Rhetorical Enthymeme: The Forgotten Trope and its Methodological Import

摘要

Despite growing interest in rhetorical analysis by management scholars, the study of enthymemes or arguments‐in‐use, arguably the mainstay of rhetoric, has been scarce. We argue that enthymeme analysis holds promise in enabling researchers to access agents' shared beliefs, in turn shedding light on organizational processes. We draw from two key studies of enthymeme analysis; one interpretivist and one objectivist, to propose a mixed methods approach that combines the situationally‐specific, grounded insights of the former, with the confirmation, population validity aspects of the latter.