However,
according to Freed and Ehrlich (2010), recent studies of questions in institutional set-
tings have focused on the multifunctional role of questions, and the need to consider
the more nuanced roles they may play in terms of interactionally achieved power and
166 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
control. Taking the notion of activity type as a point of departure, Levinson (1979)
shows that the discourse properties involved in the definition of a question are subject
to the nature of the activities in which the question is used. For example, Sarangi
(2010) interprets backchanneling cues as pseudoquestions that encourage reflection-
based decision making on the part of the client in genetic counseling sessions. In other
words, the role and function of questions depends on the activity in which they take
place.
Huisman (2001) provides an interactional definition of decisions: An utterance can
be considered to do a decision if the commitment of relevant participants to a relevant
future state of affairs is achieved. Building on this understanding, the current study
regards decision making as processes in which commitments to future states of affairs
or future actions are sought. According to Boden (1994), the focus is not on the deci-
sion outcome but on the decision processes that are located in the interactional
sequences or the “laminations of actions and reactions” of workplace talk (p. 22).
The article addresses then a fifth and final research question: How do questions
function as a discursive resource in decision making?
Data
Our data consist of 28 transcribed videotaped recordings of small group decision-
making meetings. Each group consisted of five business professionals (N = 140) with
an average of 10 years of work experience enrolled in an MBA program at a private
university in Southern California. The sample included 94 men and 51 women;
although teams consisted of professionals of U.S. American background and some
Asian participants, the majority identified as leaders in this study were White and aged
25 to 35 years. They all participated in a simulation, Subarctic Survival, which asked
each group to take the role of airplane crash survivors. Groups were then asked to
discuss and ultimately agree upon the ranking of items salvaged from the aircraft in
terms of their critical function for survival. The meetings were 20 minutes in length
and held in an experiential learning laboratory equipped with professional facilities
and technicians.
This study attempted to isolate the leadership aspects of the decision-making pro-
cess from other confounding variables, including the effects of corporate culture, rela-
tionship history, knowledge of other participants’ abilities, knowledge, and skills, and
designated or assigned power. This control was implemented through analyzing the
leadership decision-making process in a simulated situation—one that removed con-
founding factors that would inevitably arise from performing a similar study in exist-
ing organizational settings. Additionally, in order to better examine how leader
dynamics emerged in new team settings, group members had little knowledge of each
other and no leader was formally designated.
The study used a coding scheme for question-response sequences created by Stivers
and Enfield (2010) to identify the question in terms of its form, social function, next
speaker selection, and conversational sequence. This scheme was used because it was
developed to look at the issue of question use, albeit for conversational purposes.
Aritz et al. 167
Therefore, using this method will provide analogous results for a comparison between
the use of questions in an institutional setting and everyday conversations. The ques-
tions then were analyzed by speaker and his or her leadership role in the decision-
making meetings.
Method
Our first set of research questions looked at how questions are used by both leaders
and nonleaders in decision-making meetings. All participants in the database were
coded according to the amount of talk they produced, and their role in moving the
decision-making process forward and keeping the group focused on the task. Three
categories of speakers emerged: a leader in the group, a transitory leader (transleader),
or a nonleader. The speaker was coded as a leader if he or she was continuously par-
ticipating in the discussion and showing leadership by providing constructive contri-
butions to the group. If the speaker demonstrated this communication-based leadership
behavior sporadically and the group had several participants taking on leadership roles
at different times during the meeting, they were coded as a transitory leader (or trans-
leader). This category was frequently found in groups that showed a collaborative or
distributed leadership style. Those speakers not actively participating and providing
minimal contribution to the discussion were coded as nonleaders. The results were
cross-checked by three independent coders to resolve any inconsistencies in coding.
To answer the final research question, how questions function as a discursive
resource for decision making, we coded and analyzed questions included in our data
base using a coding scheme for question-response sequence in conversation developed
by Stivers and Enfield (2010). The coding dimensions include classifying questions by
their grammatical form (yes-no questions, w-questions, and alternative questions);
social action or the social intent of the person asking questions, including information
request, confirmation request, assessment, suggestion/offer/request; and response type
(see Table 1 for a summary of coding scheme and examples of question types). We
then compared the use of questions in decision-making meetings with those found in
U.S. English conversations. The findings provide a better understanding of first, the
relationship between question design, social action, and response design work in an
institutional setting and second, how professionals use questions to accomplish their
tasks and construct their identities as social actors.
Results of Analysis
This section will provide results for the analysis of the data looking at the five research
questions asked:
Research Question 1: What is the range of leaders’ use of questions?
Research Question 2: How do professionals construct authority using questions?
Research Question 3: How are questions used to establish leadership roles in
groups?
168 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
Research Question 4: How does gender affect question use?
Research Question 5: How do questions function as a discursive resource for deci-
sion making?
What Is the Range of Leaders’ Use of Questions?
Our first research question was addressed by looking at the different types of questions
that participants used and compared the results in each of the categories established
through contribution rate: Leader, transitory leader, and nonleader.
This analysis showed that all three groups asked similar types of questions charac-
teristic of decision-making meetings but show marked differences in the number of
questions they asked. As shown in Table 2 leaders and transleaders asked considerably
more questions than nonleaders did. A significance factor was not calculated because
of the small number of participants.
How Do Professionals Construct Authority Using Questions?
To address the second research question, How do professionals construct authority
using questions? we looked at the social function of the question. Using the schema
developed by Stivers and Enfield (2010), questions serve four general social func-
tions: They can serve as a request for confirmation; a request of information; as a more
general suggestion, offer, or request, or they can serve as a rhetorical question.
On average, leaders and transleaders asked more than twice the number of polar yes
or no questions and almost three times as many Q-word questions than nonleaders. In
general, leaders asked slightly more questions than transleaders, but these differences
were relatively small. Most questions were used to request confirmation or ask for
Table 1. Summary of Coding Scheme.
Grammatical form Examples
1. Polar Q:
a. Declarative
b. Interrogative
c. Tag
2. Q-word questions
3. Alterative questions
1. Polar Q types:
a. You’re thinking canvass for a tent?
b. Wait. Didn’t we make eleven the flashlight?
c. One for each of us though, right?
2. What did you put as your last one?
3. So maybe we need the alarm clock or the shaving
kit?
Social action Examples
1. Information request
2. Confirmation request
3. Suggestion/offer/request
4. Rhetorical question
1. What you’re num-, number five?
2. And then do you want to do rope, correct?
3. Ya . . . so I think the water purification tablets . . .
now?
4. The . . . the middle? Okay then.
Aritz et al. 169
information (see Table 3), with leaders asking the most questions and nonleaders ask-
ing substantially fewer questions. There were very few rhetorical questions used in
decision-making meetings, and transleaders asked more questions that were intended
as a suggestion, offer, or request than leaders.
How Are Questions Used to Establish Leadership Roles in Groups?
We also looked at the differences in questions based on group leadership composition.
We compared three categories: groups with one leader, groups with two leaders, and
groups with three or more leaders. The analysis revealed some differing team dynam-
ics in question types based on group leader composition.
Whereas groups with one or two leaders do not show marked differences in the
number of questions asked or the social action that questions perform, groups with
three or more leaders showed increased speaker involvement in terms of asking ques-
tions. As shown in Table 4, groups with three or more leaders asked substantially more
polar questions, Q content questions, and alternative questions.
Table 2. Average Number of Question Types Employed per Decision-Making Meeting by
Power Position.
Leader
(n = 20)
Transleader
(n = 30)
Nonleader
(n = 97)
All
(n = 147)
Polar Q 11.7 11.0 4.7 6.9
Declarative 5.4 6.1 2.6 3.7
Interrogative 4.5 3.7 1.5 2.3
Tag—challenging 0.2 0.1 0.0 0.1
Tag—facilitative 1.5 1.1 0.6 0.8
Tag—softening 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0
Q-word questions 7.2 5.0 2.7 3.7
Alternative questions 0.7 0.6 0.2 0.4
Total 19.6 16.6 7.6 11.0
Table 3. Average Number of Social Actions Employed per Decision-making Meeting by
Power Position.
Social action
Leader
(n = 20)
Transleader
(n = 30)
Nonleader
(n = 97)
Total
(n = 147)
Confirmation request 9.4 8.1 3.9 5.5
Information request 8.0 6.1 2.7 4.1
Suggestion/offer/request 1.6 2.0 0.8 1.2
Rhetorical question 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.2
Other 0.2 0.1 0.0 0.1
Total 19.6 16.6 7.6 11.0
170 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
Table 4. Average Number of Questions Types per Decision-Making Meeting Based on
Leadership Composition Within the Group.
Question type
Groups with
one leader
(n = 13)
Groups with
two leaders
(n = 11)
Groups with three
or more leaders
(n = 4)
Total
(n = 28)
Polar Q 31.5 34.6 56.8 36.4
Q-word questions 19.5 17.2 27.0 19.7
Alternative 2.1 1.4 3.3 2.0
Total 53.2 53.2 87.0 58.0
In terms of social actions, groups with three or more leaders used significantly
more confirmation requests, information requests, and significantly more questions
that function as suggestion, offer or request, and more rhetorical questions.
Groups with three or more leaders were twice as likely not to select the next speaker
and significantly more likely to receive a response type that is an answer or no response
rather than nonanswer response (see Table 5). This suggests that groups with multiple
leaders coconstruct shared leadership through the use of questions that solicit contri-
butions from multiple participants, request information, and ask for confirmation,
mostly in a supportive role.
How Does Gender Affect Question Use?
We also compared how women and men ask questions in decision-making meetings.
While women and men showed no difference in the total number of questions asked,
some diverging patterns emerged as we looked at the use of different question types.
Women used significantly more alternative questions (e.g., “so what do you think is
better then? The book, for navigating by stars or the mirror?” p < .001) that invited
multiple options and more interrogative questions (e.g., “wait. Didn’t we make eleven
the flashlight?” p < .01) than men. This suggests that women tend to use questions to
elicit options and different opinions from meetings participants. They also used more
Table 5. Average Number of Response Types per Decision-Making Meeting Based on
Leadership Composition Within the Group.
Response type
Groups with
one leader
(n = 13)
Groups with
two leaders
(n = 11)
Groups with three
or more leaders
(n = 4)
Total
(n = 28)
Answer 33.8 35.9 53.8 37.5
Nonanswer response 10.6 9.2 13.5 10.5
No response 5.8 6.1 13.5 7.0
Total 53.2 53.2 87.0 58.0
Aritz et al. 171
declarative (e.g., “And that would be our ranking?”) and Q-word questions (e.g.,
“What’s your 3?”), but the difference was not significant.
Our data on decision-making meetings offer new insights on the gender-differential
use of tag questions in an institutional setting (see Table 6).
Research on women’s language in everyday conversational interactions found
that women use more facilitative and softening tag questions than men that after
makes them less assertive and is considered a feature of powerless discourse (Holmes
& Chiles, 2010). Our data show that women in decision-making meetings did not
show significant difference in their use of facilitative and softening tags and in fact
used significantly more challenging tag questions than men (p < .001). This suggests
a significant switch in style by women when negotiating their roles in an institu-
tional setting. When they want to be heard and seek power in mixed gender groups,
they employ those features associated with speaker’s high degree of certainty and
propositional value, while decreasing the use of those affective tags usually associ-
ated with less powerful speech and lack of assertion. This finding adds to previous
research that explored how women as nonprimary speakers used questions strategi-
cally to take the conversational floor, thereby claiming power in conversation. As
suggested by Ford (2010), women not only use questions in higher numbers but also
use questions that invite contributions from others and to challenge others as they
negotiate power.
How Do Questions Function as a Discursive Resource for Decision
Making?
This section discusses the results of our analysis of data to address our fifth research
question: How do questions function as a discursive resource for decision making? We
Table 6. t Tests of Significant Differences by Gender.
Men Women Total
t p M SD M SD M SD
Types of questions
Alternative 0.24 0.50 0.61 1.04 0.37 0.75 −2.84 .00**
Polar 5.78 5.56 9.22 7.21 6.93 6.36 −3.20 .40
Q words 3.16 3.40 4.90 3.65 3.75 3.56 −2.87 .40
Polar questions
Declarative 3.21 3.34 4.63 3.46 3.69 3.42 −2.40 .74
Interrogative 1.82 2.15 3.41 3.48 2.35 2.78 −3.40 .01**
Tag—challenging 0.02 0.15 0.14 0.40 0.06 0.27 −2.52 .00**
Tag—facilitative 0.71 1.38 1.04 1.09 0.82 1.29 −1.46 .74
Tag—softening 0.01 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.08 0.74 .14
Total questions 9.18 8.39 14.73 10.12 11.05 9.35 −3.53 .56
*p < .05. **p < .01.
172 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
do so by first looking at question type, then social action, and finally, next speaker
selection.
Grammatical Form (Question Type). Our analysis demonstrates that the overall distribution
of questions by question type in U.S. English conversations and decision-making meet-
ings is significantly different. As Table 7 suggests, the majority of questions asked were
polar questions that can be answered with a yes or a no response. Speakers in decision-
making meetings asked fewer polar questions (63%) than speakers in regular conversa-
tions (70%), while asking more content or Q-word questions (34% as compared with
27%, respectively). The higher number of content questions in decision-making meet-
ings can be expected given the purpose of this type interaction. Decision-making meet-
ings require speakers to share and build on information in order to arrive at a joint
decision, whereas in regular conversations, content questions are primarily asked about
prior talk and personal states (Stivers, 2010). The number of alternative questions (two
questions joined together) was very similar in both types of discourse, around 3%.
The distribution of polar question subtypes differed significantly between decision-
making meetings versus regular conversations. As shown in Table 8, the number of
interrogative questions was similar in both regular conversations and decision-making
Table 7. Distribution of Questions by Grammatical Form (Question Type).
Question type
Percentage in decision-
making meetings (n)
Percentage in regular
conversationsa (n)
Polar Q 62.7 (1,018) 70 (230)
Q-word questions 33.9 (551) 27 (90)
Alternative questions 3.4 (55) 3 (8)
Total questions 100 (1,624) 100 (328)
Note. n = 1,952. Based on chi-square test of significance, there are significant differences in the
breakdown of these types of questions in decision-making versus regular conversations: χ2 (2, 1,952) =
6.62, p < .05.
aFigures from regular conversations based on the work of Stivers (2010).
Table 8. Distribution of Polar Questions by Subtype.
Polar Q type
Percentage in decision-
making meetings (n)
Percentage in regular
conversationsa (n)
Declarative 53.2 (542) 63 (145)
Interrogative 33.9 (345) 31 (72)
Tag 12.9 (131) 6 (13)
Total polar Q 100 (1,018) 100 (230)
Note. n = 1,248. Based on chi-square test of significance, there are significant differences in the
breakdown of these types of polar questions in decision-making versus regular conversations: χ2(2,
1,248) = 12.12, p < .05.
aFigures from regular conversations based on the work of Stivers (2010).
Aritz et al. 173
meetings, but the number of declarative questions decreased from 63% to 53% in
decision-making meetings, while the number of tag questions more than doubled from
6% to 13%.
Whereas tag questions are relatively rare in conversational English, our previous
research (Aritz & Walker, 2014) identified tag questions as an important conversa-
tional strategy that first, establishes influence, especially in the directive leadership
style often employed by male speakers and second, builds consensus, especially in the
collaborative leadership style. Given these social functions of tag questions, it is not
surprising that the number of tag questions increased significantly in an institution
setting.
Social Action. In addition to question types, each question performs a social action in
any given interaction. As a second step in our analysis, we compared the social
actions of different types of questions in regular conversations with those in decision-
making meetings. In regular conversations, the majority of questions are used as an
information request (43%), to initiate other repair2 on someone else’s turn (31%), and
to request confirmation (21%; Stivers, 2010). As shown in Table 9, in decision-mak-
ing meetings, questions requesting information moved to the second most frequent
category (37%), while the majority of questions asked were confirmation request
(50%). It is interesting to note that the initiation of repair (31% in regular conversa-
tions) is not a substantial category here (.6%), but questions indicating suggestions,
offer, or request increased from 2% in regular conversation to 11% in decision-mak-
ing meetings.
In addition, as shown in Table 10, all types of yes or no polar questions were used
primarily to request confirmation. This contrasts to social action in regular conversa-
tions, where the majority of declarative questions were used to initiate other repair
(56%), while most of interrogative questions were used to request information (79%).
The results indicate that speakers use questions differently in decision-making
meetings than everyday conversations. They use different question types with differ-
ent frequency and also use them to accomplish different social actions.
Table 9. Distribution of Social Actions Employed by Question Type.
Social action
Polar
percentage (n)
Q-word
percentage (n)
Alternative
percentage (n)
All percentage
(n)
Confirmation request 74.8 (761) 1.5 (8) 76.4 (42) 49.9 (811)
Information request 11.6 (118) 86.6 (477) 13.2 (10) 37.3 (605)
Suggestion/offer/request 11.4 (116) 9.8 (54) 5.5 (3) 10.7 (173)
Rhetorical question 2.0 (20) 1.1 (6) 0.0 (0) 1.6 (26)
Other 0.3 (3) 1.1 (6) 0.0 (0) 0.6 (9)
Total 100 (1,018) 100 (551) 100 (55) 100 (1,624)
174 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
Next Speaker Selection. In addition to looking at question types and social actions, we
compared speaker interaction following questions by analyzing the next speaker selec-
tion and the response type that the next speaker produces. In decision-making meet-
ings, only 61% of questions selected a next speaker compared with 93% in regular
conversation (Stivers, 2010). This finding suggests that in decision-making meetings
entering the floor is often open to multiple participants and a speaker can enter the
conversation at times when they are not necessarily selected by the previous speaker.
This suggests that a different kind of dynamic exists in institutional settings, with par-
ticipants able to establish their roles in conversation more freely, while being expected
to be more active than in a regular conversation. In other words, in the United States,
those who wish to be perceived as a leader need to be able to speak or contribute to the
discussion without a specific invitation to do so.
This can be a particular challenge for those from certain cultures. For example, our
previous research demonstrated that in mixed teams (Aritz & Walker, 2010), East
Asian business professionals often find it challenging to actively engage in group
work with U.S. professionals, often waiting for an active invitation to contribute.
However, this analysis demonstrates that in an U.S. institutional setting, next speaker
selection decreases significantly compared with regular conversations and frequently,
participants need to join in without an explicit invitation from the previous speaker
even when they ask questions. In other words, decision-making meetings that take
place in an institutional setting in the United States have different discourse norms
than regular conversations that take place in the United States; they also differ from
those of institutional settings in other cultures.
The analysis of response type provides a further insight into the use of questions is
decision-making meetings. Each question can generate three types of responses: an
answer to the question, a nonanswer response whereby the speaker answering the
question fails to directly answer the question, or a “no response” whereby a person
fails to respond. In regular conversations, 76% of questions resulted in answers, 19%
of questions generated a nonanswer response, and 5% of questions produced no
response. Conversely, in decision-making meetings only 68% of questions received an
answer and as many as 13% of questions resulted in nonresponse. A no response in
Table 10. Distribution of Social Actions by Polar Question Subtypes.
Social action
Declarative
percentage (n)
Interrogative
percentage (n)
Tag
percentage (n)
All percentage
(n)
Confirmation request 77.7 (421) 62.6 (216) 94.7 (124) 74.8 (761)
Information request 11.4 (62) 15.9 (55) 0.8 (1) 11.6 (118)
Suggestion/offer/
request
9.6 (52) 16.8 (58) 4.6 (6) 11.4 (116)
Rhetorical question 0.7 (4) 4.6 (16) 0.0 (0) 2.0 (20)
Other 0.6 (3) 0.0 (0) 0.0 (0) 0.3 (3)
Total 100 (542) 100 (345) 100 (131) 100 (1,018)
Aritz et al. 175
both instances was the same. Unlike regular conversations, in decision-making meet-
ings fewer people were selected to enter the conversation, so that questions often went
unanswered. The decision-making meetings exhibit different dynamics and conversa-
tional rules to those of regular conversations, In addition, those participants who
emerge as leaders use different conversational strategies that ensure their participation
when compared with transleaders and nonleaders.
Conclusions and Limitations
The study identifies the ways that questions function as a discursive resource for
establishing leadership in decision-making meetings; it also investigates how the use
of questions differ in conversational settings as compared with institutional decision-
making contexts. This analysis of questions has provided insights into the use of ques-
tions as a key discourse type to influence others and to demonstrate leadership in
groups.
Our analysis also shows that questions are used as a discourse resource in institu-
tional settings primarily by those who emerge as leaders in a group. In other words, use
of questions is a key resource for influencing group decision making and establishing
leadership within a group. In addition, groups with three or more leaders show a sig-
nificant increase in speaker involvement in terms of asking questions compared with
groups with one or two leaders. Our study suggests that women tend to use questions
that invite contributions from others and therefore facilitate collaboration but also
challenge these contributions when they have to negotiate their roles and compete in
an institutional setting. This might be considered a gendered usage fostered by encul-
turation practices and stereotypes as well as institutional constraints regarding the
boundaries of gendered performances.
The analysis of the use of questions in institutional settings compared with casual
conversation settings suggests that decision-making meetings differ in that questions
are used to elicit information and to either facilitate the discussion or challenge other
speakers. Our analysis also indicates that speakers in decision-making meetings use
fewer polar yes or no questions and more Q-word questions. They also use more tag
questions in both challenging and facilitative functions. The social actions of ques-
tions in decision-making meetings also differ, functioning to check with or ask for
confirmation from others, rather than creating a social fabric that initiates other repair
as they do in regular conversations. In addition, questions indicating suggestions,
offers, or requests change from a comparatively small number in regular conversation
(2%) to a more significant number in decision-making meetings (11%). As such, insti-
tutional settings can encourage the construction of a multifunctional discourse charac-
terized by a high level of collaboration among participants, in which they exert
influence and use questions to establish different leadership types in decision-making
contexts.
There are also significant differences in the ways speakers take a turn. Whereas in a
regular conversation, a speaker holding the floor often selects the next speaker, speak-
ers in decision-making meetings are often not selected. In many instances, a question
176 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
generates a nonresponse, which results presents an opportunity for multiple participants
to seize the floor at that moment. This absence of selected speaker indicates the more
dynamic nature of the interaction as compared with regular conversations.
From a broader perspective, this research highlights the need for more studies that
interrogate some of our sociocultural and sociohistorical understandings of leadership.
It also highlights the need to break down or at least question some of those assump-
tions, potentially opening doors for new understandings of what leadership is, it’s ideal
role, and who or who cannot assume the role and why.
Understanding leadership as a dynamic, complex interaction among individuals
immediately questions the assertion that leadership is simply the accomplishment of a
single person, depending solely on his or her “fit” within prescribed cultural norms or
stereotypes, attractiveness, expertise, or ability to reward and punish (cf. references).
An individual can be named “the leader,” but whether that person actually functions as
such or as the only influencing element within a group decision-making discussion
becomes another matter from a leadership as discourse perspective. As this study sug-
gests, the influence of a leader can be exerted by more than one person in a group, at
different moments—as the transitory leadership phenomena illustrates—and in differ-
ent ways, and influenced in turn by highly contextual features, such as the composition
of the group and other factors unexplored in this study.
Perhaps it is time that the study of leadership is refined to provide more focus on
leadership as a temporal phenomenon created in interaction with others. Leadership
efforts can be accepted, ignored, or rejected by parties to a decision-making interac-
tion regardless of that person’s intention or organizational legitimacy. Leadership
viewed as a group phenomenon that emerges through interaction would thus shift the
focus of leadership discussion away from grand theories of leadership toward leader-
ship emergence as highly contextual, temporal phenomena of language, and the inter-
section of such factors as interpersonal and organizational culture dynamics and
values.
This perspective is echoed to some degree by Weick (1998) in his comparison of an
organization with jazz improvisation:
The idea of improvisation is important for organizational theory because it gathers
together compactly and vividly a set of explanations suggesting that to understand
organization is to understand organizing or, as Whitehead (1929) put it, to understand
“being” as constituted by its “becoming.” (p. 551)
This passage indicates the value of looking at a phenomenon such as leadership from
a temporal perspective rather than as a fait accompli. This suggests that this approach
would require a shift in our ontological perspective to one of an “ontology of becom-
ing, using images . . . such as emergence, fragments, micro-practices that enact order,
reaccomplishment, punctuation, recursion, reification, relations, transcience, flux, and
‘a sociology of verbs rather than a sociology of nouns’” (Chia, 1996, p. 49).
From an organizational culture perspective, questioning the definition of leadership
and its role has potentially larger implications for structures of power and overall
Aritz et al. 177
organizational functioning. Take, for example, the notion of transitory leadership that
we created to describe the phenomenon of leadership as it moves from one person to
another in a spontaneous, unplanned way. If leadership was seen in this way, what
would it mean for organizations built on hierarchies that through role positions grant
some people the authority to speak, to control others, and to make decisions while oth-
ers have these rights restricted or withdrawn by policies and procedures?
From a practical perspective, this article provides educators and managers with the
practical tools to explore how questions are used differently in a business decision-
making context compared with social conversations. It also provides them with the
tools to look at how questions are used by leaders as opposed to followers. In sum-
mary, discursive approaches to the issues of decision making and leadership provide a
toolbox that organizational members can apply to practically affect outcomes in both
of these important organizational activities.
For those aspiring to be leaders, this study also provides a potentially new way of
thinking about what leadership is and how it emerges in interaction. An improvisa-
tional approach to leadership may be more empowering, but it also shines a light on
other factors within an organization that can impede leadership emergence by some
and “grease the wheels” for others. Future research should explore the variables of
gender and culture to a much greater extent and examine how leadership is constructed,
perceived, and reenacted through the female lens and from a non-U.S. centric
perspective.
As stated earlier, a limitation of this study was the fact it used an experimental
design so it did not look at other variables that might dramatically affect leadership
emergence, such as organizational hierarchies, organizational culture, policies and
procedures, assigned leaders, stereotypes, communication norms, and relational histo-
ries of participants. Future research would take this work into an organizational setting
to observe the effect of these and other often highly contextualized variables on leader-
ship emergence in a group decision-making context. Contextual variables could have
enormous, if not defining, consequences for who emerges as a leader, and how, when,
and whether he or she is able. Investigating these concerns may have broader applica-
bility to questions of social and procedural justice not only in organizations but in
society at large.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
178 International Journal of Business Communication 54(2)
Notes
1. It is important to recognize that power and influence are often considered different phe-
nomena. For example, French and Raven (1959) noted in their six bases of power model
that power is often assigned by an entity or institution to an individual who often has the
ability to reward or punish as backed by the entity or institution. This is often the power
associated with a management function in an organizational setting. Influence, on the other
hand, can occur through different means, such as the attractiveness of or respect held for
the person, his or her mastery in the use of informational resources, and/or the belief that
the person holds superior skills and abilities. Influence does not then have to be conferred
upon a person; it can be earned or attributed through an individual’s performative actions,
a la Fairhurst (2008). Influence then has become associated with leadership.
2. A repair is an alteration that is suggested or made by a speaker, the addressee, or audience
in order to correct or clarify a previous conversational contribution. An “other-repair” is a
repair made by a participant other than the one whose speech is repaired.
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Author Biographies
Jolanta Aritz is a professor of clinical management communication at the Department of
Business Communication at the University of Southern California. She teaches business com-
munication classes and conducts research on small group communication, cross-cultural leader-
ship, and business discourse.
Robyn Walker is an associate professor of clinical management communication at the
University of Southern California Marshall School of Business Department of Business
Communication. She has published research in the areas of virtual teams, teamwork, leadership,
intercultural communication, and gender.
Peter Cardon is a professor in the Department of Business Communication at the University of
Southern California. He also serves as Academic Director of the MBA for Professionals and
Managers program. He researches virtual collaboration and communication, intercultural com-
munication, and leadership communication.
Zhang Li is an assistant professor at the Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics
in China. She teaches and conducts research on cross-cultural communication.
