The serious play of ironic practice: Changing culture in an Australian factory

The pragmatic phronetic gap within change practice is also a dramatic ironic gap within the life projects of practitioners. In contrast to studies of irony that focus on irony as trope or as an attitude of cynical detachment, this paper seeks to illuminate how practitioners wrestle with this ironic gap in the course of organisational change. It does so through an exploration of the ironic disposition of actors proactively engaged in organizational practice. The study draws on the experiences of a normative culture change program, and in particular three actors within that program, to illustrate and argue for further investigation of the practice of irony.