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Idle Talk and Modern Administration

Denton, Texas

This article attempts first to define idle administrative talk in terms of Speech-Act philosophy, then proceeds to illustrate the value of such an approach as a framework for the empirical study of idle talk in modern administration. Finally, the article concludes with two suggestions about why idle talk is so prominent in modern public and private sector administration. On the one hand, it may be a buffer device matched to the everyday ideological struggles occurring in complex organizations. On the other, its prominence may be due to the `fictional "nature of administrative work itself

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